Midterm Evaluation (5)

I woke Lianna and showed her Derek, and her reaction was a genuine pleasure to behold. It was the look of someone made to witness something they could not bear to see — contempt, sincere and unhidden. She recoiled in outright revulsion, and the moment Derek so much as tried to speak to her, she turned away. Which meant, naturally, that his punishment was mine to decide as I pleased.

So I drove stakes through his limbs and his heart, exactly as I saw fit — and the expression he turned on me afterward was another spectacle entirely. A look I was, by now, slowly growing used to. After all, I had seen it plenty of times back at the Academy.

After asking her to keep watch over our surroundings, I closed my eyes in the tent for a short while — and when I opened them again, I was somewhere else entirely.

A space of blinding, immaculate white. And before it, a black door that belonged there no more than a wound. Before I knew what I was doing, I had pushed it open as though in a trance, and in that instant I felt as if I had plunged into a boundless sea. Like Icarus plummeting as the sun melted the wax from his wings, I was alone and adrift in a black, black void. I fell and fell, as though sinking toward the very floor of the deep — until my body caught against something and stopped. And in that moment, a voice resounded through my skull.

What is that sound...? It wasn't that the words failed to reach me — I simply couldn't understand them. Was that even a sound at all? Who was "thou" meant to name? What did "the price" refer to? And what did the one who spoke it desire from the one they called "thou"?

The moment those words reached me, my skull rang as if it would split apart. The pain went on and on without pause, and then someone's touch pried my eyes open before I could resist. Cold sweat soaked me through, and every muscle in my body was screaming. It took a moment to recognize the whole thing as a dream — and I promptly wrote it off as one more nightmare, plain and simple. When I pushed myself upright, something slipped from my head and dropped away: a wet towel, I realized. No wonder my forehead had felt damp, as though something had soaked into it.

"Are you... all right?"

"...."

The moment I turned my head, her face was there — and the sight of it struck me speechless. The clothes she should have been standing watch in were caked with dirt, and cuts and the traces of magic scarred her in place after place. Yet the tent stood perfectly intact — too intact for other cadets to have found us — and so the question formed on its own. What, exactly, had happened to her?

"I... um... fell into a trap..."

"A trap, you say?"

"You looked like you were hurting, so... I went down to the river to get you a wet towel, and..."

"There were traps there. And you stepped on them?"

"Yes..."

She had no reason to look so downcast. Those were traps I had set. But this did present a problem: the tent I had been guarding with layer upon layer of traps could be guarded that way no longer. I had poured real care into building them, and reconstructing the lot would take time — and even then, judging by yesterday's wolf, I could hardly call the place safe. Wild animals are keen to the scent of humans; they rarely blunder into snares.

So we decided to amend our strategy. We would range from place to place, hunting magical beasts. Going after cadets meant risking a fight against force we couldn't match. Alone, I might manage it — manage even outright assassination, one way or another — but Lianna, left behind on her own, would inevitably be exposed to danger. It seemed far more efficient, then, to move together as much as we could and earn our bonus points from monsters instead of students.

"Then I'll take down the tent!"

"There's really no need—"

"Jenison, you're hurt, aren't you? Let me handle at least this much!"

Uneasy as I was, I left the cleanup to her and set about breaking down the wolf we ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had caught the day before. We hadn't done a thing with the carcass after the kill, and it had since drawn swarms of every insect imaginable. Doing my best to ignore that, I drew the blood out of the body in one long, steady stream. Blood has been a prized alchemical material since time immemorial. Circles drawn in blood are said to yield powerful effects; the summoning of ominous beings is always attended by blood; and there are even faiths that teach that to become another creature, you must eat of that creature's flesh. And so blood never fails to number among the most common and most heavily used of alchemical materials — and I, too, intended to put it to use. It serves in curses as well, so somewhere, somehow, it was bound to prove useful.

Draining the blood took a good long while, and by the time I finished, she had already completed the cleanup and come to stand behind me. There happened to be something I'd been meaning to ask, so I spoke without turning around.

"Lianna. Just where do the limits of your Transmutation lie?"

"Limits...?"

Every ability, as ever, has its limits — and those limits shift with a person's talent, and with the effort they have invested. The same would hold ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠true for hers. As far as I knew, Transmutation had no fixed medium. Nothing defined what could serve as its target, which meant that in theory it could turn anything into anything else. And that applied to what it produced, as well.

"Lianna. Can you turn matter into mana?"

"...What?"

"Exactly what I said. Can you turn a physical object into mana — or into magic power?"

"Of course I can't! How would I even go about it? You can't see the stuff in the first place!"

"Then what about a magic circle?"

"What...?"

"Is it possible?"

A magic circle has physical substance. Each bears its own distinct form. So then — if one could read a circle's composition, could it be transmuted into something else? It was the kind of idea no one would ever have thought to think. The girl in front of me was already agonizing over it in earnest. Could she keep pace with the speed at which a circle unfolded? Could she swiftly grasp what the caster was building? And could she then summon a different circle to mind and overwrite it on the spot? Obstacles abounded, and untangling ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them all might well take a very long time. And yet the very reason she was wrestling with the question was that it seemed possible. It was, quite literally, a fancy beyond imagining — and an ideal.

A magic circle is counted among the most delicate of workings — let a single line stray, and it never activates. But what if a person could reach into another's circle and bend it to their will? For mages, there could be no hell more complete; for her, a fight would take shape that was almost unfairly convenient.

"Could you do it?"

"Not yet... I can't... not yet..."

That was the last question I asked. Because not yet was, in every way that mattered, a definite answer.

Time wore on, and the students began to thin out. The two hundred fifty or so cadets who had started the evaluation had dwindled to somewhere around one hundred eighty before I knew it, and the bracelets now displayed a list of the students each wearer had put down. The most famous names were, of course, Isabella and Princess Kiana. Isabella, who had never mixed words easily with anyone, and the Princess, who gathered her squad from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her own faction and ruled it with a firm hand — the two could not have been more different, and their one common trait was that they were strong.

Discarding any strategy only people like them could afford, we resolved to hunt magical beasts instead and began combing the forest. We had barely a moment to admire the peaceful scenery — a squirrel in the treetops, a valley opened wide to the sky — before the scent of blood began drifting around us and the air slowly turned strange. The squirrel vanished into the hollow of its tree; the wild boar that had been grazing in peace broke into a frenzied run; every bird that had been singing in the deeper woods took wing at once. The leaves began, little by little, to tremble, and as the foul odor — the smell of iron — thickened, the animals' strange behavior went on and on. Sensing that something was wrong, we judged that something lay deeper in — and began to close in on the source of the blood scent, slowly, with our breath held.

And of course, that existence was present on this island as well. Its body wore the shape of a colossal wolf, its eyes burned a red so vivid it turned the stomach, and driven into its forehead was a violet mana stone — the sigil that marked it a magical beast. It was far too grotesque to call a living creature, and far too unmistakably alive to call a thing. Its howl carried a gravity no wolf had any right to; its movements were unnatural for any animal; and its form shifted too much to make out — and yet there was no denying that it existed.

Blood seeped from what might have been its forelegs, the liquid dripping from its jaws was busy melting the ground, and the black miasma rising off it conjured the very image of a demon. The flesh it had been gobbling down was mashed past all recognition, and blood had spattered in wild arcs until the whole scene turned the stomach. The animals had long since fled far from it, and even people sensed something unclean in its aura and would not draw near. All around lay the grisly sight of trees torn up root and branch, and every boulder in sight was fissured with claw-marks.

A beast that had stalked the one crouched behind those very rocks, breath stifled, and marked their throat and nothing else. Exhaling that black aura, standing alone in solemn, lofty solitude — it was Biran, the Queen Wolf, sovereign of the black wolves.