Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotional Incompetent [A Magical Academy LitRPG]

Rubidi's void-cloaked form rippled, bristling, her shape barely holding to humanoid. Darkness sluiced off her like oil, and the air—or the lack of it—seemed to bend harder around her presence. She didn't step forward, but the space before her bent as it shoved at Severa like a rising tide.

"You don't want to fight me." Rubidi snarled. "I taught you everything you know. I built your foundation. Every clever thought you've ever had traces back to me. Don't forget who pulled you into your little stardom when your daddy left you to rot—"

Severa's hand slid beneath the folds of her cloak and drew out a dagger. The metal was unlike anything he'd ever seen: dark and so smooth to the point of oily, yet points of light coruscated from its surface, as if the metal itself contained distant stars. It drew Fabrisse's gaze like a moth to flame.

Then she spoke the shaping words,

"Steel that sleeps, awake in flame,
Curve and burn, now take your name."

Veins of molten blue raced along the blade's length, chased after by tiny sparks of confident green along its edge, briefly dancing before vanishing. The starsteel (now he had learned) itself seemed to respond to the magic, bending into a perfect predatory talon. Heat radiated in waves, but the blade's edge remained impossibly sharp, sculpted by fire yet steel through and through.

The blue fire surged along the dagger, elongating its shape. The steel itself seemed to melt into the flame, extending into a luminous arc of concentrated fire.

It was a small dagger a moment before, and now, it's . . . this?

What had been a slender blade now stretched like liquefied light. He had seen fire channeled before, but never contained so perfectly, never fused with steel until it was the steel, and in this dim, shadowed space, the dagger illuminated itself with a fireborn intensity that was almost alive.

Rubidi's shadows writhed. Her voice cut through the dark, incredulous. "You brought your legendary weapon? You weren't here by accident. You have prepared to be here."

Severa didn't speak. The rods of light she had summoned with her other hand droned louder, crackling where they touched the geometry of the void, keeping the fissure pried open.

She began to move slowly, arm lifting, siphoning more of the void around her fingers. The dark thickened around her wrist. "Fool. You should know your place; you are but a student. Don't make me unmake you, Severa."

Severa raised her light-rod holding hand to her lips. Her index finger pressed against the edge of her teeth, harder, harder—until enamel met flesh. Blood welled instantly.

Then she swallowed her blood.

What in the sacred socks—

Her eyes burst bloodshot, sclera veined and gleaming as though her own capillaries had caught fire. The veins raced from the corner of her eyes, across her face, dark scarlet devouring black, crawling like ink beneath her skin. They splintered from her throat to her collarbone, slithered down her neck to her arms, until her entire body looked like parchment overlaid with a map of burning rivers.

A Tier what? A student? Casting a Tier IV spell?

"Come," Severa said. "I will end you in five moves." Her rod of light vibrated in her grip.

Rubidi cackled. "End me? You'll kill yourself sustaining your little—"

Energy thickened, solidifying into a radiant pillar that dwarfed Severa's height. The rod no longer existed—only the blazing column, a conduit of concentrated thaumaturgic force.

The column drew together every stray particle of light and fire in the cavern, compressing it into a single, unbearably bright point at the apex of the column. Rubidi shrieked, flailing, as the brilliance hit the side of her void-cloaked form. The left arm of her cloak erupted under the pressure, disintegrating in a wave of shadow that snapped and hissed as though scorched by invisible fire.

The void-cloak's left arm was gone. Or at least, the place where the arm should have been, if she were still human. Shadows twisted in the empty space, clawing at themselves like restless smoke. Her silhouette no longer suggested a humanoid form; the lines of her body fractured into writhing tendrils of darkness that bent in thousands of directions. Her head tilted at an unnatural angle, the contours of a face suggested only by the faintest glimmer of dark matter, features stretching and snapping like thin film caught in a storm.

Severa lunged, faster than Fabrisse's eye could follow. In that instant, the fractures that traced her skin like rivermaps ignited with the blazing brilliance of the column she'd just conjured.

Rubidi's hundreds of tendrils stretched, possibly aiming to envelop Severa. Severa met the attack as she leapt, and her Embervein traced a crescent arc. The steel bit into the extended darkness. The tendril tore apart under the strike, splitting cleanly into two separate strands that writhed independently.

The split held, the shadows unable to fuse back together for several heartbeats, leaving a clear opening in Rubidi's assault. Some of Rubidi's tendrils slipped past Severa's initial strike, whipping around to slam into her side. As her body reeled, veins of molten light instantly igniting into protective wards across her skin.

"Not clean," Rubidi hissed. "Still can't swing a blade, child—"

The glowing energy coalesced above Severa's palms, spinning and condensing into a blinding sphere. She angled it with precision, aiming at the exact fracture in Rubidi's void-cloak: the twisted junction where the left arm had been torn away, where the darkness had failed to fully coalesce.

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The sphere erupted in a flash of searing illumination, shooting forward like a streak of condensed sunlight. Rubidi's tendrils twisted instinctively, trying to intercept, but the strike seemed extremely precise. She had to vault aside, the force missing her by mere inches, the residual shockwave skimming past Fabrisse. He froze, unable to move, heart hammering.

If he had been a few steps forward, the blast would have seared through him.

Rubidi's void-form wavered. Her voice cracked. "How did you know the Voidform's weak spot? Who told you?"

Severa conjured a cluster of condensed light whips. They struck fast, snaking toward the fracture she had already identified, aiming to pin the writhing shadows long enough for Embervein to slice cleanly.

The whip-strands wrapped around dozens of tendrils, constricting, pulling. Severa swung her Embervein. Rubidi contorted with terrifying flexibility. A tendril slipped free from a whip-strand; another twined out of reach, elongating to buffer the blade. The Embervein cut through the air, grazing the edge of the fracture, but the lightwhips pulled her in too.

The force of the restrained tendrils threw Severa off balance. She stumbled forward several steps, arms flailing as she fought to steady herself. But she didn't give herself even a second to rest. Planting her feet, she twisted her torso, letting the momentum carry the Embervein in another crescent sweep. That must be the angle of swing she was the most confident in.

At the same time, the lightwhips coiled tighter around the freed tendrils, yanking them and forcing Rubidi to twist once more.

Once more, the blade almost connected. One of Rubidi's remaining tendrils shot forward like a whip, striking Severa's side. Her ward reacted again. The impact slammed her backward a step, just enough to disrupt her rhythm. She staggered but didn't fall.

Fabrisse held his breath as he watched the duel unfold. Rubidi, even fractured and unstable, was frighteningly deliberate—every shift in her form designed to shield the one glaring vulnerability Severa had already exploited. Her attacks weren't chaotic; they were calculated, defensive, and yet there was a subtle invitation in them. It was as if she wanted Severa to keep pressing, to test, to strain herself.

Severa attacked again. Her movements were fluid, almost too fluid: a lunge, a roll, a strike that bent around the void-tendrils, each attack faster than Fabrisse could fully process. And yet, for every aggressive assault, there were moments when Severa hesitated just enough to allow Rubidi a chance to reposition and protect the fracture.

Fabrisse's mind clicked. Rubidi was her mentor; she must have understood Severa's weakness. Fabrisse dared to guess Severa's Focus Pool wasn't deep enough to sustain a prolonged fight. Severa must win within however few moves she had, and Rubidi was forcing Severa to expend her strength.

Severa's strike bent around a last set of writhing tendrils. She twisted, leveraging the momentum to spin through the air, and then collapsed forward onto one knee directly in front of Fabrisse. Her body shuddered violently; a thin spray of blood spat from her lips, landing on the seemingly endless pit of void beneath her.

The dark scarlet lines slithered with the same fluid grace as when they had spread, but now their motion was reversed. They crawled up her arms, each vein coiling back toward her shoulders. From there, they traced along her collarbone, converging at the base of her neck. The glow retreated up the side of her throat, tracing the contours of her jaw and cheek, until the fiery rivers wound along the edges of her eyes, the sclera slowly returning to its less pronounced crimson.

The fight's over.

The sudden movement swapped the battlefield. Rubidi's fractured, void-wreathed form now faced Severa across the small gap, Fabrisse caught squarely behind her.

The mentor's eyes gleamed with amusement, her tendrils quivering like serpents, instinctively covering the fracture she'd fought so hard to protect. "Fool," Rubidi cackled, the sound cutting through the charged silence of the voidfold. "You can barely hold your Bloodform for a minute, and you dare challenge your mentor?"

Severa's blood-streaked eyes met Rubidi's, unflinching. Her grip on Embervein had weakened; her fingers trembled, barely able to hold the hilt. The brilliant blue fire that had surged along the blade's length sputtered and retracted, folding back into the starsteel until the dagger was little more than a faintly sparkling steel. Blood from her palm dripped steadily onto the darkness.

Fabrisse's chest tightened, a mix of awe, fear, and helplessness squeezing him all at once. Is Bloodform even safe? he wondered, staring at the retreating veins along her arms. The way her body had burned with that energy . . . it looked like she'd risked her life just to hold it for a few moments.

Why did she push so hard? he thought. Does she hate Rubidi that much? Or is this . . . something else?

Rubidi's cackle deepened. "You think you can bait me? You think this changes anything? I've taught you everything, Severa. You are mine to break—or to fail."

Severa held her gaze. "Mentor. Did you really think I was that stupid to come here alone?"

Before Rubidi could respond, a violent shockwave tore through the voidfold. The air tore as an immense force slammed into the fractured space. Rubidi's tendrils snapped aside, twisting wildly under the impact, and the fissured edges of the voidfold convulsed.

A blinding surge of chaotic energy cascaded through the dark, turning darkness to light in a second. Sparkling fragments of light and shadow collided with a deafening crack, tearing at the structure like an anvil striking. Fabrisse instinctively ducked, shielding his eyes as the spell's force warped the very geometry around them.

With a sharp motion of her free hand, Severa traced sigils in the air, each line igniting with a fainter radiance than before. A shimmering dome of light erupted around her and Fabrisse.

Severa whispered, weaker now, "I only need you where you are, Mentor. So you can't use Kestovar as a human shield."

The voidfold groaned, collapsing in on itself piece by piece, shards of condensed aether raining down. Even Rubidi, normally unshakable in her voidform, recoiled as the sheer pressure pushed her to her knees, forcing her tendrils to writhe in desperate counterbalance.

"What? Is this an Energy unfolding spell?" Rubidi's voice cracked with incredulity.

A figure tore through the collapsing voidfold like a comet crashing through a storm. "A Void Thaumaturgy user caught red-handed. I have long waited for this day."

Fabrisse's eyes tracked the figure as he landed amid the collapsing voidfold, a shockwave of presence scattering loose shards of condensed aether. At first, his mind refused to place him—cloaked, masked by the sheer force of energy he carried, a swirl of smoke coiling at his side as if a river of ink had gained consciousness.

Recognition hit him. That smoke. That's Archmagus Lellian Dir from the Order.

The void's retreat finally peeled back the veil—like stepping out of an eclipse—and for the first time, the room asserted itself.

A mirrored panel materialized into full opacity around them, throwing back a warped image of the scene. Then another. Then five more. The entire space was octagonal, obsidian-adjacent stone underfoot, mirrored silver along the walls and upper angles. The kind of architectural arrogance that said 'we see all angles at once', with no visible seams or frames.

This had to be one of the private quarters in the Mirrored Tower. Probably Severa Montreal's personal training chamber.

No wonder Rubidi picked this spot. No one else would have the gall to step inside a high matriarch's sanctum.

Well. Except Severa.

A formation of eight figures in gray-black mage coats stepped into the space, each marked with a seven-spoked insignia stitched in dull silver thread. The Bureau of Arcane Irregularities. The Bureau that had supposedly been en route for three weeks.

The eight figures moved in near-perfect synchronization, each raising a hand as sigils ignited in the air between them. Lines of silver-blue light shot out from their palms, converging on Rubidi's void-cloaked form. The shadows writhed, elongating in all possible directions, but the light responded faster than they could spread.

The sigils pulsed in a synchronized rhythm, weaving together an interlocking cage of energy that reshaped around Rubidi. She slithered and flexed, each tendril stretching and contorting as if it could slip through any gap, but she had no chance against a containment cage held by eight people. The cage narrowed with each wriggle, reshaping itself to preempt her escape.

There was no longer room to coil. Even in her most flexible, void-elongated form, the containment held her tight.

With a final synchronized beat, Rubidi and her tendrils were locked in place.

One of the agents stepped forward and read aloud from a thin aether-scripted tablet, voice steady, "Affar Rubidi, you are hereby detained under Article 7, Section 19 of the Institutional Accord for unsanctioned dimensional transgression, void-collusion, and subversion of institutional law. You are entitled to one sanctioned representative and a full temporal record audit. Do you understand the charges as stated?"

Fabrisse stared at the Bureau's insignia. It was the exact emblem stamped on the sealed directive Archmagus Rolen had shown him in confidence, before his departure to the Outer Fold. He even remembered the label: Time-Sensitive: Do Not Transmit.

Fabrisse had expected the Bureau. Rolen leaving had been a bait, a means to embolden the void faction into following through with their attack. Headmaster Draeth had sent him away, right after the headmaster himself had formally petitioned for an arrest.

"By formal request to the High Seat of the Thaumaturgical Synod Authority," he had said, "I submit this petition for immediate action against all agents of void-aligned subversion, whose actions threaten to destabilize the sanctity, integrity, and lawful continuity of this reverent academic institution."

Those were his words to the Bureau. And Fabrisse had been there to witness it.

He could only pray the Bureau had been able to capture whoever was sustaining the much bigger voidfold out in the North Pond.

But he had not expected Archmagus Dir. What's going on?

Archmagus Dir stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back. Fabrisse watched as the smoke at his side drifted and curled with an almost sentient patience.

Stopping a few paces in front of Severa, Dir inclined his head slightly. "How are you feeling, Montreal?"

Severa lowered her gaze, the faint gleam of residual blood on her lips still visible, and her voice came out refined, almost ceremonious. "I deeply apologize for disappointing you, Magister Dir."

"Wipe the blood off your face," Dir said. "And I am not the one you should apologize to." He gestured subtly with the tilt of his head, indicating Fabrisse behind Severa. "Apologize to him."