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

The voidspawns were no longer present by the time Fabrisse returned to the North Pond after his medical examination.

What remained was the kind of mess that looked, oddly, like it had followed instructions.

The grass bore the evidence of conflict in a patchwork of blunt depressions and scorched circles; the former from kinetic spells and collapsing wards, the latter charred black from Tommaso's rings of fire. The geometry of the destruction had a strange order to it, like someone had tried to draw a battlefield using only gestures and heat. A few saplings had been splintered at the base, and one of the ward-beacons near the eastern bank had fallen over, melted.

Several clucklebeaks lay still along the slope. Their mottled feathers were damp, splayed at unnatural angles, and their bright crests had dulled. Too many to be a coincidence, but not so many that it felt apocalyptic. None of them resembled Mercy.

Good. Mercy might still be out there; un-dead. Wait, no. Undead means he's already dead. Not dead, I mean. Not dead.

Alongside a Bureau agent, Fabrisse stepped further into the pond's vicinity. Severa Montreal hadn't been made aware of this battle taking place here, so she agreed to a brief questioning instead. Fabrisse didn't think she'd missed much. 'The Battle of the North Pond' didn't sound particularly flashy, and there wasn't anything to see once he'd returned anyway.

Ganvar was already gone, taken away in the custody of the Bureau. Tommaso lay curled in the grass with his head resting in Ilya's lap, his fire-touched skin finally cooled. He looked young like this, and not the reckless kind. Ilya had slumped back against the thick trunk of a nearby poplar, arms folded loosely, her head tilted as if she'd drifted off while in thought. Her breath was even, but her eyes remained closed. Neither stirred at Fabrisse's arrival.

They must have been absolutely knackered, but he was glad they looked fine.

Celine sat on the grass a short distance from the pond's edge, her boots soaked to the ankle, streaked with mud and shards of her own crystals. A Bureau agent stood beside her, tall and slate-faced, wearing the standard storm-colored magecoat with a high collar and faint sigils stitched along the cuffs. In their gloved hand was a small crystalline vial—stoppered with a seal Fabrisse didn't recognize—and Celine drank from it in short, clean sips like it was routine.

The agent made a note on a hovering pane of aetherglass with a stylus that left no visible ink. They didn't speak much, only gestured once or twice between questions, and Celine answered each one with as much calm as someone in her situation could be: with an occasional shoulder shudder every now and then.

The vial in her hand gave off a faint steam where it touched her lips. Is it some kind of post-casting stabilizer? Or possibly an alchemic blend for magic fatigue? Bureau agents were pulled from all disciplines—Thaumaturgy, Alchemy, Divine Abjuration, and many others. Maybe that wasn't an alchemical drink at all.

She caught his glance and then, without hesitation, raised a finger to point straight at him. The Bureau agent paused. Celine gestured again, this time more deliberately, like she was asking permission. The agent gave a single nod, barely a twitch of their chin, and before they'd even finished the motion, Celine was already on her feet.

Her crystalline shards crunched underfoot as she broke into a sprint.

"Fabrisse!" she called. "Are you alright? Where did the voidcaster take you?"

"I'll explain later. Where's Mentor Lugano?" He asked back.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"He—"

"I'm here," came Lorvan Lugano's voice, hoarser than he'd ever sounded.

Fabrisse turned to see him approaching from the treeline, moving slowly with one arm draped over Kaldrin's shoulder for support. Both of them were bruised and dust-streaked, walking at a limping pace like the battle had wrung them out from the inside. Kaldrin looked like he'd taken a few nasty impacts—his vest was crumpled at the ribs, and a bloom of purpling bruises was spreading across one cheek, as if his own wards had rebounded on him under pressure.

But Lorvan was the worse for wear.

His coat was unfastened, sleeves rolled back, and his left hand was wrapped hastily in what looked like the remnants of someone's belt, dark with drying blood. The skin around the binding glinted with thin gashes curving down from his palm toward the wrist, blackened at the edges like a snake tongue.

"No fatalities," Lorvan said. "But the voidcaster had escaped."

"It was the same faceless one we saw, Kestovar," Kaldrin added.

Fabrisse's gaze locked onto Lorvan's hand. "The lacerations . . . are they superficial or tendon-deep? You're still able to grip, but is there a full range of flexion? Did the darkness spread through direct contact or ambient curse? Is the color a burn reaction or aetheric corrosion?"

"One question at the time, Kestovar." Lorvan coughed. "To answer your question . . . I should be back in full health in two weeks. Until then, you'll be arranged a replacement mentor."

Fabrisse's brow furrowed. As he stepped in closer without quite meaning to, his gaze narrowed on the curve of blackened gashes winding down Lorvan's hand. "A cut like that? Two weeks seems physiologically implausible."

"We have healers in the Synod, Kestovar."

"Healers with time-manipulative aetherics?" Fabrisse muttered, then looked up as the Bureau agent who had accompanied him—Varys, if he remembered correctly—took one step forward, the smooth gleam of their aetherglass panel hovering back to life. The agent wore a charcoal-colored metal mask, and from their voice, he couldn't tell if they were male or female. This was the second person with a mask today, and the first one, Ganvar, hadn't been very affable. He didn't expect much from the second one.

"Fabrisse Kestovar. We'll need your full account of the incident," they said, voice low and politely impersonal, like someone asking for a toll payment instead of recounting a trauma. "And related inquiries as to your role in the incident as a binder of the Eidralith."

"Can you wait?" He hated Varys already. The Bureau didn't pause for aftermaths. They were always trying to index things before they'd even finished breaking.

"The sooner you answer our questions, the sooner you can return to your mentors for triage and debrief," Varys said. "Or to rest, if that's what you require."

The cut-glass glint of the aetherglass panel kept catching the corner of his vision, and the hovering sound of it—like a tuning fork too close to his ears—wasn't helping.

He wasn't ready.

"I don't—" His voice cracked halfway through, and he looked away from the Bureau mask, focusing instead on the churned-up earth by his boot. He could feel the drag behind his eyes. His mind kept trying to sequence the events logically, but the threads wouldn't line up.

"Kestovar," Lorvan said. "You can answer, even if it's uncomfortable. You're still in your body, still oriented. If you wait until it frays further, you'll lose detail. And they won't wait."

Fabrisse didn't reply.

Lorvan continued, "They helped us. We owe them a degree of cooperation."

Fabrisse finally lifted his head. "Then I want a hard limit on the number of questions. Ten; no, seven. If you breach that, I will stop talking."

"Noted," said Varys as he pulled out his stylus. "We'll begin at the moment of first resonance with the Eidralith. Start with what you felt—not what you assumed it was, but the exact aetheric texture or stimulus that marked the shift. Let's make our way to that empty patch over there." The masked man had already walked ahead.

Hold on. They aren't even asking me about the Voidfold incident, but just went straight to gathering information about the Eidralith?

Fabrisse looked and Lorvan, acknowledged his nod, then followed Varys.