Chương 36: Leaving the Hospital

The Emerald Isle burned not with rebellion, but with cleansing flame. Duke Bjorn Morsin, axe-bearer and spell-slayer, marched against the night. The undead, the cursed, the howling things that slithered in the bogs - All were dragged into daylight, their carcasses nailed to castle gates, Displayed as proof: This land was guarded. This land was ruled. The people saw. The people cheered. Gold filled purses. Markets hummed with song.

The nobility, once feared and aloof, now walked among the common wix, Draped in finery, with old Morsin blood displayed like trophies - Wives, husbands, handmaidens, consorts. Was it mercy? Was it domination? The people did not care. For the first time in memory, their duke fought for them. The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 39 Erik put aside his lunch tray. It was bad, if healthy, and he spent a minute thinking about why. Ah. To not encourage people to linger and stay.

If the hospital was miserable, it incentivized people to get out as quickly as possible. Kind of a dick move to the people who got hurt, but possibly reasonable in the grand scheme of things. He'd have to ask someone who actually knew. His curtains were open to talk with Odric, when two red-robed figures caught his eye. A pair of Praetorians, mirrored shields slung over their back, were walking down the aisle. They paused at a curtained bed and moved in.

Erik continued working on what, exactly, he wanted to tell the Praetorians. It would be easy enough to tell his story with a slant, only telling truthful information that put him in a good light. But then he also had to consider the next eight years. What did he want his relationship with them to be like? How did he want them to see him? He softly smacked the mattress he was lying down on. Damn his lessons for making him think that way. They weren't wrong, but… Erik felt he had no innocence left.

Not since executing Jonas and becoming a man. Whining was for kids. Properly charting his life and sailing the rugged seas was his lot in life. Finding the right music to play to harmonize with the symphony of life was the tune he needed to play. He was just starting to debate the pros and cons of various approaches when Sora sat down on his bed, then pulled the curtains shut. Erik lifted an eyebrow.

"Bossman." She said seriously.

"We need to talk." Erik straightened up at that.

"Right then. Let's talk." He said, putting aside his planning.

"Just what was going on with you and that girl on the Prydwen?" Sora asked, snapping her fingers.

"The, errr, outcast one? Where you kept staring off blankly into space?"

"Are you talking about Winslow? Hazel Winslow?" Erik asked. She snapped her fingers and pointed excitedly at Erik.

"Yes! That's the one! Her! You told me the walls had ears and you didn't want to talk about it." She gestures around them.

"Privacy curtains. Anti-wall-ears. Start yapping." Erik briefly mulled it over, then realized he had to tell Sora.

"First off, no freaking out." He said.

"Yeah, sure." Sora said dismissively. Erik took a deep breath.

"Hazel's a natural mind mage." He said neutrally. Sora jumped out of his bed.

"She's a WHAT!?" She yelled.

"A natural mind mage." Erik said.

"I know what you said!" She snapped, then groaned, holding her head in her hands, then started to furiously pace around Erik's bed.

"Oh fuck, oh no, oh, this is so bad, I let a mind mage near me!" She gasped.

"And I have no defenses! Oh no, what if she's Roko? What if she got into my mind? Am I still me? Oh fuck! We need to tell someone! We need to-" Erik grabbed Sora's wrist.

"Breathe." He commanded.

"I am!" She snapped back.

"You promised you wouldn't freak out." Erik said.

"It's worth freaking out about!" Sora yelled back.

"Roko was a natural mind mage! If she's not him, she could be just as bad!" Erik shook his head.

"Sora, do you have any idea how bad a kid has to have it to awaken as one?" He asked. Sora shook her head, her eyes widening as a revelation came over her.

"Wait! I know! Erik, ego check." Erik opened his mouth to protest, but caught his tongue before it could get him in trouble. The first rule of ego checks. When someone trusted asked for one, you gave it.

"How do you know how to do an ego check?" He asked, mildly suspicious. Sora rolled her eyes.

"I'm bad at the theoretical number nonsense and random fact trivia. Ego checks are something actually important, I know how to run one." She paused and hesitated.

"What?" Erik asked.

"There's more." Sora took in a deep breath, her eyes flitting everyone except Erik's.

"That's… yeah… well." She was clearly uncomfortable, fidgeting in place.

"A couple of people pulled me aside and pointed something out to me before we left." Erik let her work through the words she wanted to say.

"Look, we're brand new initiates. At the end of the year, at the end of our schooling, I'm probably going to be the only one who can run a full ego check on you. I just don't want it to be weird, you know? I want to be your friend, not your handler or sanity checker or whatever." Erik opened his arms.

"Come here, broombrain, give me a hug. You'll always be my friend. Then run the damn ego check before you get convinced that I changed the topic on you and go all paranoid that I deflected it." Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Sora clutched Erik, burying her face into her shoulder. She mumbled something he didn't hear.

"What was that?" Erik asked.

"Can you ego check me as well?" She asked.

"The idea that I'm not me anymore… I'm scared." Erik patted her on the back.

"I'll do the ego check right after." He promised. Sora sniffed.

"Thanks bossman." She said.

"You're the best." She got up.

"First thing's first. Today's password?" Erik mentally went down the list and gave it. They were running out, and would need to make a new list soon enough.

"Right. Next…" The two were about halfway through the ego check when the Praetorians pulled back the curtain. On top of their red cloak, both of them were wearing thick glasses, a necklace with too many trinkets on it, and had more rings than fingers on their hands.

"Gentlemen, if you'll excuse us, we're in the middle of an ego check." Eriksaid.

"We'll be happy to answer your questions after." The one on the left snorted.

"You don't need to run a full ego check. There's no reason to." He said. Erik glanced at the curtains and Sora got the hint, pulling them shut.

"Except there's a full mind mage running around." Erik said. The two Praetorians were good, not a ripple on their face at the news - but that, in itself, was also a tell.

"She seems nice enough, but Sora wanted us to both run a full ego check." He shrugged.

"It's good practice for life."

"Come on, Walker." The other Praetorian said.

"The kids know, they're not just guessing." He turned to them.

"The mind mage in question, should one exist, should not be advertised, nor should you give hints about who they are. Everyone will be told, but for their own safety, we're misdirecting people. The first years are going to be told it's a fifth year, the fifth years are going to be told it's an eighth year, etc. Give them a chance to make something of themselves, don't just drive them away and give them no other option but to lash out. They've done nothing so far but to have a bad draw."

"Yeah, imagine if someone went after people with blue hair." Erik teased. The second Praetorian nodded.

"Exactly!" Sora smirked.

"Erik here's more likely to make friends with her than anything." Walker pulled a face.

"Either way, we need to interview both of you about what happened last night." He said.

"Your statements are important to determine what, exactly, happened, and what punishments need to be meted out."

"Yeah, but we can give the kids some time to finish practicing their ego check." The second one said.

"No need to interrupt them, plenty of other people to interview."

"Jones, they're going to spend all this time getting their story straight!" Walker protested.

"Like everyone else had all of last night and this morning to get their story straight?" Jones said. Walker narrowed his eyes at Erik and Sora.

"I'm watching you. Don't use ego checks to constantly get out of trouble. We will be back." The two of them left with dramatic swirls of their blood-red capes. Sora shuddered.

"I do not like Walker." She said. Erik half-smiled.

"They are masters of their routine." He said admiringly. Sora did a double take.

"Wait, what?" She asked.

"Light Praetorian, Dark Praetorian." Erik explained.

"One's a mean hardass, which makes us want to cooperate with the nice one. Do you think they trade off, or is Walker always the Dark Praetorian?"

"Wait, that expression had nothing to do with mind magic?" Sora asked. Erik laughed, and reached up to affectionately ruffle Sora's hair.

"Only you would think that, broombrain." He said.

"Only you. Back to the ego check?" Sora looked offended, but they went off to the next question. The Praetorians came back a few hours later, after both Erik and Sora went through an extensive ego check. The full, proper,'we totally-think-you're-compromised' check involved locked rooms and deprivation for days on end, which neither of them could afford. Both of them were convinced that Camelot had a number of rooms for just that purpose somewhere in the castle. It would be irresponsible of the headmaster not to.

Erik got a 5 point deduction for fighting.

"We do award points for not fighting." Jones admitted.

"But let's all be honest here. It doesn't work, people don't stop when the victim just passively stands there. The policy and how points work does involve a lot more fighting than we're comfortable with in a school, but we have to admit it somewhat works, and the wards do change the numerology." Then the two of them interviewed him extensively over the murder attempt on the castle walls.

"This is one for the headmaster." Walker grumbled.

"I will admit, it's been a while since we last got a serious murder attempt."

"With Thorne-" Jones started to say, before Walker cut him off.

"That girl is an outlier and should not be counted." He grumbled.

"It's why I qualified it with serious."

"Ah, yeah, I can see that." Jones said, then winked at Erik.

"Don't be a stranger, but don't take too much offense if I say I hope we don't get to know each other too well." Erik laughed.

"No, I can see that. Thank you, gentlemen, for your hard work. I have to admit this posting sounds particularly thankless, given the people you're working with."

"Take care. It's possible we'll need to talk with you again about all this, but I doubt it." Jones said. The two of them left, and one of the Unicorns came by a minute later.

"Healer Elaine says you can leave with your friend." She said.

"Your stuff is in the office, I can help you get it." Erik got up, grabbed his stuff, and met Sora at the doors.

"We only missed a day." Sora said cheerfully.

"Ready to see our rooms at last?" Erik snorted.

"We missed the CATs." He pointed out.

"Yeah, but they'll let us retake it, right?" Sora said. She didn't like the look on Erik's face.

"Right…?" Erik clasped her shoulder with a grin.

"Well, we always knew you were going to fail it, broombrain." He teased as the two of them started walking through the twisting halls of the castle. The blond figured they'd get lost, but that was the whole point of orientation week, right? Find places, figure out where it was, orient themselves to the castle and everything in it.

"But what does that mean?" Sora whined. Erik shrugged.

"Well find out, won't we? Hey, look on the bright side. If it's used to place us in classes, we'll be in the same class." Sora brightened up at that.

"Yeah! It does!" The two friends chatted as they wandered the halls, eventually finding their way back to the Thunderbird Spire after asking a few upper years for directions. They parted ways on the stairs, and Erik spent nearly an hour getting his room ready, thankful that they all had individual rooms off the main hallway. The main ramp? Whatever it was. The rumors of magic doing all his unpacking for him seemed to be false, but it wasn't like Erik was unused to the hard work.

He kept a metronome going in his head. One-two-three-four-two-two-three-four-three-two-three-four-four… Each beat was associated with, demanded an action to go along with it. Book out. Book down. Reach in. Shirt. Open closet. Hanger down. Shirt on. Hanger up. And so on and so forth, the metronome to his life keeping things moving at a brisk pace. When the last poster was stuck to the wall, after the last pair of socks had been placed in the armoire, Erik's fingers brushed against his violin.

He kept it still in his satchel, like everything else 'properly' important to him. He could have just left everything in there, but that was a level of… laziness? Relying on external equipment? Not properly making his room his home? That didn't quite sit well with him. It was a mixed bag, and Erik split the difference. At last, he had some time. At least an hour until dinner, and he'd been putting it off for so long. He tenderly drew his case from his bag.

He carefully undid the clasps, then lovingly tuned the instrument.

"I'm sorry for neglecting you for so long." He whispered to his violin.

"I'll do what I can to play you more." He stood up, positioned the violin on his shoulder and the bow across the strings, and with eyes closed, pulled the bow. The notes of the scale slowly echoed through the room, before Erik moved onto a number of memorized, well-played songs. Slow songs at first, before speeding up. An elegant waltz, and then a fast jig that got Erik's own feet dancing.

He danced as he played, practically bouncing off one wall of the room before spinning in place, and jigging his way over to the other end. He briefly entertained the idea of trying to jump on his bed and his chair, before deciding the risk to his instrument wasn't worth it. All the time he played, the notes coming faster and faster as Erik poured his fiery passion into the instrument. And all too soon, it was time to move on. Dinner!

Dinner with Alexandria, where he might get to finally meet his fiancee and talk with her without agonizing pain. Erik mentally set his expectations a little lower. Without agonizing physical pain. He carefully packed his violin away, then drew his wand from the satchel. It was the Morsin ancestral wand, with an ancient white hart core. The centuries had worn away the motifs.

Generations of his ancestors had used the wand, the creature a perfect match to their core, and one day, Erik would hand it down to his children to use while they learned. Perhaps, depending on how quickly he moved on from the learning aid and went to one of the secondary foci the family owned, his sister would be able to use the wand when she attended school. Erik tugged the wand holster glove onto his right hand, then watched with fascination as the wand seemed to sink into the holster.

He got dressed, aiming to impress but not overwhelm Alex. Just because they were engaged didn't mean he should put in no effort. He took one last look at himself in the mirror, wiped a smudge off his face, then opened the door to a cruel visage looking at him." Kasamu!" De Corci shouted, the wand at point-blank range to Erik. His throat opened up, and he went down, gurgling as he drowned in his own blood. Erik woke up again, staring at the ceiling of the hospital wing.

A number of the Unicorn students fussed over him, but Healer Elaine just needed to swing by for a quick minute. No long speech this time. A quick check let him know that he was alone here. Neither Sora nor Alex had been sent for another stay in the hospital. He stared at the ceiling and the sheet of his bed, and plotted. Being sent endlessly to the hospital until De Corci got expelled was not an option.

The boy could simply keep bouncing him back here, and the devastation to his first weeks or months of education would be far more devastating to him than the older boy. Especially if he stopped right before getting expelled. Erik chilled as another thought came to him. Or if he managed to get enough points to keep doing it. Especially if he teamed up with other people. He could throw a rock and hit six people who hated the Morsin name. No, Erik needed to find a way to fight back, and do it now.

What resources did he have? What tools were available? What was his goal? What were his win conditions? He stared at the ceiling, until Felix came into the hospital wing. At that moment, a plan crystalized.

"Hey Felix!" Erik waved the boy down.