Chương 61: Chapter 60 - Covens Conversation III

With spoils piled high and blood-debt paid, Bjorn purchased Rimebreaker, fierce of prow and sturdy of wood. Upon its deck he stood not as thrall-born, but as war-lord, chief of his own crew - men sworn by blood and coin. Through the coasts of Logres and across the jeweled lands of the southern kingdoms, he struck. Raider, reaver, spell-caster. A name to be feared in wind and port alike.

The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 14 Wednesday's classes ended far too quickly, in a haze of learning magical theory, scribbling notes, and occasionally casting spells. The coven all met together at the end of the day to do some work.

"Mind magic class sucks!" Felix complained, dropping his bag and throwing himself into the chair.

"Why?" Hazel asked. Felix was starting to get a handle on her. She viciously swung between 'shy, but chatty', and 'I'm going to vanish now'.

"Mistvale." Felix groaned." Professor Mistvale." Vivian corrected, having successfully dodged detention today by actually participating in class. The other members of the coven were filing into 'their' room, right across from the Flame challenge room they'd found. The habits formed on the first day of classes were going to follow them around for the rest of the year, Felix just knew it." Professor Mistvale," Felix corrected himself, throwing as much sarcasm into the word as he could.

"Keeps docking points for 'not paying attention' and other nonsense." He pulled out his mind magic notebook, and flipped open to the day's notes. All five pages of them.

"Does this look like I'm not paying attention!? Argh!"

"Jesus Christ." Hazel swore.

"I can see why that'd be annoying." The four magical natives were staring at Hazel.

"Wait, you're not one of the Christian nuts are you?" Sora asked, her hand creeping towards her wand. Hazel was rapidly drawing into herself, and Erik smacked Sora across the head.

"You've got to be nicer!" Erik said.

"You've got to learn some good spells." Alexandria muttered.

"Come on Sora, the witch burning stuff was, like, 400 years ago." Vivian said.

"Nobody really gets to choose which religion they were brought up in. Raise your hand if you've converted. Go on. Anyone." Vivian challenged. Everyone's hands stayed down. The blonde nodded in a self-satisfied way.

"See? See! So she was brought up in the noonie world, so she's got a different religion. Yeah, there's bad blood there, but has she done anything? No? Right."

"My religion sucks anyway." Hazel muttered, trying to shift in her robes like she was trying to burrow her way into a hoodie.

"This is one of those topics that utterly ruins friendships, especially prospective friendships." Vivian firmly stated.

"Like politics. Let's move on. One day, when we're good and drunk, maybe we can talk about it."

"You want us to wait seven years before discussing religion?" Felix asked.

"What? Seven years? Where did that come from?" Sora asked.

"That's…" Felix had a realization mid-word.

"That's not the legal drinking age here, is it?"

"Your legal drinking age is twenty one?" Erik asked.

"Damn. My first taste was probably like… 6? My first real drink was my 12th birthday. A beer with my dad, and later on, a glass of wine with my mom."

"Ha!" Sora yelled.

"Sucker! We managed to grab a drink when we were ten. That's what you get for always being in a lesson!" Erik arched an eyebrow at her.

"Oh really? That wasn't the story you lot were telling me before. Well, I'm sure Loren and Caleb will be delighted to know that you're finally snitching on them." Sora slapped her hands over her mouth.

"Err, I mean… oops?" She said. Vivian patted her on the back.

"I'd just stop talking now." She stage-whispered." None of this is homework or coven work." Alexandria hissed.

"We're burning torches here." This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I'd argue it is coven work." Erik countered, taking his books out at the same time.

"This sort of banter? It's the bonds of camaraderie we're forming, absolutely critical to a strong coven bond. Trying the same ritual with complete strangers would have a different, worse effect, and you know it." Alexandria hissed her displeasure, but didn't correct him.

"Speaking of the coven stuff! Hazel, I don't want to pressure you, but very soon we're going to start practicing the chants and ritual to form a coven of five. We're approaching the point of no return, and we don't even have a prospective seventh if you want in. If you do want in, we'll pause and delay until we've found the last one, and make it work. But I don't want you to feel left out. You are one of us. No pressure either way, and we'll continue to stay out of your way whatever you decide."

Erik grinned at the girl, who looked torn. Felix quietly stayed out of it, reading over his notes from the day. Trying to read his mind magic notes just made him fume at how unfair it all was, and he switched over to rituals. Much better. As much as he wanted to wreak vengeance on Paracelsus, it was in a far more abstract way. A… lighter tone. Mistvale - he wasn't going to call her professor in his head - was far worse in his opinion, and made everything he felt against Paracelsus sting less.

That was complete bullshit. Mistvale was worse, somehow. Because it actually, directly affected him, as opposed to being theoretical. As Felix pushed his mind magic notes off to the side, Sora greedily snapped them up. She didn't give Hazel a moment to respond to Erik's request.

"It's total zombies what the Professor's saying about you not paying attention. These are good notes." She said, then silently moved her lips while reading over Felix's notes.

"Since we're talking about a coven of five, I've written out an initial ritual for us to use." Alexandria whispered. She took four sheets of paper out, and passed it around the table. Felix did his best to keep his face neutral, and just barely managed to avoid laughing. Or saying something mean. Or… honestly, anything resembling an honest reaction was a bad idea here.

"Earth, you're so chonky? Stomp, stomp extra hard?" Sora said. Erik also seemed to be struggling to keep quiet.

"Alex, you're my best friend, but 'splishy splashy glub glub' does not belong in a ritual." Vivian said.

"I'm not doing it. Maybe if it was a well-known ritual of power, for your soulbind. After I was married. But I don't think I could say this with a straight face." Hazel was reading over Vivian's shoulder with a sort of sick fascination on her face.

"I think I'll leave the rituals to you. I'll keep my dignity." She said.

"Why don't we use one of the well-established coven rituals, instead of creating our own with a whole two proper ritual classes under our belt." Erik diplomatically said.

"The path to power-!" Alex was interrupted by Vivian.

"Is seated on a mountain of skulls, yes, we know." She said.

"Half of those skulls decided to make their own ritual. Do you want to learn enough about rituals to make your own in two years, or maybe listen to the generations of wixen before us, who studied rituals and covens, and worked out some pretty damn good ones? Because if 'whooshy wishy' is your starting point…"

"If you want to contribute to the field of rituals, why not make one after you graduate?" Felix asked.

"Or, err, as a school project or something? I'm sure Paracelsus will be willing to look over it. Actually, did Paracelsus look over this one? I know he said to bring it to him." Alex was flaming red as she snatched her proposed ritual back from everyone, and sniffed. She then grabbed her stuff and ran out of the room.

"I think we made her cry." Sora said, sounding guilty.

"I should-" Vivian started to say.

"Give her some time and space." Erik said.

"This is important to her, and we kinda stomped all over her work and laughed at it. It's hard not to feel personally attacked." Felix decided that pointing out that he hadn't been laughing would probably go over poorly.

"Let's do the natural world homework?" Erik proposed.

"Get our minds off everything rituals and mind magic, get a bit of a refresher in. Anyone got a proposed experiment idea we can write up?" The five of them pulled out the homework, and got started. After a few more assignments, and a number of questions Felix wrote down to ask Beatrix and Chris later, he finally asked one of the questions that had been bothering him.

"Hey, why did you call out Lance yesterday in the forum?" He asked.

"Who, Thalorien?" Erik said.

"I didn't know you were friends with him." Vivian said, twirling a lock of hair in her fingers. Felix traded a commiserating look with Hazel. Wixen.

"I'm not." He explained. Erik leaned back in his chair.

"Back to Thalorien. It's a lot of different, small factors. The biggest one is reputation. If he was in the Light faction, he might, might, be able to get away with 'we're past that sort of nonsense.' He's not though. His grandfather's the duke, and believe me, I got into a fierce argument with him yesterday about calling him out. He's not happy with either of us." Erik grabbed a drink out of his bag, took a sip, and put it back.

"Anyway. As a Dark member, reputation and tradition matter. Saying shit, then refusing to own up to it in a duel? That doesn't fly. I called him out in public for refusing, and now he's facing consequences. Far worse consequences than if he'd 'just' lost a duel. Then he could say 'well, might doesn't make right', and maybe try to trash talk me from there. People mostly don't think that anymore. But refusing? It's a terrible look. His family's now going to pressure him over it.

They're also going to interrogate him about what he said, and he's going to get a hell of a hard time over it. Far worse than anything I could say to him. He doesn't have a coven formed yet, and the people who might be considering joining him are also traditionalists, for the most part. Now they're going to be rethinking things. No offense, I'm glad you guys are alright joining me, but you know you're going to get tarred with a bad brush. Thalorien's now in the same position. He's tarring other people.

Those same people who might've seen opportunity joining with me, and didn't. In other words, people taking the safe route. If this gets big enough and bad enough, it could follow him after school, but I'm really reaching on that one. We're in our first year. None of us can even name one thing Thorne did in her first year. Still, it's fucking with him. One sentence from me, and now Thalorien's in deep shit from a number of different angles." Felix's mouth dropped open.

"Wait, wasn't it more than one sentence?" Felix asked. Sora smacked his arm.

"Nobody likes a pedantic ass." She said, and Felix could read the room.

"Sorry." He apologized.

"Wow. What did he say?" Vivian asked, getting back on the subject. Erik's face hardened.

"He made some comments about my mother." He said. Felix almost, almost, made a 'your mom's so fat' joke, but a sliver of self-preservation managed to slip in at the last second and keep his mouth shut. Some people were more sensitive about their parents than others, and from all the drama occurring, he suspected he was missing some critical context. Like, if Erik's mom was dead, that'd change it all. Back to a safe subject, before his desire to make terrible jokes overwhelmed his better judgment.

"Hey, can I check how everyone did on the divination homework?" Felix asked.

"I'm being tutored, and maybe I can pass along some tips." The others handed over the homework, along with a few points granted. One point for a mushroom grade, the lowest passing one - Felix rolled his eyes at Sora's lack of effort - all the way to 10 points for his unicorn grade. The professor had done some magic to make the stamped mark prance around on his paper, trotting over his words like they were a field.

He narrowed his eyes as the stamp lowered its head and pretended to 'eat', but at least his words weren't getting devoured then pooped back out. It'd be hell to study off his past assignments if that was the case.

"Sora, you've gotta put more effort in. Vivian, it looks like you missed the salt aspect for scrying water, but otherwise it was good. That wasn't in the main textbook, clearly he's expecting us to go hunting. Erik…" Felix pretended not to see Alexandria wiping off tears as she came back, and seamlessly integrated her homework into his review without comment. Yeah. He could get used to this magic school thing.