What We Do to Survive

“You can begin once you’re ready,” Professor Williams’s voice whispered in my ear.

I nodded, glancing up towards where I knew the viewing area was hidden in the room’s domed ceiling. Though I couldn’t see them behind the opaque stone between us, I knew the rest of the class was watching me on specialized illusionary screens designed to transmit mana flows as well as images. I could just barely sense them, a dense cluster of mana signatures dampened by the mana-reflecting properties of the dune-slate.

“Thank you Professor,” I replied, my voice echoing in the empty hall. Doing my best to smile naturally I waved up at the viewing area. “Enjoy the show.”

There was no response, but I didn’t really expect one. After the second student to attempt their ritual had failed in a messy explosion of blood and viscera, the student after them had waved and told everyone to ‘enjoy the show’ before their attempt. Everyone else had followed suit and that had been our only death this term. I wasn’t particularly superstitious, but belief could play a part in certain magical disciplines so I wasn’t going to say no to a potential bit of insurance.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed those thoughts aside. There was no room in my mind for doubt or distraction, only action.

Exhaling, I opened my eyes and gave the ritual circle I had painstakingly drawn out across the floor one final look. A massive heptagon drawn with reddish-silver ‘ink’ covered the majority of the room’s floor. Even with the illusionary guide I had used to make sure my positioning was perfectly even and runes were shaped properly it had taken hours to get everything exactly right.

I was very glad I’d decided to use quicksilver-based ink for the ritual instead of something more grainy like powdered silver or copper. An early mistake in alignment had forced me to redraw an entire segment of the ritual circle and I would have risked running out of ink if I’d used something that dried just a little more quickly.

Quicksilver, even purely mundane quicksilver, was much more expensive and finicky to use, but the boost in mana conductivity was more than worth the expense when combined with some of the other materials I was using.

The cost was painful, that much money would have been enough to raise my family to the merchant class in a matter of weeks, but nothing I couldn’t afford after my recent windfalls. The bag of pieces I’d liberated from Lea’s attackers was enough to cover the cost with a few coins left over.

It wasn’t like I was using something insane like alchemical quicksilver, even with the chest I’d received from Elpha I doubted I could afford more than a small bowl of the miraculous metal, if I could even find someone both able and willing to make it for me. The process wasn’t a secret but rather it was so wildly dangerous and difficult that even most archmages didn’t bother to attempt it.

Everything looked good. The circle was as perfect as I could make it, the box holding the outsider was positioned off to one side but close enough that I could utilize all the commands Professor Williams had shown me, and my mana had fully regenerated from when I’d used a large chunk of it to combine all of my individual ingredients into to the ink I needed.

I took a small sip of a potion designed to help me split my focus between the many complex sections of the ritual I was about to perform, set the vial down carefully in the corner of the room, and then carefully picked my way between the runes and lines of ink on the ground to stand in the circle at the center of the heptagon.

The small circle, though it was really only small in comparison with the rest of the ritual, was divided into two sections by a curved line and I was very careful to stand in the smaller segment of the two. One was for me, the other for the outsider. I absolutely did not want to find out what it felt like to be sacrificed in this sort of ritual.

Extending my arms out to either side of me, I let the mana flow out of my core in a gentle tide. The moment the invisible wave touched the first line of runes it was hungrily pulled into them and the rusty red tint in the ink transformed into a crimson glow.

This part didn’t take very long and the moment the first runes were fully charged I instantly stopped releasing mana. Keeping half my focus on ensuring the mana in the runes didn’t disperse back into the air, I turned to face the large chest holding the outsider. I took a moment to steady my nerves and then it was time. I really hoped this thing would work the way she’d claimed it would, else I would very soon be stuck in an enclosed room with a very fast, very dangerous, and probably very mad monster.

My mana shaped into the first sign Professor Williams had shown me and nearly invisible runes on the surface of the box lit up with a shimmery silver glow.

Sitting between Alan and Ulan in one of the observation room’s hard-backed wooden chairs, Camille nervously gnawed on one of the fingernails as she watched Orion make his final preparations on the illusionary screen before her. She knew that it was unseemly and a bad habit, her parents had hammered that point home quite clearly, but she still sometimes reflexively came back to it when she was stressed and now certainly qualified.

It had been a few weeks since she’d really had a chance to speak with Orion, he hadn’t been coming to their weekly study sessions and almost every class over the past few weeks had been one of these ritual-viewing sessions instead of a more ordinary class.

On a normal day she could easily catch him by simply coming to the room a few minutes early, Orion was always early to class, but it was never a good idea to loiter in Avalon’s hallways and Professor Williams only ever let them into the various observation rooms right when class was starting.

They’d exchanged casual greetings and the like, but the last time they’d had anything resembling a conversation was when she’d caught him walking into class looking like death warmed over and given him what seemed to her like some very, very basic advice.

Ulan leaned over and whispered quietly, “Is it just me or does that look nothing like what Orion showed us the last time he came to one of our sessions?”

She nodded slowly, “Yeah…” she whispered back. “I think I can see a few similarities, look at that section on the left next to where he’s standing? The back two rows. But that's really it.”

Ulan looked back at the screen, tilting his head to the side and squinting at the image. “I think you’re right, I didn’t see it at first but it's those same dwarven stability runes Orion always uses. Good eye.”

Camille did not respond, simply continuing to stare down at where Orion was standing beside the circle. She’d noticed the same thing as Ulan had and it was the reason she was as worried as she was. Despite what she’d said, this looked nothing like any of the drafts Orion had asked her to glance over during their study sessions. Sure a few of the runes and rune sequences used were the same, but they were being used for completely different purposes within the overarching ritual

If she was remembering correctly, Orion had originally used that six-rune sequence in each of the six segments to stabilize the ritual and combine the six separate segments into one ‘package’ for his body to absorb. Here they were only in one of the segments and were surrounded by runes focusing on amplification, conversion, and containment. The runes may have been the same, but it was like comparing using a brick to build a house to slaming someone over the head with one.

This was an entirely new ritual, something Orion must have put together in the scant few weeks since he’d last come to work with them. It felt like it had been a long time, but a few weeks was not a reasonable amount of time to develop a full ritual, much less one as seemingly complex as this one.

Her own ritual, which she had performed the previous week, had taken her most of the semester to develop and she’d had a lot of help from the others in refining it to the point of usability. She hoped Orion had had someone to go over everything with him, it was always a good idea to have a second opinion when doing such complex flow-balancing, but she doubted it. He certainly hadn’t spoken about it with herself or the brothers and neither Brenda nor Miranda, the only other people he ever really spent any time with, knew the first thing about ritual magic.

Orion looked up towards the screen and waved, lips moving soundlessly. Camille’s painted nails sank painfully into her thigh. He probably hadn’t even considered asking for help. He was like that sometimes, painfully independent and self reliant. He was always willing to help a friend, but never able to understand that they wanted to help him as well.

Camille began to gnaw on her lower lip, white-knuckled hands clutched tightly along the hem of her skirt. Someone had hurt that poor boy one too many times and coming to Avalon had doomed any hope of him breaking out of his shell. He was like an animal that had been kicked and beaten until it no longer trusted anyone, lashing out at the world and always huddled in on himself.

Camille didn’t think of herself as being particularly violent, especially when compared with some of her classmates, but on those rare days where the gentle, vulnerable soul under his shell shone through, she wished she could get her hands on whoever had hurt him so she could make them regret the day they were born.

She hoped he knew what he was doing. Maybe he’d had one of the older students he sometimes hung out with look over his work? Liam Marc Pierr was not known for his ritual magic, but he had to be at least somewhat proficient in it after six and a half years at the Academy. He and Orion shared a class and ate lunch together occasionally, so perhaps? Though she imagined he was probably very busy right now with his own work and didn’t have time to indulge a third-year’s questions.

She nearly jumped out of her seat when something brushed across the back of her hand and it took her a moment to realize that it was Alan’s hand. “Orion will be fine, I’m sure of it,” he whispered in her ear. “We all managed it just fine and you know how talented he is. He’s probably just been busy.”

“I hope so,” she whispered back, but she noticed that Alan’s accent was much thicker than it usually was. He was just as worried as she was, but she appreciated the gesture.

A flare of mana made her look back at the screen and she found Orion standing at the center of the ritual circle surrounded by a faint cloud of blue smoke, the illusion’s way of indicating the presence of vaporous mana. She knew that the illusion also had other ways of showing that information in more detail, but her mana sense was simply not good enough to use them yet.

She frowned. He was starting already, but his sacrifice was nowhere in view. Had he not found something? The last time they’d spoken he had still been unsure of what he was going to use, but she’d assumed that the reason he’d been leaving Avalon so often was to find an appropriate sacrifice. Was he going to sacrifice something else then? An object, or maybe some component added to the ink ahead of time? She hoped he’d had that approved by the Professor ahead of time or he might be in a lot of trouble.

Ulan leaned over again but before he could say anything, a writhing mass of something suddenly appeared on the screen, its shape half obscured by illusionary yellow smoke that made her slightly ill just looking at it.

Gasps rang out around her but Camille couldn’t tear her eyes away from the display as the blob rose slowly into the air and the smoke around it diffused into the air. It was an off-white mass of twisting, writhing tendrils, some like those of an octopus, others like a jellyfish, and yet others resembling no creature she’d ever heard of. It seemed to struggle and twist in the air, pulsing rhythmically like a heartbeat as it slammed uselessly against some invisible barrier around it.

“What is that thing? Does anyone recognize it?” someone asked from behind her and Camille could only faintly shake her head. What injustice had spawned such a creature and where in the world had he found it?

After a few moments, she managed to glance over at where Professor Williams was sitting at the edge of the room. The woman was smiling widely at the class and their eyes met for a moment. The Professor winked and Camille looked back towards the screen. Whatever this crime against nature was, Professor Williams didn’t seem to have any issues with it.

The thing, for Camille couldn’t rightfully think of the writhing mass as a creature, floated slowly across the room and then Orion let it drop just a scant few feet away from him in the other half of the ritual’s central circle. She half expected it to collapse into a puddle like some sort of monstrous pudding, but instead it simply bounced bonelessly and settled like a lumpy mound of putrid meat.

After a few moments, the entire thing began to shift, this time seemingly with much more purpose than it had a moment earlier. A crude face appeared first, quickly joined by the facsimile of arms and legs. It was still confined into a small sphere, but now it moved with much more purpose than the writhing and lashing out from before.

Someone gasped again. “Is that… is that a Starspawn?” one of the other girls asked, her voice noticeably high-pitched than usual. “Professor, is that…”

“I… yes, I think so,” Sten Strongpike announced loudly when it was clear Professor Williams wasn’t going to say anything. “I am not truly familiar with such creatures, but it does neatly fit the descriptions I’ve read. An Outsider, and a particularly canny one as well.”

Where the first announcement had been met mostly with confusion, this time the room erupted with harsh whispers. Everyone was familiar with what an Outsider was, even if only tangentially. Camille stared wide-eyed at the illusion, nails once more digging into her leg. What had Orion gotten himself into? An Outsider? Orion was not afraid of danger, but she’d never known him to seek it out either.

She almost couldn’t bear to look and yet she couldn’t look away. Something was going to go wrong and… and… she didn’t want to see it. The outsider writhed and pounded against its cage and it looked like any moment it would escape and then… She didn’t understand how Orion could look so calm standing so close to it when she could barely stand to look at it from behind several meters of enchanted stone.

And yet… nothing happened. Orion stood motionlessly as more and more of the ritual circle lit up with the same crimson glow as the initial circle. As the minutes ticked by, mana continued to flow at a slow, even pace from his hands and hazy simples of blue smoke swirled above the ritual circles as the spell began to take shape.

Slowly but inexorably, the entire circle lit up one rune at a time, starting with the dividers between segments and then moving in a spiral around him. The entire time not a single mote of mana escaped the ritual circle, held perfectly within the ink and in the air above it by Orion’s iron will and mana control.

It was almost… anticlimactic when it was all over. The mana in the air rippled, pulsed, and then was sucked violently into Orion’s chest before erupting outward in a dense wave that was reflected back towards Orion by the walls of the ritual room. Blue smoke obscured the entire illusionary display and when it was clear, Orion knelt alone at the center of a near-perfectly clean floor. Only a pile of gritty-looking black dust remained where the outsider had been.

“Well that’s that,” said Professor Williams, her voice shockingly loud in the silent observation room. “I will go check on your classmate but it looks to me like a success. I hope you found that educational. Class dismissed.” And then she vanished between one moment and the next, reappearing on the illusionary screen standing beside Orion’s kneeing form.

Camille looked over at Alan and found him and his brother sharing their own wide-eyed looks.

“That was…” Alan began slowly.

“...really something” Ulan finished.

“He damn well better be at the session this week,” Camille murmured, receiving twin nods of agreement. Her lips narrowed into a tight smile. “I certainly would appreciate an explanation.”