“Wow,” Bri said as she, Ralus and Shaya left the class, still breathing heavily from exertion, “what you did back there was awesome.”

“Heh, thanks,” Shaya said, rubbing the back of her sweaty head in embarassment, “I can see why no one else wanted to volunteer to fight that guy though. I’m just glad he chilled out once Auric released him from his...prison.”

She shuddered at the memory.

“Yes, we should...” Ralus said, glancing at Bri, then back to Shaya, “we should probably discuss that.”

“Spit, I hope it can wait,” Shaya replied, “I just remembered that I have my next class in ten minutes, and it’s across campus.”

Bri and Ralus looked at one another again, then shrugged.

“Cool, I’ll catch you both later!” She waved, taking off to the north end of campus at a jog.

It wasn’t nearly fast enough.

She stumbled into the classroom a few minutes after the bells, gasping for breath and cursing whoever placed Intro to Biomancy on the third bloody floor of the Ishtola Spire. Bari’s eyes turned to her as she entered, and the rest of the students followed.

“It looks like we’ve found our volunteer,” Bari gave her a fanged smile.

Shaya no longer trusted anyone’s smiles in this place.

“Please find a seat for your belongings, then come up to the front.”

That was easy, this classroom was also much too big for the dozen students that occupied it. Cyren gave her a small wave, but the spots around him were occupied with people that kept checking him out. Shaya suppressed a chuckle when she found Yllaneth among them and wondered how well Cyren would acquit himself against Galo.

I hope you dumped his ass girl, Shaya thought.

But she sighed when she noticed that Cyren didn’t even have a notebook out, so she’d have to ask someone else about what she missed at the start of class.

Bari gestured for her to stand next to her on stage and face the class, and Shaya did so obediently.

“Sorry,” she muttered to the older woman.

“Think nothing of it, I'm not one to hold a grudge.”

Phew, I thought she’d roast me given-

In one smooth, relaxed motion Bari slashed her obsidian knife across the front of Shaya’s throat, above the protection of her gambeson.

Shaya tried to curse, but only managed to sputter out her life blood. Panic filled her, but she still managed to move her hands over her throat and grip down on the wound. She pinched her flesh together, but couldn’t stem the tide of blood pouring down her neck and over her sweaty gambeson.

She turned her stunned eyes from Bari’s amused expression to look over at the classroom, everyone frozen in horror at the spectacle before them.

“Well?” Bari prompted, “One of your companions is dying – can none of you save her?”

Cyren blinked when Shaya’s eyes found him in the crowd, his normally relaxed posture replaced with petrified horror like the rest of the class. Faintly, Shaya registered how his fur puffed out when he was panicked and very, very distantly found that funny.

“Come now, a severed carotid artery is quite severe, a person can even die within two minutes of such an injury.” Bari prompted again, “Our patient appears healthy and was able to think clearly enough to apply pressure to the wound herself, but her strength is fading and she will not be able to apply effective pressure beyond a minute at best.”

Cyren! Shaya screamed in her mind, but her vocal chords were slashed. She willed him into action. Get your shit together!

“Professor Bari,” Yllaneth said, her voice an octave higher than Shaya remembered, “none of us have the power to close that wound! Our basic healing spells are more likely to seal over her entire artery and kill her anyway!”

Yes, please save me. Galo doesn’t deserve you.

“True,” Bari nodded, stroking her chin with a clawed hand, “so you would write off your comrade then?”

“N-no!” The young Vayeiran cried, “I, uh, uhh-”

Nonono, please come apply magic to me.

Cyren gave Yllaneth’s bare shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he stood, then walked past her and up to the stage.

“What’s your plan?” Bari asked him as he lowered Shaya onto the ground, where he could better treat her. “Ah, good start.”

“While we don’t possess the magic to heal the wounds ourselves,” Cyren explained, voice hoarse, “We, uh, we might have the ability to apply better pressure than the vict- err, than the patient and use basic invigorating magic to keep them alive until a more skilled healer can be summoned.”

“Very good,” Bari nodded, “With pressure, people have been known to survive a severed carotid for upwards of twenty minutes. And with careful control, you can utilize lesser healing magics to partially seal outer injuries to slow the rate of blood loss or inject oxygen into the person’s blood, extending this by more than double.”

Cyren looked up at Bari, expectantly.

“Well,” she said, “Go ahead, keep your patient alive.”

“Rika!” Cyren invoked, and his Esper manifested. A curvaceous woman with strong, killer legs appeared. Shaya’s vision blurred as she tracked her eyes up the spiritual woman’s sensually robed body until she noticed the white bunny ears on her head.

You’ve....got to be....kidding me......

“Offer succor to the wounded!” He said, eyes glowing as he drew in Jade and shaped his spell. Seconds later, Shaya’s vision sharpened again as Cyren and his Esper kneeled beside her, two sets of hands laid over her throat. Blood continued to pump from her wound and she gasped for air, splattering blood onto Cyren’s white, silken tunic.

“Really?” He frowned down at her, then himself.

“I’m afraid blood stains are part of life as a Jade mage,” Bari chided, “but fear not cousin, I shall remove the blood before that happens.”

“Shall you also actually heal her before she dies?” Cyren asked jovially as he looked up at the Professor.

“Yes, you have done very well.”

“Thanks, Teach,” he replied, more sacrcasm oozing from his voice than blood out of Shaya’s wound.

Bari knelt at Shaya’s head and again invoked her Esper in a language she didn’t understand, but she saw Cyren smirk at the name. “Sustain your efforts,” she instructed him as she drew in her own Jade.

The first spell she cast extracted Shaya’s blood from Cyren’s clothing, then her own, until a large glob of it hovered above her. With a gesture, Bari slowly fed it back into her through her throat, making Shaya pray for death as Bari's magic forced the blood in her veins to reverse course.

Her next spells restored her artery, mended her vocal chords, and finally re-sealed her throat. Bari cocked her head at Shaya, still upside down to the prone, formerly-dying woman, “Would you like to keep the scar?”

“Got plenty already,” she rasped, her vocal chords screaming from the effort.

“Fair,” she said, and cast another spell which smoothed out Shaya’s skin like clay.

Bari stood up, motioning to Cyren that he could go back to his seat.

“You...” Shaya rasped again, reaching for him before he left.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “you’re very welcome.”

She grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, only able to do so because he was too surprised to resist her. “You...waited until you could impress her, didn’t you?”

“Ha...ha,” Cyren replied, eyes flicking back towards Yllaneth and the rest of the class, who watched with interest, but were unable to hear what they were saying. His response was a whisper. “Can you really blame me?”

I’m going to kill you, she thought to herself.

“I’m going to kill you,” she rasped into his ear.

“No need to thank me further,” Cyren said loud enough for the class to hear. He stood up, continuing in a stoic tone, “I’m just doing my duty.”

He returned to his seat as Shaya climbed to her feet, Yllaneth laying a hand on his arm as he sat back down next to her. Shaya wished her throat hadn’t been slit, so she could hear what was said between them, but her ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton as she recovered from her near-death injury.

She wished her throat hadn’t been slit for other reasons too, just not at the moment.

“Thank you,” Bari said as Shaya stood up, “you were an excellent volunteer. Ah, please, don’t strain your vocal chords further. They need some time to heal, despite how clean the cut was.”

Shaya returned to her seat, receiving looks of horror and sympathy from everyone she passed on the way. She almost preferred the derision and judgment, but accepted this minor boon given the cost she just paid for it. Bari dived into the rest of the lecture before she could even get her notebook out and start taking notes, giving her yet another reason to curse the woman to the nine hells and beyond.

“And so,” Bari lectured, “we have learned the importance of acting, but acting with wisdom instead of fear. Jade aether demands serenity if we wish to draw upon it – it represents life, nature, the here and now. It rejects our anxiety or fears of what may be, and so must you. Those of you who are enlisted will be faced with scenes of shocking brutality and gruesome damage, and if you react as you did today, people will die. In this class, I'm going to teach you spells to make sure they don’t.

“We’ll begin with some basic Seeds that focus on minor repairs or keeping someone critically injured alive longer. To this end, you’ll need to learn and master mend wounds, invigorate, and control blood.”

Control blood sounds dangerous... given that it was able to reverse the direction of my blood, I wonder if it could forcefully eject blood, halt it, or even turn people into puppets.

Which would be awesome.

Wait, wasn’t the guy on the ship manipulating blood? I didn’t see any Jade on him at all though.

Shaya wrote furiously, massaging her throat with her other hand. The other students grew more tense as Bari continued speaking. “And yes, you will be practicing in live environments, including for the mid-term. Only after you prove you can save lives will you get to focus on body enhancement spells. But first, let us discuss the Jade spectrum.”

“The term shaping applies more to Jade than the other Spectrums. Just like nature, you do not get to control it, simply encourage it to grow the way you wish it to. Your anxieties will twist this growth and trying to rush a spell is the most surefire way to ruin your circuit. The other side of the coin is that Jade’s influence will make you care less about future problems. We have been accused of being lazy, or simply reactionary, living moment to moment instead of planning everything out like many would prefer you to in our society. This can be freeing, but like any other Spectrum too much of it can be damning.”

I wish I could draw on that serenity at any time though, Shaya thought about the enemy she’d already made today and all the work she had to do to catch up, I could really use some of that right now...