Chapter XII

Kizu sat alone in his Elemental class. Like the other F classes, it appeared significantly less attended. A few little cliques of students were chatting but for the most part everyone sat silently and alone on the wooden benches scattered around.

The classroom was structured completely different from the other ones. They were in a walled off courtyard that felt more like a greenhouse than a classroom. A moat of water circled around them, gurgling slightly and keeping the air fresh. The tall, vine covered stone walls shadowed the little courtyard.

Long after class should have begun, a fat turkey waddled to the front of the class and stepped up on the pulpit. Kizu assumed it must be some sort of familiar of the professor, or otherwise conjured animal carrying a paper message. He doubted a turkey would just be able to wander in here from the kitchens.

“Good afternoon class,” the turkey said. “I will be your professor for Elemental F. My name is Professor Oasaji.”

Kizu covered his mouth with his hand but other students weren’t so subtle. Outright laughter echoed in the little courtyard.

“Get that out of your system?” the turkey asked dryly. Kizu noticed its beak never moved as it spoke. It simply opened it and words came out. “If that’s done with, let’s get on with your lessons. You all are the ones with no practical knowledge of elemental magic. Or maybe you are here because you were taught such horrible habits that you needed to be sent to this class to relearn everything from the basics. Regardless, today you will be focusing entirely on the element of water.”

Oasaji raised a wing and the benches jolted all at once, repositioning themselves so the students all sat perpendicular with the moat.

“Put an appendage in the water.”

Kizu knelt at the water’s edge alongside all the other students and placed the tips of his fingers in the water. The chill from the water made his hair stand on end.

“The very first thing you need to learn about elemental magic is elemental manipulation. Focus entirely on shifting the element in front of you. Today’s goal will be to shift the temperature of the water.”

Oasaji strutted around behind them, giving little pieces of advice or criticism.

“Ione, what are you doing?” he asked a girl at the end of the row.

Kizu strained around and realized he recognized the girl the professor spoke to. It was the triangle girl from Music F. She had removed her shoes and rolled up her uniform’s pants. She soaked her feet in the moat while laying back on the grass and looking up at the clouds above.

“You said appendages, my fowl professor. My feet are appendages, are they not?”

Kizu expected the professor to lash out and send the girl out of his class. Instead, the turkey chuckled and gobbled. “You never cease to fascinate me, girl. Carry on then.”

Hardly the only one flummoxed, all the other students glanced at one another. A few of them even dared chuckle. But Oasaji swiftly redirected their attention back to the chilly water.

By the end of class, Kizu thought he might actually have accomplished something with the water, but it was impossible to tell with his fingers white and numb. He tucked them into his armpits as Oasaji dismissed them all with a flap of his wings.

With that, Kizu followed his orb down the halls to his final class of the day. Brewing S. All the other students in the halls looked weary as Kizu felt. But he told himself that he only had to get through one more class, so he pulled himself forward.

His orb led him into a cave. Not the same one as he’d had to go through to get to the testing tower. This one was on the entire other side of campus and it seemed like a straight up cave into the side of the mountain. A rickety door stood at the entrance. It warned in the Universal Script of danger. Though, Kizu noted, it didn’t clarify what kind of danger to expect.

Just as he set his hand on the doorknob, it slammed open from the inside. A plume of black smoke accompanied the half a dozen coughing students who scrambled out. Their uniforms looked ruined from the soot and none of them gave the cave a backwards glance as they fled.

Inside he heard a mad cackle. Kizu smiled slightly, the sound reminding him of the crone on a good day.

He entered the cave, using his scrying orb to light his path. Condensation clung to the walls, keeping everything inside clammy.

When the cave opened up, a thin man with white hair styled like a cat’s hairball stood in the center of the opening in front of a cauldron. Rows and rows of ingredients lined the walls. And he ordered students around, telling them to grab certain things and throw them in the pot in front of him. His eyes bounced in two different directions as he scanned the room for what he wanted. When he saw Kizu, his teeth flashed manically.

“Kaga! What a happy surprise you are! Nothing better, no nothing. Quickly, tell me what kind of ingredient I would want to make a love potion?”

“Hagsroot, glacier water, a bit of succubus blood, and harpy feathers,” he said automatically. It was an easy enough concoction, if all the ingredients were on hand.

“Hmm, not a crushed siren’s tooth? Why choose succubus blood?”

“Succubus blood is more potent. If you wanted to just make someone more favorable, then sure, a siren tooth is a lot more subtle. But you asked for a love potion, not a friendly acquaintance potion.”

“Excellent answer! You see? This is what I’m looking for! You lot all take notes!”

Every other student in the room glared at him.

“Now, my dear S class. Sit down, sit down,” the man said. He wore the robes of a professor, but they were filthy and fit him poorly. As if he’d shrunk in size several times since gaining it.

They sat down.

The professor counted them out. “Ten! The perfect number for a class. The cream of the student body. You all tried so hard to get here. Number 11 is probably weeping and wailing about how his spot was taken by dear Kaga. Oh Kaga, the enemies you unwittingly create. If only friends were so easily fallen upon as enemies. The tragedy of adolescence. Bumble forward!”

Again, the students in the class glared at him. As he looked around, he realized that for the first time, the students actually looked older than him in his class. He wondered which ones were fifth years. Then Kizu recognized a student. Ione again sat in the class with him. But instead of looking carefree and bored, she looked furious. She glared at him from under her bangs.

The professor continued to ramble on about the things they might achieve and the dire consequences of their level of brewing. He told a nonsensical cautionary tale about a mouse who brewed a potion that turned him into a bat, only to lose all his friends at the last moment to an earthquake. The other students diligently took notes while Kizu just stared.

“Now, brew me up something nice!” the professor said with gusto. “All the ingredients are yours to use. You achieved greatness by being present here, prove that greatness! And pair up!”

Five cauldrons popped up in front of them. Immediately, the other students latched onto one another. They all seemed to know each other from previous years. Soon, only he and Ione remained. He walked over to the cauldron in front of her.

“Ione, right?”

The look on her face went from loathing, to despising.

“No. My name is Sene,” she said and gave no further explanation.

“Okay,” Kizu said, trying to remain pleasant. “And what do you think we should make?”

“There is no we. I will concoct a potion. And you will stop bothering me.”

“Yeah, no.” Kizu dropped any sense of nicety. “Let me put it this way, either you tell me what we’re making, or I will do everything in my power to sabotage and make it a monstrosity of a mixture.”

She rolled her eyes, blowing him off. Then she went to the shelves and began grabbing pickled mandrake roots and a wisp ectoplasma. She picked up other things but Kizu stopped paying attention. It was obvious what she was trying to brew off those two ingredients. And he also knew exactly what to add himself.

Scanning the shelves, he approached the cave wall and gathered up some dried lizard tails and a pair of peacock eyes. They were hardly flashy ingredients and nobody paid him any attention as he mashed them into a paste with a mortar and pedestal. He added just a dab of fermented kelp. Then he waited.

From the edge of the room, he watched as Sene brewed. She did everything exactly like a book would instruct, no nuance or experimentation. When she chopped, she did it in exact increments. When she poured, she used a cup with specific markings.

As she stirred in the final ingredients, Kizu walked up. She continued to completely ignore him right up until he splashed his concoction into her brew.

“Whoops,” he said.

She froze, mid stir. It took her a moment before she turned to him. The room temperature dropped and he could feel the air thinning. She opened her mouth, as if to scream.

“Okay, okay!” The professor clapped his hands and looked at them all. “Time is up! Let’s see what all of you have!”

The professor launched himself out of his seat and rubbed his palms together. He peered into each cauldron, either sniffing, spitting in, or tasting each one.

When at last he arrived at theirs he beamed at them.

“Let me guess, hmm, an invisibility potion based on the ingredients at your cutting board. Matches Kajima Sene’s usual strategy of choosing the most complicated thing in the book.” He leaned over and sniffed it. “But it doesn’t smell quite right. I imagine that must be Kaga Kizu’s contribution. What could that little zing be?” He reached into the pot and touched the liquid.

“Don’t!” Sene called out, horrified, as he put his finger into his mouth.

The lights in the room all winked out immediately, then the professor erupted with light. All the students shielded their eyes as the professor stood there arms outreached looking like some sort of divine justice.

“Ingenious!” the professor declared. “Absolutely innovative. An invisibility brew relies on a disruption of light, so you took that and altered it so that the user instead absorbs in all sources of light. You two really are the top students of the academy.” Then he cackled, buckling over onto the floor, looking like a mad angel until the brew’s effects faded away and the lamps returned to normal.

The hostility in the room did not fade, least of all from Sene. But Kizu hardly cared. He basked in his accomplishment. Completely satisfied with his results.