Chapter Text
He and Qifrey had been twelve years old when they took the second test.
It was the begrudging compromise between their teachers. While Olruggio’s master had pressed him to chase prodigious achievement, Qifrey’s would have held him close for years to come. Waiting for a safer bet meant never playing the game.
Thus, the compromise: less a union of agreement and understanding, and more a bond of helplessness in the face of their conjoined apprentices.
Beldaruit and Master Ilonia had never liked each other. Olruggio supposed he could distantly understand his aggrieved master. Ilonia had under her tutelage a young prodigy — a title Olruggio himself still cringed from. Testing at age eleven and passing on his first attempt would have renewed that reputation for years to come. Prestige and bragging rights for both master and apprentice were stolen away in the face of a half-blind boy.
Maybe, if he was generous, he could believe that his master had been worried that Qifrey was holding him back. In many circumstances it would be a concern to see someone changing the course of their life for a boy they’d just met. The problem with that idea was reality: it was a test he took as a pre-teen and nobody really cared about that more than one year later.
So, Olruggio couldn’t bring himself to feel particularly generous.
The truth was that his master had been pleased by a student that needed so little oversight, which meant she received any questions and obstacles with impatient disappointment. Those first, early signs of rebellion from Olruggio had been something she sought to quash before they grew. She scolded, and fretted, and stormed Beldaruit’s chambers, and despite it all she saw Olruggio into the caves with Qifrey at his side.
It almost made the journey nostalgic, were he not choked by panic.
Olruggio wondered if Qifrey had his own pride to stoke, sending his two students in now. It would be well-founded pride. They were bright as torches and sharp as a tack, products of Qifrey’s merit as much as their own. Olruggio still winced to hear of their descent along the Serpentback trail.
The Arklaum girl was a somber, desperate thing, and wore her need to prove herself as blatant as the cap on her head. The other had a history that reached even Olruggio’s ears, scandalized whispers that escaped the sea and journeyed to the very fringes of witch society. For all the wit and talent they wielded, they were equally damaged.
It was clever of Qifrey, picking out such worrisome students. He only had to wonder at times if Qifrey was good for them.
Beneath him, the puttering figures of myrphons pointed to his destination. He broke the modifying seal at his toes and swung his feet forward, slowing his overwrought flight to a standard velocity. What had been a blur far below resolved into the crisp view of an open, sunlit expanse of stone and rolling hills. The cliffs fell into the sea, high tide in the late morning.
It was an idyllic view that carved a pit into his stomach. Qifrey wasn’t there. Neither were the two students he’d brought with who weren’t testing this day.
What he found instead was a small, cloaked form kneeling in the grass. The deep teal of her robes meant she couldn’t be missed — not by Olruggio, or anyone else looking for her.
He fixed his hat first. The brim dissolved to ash and the ash crumbled to dust on the wind. Only then did he remove the seal that hid him from view. When the girl turned, she would see another pointed-cap witch arriving to help.
His shadow draped over her as he descended. She whipped around, a too-quick motion that sent her falling onto her bottom to stare up at him. His stomach clenched. Tears glossed her eyes, though the first one only fell when she did.
He saw the motion of her gaze, checking his hat before his face. She’d already encountered the others.
Long blue hair, an expression that even at its most emotive was somewhat restrained. Richehlette, he recalled. She was of the two scheduled for the test. Shamefully, Olruggio had been unable to forget the name of Qifrey’s apprentices.
“Where are the others?” He asked as he landed. Too late, he realized that he had no cover for his presence. He had no name to give and no story to spin, and Qifrey’s apprentices were all bright young girls.
Richehlette pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the hand Olruggio automatically put out to help. She scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve and then flung her fists down in the next motion. “I need help,” she rasped, glaring directly into his face. Her voice was thin, shaking on a breath. She pointed back towards the exit from the caves, saying, “Brimhats are hurting my friends!”
Nausea burned in the back of his throat. “What did they —” He choked it off, shaking his head. “What’s your name?”
“Richeh,” she said, and he was immediately thankful he’d asked.
“Where’s your teacher?”
Her eyes screwed shut and she shook her head. Olruggio held back a curse — she didn’t need the one adult she had losing his head.
“Okay,” Olruggio exhaled. “Then I’m going to search for them. Before that, though, do you know the signs for your atelier’s window—”
“No!”
He blinked. Richeh glowered at him, hands balled into shaking fists. “I’m not leaving!”
“You’re too young,” he said, blunt and harsh. “This is an adult’s job.”
Her face twisted, fists and jaw going tight. Then her gaze dropped. “I know,” she rasped, shoulders hunching. “But I am not leaving. If you don’t bring me with, I’ll follow.”
If Olruggio was correct in his suspicions and Qifrey had become a teacher to fret over his students, he had chosen excellent pupils. Richeh meant every word. She’d truly throw herself back into a den of curses before leaving without her atelier.
He could forcibly window her to the Great Hall. It would be deeply unpleasant for everybody involved. She’d probably start running the moment she realized, and everything after that turned his gut to think about.
Olruggio didn’t remember putting his teacher through this much torment at her age. Kids these days.
“Fine,” he spat, “but I’m carrying you, and you have to do exactly as I say. Can you agree to that?”
Richeh frowned, and for a moment he thought that she would refuse outright. Then, in a stiff motion, she nodded.
Olruggio allowed himself one final sigh. He knelt down and held out his arms to her, only for Richeh to recoil. It was automatic. Her body moved before her mind caught up, terror flashing behind her eyes.
He knew that look. He’d seen it in Qifrey, as often as Qifrey had seen it in him. How many nights had both of them woken up gasping, weeping, drenched in sweat. Did Richeh do the same?
Olruggio bit back an apology, staying put with his arms outstretched. He’d learned about Richeh before he knew she was Qifrey’s apprentice. It had been almost a joke to the Brimhats he encountered. They spoke about it with a certain relish: a dozen or so apprentices, all abused by the same master, right under the nose of the Great Hall.
When the news came out, the good witches gasped and twisted their pointed caps and didn’t change a single thing. Richeh was sent to another atelier, this one smaller, more isolated. They didn’t even pretend to care about the failure of the system they made.
Of course it was Qifrey who had taken her in. Olruggio hadn’t even been surprised to find his name there, boldly declared as the whistleblower that led to a master’s arrest. It only made him wonder when, precisely, had Qifrey become the type. He’d always called Olruggio the bleeding heart when they were kids.
But he supposed a lot changed when you grew up. Richeh took a breath, then took his hands.
“One, two!” Olruggio gave her a word of warning before hoisting her up. It was easier than he expected. Richeh fit in one arm, easily concealed in the breadth of his robes. Had he been this small, back then?
He tapped his shoes together to fly. Richeh’s hand buried in his cloak even if she should have no fear of heights. “I just want to get a glance at the other side,” he told her, before speeding over the stony peaks.
On the other side, he hoped without hope that he would catch a familiar pale cap. Instead it was more empty land, populated only by the birds that had no mate or chicks to tend to. He stared at it, trying to keep his breathing even. The road of Serpentback Cave was long, but easily traced. The rest of the caverns stretched like flytrap’s maw. Before the road was traversed and mapped and cleared of remnant danger, it had been a grave for many an ambitious witch.
Richeh shifted in his hold, untangling one hand to lean back and catch his eye. Despite the horror churning in his gut, her gaze was bright. “Look,” she said, and pointed.
Olruggio followed her hand. She was pointing to a statue on the ground, the open-mouthed serpent for which the cave was named. Legend said that it had been a monster once, constructed to guard the Romonon kingdom. Later it was petrified like the rest, though in stone rather than feeble gold, and its corpse became a construct to obey the war-witches’ commands.
“It moved,” she told him. Her finger panned across the field. “It was there, first. Now it’s here.”
“Good eye,” he praised, instead of saying oh, fuck me. They’d animated the construct. He didn’t want to think about what several tons of stone could do to a human body.
The serpent had been left disanimated beside a strange patch of rock across the ground. That stone hadn’t looked odd from the air, but on descent he could see the uniformity of its surface. The stone that dotted Cape Romonon was broken and eroded, while this was smooth.
He halted just before landing. “Now,” he muttered, “how to best peek under the surface.”
His answer came in a tug to his cloak. He looked down at Richeh, who squirmed determinedly out of his arms against his sputtered protests. She sprang, deerlike, to the earth, and Olruggio watched with hands on his hips while she took up her quire.
She turned a page to him. Within it was a ring of minute seals that formed a near-perfect solution to their problem. When completed and applied, her wallbreaker spell would powder the stone to cast harmlessly into the depths. If there was someone underneath, they only needed to worry about getting grit in their eyes.
Olruggio rubbed the back of his neck, chuckling on an exhale. “What little genius did Qifrey manage to find?”
Richeh neither smiled nor frowned at the praise, but her cheeks turned a shade darker. “I’m best at small seals,” she informed him, and offered him the spell. “It’s my specialty.”
“It certainly is.” Any good witch knew how to adjust the size of their seal, but she was young to have such crisp linework. Her pen had to be as thin as they came. Olruggio had spent many nights with bungled work, unable to get the proper curve of a sign when scaling it down to a fraction.
He’d love to watch her at work. It was a shame he’d likely never get the chance.
“Alright, up you get,” he said, moving to scoop Richeh up again. “And no more stunts. We don’t know how stable the ground is. Or what’s underneath.”
She didn’t balk this time, though Olruggio’s back certainly did. To stay afloat while affixing the seal, he had to bend down and hug Richeh to his chest. When he straightened up again, his spine gave an angry crack that made Richeh squeak in concern.
Olruggio groaned. “This is why you sleep in beds,” he told her, “and not on couches, cots, or floors.”
Underfoot, the stone crumbled away first into chunks and then into sand. He watched a funnel form and widen until they were left with a foot-deep hole in the earth, wide enough to swallow him whole. It dropped away into yawning darkness.
Iguin and any lackeys had covered their tracks, using the construct to crack open the earth and then sealing Qifrey and his girls inside. He assumed, at least. He hoped, because there was no better reason for them to be missing.
Olruggio shifted his cloak to curtain Richeh. “It’ll keep you safe,” he told her, an honest deception. The cloak had protective seals woven into it — the fireproofing on his skin didn’t extend to his clothes otherwise. That had been an unfortunate discovery in his youth.
“Alright,” Olruggio said. He grimaced into the dark. “This is the part that sucks. It isn’t safe to fly, so we’re going to have to freefall. You trust me?”
Fingers so tight in his cloak that he could feel it pull, Richeh said, “I trusted my Master before. I can choose to trust you.”
A lump formed in his throat. “Gotcha,” he croaked.
In another world, Richeh would have been… something, to him. His best friend’s student. So Olruggio would have been their teacher-uncle or something of the sort. Maybe he could have given them pointers on fire magic, on designing contraptions, on eating well and sleeping through the night.
Or maybe Qifrey was just gone, in that world. Maybe there was a new tree outside the Tower of Tomes and his students never met, all sent to different masters, and Coco wore a hat with a brim on her head. He could doubt himself later, over a smoke and a drink. For now, he held Richeh tight to his chest, summoned a far-reaching light, and fell.
The world turned to shadow and stone. It raced across his vision too fast to see, just shape and arching darkness. His faithful light hit the ground and spilled out wide, granting him just enough time to unfurl a cushioning wind.
At their velocity, there was no such thing as a comfortable landing. The wind meant he didn’t splatter on impact, but the breath was still knocked out of him. It held for a moment before dissipating, setting him safely on his back and letting the whirlwind of sand fall into his face.
He screwed his eyes shut. No breaks or sprains. Maybe a bruise. His mouth tasted like dust.
“You okay?” He asked, loosening the death-grip he’d locked around Richeh. She gulped in her breath and then — “Oof, fffuuureaking hell, kid,” — sat on his stomach to stand upright.
Olruggio groaned as he wobbled to his own feet. The surrounding cavern was dimly illuminated and adorned in spires. These were the remains of a great city now one with its own grave.
He could see the precise impact point where the stone above had first broken, what must have caused Qifrey and his students to vanish from above. In that span of broken stone was an open radius that could only have been kept clear by Qifrey’s magic. And in that area—
Olruggio brushed forward, cutting off Richeh’s view with his own body. Blood had soaked into the sand, congealing it into a grotesque silt.
Around that was the evidence that removed any doubt this was Qifrey’s work: patches of wet sand, gouges cut into stone. Qifrey had been here, and he had been fighting. Olruggio was too familiar with the damage he could deal with a blade of water.
“What’s wrong?” Richeh asked. Olruggio realized then that his breathing had gone short.
He dragged his gaze away to face Richeh. “They were here,” he said, pointing away from the blood and towards a long slice in a nearby pillar. “That’s Qifrey’s signature magic there. Combat magic at that. Come on, we can’t fly but I’m absolutely still keeping ahold of you.”
He stooped down, which provided Richeh with the opening to scrabble not into his arms but directly onto his back. He sputtered a protest that she ignored, throwing arms around his neck like she intended to strangle him.
Catching her legs, Olruggio stood and hitched her up higher. It let the pressure off his throat. “A little warning next time,” he grouched. “If I have to cast, you’ll need to hang on by yourself.”
A thumbs-up stuck over his shoulder. He sighed, and started forward through the caves.
The sand was too thin to offer him a convenient trail of footprints. Instead he had to examine the wake of destruction, mapping the fight in his own head. They passed a chokepoint and out to a deceptively broad stretch where the walls stood wider than the ground. To either side of this passage was an abyss. It would be easy to walk right off an edge without good lighting.
Holding Richeh like this, Olruggio could feel her grip on his cloak. She twisted her hands in his collar, her breath turning deep and rasping. The silence couldn’t be helping her anxiety anymore than his.
“I’m a bit surprised you kept to our deal,” he commented, grabbing the first thought that came to mind. “I’d half expected you to go running off on your own.”
Richeh lowered her chin to his shoulder. “I mean what I say,” she mumbled, sounding put out. “It’s everyone else that lies.”
Olruggio nodded. “Well, I appreciate that in a person. I’ll trust you a lot more that way.”
She seemed pleased by that, humming an affirmative. Then she said, “Master Qifrey lied.”
Alarm lit in his chest. “About what?”
It was a long and terrifying moment before she spoke again. “He said I can do whatever I like. That I could do things my way.” Her voice went soft. He’d expect a sullen tone from what she was saying, but she only sounded small. “I don’t like reading. I don’t like tests. I don’t like other people’s spells. I didn’t want to do this test.”
“...You wouldn’t be able to become a fully fledged witch,” Olruggio said, after a moment to think. “You were okay with that?”
“I only want to be me.” Her mouth was muffled against his shoulder, now. “I don’t want to change because an adult says I have to. But I can’t help anyone the way I am now.”
Her voice gave to the crunch of sand underfoot. Yes, Qifrey certainly had his hands full with this one. And to think she was only one among four apprentices. He couldn’t be sleeping well.
“It’s true that a lot of adults will tell you the ‘right’ way to do things,” he murmured. “Ours is a society that holds onto tradition — even tradition that harms. But the Qifrey I know, at least, wouldn’t want you to change just for that reason. What do you think?”
Her fingers tightened. The arms around his neck felt more like a hug, now, holding on for comfort instead of security. “Master was right,” she said, like a confession. “I met a boy here. I thought he was stupid, because all he does is book magic but—” her voice cracked, “—it’s still his. He adds extra signs because his hands shake. It’s his. And now he’s — and I can’t help —”
Olruggio’s mouth was suddenly dry.
“Now he’s what?” He made himself ask.
She was shaking, now. Her body, her voice, all trembling. “The Brimhat carved on him.”
What she said next, Olruggio didn’t hear. His pulse drowned it out.
They’d carved on a kid. He’d been too late. He’d been stupidly, uselessly late, tearing across the sky with the unfounded belief he hadn’t already failed.
That kid’s life was over. Might as well be dead if the knights found him. Memory blank, if he was lucky, if his curse was something they could amputate. And it it wasn’t — if it was something they couldn’t take away, something that couldn’t be left in this world —
Richeh sounded far away the next moment, high-pitched and panicked. Except it wasn’t Richeh, and it was far away, echoing on stone walls from another hall in these caverns. There was another girl here.
Then he heard, clear as a bell, that voice call, “Coco!”
He broke into a run.
Ahead, the bridge opened to high ceilings and paved roads, all cracked with age. In the far, far distance, he caught humanoid figures looking on. The aurified people of Romonon were gathered as sentry, watching the two young girls that knelt over Qifrey.
He skidded to a halt, slipping his arms from Richeh’s legs to hesitate towards his quire. She clung on as promised.
The Romonons didn’t move. He would wonder if they were people at all, and not true statues, were it not for the occasional dip of a head as if to murmur amongst each other.
Every history said that when a witch was unlucky enough to find these remnants, they were met with violence and often death. Perhaps even they could not strike towards children. Perhaps they had changed their minds. Olruggio decided he didn’t need to understand as long as they weren’t a threat.
He closed the distance. Richeh called out as Olruggio swung her off his back and beside her sister apprentices. That was three kids accounted for.
Hitting his knees, he lit a torch and bled it white. Warmth was good. Qifrey looked a mess, clothes torn, face caked in dirt and dry blood. Alaira was there as well, unconscious but breathing even. She was safe enough for now.
He looked at the two new girls. Coco, he knew, and the other was not Agott, so that made her… The name escaped him. He wasn’t supposed to know it anyway.
“How is he injured?” he demanded.
It was the pigtailed girl that recovered first from her shock. “He protected us from the fall,” she said, voice gone thin but brave. “He — he couldn’t slow himself—” She swallowed, shook her head, then said, “His back, his arm, and his eye are hurt.”
He nodded absently, rolling Qifrey over onto his belly and hissing at the sight. The injury spanned from his shoulder down the blade, an entire quadrant of his back mottled and torn. It was seeping blood through uneven flesh and the grime that clogged the wound.
Good witches weren’t allowed to practice healing. It was lucky, then, that Olruggio wore a brimmed cap.
“What’s your name?” He asked.
She blinked, stuttering, “T-tetia!”
“Tetia, I need you to draw a fountain. Low pressure, about a foot high.” He motioned the height, then turned to Richeh. “Can you make me a wide bowl?”
Both apprentices knelt to draw at once. That left only Coco, who stood with her fists knotted in her robes. She stared at Qifrey, breath heaving in shallow gulps.
“Coco,” he said, “can you help me cut his shirt?”
She paused for just a moment, then her eyes brightened. “Yes!” She exhaled. She took the shears Olruggio offered and dropped down to kneel. Without needing instructions, she got to work with a surprisingly expert hand.
Apparently able to leave Coco to the job, he took the bowl Richeh had shaped. Tetia revealed her waterspout, letting Olruggio fill his vessel. By the time he was turning back to Qifrey, Coco had cut perfect lines that let him peel the material away.
“Fantastic, all of you,” he said, and began pouring the water over Qifrey’s back. Washing the debris out came first. He needed to see the injury to know how bad it was.
He filled and emptied three bowls before remembering to say, “You three shouldn’t watch this.” They were young, and no kid should have to see their guardian so helpless.
It was the permission Tetia and Richeh needed. Only Coco stayed staring at his work, and he didn’t have the time to argue with her about it. Instead he said, “Coco, use his skirts to cut large sections — big enough to cover the wound.”
She seemed relieved to drop into a new task. With all three girls accounted for — and not staring at their teacher’s mutilated back — he could focus on his job. Eventually, the wound was as clean as it was going to be. Coco offered him a stack of fabric that he layered over and secured with adhesive, then added an additional seal to reinforce the fabric. A tighter weave was best to staunch the bleeding.
Then, at last, he could relax by just a fraction. Whatever had ruptured in Qifrey’s eye socket — Olruggio tried not to think of trees and what they could do to the inside of a skull — had bled heavily before it staunched. It left a gummy layer of half-congealed blood coating his cheek, but the image was far more alarming than the injury.
“So, what happened?” He asked, cloth in hand. He hesitated before cupping Qifrey’s face.
The girls’ voices made the ambience for his work. It was an almost mindless task, gently cleaning the blood from Qifrey’s skin. He took the time to write a cleansing charm, then another to warm the space around them. Tetia formed a pillow out of sand to cushion Alaira’s head.
Their first mention of the Romonons made him look up at their distant forms. They’d faded into the darkness, but in this tense breath he caught the gleam of his torchlight reflecting back at him.
“I’m surprised they left you be,” he murmured, lingering on that shine. “Every history that spoke of them described a cruel and callous people. And said their endless suffering only made them more foul.”
Punishment had been the word in his lesson. There was no sympathy for a culture that had brought their own damnation. It was a justice brought on by the stars.
“They’re just people,” Tetia said, as if reciting his thoughts. Her fingers clutched in Coco’s. “They just needed to believe that witches had changed.”
There was a deep grief in her voice. She stared into the darkness, maybe at the exact same glint of light.
“Why isn’t anybody trying to help them?” she asked.
Olruggio’s chest clutched. He turned his gaze back to Qifrey.
He had found some truly brilliant students. In this moment, Olruggio did not envy his life in his atelier. How was an adult meant to teach their children about an unjust world — how was he meant to raise compassion while forbidding its practice.
Qifrey’s cheek was cool under his hand, and soft to the touch. He’d lost the roundness of youth, jaw now set at an elegant curve. It nestled perfectly in his palm.
He looked peaceful like this, as the blood wicked away. Eye shut, lips parted, an illusion broken only by the shallow pull of his breath. Against his better judgement, Olruggio traced his thumb down his cheek. They had been so young the last time he’d seen him like this, guilty and longing.
His movements grew more cautious as he came to the end of his work. He brushed Qifrey’s hair back, angling himself to be sure his students couldn’t see, and carefully ran his cloth along the very edge of his eye socket.
In its depths, there was a glint of silver.
It occurred to him that he could reach into Qifrey like this. If he fed his fingers between loose eyelids, they would be inside his skull.
Nausea roiled in his throat. He took a final, messy swipe beneath the socket before yanking his hand away.
He shook the image out of his head, ignoring the sweat prickling over his skin. Olruggio fixated on his task and put all else out of his mind. He cleaned the rest of the blood from his chin, neck, and hands. He fashioned a rudimentary sling. He took one more look over Alaira, confirming that whatever had left her unconscious would leave no lasting injury.
He sat back on his heels, then fell on his ass. Olruggio planted his hands in the dirt to gust a loud sigh. “Alright, kids,” he said, “They’re gonna be okay.”
A second later, he was oof’ing out his breath as Coco threw herself into his side. He lifted an arm, hesitant to touch, then wrapped it tight around her. She was shaking.
The other two were in similar states when he looked their way: Tetia cried with relief as she clung to Richeh, who patted her head in a placating manner. Her own prickling tears were seen only by Olruggio.
He was stuck in these underground ruins with three weeping apprentices. If Qifrey was going to be the death of him, he’d appreciate some good old fashioned murder instead of this doing him in.
The girls had described Sasaran attacking them. That meant it was likely Iguin who animated the serpent far above, casting Qifrey and his apprentices into the depths. He looked up, half expecting to find an eye gaping back.
Iguin was elusive, intelligent. He never showed his hand, or his face, or even his spells. He appeared out of nowhere, knowing far more than he should. No one knew where to find him. Anyone that knew of Iguin had the same story to report: he found them.
Iguin was almost certainly nearby. He wouldn’t stray far from Coco while in these caves.
A migraine drew up behind his eyes. He shut them, grinding his thumbs into his forehead. He had three young girls and two unconscious adults. One of those adults would attempt to kill him on sight. The other — would she recognize him? And if she did, would she trust him?
There’d been no call among witches to denounce the apprentice Olruggio. The Knights Moralis hadn’t pursued him. His teacher had sent him a flock of messenger birds, all unanswered but none outraged. Qifrey was predictable. He wanted to find Olruggio himself with no risk of someone else beating him to the punch.
He had to have said something, though, truth or lie. When Olruggio went missing from the Great Hall, Qifrey would be the first person they questioned. That was assuming he’d gone home at all. It was far more likely that Qifrey had staggered from the coast, hellbent and delirious, until Beldaruit found him and coaxed him to return.
He flattened his palms and covered his face, inhaling deeply through his nose. Speculating wouldn’t give him an answer. One of the apprentices was still missing, another had lost his body and his mind. These three couldn’t be left alone. Iguin and Sasaran were somewhere in these caves, waiting to pull Coco to their side.
His fingers itched for the pipe in his pocket. Did he have to care about being a good influence if the kids weren’t his?
“Sir?”
He peeked through his fingers and found Coco herself peeking back. Her posture was timid, hesitant to interrupt. Olruggio groaned once and uncovered his face, shaking himself.
“Sorry, sorry,” he sighed. “I’m just… thinking. What is it?”
“Just.” She balled her hands up, frowning at the sand. “Do you know how we could help Euini?”
“Drawing on the body is forbidden,” Richeh told her. It was a clean delivery, like she was musing aloud instead of reminding an outsider of their rules.
Coco grimaced, then nodded. “Right. But, there had to be another way? A way that wouldn’t break the principles?” Her eyes stayed on Olruggio.
He forced his jaw to unclench. Euini had merged with the pelt of a scalewolf, according to Richeh. It was Sasaran’s precise brand of depravity. “A lot of magic that would be forbidden if cast on the body,” he said, careful and deliberate, “is allowed with the use of contraptions. But even with a contraption, if the spell were to create a true, physical transformation… And even then, being able to conjure such an effect safely, with the desired result, is unlikely. That study is strictly forbidden, even on animals.”
Tetia and Richeh’s faces fell. They read between the lines. Euini couldn’t be saved with anything less than unpredictable, forbidden magic.
Coco, however, only looked pensive. ‘Ah,’ Olruggio thought, frowning at her. ‘This is what Iguin plans to use.’ He might just get what he wanted, with Coco making such a face. The threat of forbiddance wasn’t enough to stay her hand.
Then her face pinched. She jerked, then wriggled, hands fluttering before she squeaked and pulled back the flap of her cloak. Underneath it, a white-furred brushbug was revealed in mid-motion.
Olruggio blinked to make sure he wasn’t imagining that. The brushbug skittered up her front and looped around her shoulders, head swinging to and fro. Its face scrunched inwards as it snuffled at the air. Its face turned to Olruggio, and for a moment he was entranced by the shock of something so adorable in hell.
Then it leapt. He pedaled backwards, yelping as the creature landed on his skirt and clung on. It clawed itself onto his belly and then dove beneath his cloak, tickling his sides as he fumbled at it through his clothes. It had just gotten close enough to mash its head against his seal-brand before he grabbed it by the tail and yanked it free.
It squeaked indignantly, clinging to his wrist and making a valiant effort at biting with a mouth too small to find purchase. Coco sprung forward to retrieve it, bursting out, “I’m so sorry!”
“It’s fine,” Olruggio grunted. He tugged his cloak back into place. The brand was burning under his shirt. “That’s yours?”
Brushbugs were ambitious pets to keep. They’d become popular in his youth, then mildly invasive around the Great Hall as unattended pets turned into many new puffball brushlings upending pots of ink in every classroom.
Coco nodded, and Olruggio bit back a grin. “Your master is pretty indulgent with you. Mine woulda strung me up by my ankles if I’d tried to bring one of these guys into our atelier.” And Olruggio had certainly tried to smuggle some of those brushlings in. He reached out to scratch this brushbug’s head, turning its angry squeaks into a begrudging churr.
Coco watched him. Her face went soft. “He is,” she murmured. She looked towards her teacher, wrapped in bandages and laid out on the stone. “...Is he really going to be okay?”
Olruggio’s chest twinged. “He will,” he sighed, stepping towards her and reaching out. When she didn’t shrink back, he set the hand on her shoulder. “He’s just gonna need a lot of time to recover. The good news is, eventually someone’s going to come to check why the test hasn’t ended yet. Once they do, he’ll—”
His voice died. Over Coco’s shoulder, a single blue eye stared back at him.
Qifrey was awake.
