Sacrifice Mage

I flew to the academy. Literally. It didn’t matter what sort of defences they had against someone dropping out of the sky, I couldn’t give a shit. Gravity and Flare turned my body into a missile soaring over the Rings of Zairgon until I was forced to land right in front of Xokrist academy’s main gates.

Vandre wobbled where I put him down. I hadn’t been careful about our flight, but he had insisted on coming along, so I had carried him with me. There was no time for care.

I would have punched right through into the academy grounds, straight through the infirmary window had I been able to locate it. Sadly, there was a powerful forcefield active around the whole school.

“Hold there!” An academy guard was approaching me with a rune-etched baton out. “Who—”

“Take one good look at me,” I said, getting right up to him with just a single step. “And tell me you don’t know who I am or why I’m here.”

One second. That was as long as the Rakshasa needed to consider me. That was as long as I allowed it before my expression hardened, before my mana core thrummed on its own. And then he was quickly drawing away.

“P-please, follow me.” He cleared his throat, then hurried away. Even the gate drew open pretty quickly. “The infirmary is this way.”

I followed, hardly seeing or noting anything save for the direction I was going and the fact that my destination was coming up. My feet thumped lightly on the dirt, my body feeling like it was simultaneously freezing and burning at the same time. My mental state didn’t even let me register Ascelkos dropping by next to me.

“Ross,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I should have… I should have been closer. I should have seen this coming.”

“What happened?” I asked tightly.

It had been so urgent that he hadn’t even sent a letter. Instead, one of the Anymphea had come rushing to me, arriving at the temple at breakneck pace when empowered by his wind-related Aspect. But that sort of speed meant the messenger hadn’t found the time to learn details.

Only the crucial piece of information—Sreketh had suffered an accident and was grievously injured.

“I wish I had been there…” Ascelkos got on with it pretty quickly. “But from what I’ve been told, there was a commotion. Sreketh had an altercation with a few other students, and it turned violent. And then…”

Right. There was no need to say more.

Ascelkos’s confirmation of the suspicions I had been harbouring ever since I had heard the news just incensed me even further. I was grinding my teeth so hard, I’d probably end up eroding the stupid enamel.

“Sreketh isn’t the type to get violent,” I managed to get out, every word clipped and razor-edged.

“I know, Ross,” Ascelkos said. “I understand. This… something went horribly wrong.”

That was an understatement.

We arrived at the infirmary like a storm. A few healers there tried to calm down the commotion, but I wasn’t having any of it. My strongest glare finally had them forgetting about their Pits-cursed little notions of orderliness and peace, before showing me to Sreketh. When they pulled away the curtains around her bed, I understood why they were scared of letting me in.

All this time, I had held back from letting my mana go wild or giving in to the temptation to channel my Aspects just to work some of my burning energy out.

Now, I felt like pulling down this whole worthless excuse of an academy.

She was lying on the bed, unconscious. Hardly even breathing. I couldn’t tell through the fog of rage that had descended on me. Her body was covered with a shift that all the patients here seemed to be wearing, but she was practically mummified with bandages beneath the shift.

“Her scales,” I said. My words didn’t even sound like mine. “Why are they falling off?”

The healer took a step back. A vein throbbed on my forehead. Wasn’t she supposed to be getting closer? Tending to the poor child lying dying? “She… came into contact with a combination of Aspects, so isolating any singular reason will be difficult. But we’re still healing her the best we can.”

I wished I could have gotten reassured at that. But with literal scales littering her bed, I had a hard time feeling charitable about anything to do with the academy, much less their healers. “What sort of combination of Aspects causes something like this to happen?”

“I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’m certain we’ll be able to stop it. Now please, you must let us work. We have patients to tend to.”

“I’m not holding you hostage. I’m asking for some accountability.”

“Don’t worry,” Ascelkos said. “I’ve alerted the administrators. They will answer for this.”

“And what about the students who caused this?” I asked.

Ascelkos grimaced. It was the healer lady who answered.

“They have been temporarily suspended for their part in this,” she said.

“You temporarily suspended the people who are responsible for this mess?” I asked. I couldn’t help my voice rising, and if our arrival hadn’t drawn most of the nearby attention, then it was surely doing so now. “Did you even think to interrogate them about what exactly they did? What Aspects they used or anything like that?”

The Scalekin woman’s face confessed she absolutely hadn’t. “The administration saw fit to remove them from the premises as soon as they learned of the… the incident.”

My fingers itched. Ascelkos drew my attention with a warning shake of his head. I took a deep breath to try and calm myself, but the blood raging through my veins wasn’t about to pacify itself anytime soon.

It was probably a good thing a couple of the academy’s administrators arrived moments later.

“A regrettable state of affairs, this,” an old Rakshasa stated. He shook his head morosely when he saw Sreketh. “To think they would devolve into violence of this level.”

“That’s enough of that,” I said. The professor looked up at me sharply through his round glasses. I didn’t give him the chance to muster any idiotic outrage. “Stop talking like your favourite team lost the game. This is a fucking crime. I want to know what actionable steps you’re taking to redress the issue. If you think a little suspension is enough, then you’ve got another think coming.”

“Calm yourself, Cultist Moreland,” said the other administrator. “We are taking the steps outlined by the academy. There will be further reviews of the conduct of all involved parties—”

“Didn’t I just say enough? I don’t care about your policies. You know why? If the way you work and run this place can let something like this happen, then your entire system needs to be uprooted.”

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The first administrator scowled. “This is a lone incident! We never have issues such as these. Your anger is understandable, but frankly, you’re being highly uncooperative. This will only make further steps harder to carry out.”

“There.” I stood straighter. A current of satisfaction ran through my building rage, and I hated that I felt it. “See. That’s another little proof. You all care about your academy, but you don’t care about a little girl who was nearly killed in your premises. Even now, it’s academy this, academy that. Where’s your anger at this crime, huh? Where’s your rage at this incident?”

“We—”

“I’m not done. I know that you obviously won’t care about some random student you probably never even saw before, especially a kid from Ring Four of all places. But where the fuck is your outrage at having the rules of your precious little academy flouted by these criminals, huh? Where’s your horror at what’s transpired? Where’s the burning need to make sure something like this never happens again?Where?”

I was shouting by the end of it. The quiet that replied to my outburst suffocated everybody, myself included. They… these assholes… I shook my head, my heart sinking in disappointment.

There were glimmers of shame in their eyes, in the slightest downturn of their faces, but I had put them on the defensive. All I had done was make them dig their graves in their positions behind whatever shield the idea of Xokrist academy provided them.

“Perhaps you should also take heed of this matter?” said the shorter of the men.

I froze. “What?”

“Surely, you are aware of the circumstances surrounding you and anyone else involved with you, yes? Here you are, blithely blaming anything and everything except your own self for the disaster that you now face.”

“Hadirth!” the first administrator said, turning to his companion admonishingly. “We mustn’t bring up external matters in the academy.”

“And why not? So we can just stand here and take abuse? I will not—hey!”

I had taken a step towards the shorter man, but Ascelkos’s arm had risen up to bar my way. No, I wasn’t crazy enough that I was going to hurt an academy administrator. But distance was affording him the ability to pretend that he could get away with saying whatever he wanted. I would have just closed the gap to make sure he didn’t keep getting stupid ideas.

“Sreketh has been locked inside your academy all this time, you stupid, fucking morons,” I said. This time, I didn’t need to shout. The cold harshness of my words felt like blades against my own mouth. “It’s not like she was outside when this—”

My voice faltered. I couldn’t believe it. I just—

Deep breaths, I counselled myself. Sadly, even they weren’t working any longer. My suspicions, my fears, had just been confirmed. Here was an administrator of Xokrist academy openly admitting that this murderous assault had happened because of my altercation with Uralivanth.

I looked down where Sreketh was lying unmoving, still dead to the world. “Ascelkos. The ones who did this. Do you have any idea who they were?”

“Most were scions of a few different Great Houses,” Ascelkos said, after the slightest hesitation. “Some heirs, some children of branch families. You know how nobles are. To be specific, there is at least one scion of House Uralivanth involved, yes, as well as scions of Houses Avrithya, Drihawk, Brasvay, and Serist.”

The second confirmation of the terrible feeling I’d had since the moment I had heard about Sreketh’s “accident” slowly turned my brain into a nest of thorns. I slowly got to my feet. When had I even gotten to my knees next to Sreketh? I couldn’t remember.

“Can you watch over her, please?” I asked Ascelkos quietly. The rest of the infirmary and everyone else present was still staring at me, but I couldn’t care less. “Stick close, if you can. I don’t trust this place.”

Ascelkos nodded. “Of course. I won’t leave her side. And she’s not alone, I believe. For all that she has suffered at the hands of her peers, there are a few who tried to stand up for her. They’d have been here … except they were suspended too.”

“Her friends were involved in this too?”

Ascelkos must have caught the immediate and admittedly assumptive accusation in my voice. “No, no, not in that way. They weren’t present at the actual incident. But once they learned what had happened, I know two of them went after the perpetrators, but were swiftly caught and suspended by the administration.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, wanting to think kindly. Wanting, and failing. Just one look back at Sreketh had my head spiralling with enraged suspicion about every single square inch and living cell within this academy.

No. No, there were people like Ascelkos I could count on. Maybe he was right. Those other kids had tried standing up for Sreketh too. And I needed to send a letter to Professor Urhei and Mage Tirk, maybe Professor Izithy too. She had helped Sreketh with her admission process a lot.

“Ross,” Ascelkos said urgently and quietly. His words were only for me. “I beseech you to calm yourself and pull away from whatever precipice you’re thinking of throwing yourself over. We have only some strong suspicions. No real proof. We mustn’t do anything drastic.”

“Sreketh has nearly been killed,” I hissed.

“I know.” He was normally so cheerful that hearing him so mournful as he was now just made my heart sink. “But please, Ross. Let me look into this. Let me find out what really happened. Just… pause whatever it is you intend to do until we have irrefutable proof that this crime is the doing of House Uralivanth.”

I took in the first proper breath that helped me calm down just a little. Just enough for me to drag my mind away from any notions of immediate vengeance.

“Your stupid academy isn’t off the hook,” I said, staring right into the administrator’s eyes. “You allowed this to transpire on your grounds, so you will answer for this. The least you can do is make sure Sreketh is nurtured back to full health.”

I didn’t let them respond. There was no reason for me to entertain their pathetic outrage.

Instead, with a nod at Ascelkos, I stomped out of the infirmary. A part of me wanted to stick by Sreketh’s side too, but I needed to act. I needed to send a letter or two.

I needed to help her instead of fussing over her prone form, frothing with anger.

When I got back to my office at the temple, things changed yet again. A letter was lying on my desk. No one had a clue as to how it had gotten there.

My hands trembled for a bit at seeing the expensive letterhead and seal, before I stilled them and tore it open. Then my hands began shaking again as I read through the entirety of the short missive.

“The scales will continue to rot and fall,” it read in elegant handwriting. “Till all that was stolen is returned and the thief has prostrated himself before the true owner. Or else, in three days, the sun will set upon several more.”

For a long moment, I just stared at those words. At the naked threat in every stroke of ink on the rich, real paper.

Something in my mind snapped. Right. It was time the kid gloves came off. I’d had enough.

Unlike his usual self, Khagnio was entirely silent as we threaded our way through the winding tunnels of Ring Zero. Maybe he understood I wasn’t in my usual mood, where I’d happily accept his foibles as something he just did. Today was not that day.

“You sure about this?” Khagnio asked.

“I had Thefris check the letter before attaching it to my message to Councillor Ghistara,” I said. “She—as in, Thefris—confirmed it was from Ring Two.”

Khagnio cursed. “You also reeled in a Councillor’s help?”

I shrugged. “Just to heal Sreketh.”

She had nearly been killed. The thought kept spinning around in my head like an F5 tornado in late spring. Right now, I was in the eye of my little storm. A calm that was deceptive.

I’d be hitting the destructive edge soon, though.

“We’re here,” Khagnio said.

The location was so unassuming, I’d have thought he was pulling a prank if this were any other time. A ramshackle, unassuming building built into the stone wall of the undercity.

Nobody in their right minds would ever mistake this place for the hideout of the legendary Riptide.

Khagnio looked around furtively to make sure there was no one nearby, then rapped a strange sequence of knocks on the stone door. “It’s me, old geezer. Open up. I brought our special guest you’ve been dying to see.”

I raised my eyebrows. He hadn’t mentioned the supposed eagerness from the leader of Riptide before, when I had stated my plans and intentions.

Moments later, the door opened, revealing a tall, wiry man with grey-brown skin and the black head of a jackal. Golden eyes took in Khagnio for a mere second before landing squarely on me.

“Ah, we finally meet,” he said. His voice was aged, belying his looks. Or maybe I just had no frame of reference for what older Theriocephs looked like. “The one and only Ross Moreland.”

I stepped inside as the leader of Khagnio’s old gang moved to one side. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me, Silan.”

“Of course, of course. I’ve been waiting for this auspicious day for a while.”

“I wish I could share your enthusiasm but unfortunately, it’s the opposite of auspicious for me.”

Silan nodded seriously. “I heard a little bit about what has happened, though I hope I get a clearer picture. Regardless, I understand you came here for a purpose, Moreland. A goal that I—and Riptide—can assist with.”

“Right. I’m going to need a bit of help from you. Of course, I’m happy to return the favour however I can when this is over. And if you already have a price in mind, I’m willing to listen.”

“We can discuss deals and remunerations and all that later. They will come in due time. But for now, please tell me about yourself, Moreland. What is it that you really seek here, in Ring Zero?”

I considered going on an extended spiel, but then I decided to summarize. “Basically, I want to eradicate a Great House. And you can help me get started.”