Chapter 127: The Unicorn Python
Evan's head swam. He forced his eyes open to a wash of shifting light — colors that seemed to hold every hue at once, and none at all — everything suspended in perfect stillness. He turned his head to find Jessica and the others beside him, eyes open but empty of any spark, clearly caught in something close to unconsciousness.
"Jessica! Emma!" he called out. No answer came. Puzzled, he looked to Xiaoshuang on his shoulder, who seemed perfectly alert. "Why do they seem cut off from everything?"
"Surprised you're still awake? I get it now — you've got divine power in you. You can't feel it yet, but it's protecting you, keeping you from falling under like the rest. Spatial transport actually does a little harm to whoever's being moved through it. Normally, the traveler blacks out during the crossing — it's the body's own way of protecting itself," Xiaoshuang said, rather pleased with herself.
"How do you know all that? And why aren't you out cold too?" Evan asked, puzzled.
"I just know. My kind, the fairies, are heaven's own favored children. Of course we don't black out," Xiaoshuang said, with clear disdain. "Not like you humans."
Just as she finished speaking, the scene around them shifted and vanished entirely. Everyone dropped out of the void at once, snapping awake with a chorus of startled grunts. One moment there'd been a rising column of light — the next, they stood in the middle of a forest, a raw, animal stench hitting them full in the face. Evan focused his eyes and understood why several of the students — the women especially — had already started screaming. A massive python coiled around a tree trunk, a single horn jutting from its head, hissing and flicking its tongue straight at them.
This was a Unicorn Python, a magical beast, caught mid-sleep when the ripple of their arrival woke it. Not yet fully alert, it found its territory suddenly crowded with thirteen new bodies — fourteen, counting Xiaoshuang — small, roughly the size of monkeys, and it had swallowed a monkey whole not two months back. Its fury ignited at once, and it dropped from the branches without hesitation.
Evan found himself standing farthest from the creature, along with the two other teachers. Closest to it stood Carpenter, Duva, and Selena. Selena screamed. Carpenter leveled his wand and sent a bolt of lightning streaking forward, while Sher swung his own wand, driving an earth spike up from the ground straight at the python's belly.
A faint light flickered across the beast's hide. Neither attack broke through cleanly, though neither did any real damage either — the earth spike struck its underside and arched its body high off the ground without piercing the scales, and the lightning bolt shattered against a burst of dark light thrown off by the horn on its head. Evan had already thrown up a bone wall in front of the three students; seeing this, he let it dissolve.
The two had reacted quickly enough that Evan gave a satisfied nod and decided simply to let the python serve as practice for the group. Magical beasts were generally ranked the same way mages were, and only past sixth tier did they pose a genuine threat. This Unicorn Python barely counted as fourth tier, though its thick hide gave it fighting power closer to a fifth-tier mage — still, by any real measure, a lesser beast, with no true intelligence yet. Beasts didn't develop real intelligence until sixth tier, and only past ninth tier could some of them take human form — though beasts capable of that were rare across the entire world, and the overwhelming majority never developed any intelligence at all.
By then the other students had gathered their wits and surged forward, spells raining down on the creature. Jessica and Emma moved to help, but Evan shook his head, and both women understood at once, stepping back to let the students handle it themselves.
Evan had assumed the python was a dark-aligned beast at first, but it turned out to belong to the water school instead — though something about it seemed off, with what looked like traces of dark element woven through it, given that its venom came out as a black, corrosive fluid, closer in nature to an acid. It stirred his suspicions about elemental classification all over again.
Thick-hided and powerful as it was, the python couldn't withstand the combined assault of ten mages for long, and within the time it might have taken to eat a meal, it lay dead on the ground. The students caught their breath. "Don't forget the Core Stabilization spell," Evan called out.
Understanding dawned at once. Selena began the chant, her wand flaring, aiming a circle of light at the fallen beast that drew inward toward its center. Everyone let out a breath of relief, and the students set to work carving up the carcass. Jessica pulled out her notebook and stood by, recording the dissection as it proceeded.
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Evan had no idea which direction to find Professor Damire in. Their distress message had placed them southwest of a lake, but nothing resembling a lake stood anywhere near their current position. He began an incantation, and his body lifted slowly into the air — Levitation. Within moments, he'd risen three or four hundred cubits above the treeline and scanned the horizon in every direction, checking the sun's position to fix his bearings. To the west, roughly seven miles off, he spotted a lake. That had to be it. Xiaoshuang stayed put rather than fly, perched on his shoulder, watching the distant lake with curiosity. It wasn't especially large, its shape irregular — seven or eight miles across at its widest point, two or three at its narrowest. Traveling on foot, that meant more than just the seven miles to reach the shore; they'd then have to cover roughly a third of the lake's edge to reach the southwest side.
Evan kept scanning and caught, almost by accident, some sign of habitation deep in the trees, roughly ten miles to the east. He frowned. Go, or not? Something — someone — was out there.
He decided the rescue mattered more and dropped back down. The students had already finished dressing the carcass, storing everything of value into their ring except for the pale white flesh of the snake itself. Emma, seeing him land, asked, "Where are we, exactly?"
"East shore of the lake, about seven or eight miles out. We should head west to reach the shoreline first, then follow it south," Evan said, sketching a rough map on the ground as he described what he'd seen. The others gathered around to look.
"All right, let's move. Is the python fully processed?" Evan added.
"We're finished here, Professor," Carpenter said.
"Good. Stay alert out here. The jungles of the Barbarian Continent hold an enormous variety of creatures, plenty of them magical beasts, and humans haven't catalogued most of them — most, in fact, remain entirely unknown to us. Recognizing something like this Unicorn Python at all counts as a stroke of luck," Evan said.
"Professor Wang, this specimen might differ from earlier recorded ones. I found several mutations in the sigils across its hide — possibly a new subspecies," Jessica said, handing over her notebook.
Evan took it and found a series of sketched arrays, each one marked to highlight where the sigils diverged from the norm. Sigil work formed a mandatory part of any properly trained mage's education, and Evan had spent the past year studying it in some depth himself. Sigils looked complicated on the surface, but at their core, only a few dozen basic types existed — everything else amounted to combinations of those same building blocks.
"What's this sigil here? It's not in the standard set. What does it do?" Evan asked, pointing to one section.
"I thought the same thing at first — got excited, thinking I'd found something new. Look closer, though," Jessica said, her face brightening with excitement. The students crowded in as well.
Evan studied it again and gave a short, surprised laugh. "I see it now. This is Water Cleansing fused with Water Repellent — a genuinely practical combination. Keeps the skin dry and clean at once. I've never seen these two sigils merged like this before."
"Exactly. It took me a good while to work it out myself. There's a sigil for sharpness and hardness on the fangs, and a death sigil on the horn — which is strange, given this is a water-aligned beast. How does it carry a dark sigil, and how does water magic power it at all? Its core is clearly a water core," Jessica said.
"Is there any dark magic in the blood?" Evan asked.
"I hadn't checked. Let me look." Jessica requested a sample of blood from the students. Beast blood commonly served as ink for scroll-writing, and typically, once collected, it needed treatment with a special powder — made from magical lemon, ginger, and cinnamon along with various other ingredients — which kept the blood from clotting and stripped away the raw smell. Some blends of the powder included fragrance as well. This blood-ink powder counted as a standard alchemical product, usable even by non-mages, and one of the common tools for processing magical beast remains.
The blood had already been treated, giving off a pleasant fragrance — clearly a fine grade of powder, scented besides. Not that the fragrance did anything for the blood's magical properties, but mages were still people, and a pleasant smell put anyone in better spirits.
"There's no dark magic in here at all. Mostly water element, though there seems to be some kind of unaligned magic mixed in as well," Jessica said.
Evan took the sample from her. Sure enough, just as Jessica had described. Something clicked in his mind — unaligned magic. That had to point to something deeper, something underlying the elements themselves. For a moment, he thought he glimpsed a genuine crack in elemental theory — though whether it truly was a crack would need real experimental proof, and Evan hadn't the faintest idea yet how such an experiment might even be designed.
He handed the blood — blood-ink now, properly speaking — back to the students. "Let me have a look at that horn."
Selena produced it — over two cubits long. Evan channeled a trickle of dark magic into it, and the sigils along its length lit up, releasing a burst of black light that struck a nearby tree. Leaves rained down instantly, withered and yellow, as though winter had descended on the spot, despite the fact that a tropical rainforest knew nothing of winter at all.
The group drew a collective breath. Emma took the horn next, a fire mage herself, and channeled fire magic into it instead. The sigils flickered once and went dark. The horn stayed inert. It seemed only dark magic could activate it.
Evan handed the horn back to Selena and turned to the other four students. "My apologies — I never got your names properly, and I should have asked sooner. The four of you — I still don't know your names."