FWFW 3 - 55

Happy Friday!

-Plum

Olivia sat in Oylla-dak’s office next to Inspector Carlu, feeling like she was in trouble for some reason. Perhaps it was the deep scowl that Oylla wore, or perhaps it was because Carlu was fidgeting nervously and Olivia was mentally associating herself with him. She crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at Oylla, her eyes ablaze, daring the professor to try to blame her for anything that had happened.

“Carlu, do you have a scrying spell that you can teach Olivia?” Oylla asked, surprising both of her guests. Carlu sputtered for a moment, glancing from Olivia to Oylla. “If you don’t, we can find something in the library, I’m sure. I know some scrying spells, but nothing quite right for this purpose.”

“The, um, killer does a fairly good job of shielding himself. I’ve only ever found traces of his Energy signature, never enough to track him down. His image is always obscured—just a blurry shadow,” Carlu said, answering the question in a way that made it seem like he was thinking aloud.

“I felt his Energy very clearly,” Olivia said. “I can still feel it, almost like a dirty taste on the back of my tongue.”

“In that case, I have a spell that we could probably modify fairly easily to help lead her to the killer. I don’t have my texts with me, so I’ll need to write the pattern by hand, then we can alter it. Do you want me to do that now?” Carlu produced a neat, leather-bound notebook and a quill.

“Yes, start writing it, and I’ll call Professor ap’Rall to help with the modification. We could do it, but she’ll be faster.” Oylla touched a black stone on her desk, and when it began to glow with a soft orange light, she said, “Have Professor ap’Rall report to my office immediately.” Olivia couldn’t hear the response, if there were one, but Oylla lifted her hand from the stone and nodded. “Olivia, tell me everything about your encounter with the killer. Try to describe his spells to me.”

“I already told you pretty much everything. He snuck up on Adaida and me in the garden, and Adaida saw him coming. When I saw the look in her eyes, the way she stared over my shoulder, I just cast Elemental Form out of reflex.”

“You anticipated his attack from a look in Adaida’s eyes?” Oylla, someone Olivia had always thought of as a kind of mentor, sounded more skeptical than she would have liked.

“That’s right. When I chased Adaida into the garden, I’d already been fearing the worst. It seemed like the perfect place for an ambush, for a killer to hang out.”

“You chased her?” Oylla raised an eyebrow, and Olivia heard Carlu’s breathing slow, almost stop, as he waited for her response.

“Damn it, Professor! We were arguing, and she stormed off. I’d promised not to let her wander alone, so I feared, rightly, the worst!” Olivia couldn’t help the frustration in her voice or how her shoulders, and probably her head, started to flicker with ghostly blue flames.

“Relax, Olivia,” Oylla said. “I’m sorry if my questions seem harsh, but I’m trying to get to the bottom of things.” Her voice was soft, and she spread her hands out, palms down on her desk, almost like she were speaking to a dangerous animal which had the effect of throwing tinder on Olivia’s smoldering irritation.

“Relax? I was attacked in the gardens of this school! My classmates are being slaughtered! Adaida’s fingers were cut off! I’m done relaxing, dammit! Get me this spell, and let me go and put this killer down!” Olivia heard the anger in her voice, the frustration, and knew that it wasn’t really all about the killer—she’d been emotional and frustrated without his appearance. She wanted to scream, wanted to ask Oylla, Carlu, anyone, what she was supposed to say to Bronwyn. She felt tears start to spring up in her eyes, and she scrubbed them away with an irritated growl.

“Olivia, you will not be rushing after the killer as soon as we prepare this spell. Is that understood?” Oylla asked, leaning forward, her star-filled eyes growing bright. Olivia didn’t respond immediately, so she continued, “When we’re done, you will scry out this person, and we’ll go together, the three of us. Now answer me, is that understood?”

“Yes,” Olivia said softly. She couldn’t argue with those words—surely the three of them would have an easier time, and Olivia was just happy to not be sidelined. Just then, after a quick knock, the door was opened, and Alyss strode into the office. She looked at Oylla and followed her gaze to Olivia, and her eyes widened.

“Olivia! I knew you were back, but I didn’t realize you’d . . . changed so much. How are you?”

“You’ll have to spend some time catching up later, Professor,” Oylla said. “We’ve a bit of an emergency on our hands.” Oylla stood, pulled a chair from against the wall over to her desk, next to Carlu’s, and said, “Please sit down.”

Alyss looked from Oylla to Olivia to Inspector Carlu, still furiously scribbling in his notebook, then shrugged and sat down. “Am I in some kind of trouble?” she asked in a small voice, and Olivia couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped her.

“Of course not, Professor!” Oylla said, “Why would you ask that?”

“Well, everyone seemed so serious, and I saw the inspector here, and . . .” she trailed off, cleared her throat, and continued, “It doesn’t matter, Professor. What can I help with tonight?”

“Olivia’s had a run-in with the killer, and we need your help to modify Carlu’s scrying spell. She’s going to track him based on a strong sense of his Energy.”

“Excuse me? Olivia’s going to track him?”

“Yes, but we’ll be with her, of course.”

“I think I should also accompany her! This isn’t exactly a safe activity for a student!” Alyss said, and Carlu grunted in agreement while he worked.

“Alyss, Olivia Bennet could utterly dominate most of the professors at this institution. She’ll be fine.” Olivia had never heard Oylla speak so frankly about her power. She’d hinted at Olivia being stronger than most students and having more raw potential than many professors, but to have her say that she could “dominate” most of the professors gave her a strange, torn sensation. She wanted to be proud, but she felt a sort of shame instead. It almost felt like she were an imposter—what had she done to earn such power? Was she really as strong as Oylla thought?

“Really?” Alyss glanced at Olivia, at the flames that still flickered along her shoulders and on her head like a blue, living crown. “I’ll come along in any case. I insist.”

“Almost done here,” Carlu said, and for the first time, Olivia noticed how fast his quill was flicking over the page of his notebook. If the marks he was making were accurate, then he had quite a talent for scribing.

“Was anyone else harmed?” Alyss asked, looking up from Carlu’s work.

“Adaida, but I think she’ll be all right,” Olivia answered.

“So he didn’t get anyone? That’s good news, at least!” Alyss said, her orange eyes widening as she breathed a sigh of relief. “I didn’t want to hear that we’d lost another student with tomorrow’s announcements.”

“I don’t want him to get anyone else, either,” Olivia said. “That’s why I have to do something. I got a really good feel for his Energy, Alyss. I can still taste it, like a cold, sickly oil on my tongue.”

“Tut, Olivia—that’s professor ap’Rall to you.” Oylla narrowed her eyes at Olivia, and Olivia realized the woman wanted to keep Olivia’s familiarity with her and with Alyss between them, respectively. She still didn’t completely understand the decorum and power structure at the academy, but the more she learned, the stranger it all seemed. Everyone seemed to keep secrets from each other, and that thought made her realize that it was part of the problem with catching the killer. None of the professors seemed to wholly understand what any other professor was up to.

“Finished!” Carlu announced, rubbing at his strange, red-flecked, green eyes blearily as he looked up.

“Good, please hand it to Professor ap’Rall. Professor, we want to modify this scrying spell so that Olivia can focus on the feeling the Energy of our target has given her,” Oylla said.

“I gathered as much. Let’s see here. Can you describe how the spell normally works, Investigator?”

“Yes, normally the caster would focus on the person, and this spell would create a trail of Energy, visible to the caster, leading to the target.”

“Mmhmm, yes. This is perfect. I’ll just need to change this section here that provides the target. Oylla, do you have a copy of Karn’s Energy Divinations?” Alyss looked up, squinting at the bookshelves behind Oylla.

“Not here, but I’m sure I do in my study. One minute, Alyss.” Oylla stood and stepped through a sliding pocket door at the side of her office. Alyss looked at Olivia and reached out a hand to take Olivia’s.

“Are you okay, Olivia? This can’t be easy!”

“I’m fine, Al . . . Professor,” Olivia said, mustering a smile. Oylla strode back into the room, then, and handed Alyss a thin, black-bound book.

“Yes, this is it,” Alyss said, flipping through the pages. “He wrote a spell that was supposed to help find residual Energy in a person that had their Core damaged. I think I can take part, modify it and add it to the inspector’s spell. Yes! Here it is.” Alyss scooted up to Oylla’s desk, ripped a fresh page from Carlu’s notebook, and began writing a spell pattern. Olivia wanted to watch, wanted to see the process as she modified the spell, so she scooted forward and observed as the diminutive professor painstakingly worked out the spell.

Alyss was quick with her work but very precise, and her artistic ability was far beyond anything Olivia could muster. She added shading to empty portions of the pattern, and some of her lines looked like they were written in three dimensions, making the whole thing sort of seem to lift off the page as Olivia watched. “This is beautiful,” she breathed, leaning forward to watch.

“Professor ap’Rall has quite a talent for spell design. If you went to more of her classes, you’d be learning a thing or two, I’m sure,” Oylla said archly. Olivia flinched at the words and glared at the powerful Shadeni, wondering if she was putting on some sort of show for Alyss, Carlu, or both.

“It’s almost like people and events are conspiring to keep me from your classes, Professor,” Olivia said, still glaring at Oylla. To her relief, both professors smiled at her words, though Oylla struggled to control her lips. She turned her gaze back to Alyss’s work and watched as the woman seamlessly began to incorporate a modified portion of the spell from the textbook into Carlu’s spell. Oylla might have been teasing her, but she couldn’t disagree; she’d learn a lot if she spent more time with Alyss.

A few minutes or an hour later, Olivia couldn’t have been more accurate in her assessment than that, so absorbed was she in Alyss’s process, the professor finished and set her quill down. “That’s it. I’m quite sure it will work, though if you can build the spell in your pathways and it doesn’t pulse with Energy, it will mean I’ve made a mistake. Are you ready to try?” She looked at Olivia, her eyes saying much more than her words. She was worried and would be willing to support her if Olivia wanted out of this.

“Yes, I’m ready,” Olivia said, reaching for the spell. No one else in the room spoke or objected, and she held the pattern in front of herself, studying every line, angle, and whorl of the complicated pattern. She’d already been doing so while Alyss worked, so she had a good, general understanding of the shape, but all the little details would take a few minutes to get right in her pathways. Still, it was a masterfully designed pattern, and she could easily understand the gist of the spell.

Olivia closed her eyes and teased a thread of wind-attuned Energy from her Core. She wasn’t sure why she chose wind, perhaps because she felt like it had a natural affinity with searching and finding things—she could imagine tendrils of the wind poking around corners and tracing its fingers over clues. She built the first part of the pattern, then opened her eyes, holding the tendril in place with her prodigious will. After memorizing the next section, she closed her eyes and repeated the process.

A few moments later, she said, “I’m about halfway there.”

“Halfway?” Alyss said. “Ancestors, Olivia, what’s your will attribute up to?”

“Nearly two hundred,” she muttered, closing her eyes to complete another section of the puzzle. If she’d been paying attention, she’d have seen the other three in the room exchanging looks and Oylla nodding smugly at Alyss. Not five minutes later, Olivia finished the pattern and was rewarded by a pulse of Energy in her pathway as the spell formed, and then the System confirmed what she already knew:

***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Hunt Energy - Basic***

***Hunt Energy - Basic: Casting this spell while concentrating on a well-known Energy signature will create an animated breeze, visible to the caster, that hunts for the source of the target Energy. Energy cost: 400. Cooldown: Medium.***

Olivia grinned broadly, concentrated on the dirty feeling of the killer’s Energy, then allowed her Core to flood the pattern, finishing the spell. From the periphery of her vision, she saw magenta swirls of air rush into view, whipping around the room, then slipping under the door. She stood up and rushed toward the door, shouting, “Come on! They’re on the hunt!”