Everyone At The Academy of Magic

Seven mika-palms of wicked charcoal, ground to a fine powder and passed through a sieve. One lika-palm of pure birch tree sap, probably best warmed before mixing to make it more fluid. A good trick to avoid a tired arm. Thirty seven wrinkle-plant seeds ground into a paste… hmm… you were out of those, but you recalled that spike-nuts could be used as a substitute. A quick look around the workstation failed to yield the book with the conversion table you needed to make the substitution. You hadn’t used it in a while, so you weren’t sure where it had ended up in this messy lab.

“Miss Xisha, where’s ‘The Principles And Applications Of Botanical Reagents’? I remember there was a copy around here somewhere.”

“Oh that old thing? It’s in a pile somewhere… maybe… Why do you need it anyways?”

“The conversion table, we’re out of wrinkle-plant seeds so I need to substitute them with spike-nuts.”

“Hmm, I thought that I included wrinkle-plant seeds on last month’s re-ordering form. But yeah, that should work. Honestly, the conversion table is the only useful part of that book… which is why it’s right there!”

Looking where Miss Xisha was dramatically pointing, multiple pages containing the conversion tables were nailed up to the walls above her workstation. It looked like she had cut them straight out of the book binding, which mildly upset the bibliophile within you. You went over to your mentor’s workstation and searched for the appropriate conversion for thirty seven wrinkle-plant seeds to spike-nuts. The pages were flanked on all sides by various notes containing ideas, scrap calculations, or shopping lists, all pinned to the wall to create multiple layers of paper that had built up over years.

The rest of the lab wasn’t any better. Both important and useless papers alike were scattered over any horizontal surface, including the floor. Underneath some of the tables, unstable stacks of various tomes slept under a blanket of dust. There were even some containers with ingredients and reagents scattered around in random places. Despite the disorganization and mess, the place smelled fine, mostly of paper and dust with some trace scents from various spilled concoctions.

This was the home of the brilliant alchemist Xisha, her lair where she conducted cutting edge research. Some of her discoveries were more useful than others, winning awards and great acclaim, but she had plenty of frankly useless research in strange and niche fields that happened to pique her interest. Still though, she had the ability to see the world in ways that others couldn’t, to think in ways impossible for even the most experienced researchers. It was what made your study under her worth it.

Being Xisha’s mentee, you naturally studied under her and assisted in her research and experimentation. Before you had met her, you idolized Xisha’s brilliance and only regarded the rumors of her habits as mysterious and eccentric tendencies. You dreamed of working with her on developing the next breakthrough in the world of magic. Back then, you wanted to be useful, so cleaning the lab would surely make a good first impression right? Well, upon witnessing its actual state, that plan went out the window. Through working with her, you found that your idol, the genius and pinnacle of magic research was… very much just a person.

She wasn’t great with speaking to others, and had a very hard time getting others to understand her ideas. She would often develop obsessions with seemingly random topics that caught her interest, diving in much deeper than anyone else before her, and fully immersing herself regardless of the outcome bearing useful fruit. During these dives, everything else fell by the wayside. The state of the lab was a result of this, as she only cared about her research to the point that it consumed everything else in her life.

Besides assisting your mentor’s research academically, you found yourself assisting her personally as well. You would regularly remind her to eat, sleep, and take care of herself. It was alarmingly normal to bring her food and drink after she hadn’t had anything all day. While this wasn’t the mentorship you had dreamed about, it wasn’t bad. It felt good to be useful.

Her newest obsession and current research topic was the soul. What exactly were souls? Hard to say when they couldn’t be seen or touched, always trapped inside a living body. Well, this next experiment would help to answer that. You were currently gathering ingredients to concoct a potion that would hopefully separate a soul from its living vessel. You glanced at the mice in their cage, and wished them luck. This concoction had never been tested before, only existing in the theoretical notes scattered around the room. If it was successful, and the souls of these mice were extracted, perhaps they could be observed and studied.

After calculating the correct amount of spike-nuts to use, you returned to your workstation and continued preparing ingredients. Atop your desk laid the recipe written by your mentor with her infamous handwriting. Judging by the “style” you could tell that her mind moved much faster than her hand, which was **** to take shortcuts to keep up. That is to say, her handwriting was just as messy as everything else around her. Still though, after working with Miss Xisha for a while, you learned how to decipher the scrawl.

You poured clear tree sap into a huge glass basin and mixed in the finely ground wicked charcoal powder. You had to take extra care so that no chunks of wicked charcoal powder remained, it had to be fully integrated into the gooey mixture. Tree sap would essentially insulate the conductive wicked charcoal particles, ensuring a slower and more controllable reaction. Most of the other ingredients helped fine tune the balance between conductivity and resistance. It had to be perfect before the last, truly terrifying ingredient was added.

You double checked the solution that would serve as the base of the potion. Usually the lab wouldn’t brew potions this large, but all the other ingredients needed to be portioned around the last ingredient. You informed Miss Xisha that the mixture was ready. She took a quick look over the potion base, and nodded, telling me to watch the lab while she fetched the last ingredient. You moved the glass container onto a metal stand in the center of the lab, then busied yourself with some meaningless cleaning while you waited in anticipation. Opportunities like this didn’t come every day.

It didn’t take long for Miss Xisha to return, accompanied by a woman in light armor carrying a heavy looking metal box covered in locks and chains. The woman was Lynn, a knight assigned to the academy who often worked with the lab. She was essentially the opposite of professor Xisha, being outdoorsy, fit, and quite talkative. Lynn was one of the few people that Miss Xisha could talk with comfortably, since they often had to work together. Lynn placed the heavy metal box on a table, causing a loud thud and jangling from its chains.

“Phew! There ya go professor. Now tell me, what’s the cause of your obsession this time? Souls seem kinda darker than usual y’know?”

Lynn took out a ring of keys, and began to open the multiple padlocks that held the numerous chains around the box. Miss Xisha answered Lynn’s question as the required security procedures continued.

“This one was a bit unusual, I’ll admit. A recently discovered research journal was forwarded to me. It’s supposedly from a dark magic practitioner that lived hundreds of years ago. No one’s ever heard of them, but they seem to have conducted an incredible body of research in dark magic. This journal is numbered fifty seven, with tons of theories and experimental results packed inside. The thought of fifty six or more journals of this… wow. Anyways, after reading some of those theories, I couldn’t help but get interested and develop some of my own.”

As Miss Xisha finished explaining, Lynn also finished her task, removing the last lock and chain from the metal box.

“Well, this potion o’ yours sure does use some dangerous stuff. Never thought I’d ever have to touch one o’ these.”

“What’s the point of keeping it locked up if we’re never going to use it? If anything, this potion could be one of the few practical applications for this ingredient, provided that this experiment succeeds of course.”

Lynn took out another key, separate from the key ring that she had just used, and slotted it into a lock built into the metal container itself. Miss Xisha approached with some glass-tipped tongs at the ready. The two women shared a glance, before Lynn opened the top of the metal container and Miss Xisha dipped the tongs in, grabbing the crucial ingredient and pulling it out. As soon as the metal container was opened, the air of the lab seemed to drain of life. Held between the tongs, it looked like a giant raisin, about the size of a balled-up fist. You had never seen one in person, but every student that studied dark magic had seen it in textbooks. Miss Xisha’s tongs held a dried lich’s heart. She kept it away from her body, but still gave it a good look as she turned it over in the tongs.

“Incredible…”

Without further delay, Miss Xisha carefully walked the ingredient over to the potion base, holding it over the solution.

“If you have any prayers that you want to say… hold on for a bit, you might affect the experiment.”

She lowered the dark, desiccated heart onto the surface of the fluid. She freed it from the tongs, letting it slowly sink into the thick, clear liquid. Everyone’s eyes followed the dark blob as it slowly made its way to the center of the container, before slowing down and suspending itself perfectly in the center. There it sat, like an artifact in a museum. Despite your nerves, you got a little closer to the potion-in-brewing and looked at its dark center. You couldn’t help but stare at it, even as it stood motionless.

Liches were incredibly dangerous beings. They were once-living dark magic practitioners that used cursed and profane rituals to obtain unnatural powers. By snuffing out the life in their own bodies and binding their souls to the corpse, they were able to wield the powers of **** and decay in horrific ways. Wielding powerful forbidden magic, high intelligence, and a total lack of humanity made them a **** sentence to anyone who faced them. It was quite a wonder how Miss Xisha was able to gain access to a lich’s heart, the kingdom’s approval was required after all. You suspected that somebody in a high place was personally interested in Miss Xisha’s research.

While watching the potion, something felt strange. It was only a feeling, only an instinct, but it was unmistakable. Did the heart look… different? It looked sort of… bigger. Yes, yes, it had changed shape somewhat. Before it was dried and wrinkled, but it was starting to rehydrate and return to its original shape. You looked at Miss Xisha who watched in rapt fascination.

“Um, Miss Xisha, is it supposed to do that?”

“I believe so, yes. This is within expectations. The essence of the lich’s heart should slowly leach into the solution, and be absorbed into the receptive agents at a controlled pace. After a few hours, we’ll have to pull it back out and re-dry it, but for now we just need to wait.”

You felt reassured by Miss Xisha’s words, until you saw something that made your heart jump in your chest. You weren’t sure if you saw it right, but did the heart just… move? No, that was probably it just changing shape because it was rehydrating or something but- There it was again!

“Miss Xisha, did you see that? I think it just moved.”

She brought her face close to the glass and squinted at the black heart suspended in the center, before quickly backing away.

“It’s beating, the heart is beating!”

Lynn could hear the alarm in both of our voices.

“Is that a part ‘a the experiment? Is it supposed to beat?”

“No, it’s not, call for help, We need to stop the experiment right now.”

Looking back at the heart, what were once tiny twitches of movement had become a weak, but regular rhythm. Lynn bolted out of the laboratory as fast as her legs would carry her, while you and Miss Xisha tried to figure out what was going on. With every beat of the heart, it seemed to grow stronger.

“What do we do?”

“We need to stop the reaction! Get all of the birch sap and pour it in!”

You quickly did as instructed while Miss Xisha looked over her recipe in an attempt to understand what went wrong. You returned to the center of the room and filled any remaining space in the glass container with pure birch tree sap in an attempt to dilute and stop the reaction. It didn’t work. Each heartbeat was stronger than the last. You could hear it now, heavy, terrifying thumps that sounded like the drums of impending doom. Small sparks of purple lightning started to arc off of the heart as it kept beating. You could feel dark magic starting to permeate the air, emanating from the failed potion. It felt menacing and powerful, akin to a large-scale spell being charged.

“What if we pull the heart out? Will that stop it?”

“No, don’t! That’ll make it worse! The solution that it’s sitting in is the only thing keeping it in check right now! What went wrong? It shouldn’t be overreacting like this! How much of each ingredient did you use?”

You ran back to your workspace and read off the recipe that Miss Xisha gave you.

“...Five palms of crystal quartz… Seven mika-palms of fine wicked charcoal powder…”

“Wait wait wait! Seven! It should be just one!”

You looked back at the recipe, at the hastily scribbled characters, at the messy number one that you mistook as a seven. You felt your stomach turn as you comprehended the mistake. Thankfully, the professor’s mind was still fixated on coming up with a solution.

“With that much conductive material, we won’t be able to dilute it enough to stop a reaction. There’s only one option left.”

You looked back at the glass container to see the heart violently emitting purple lightning, with each beat expelling a nauseating amount of dark energy into the atmosphere. Miss Xisha grabbed something from her desk, before speaking again.

“This might be your last lesson, so listen well. You’ve been taught not to use too many contradicting magic energy types, correct? That’s because their reactions are very unpredictable. They may cancel each other into nothingness, or they may conflict and… who knows what will happen at that point!”

Miss Xisha walked over to the ongoing disaster in the middle of the room with a small pouch in her hand. She dipped her hand into the pouch and pulled out some yellow leaves with a faint glow to them. From the look of them, they must’ve been dried leaves from a blessed tree of light. Light and life coming in contact with darkness and ****, it was guaranteed to conflict. Miss Xisha looked at you.

“You can start praying now.”

She cast the leaves into the violent concoction, and as soon as they touched the surface of the liquid the effect was immediate. The heart itself started to beat irregularly, almost desperately as if it was struggling to breathe. The magic energy in the air lost its pulsing rhythm, devolving into a twisted mess of conflicting energies. The heart sped up, as if trying to rally itself to fight back, but stumbling over itself to clumsily throw out as much power as possible without proper control.

Purple lighting continued to arc inside the solution as the leaves floating on top of it caught fire, bursting into black flames. The heart kept pushing itself harder and harder as the black flames engulfed the leaves, putting out as much as it could in response to the threat. The whole surface of the potion was covered in black flames now, rising tall in a twisted, dancing fire pillar. The flames moved like partners that were trying to dance and kill each other at the same time. Both you and the professor watched as some sort of breaking point was reached.

Slowly, the flames started to die down, revealing that all the leaves had been burnt to a crisp. The heart’s once **** rate also rapidly slowed, seemingly exhausted. The pace kept slowing down more and more, with each beat taking longer than the last. Eventually, it seemed like the heart stopped completely, silently suspended in the center of the fluid. You stared at the heart, still ready for anything to happen. The magics in the air were still a messy intertwined current, but after several moments of nothing happening, you opened your mouth.

“Did it work?”

“I’m not sure, you can never be sure with these things, but it’s better than I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Quite honestly, I expected the entire academy to explode. That’s one of the more common reactions between light and dark magic contradictions like this. Although there has ever been one to this scale.”

“Well, we certainly made history today.”

“Yes, well, make sure to record the events that occurred. Don’t touch the solution itself yet, hopefully the heart will remain inert for now, but we are far from being certain at this point.”

Picking up your notebook, you begin to record timestamps and notes on what happened. You recorded the preparation, the mistake, the reaction, everything. You realized that a sketch of the heart would be useful to include, so you sat a safe distance from the troublemaker and began to sketch it inside its prison. As you looked at it, it almost felt like it was looking back. To your surprise, the heart jolted and let out one final beat. This one was different from the rest. A single huge pulse of strange energy was released, tearing through the air. It felt like it was resonating with the very air itself- No, not the air, it felt like it was resonating with the very core of your being. You felt this pulse of energy push through your body like a hard shove, hitting you with a terrifying sensation of falling before you blacked out.