What We Do to Survive

I woke up the next morning with a crick in my neck and an aching back. I’d done my best over the years to make sure the chair I spent so much of my day in was comfortable, but there was only so much I could do with my elementary understanding of furniture design. It was never exactly a focus of my education after all.

I stood up and stretched, my back loudly protesting every movement. Thankfully, magic had a much more practical solution to that problem. With a touch of will, I set my mana circulating through my body, as I did every morning. I’d gotten the skill down to the point that it took barely any effort to keep it going, but I was unable to maintain it in my sleep yet like a proper master could.

Mana circulation was the most basic foundation of all body enhancement Magic. A master of the skill could bend metal bars, shrug off swords and arrows, and run as fast as a horse. It also was a great exercise for general mana control, the feeling of circulating your mana was an excellent way to familiar a mage with their mana, and shaping it inside your body was much easier than practicing outside the boundaries of your soul. There was a reason Introduction to Body Enhancement was a mandatory class for all freshmen.

The skill had served me well over the years and I’d even learned some additional patterns beyond the basics on my own time. For instance, one that helped heal stiff muscles and the like.

The night before I’d made a big dent in the pile of work, I estimated I was more than half done, but exhaustion had clearly claimed me eventually. In the background, I could faintly hear my captive’s soft snores, muffled by her tightly fit gag.

I quickly took a note of that, any noise she made had to be accounted for. I doubted she was going to be casting any spells with her snoring, but then again I hadn’t expected her to almost summon actual demons with just some hand signs and mumbling.

Checking the clock hanging on the wall by the door, I noted that I’d actually woken up well before my alarm was set to wake me up. I had time for a quick shower and shave, and maybe I would grab a proper breakfast for once before class.

Today was Tuesday and I had three lessons, the most of any day of the week. A solid chunk of the assignments I had completed the night before were due in class today. I’d have to double check that I’d packed everything before I left.

I basked for several minutes under the wonderfully hot water. There was something truly magical about the experience, mana circulation might clear out all my aches and pains, but the hot water did something my magic couldn’t.

As I often did, I marveled at the ingenuity and convenience of the system. In the small apartment where I’d lived before… I stopped that train of thought before it could ruin my entire day. Suffice to say, if we wanted a hot bath we had to haul and heat the water ourselves. In buckets.

The less there was to say about how I had to wash myself in the three years I spent alone before I was accepted into Avalon, the better.

Once I was thoroughly soaked and steamed, I quickly used a spell to clean up my stubble. A blade of clear force swept smoothly along my jawline, trimming to the exact specifications I’d designed into the spell. I hadn’t made it myself from scratch of course, I was not yet at the level of a proper spellcrafter, but the matrix for this particular spell was built in such a way to be easily modifiable by an amateur, much less someone with actual training in the field.

I typically preferred to shave manually, using my grandfather’s old kit always brought me back to a kinder time in my life, but time rarely permitted me that luxury. Instead I contented myself by using his special aftershave, not the same one he’d given me so long ago, but a bottle concocted with the same recipe and painstakingly collected ingredients.

Today's first class was EM 1031, Advanced Body Alteration 1. It was an interesting class, a mix of internal mana control, basic shapeshifting, enhancement spells, and a whole lot of studying how different body parts worked and interacted. After what I’d seen the day before, I was thankful that Professor Igor was no longer teaching the class.

Professor Yana was a demanding teacher, but she mostly used diagrams and models for her demonstrations.I had no doubt that the recent unit on digestive organs would have been much more gruesome with him as the instructor.

I arrived at the classroom as I always tried to, 10 minutes before the start of the lesson and ready to go. I slipped my finished paper, just a short writeup about the risks of certain forms of self modification, into the box on her desk and took a seat.

Her classroom was quite different from what I had grown used to over the years. Twenty-seven overstuffed bean bag chairs lay arranged in a half circle facing her desk. Floating platforms were hidden behind each seat, providing an easily adjustable and very stable writing surface when necessary.

In the corner of the room was a fully stocked first aid station, complete with a stasis chamber to preserve grievously injured students until one of the academy’s highly trained healers could arrive. Though the academy had no issue with students butchering each other in the hallways or blowing themselves up, as long as you didn’t die immediately they were usually willing to put you back together.

Professor Yana went even further than that, demanding a high level of safety precautions from all her students and going out of her way to keep them alive. Well, that assumed that you didn’t piss her off, then she would happily watch you bleed out on the floor.

She’d actually saved my life at the end of my first year, and had recommended I take her class once I had a little more experience under my belt. I’d been caught in a toxic cloud of aerosolized venom when one of her students made a mistake while casting. I’d been left choking on the library floor, bleeding out of my eyes and ears. She’d found me in the nick of time and got me to the medical wing before my organs failed.

The student had died during the accident, and that was probably the kindest fate he should have expected. Practicing dangerous spellcraft in the library was expressly forbidden and typically punished with a torturous death and eternal servitude as a spirit. His soul had been so badly mangled the necromancers hadn’t bothered with binding it into service.

Though I had been the first to arrive, the rest of the class trickled in over the next few minutes. I’d taken the red beanbag on the left side of the room, my preferred seat. With the way the Professor stood, this seat offered me the best view of what she was demonstrating.

The spots on either side of me were taken quickly as well by my usual neighbors, two students with whom I was generally familiar with.

Kalvin Boor was a perpetually tired, older man, with dashes of grey in his short cropped hair and beard. He had joined Avalon the year before me but was nearly three times my age, having only begun his study of spellcraft after his monastery was massacred by southern raiders. He had chosen to abandon his vow of peace and silence, though he still continued to practice most of his same religious ceremonies, and had thrown himself into the study of battlemagic with a frightening intensity.

I’d seen him fight a practice bout during the start of semester tournament, and the firestorm he’d invoked had been a terrifying sight. I’d tried to befriend the man since then, but his single minded focus and the large age gap didn’t give us much common ground.

The girl on my left could not have been more different if she’d tried. Janna de’Floris was a serious academic, as anyone who wanted to succeed here was, but she focused primarily on botany and alchemy, with healing and other white magic as a secondary area of study.

She was a tiny girl, not even breaking 5 feet, and the twin pigtails she wore her hair in made her look like a prepubescent child. The frilly pink dresses she liked to wear, with their long multi-layered skirts and petticoats, did nothing to detract from that image.

She was in the same year as me, and I remembered that in our first year a lot of people had seen her as an easy target. She had proved them wrong many times over, and there was a good reason I never ate or drank anything she might have gotten her perfectly manicured hands on.

I gave each a nod of greeting as they arrived, then fell into some casual conversation with Janna about the homework I’d just submitted.

“Did you have any luck getting the temperature control portion working? I couldn’t get my mana to twist the right way around my belly and when I tried to meet with Professor Yana she just told me to keep practicing!”

I blinked. The question had come somewhat out of left field, and I never would have expected someone to admit to that sort of weakness. It just was not done in my experience.

Still, if she was going to open up, I would be happy to see if I could get something from it.

“I didn’t have any trouble with it. Which of the configurations did you attempt?”

She sighed with annoyance and pouted, looking like nothing more than a child denied their favorite treat. “I tried all three of the ones she suggested, and even checked a reference book for four more, but none of them are working. They all have that half twist just below the intestines and I just can’t make it form properly.”

“Show me,” I commanded, “Maybe I can take a look.” I was pretty sure I knew what she was talking about, but I wanted to make sure.

She dug into a pocket sneakily hidden on the hem of her dress and withdrew our textbook. Damn, I’d known she had connections, but I hadn’t realized they reached that far. That dress was worth a fortune, folding expanded space was difficult, but imbuing it into something like a lace pocket? Down right incredible. I was somewhat shocked she would show it off just like that.

She slid the book onto my floating platform and pointed out the appropriate spot on the diagram.

“It's this bit, right here. If you take a look on the next page, it's on both the other versions of the circulation as well.”

I nodded, examining the intricate illustration with care. Internal mana manipulation came easily to me after so many years practicing pure mana forms. Thus, I hadn’t really had any trouble learning this stuff, and had thus not looked closely at it before.

It took a moment, but I saw the issue. “I think I know what the problem is.”

She waited for a moment for me to elaborate, then huffed when I looked at her expectantly. “Fine. And what do you want for this service, oh classmate of mine?”

The ghost of a smile flickered across my face unprompted at the formal form of address. Janna was a de’, an appointed heir to one of the judicial houses of the Gulivine Republic. The ‘oh classmate of mine’ was clearly a variation of ‘oh petitioner of mine’, the formal way a Gulivine Justice addressed people in their court.

“I know you are something of a botanist, yes?” I didn’t wait for her to respond before continuing. “I’m interested in some rare plants. If you can source and grow them for me, I will happily help you out.”

“What plants?” she asked hesitantly.

“Nothing dangerous, just irritating to get. I need Island Milkweed, Æther Poppies, Quickroot Moss…” I listed a few other rather odd plants as she listened intently. Several were those I needed to get my new pet’s milk flowing, I’d checked the recipe he’d provided and though I would need to make some minor modifications (Elfroot Cherries were extinct in most of the world and the people who had them certainly wouldn’t sell them to me), I was certain I could manage it. The rest were just other ingredients I would like to have and couldn’t get freely from the Academy greenhouses.

Sourcing the ingredients had seemed like it would be the hard part, stuck here as I was with my classes and somewhat low on money, but this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

She listened intently as I spoke, and made a few quick notes on a piece of paper. Once I was done, she gave me a considerate look, glanced back at the paper, then glanced back at me.

“I can do it. I’m not sure why you need some of these… but I can get it. Still, I only have your word that you can help me.”

“I’m certain that we could work something out. Perhaps a contract?”

“That would be agreeable. After class then?”

“Of course. I would be honored if you would join me for lunch in the cafeteria?”

She flashed me a tight smile. I was certain she would have preferred to have this discussion somewhere she had more control, but I much preferred the safety the cafeteria offered. It was actually one of the safest places on all of campus, not only was violence not permitted, it was almost impossible to accomplish in the first place.

Avalon had several ‘patron’ gods, some more willing to work with the academy than others. An unnamed goddess had at some point in the past had turned the Academy’s massive dining area into a sort of pseudo shrine, granting her almost absolute power over the area.

The divinity enforced the rules of the academy religiously, tolerating no conflict within the zone of her influence. I imagined people would complain more about it if she wasn’t perfectly impartial and silent about what she witnessed. The side effect of enhancing the food with healing magic probably helped as well.

I mostly cared that it meant little miss poison fingers next to me wasn’t going to be able to drug me with something nasty while we ate.

“Oh course, that would be wonderful. I imagine you know the relevant spells?” I nodded. “Perfect. Lunch it is.”

Our conversation concluded, she turned back to preparing for class. I did the same, wondering if I’d done the right thing. Revealing all those ingredients could be somewhat risky, but I’d thrown in enough parts of enough different potions that I doubted she would be able to narrow in on what I wanted them for.

After all, I had almost all the ingredients I needed for most things, the Academy’s stores and fields were vast and they were generous with what students had access to. It was only the really wacky stuff that I couldn’t get here, that and plants that required much too specific conditions to be cultivated anywhere outside where they grew naturally.

I only stopped worrying and started listening when class began. Professor Yana spoke quickly but clearly, and was always happy to answer any questions. I didn’t want to miss something important.