Soul Gem Collector 5 Chapter 3

“Where did all of those bugs come from?” Aylara gasped at the black, buzzing cloud.

“Only every damp patch of ground in the city,” Taslyn said. “Noura, we’re going to need to fumigate. Lime, clove, and red pepper.”

“Ugh, that sounds nasty,” Janel groaned. She pulled her gray hood tighter around her face and put her hand over her cup of beanbrew. “Protective bubbles, please?”

“No, don’t spray!” I yelped. I heard a thin whine buzz past my ear, felt a faint tickle at the back of my neck, and slapped at the itch. I could feel the magical energy holding most of the mosquitoes into curved patterns up above, but more and more mosquitoes whined their way across the clearing by the second. I tried to push the magic back up into the sky, but I couldn’t feel or see any change in the magic at all. It was as though my connection to the offensive aspect of the magic had been severed. “It’ll drift all over campus and make people sick.”

“Do something about the mosquitoes, then!” Taslyn’s red tail lashed, and she pulled her pale hands into her wide black sleeves. “It’s an offensive power. Aim it at something!”

“It’s certainly offensive.” Noura gritted her teeth and scratched at the side of her head. Little orange flames flared where the mosquitoes landed on the djinn’s brown skin.

“I can feel the magic, but I can’t control it,” I complained. I held my hands up to the skies and imagined a clear disc like a force field pushing up in the air in hopes that it might keep the mosquitoes up, but the sky just grew darker and thicker with bugs. I could feel little bug legs crawling over my skin as the fast-beating wings of the insects fanned my flesh and their pointed needle noses pricked me everywhere, but I couldn’t slap them away from me without letting go of what little control I had over this new magic.

“Noura, can’t you do anything?” Janel slapped at the side of her own face, winced, then inspected the squashed bug on her hand. “Make them disappear or send them all somewhere else?”

“Every single mosquito?” Noura peered into the sky with a pained look, then jabbed out a finger out into the air. At the end of her finger, a bright blue zap eliminated a single mosquito. “I didn’t create or summon these, so this is the best I can do.”

“Fucking bugs!” I hissed as I tried to curl my fingers into the earth magic. I could feel every mosquito that buzzed around the clearing, but I still couldn’t manipulate the magic myself. Every time I thought I had control over a spark, it slipped from my grasp. I couldn’t tell if the magic was just out of my hands because I hadn’t given it an aim, or if I simply couldn’t overpower the will of what seemed like millions of individual mosquitoes at the same time.

I shook and shuddered in spasms as more insectile spikes pierced every inch of my flesh. I could feel the insects crawling up my sleeves and as I finally broke my stance and dug my fingernails into my wrists I cursed myself for not picking a target when I had the chance. It seemed like summoning mosquitoes to the area was simply the default for this particular magic, and I had to find a way to control it, but I had to figure out a way to get rid of this swarm of blood-sucking little insects first. I wasn’t willing to just write off the bugbear ruby entirely.

I forced myself to stop slapping and scratching at my flesh, and then I held out the chevron-shaped ruby with a shaking hand. I couldn’t help twitching a little as I tried to suppress my urge to shred my overstimulated skin off, but I forced my mind into the oily black magic that sloshed inside the ruby. I was normally only able to use one type of magic at a time, but I didn’t have many gems that had two separate types of magic inside of them to use. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that if the two types of magic inside the gem really did come from the same soul, they would have to be connected. I tried to hang onto the sparkling brown magic above me with one imaginary hand even as I dipped a mental finger into the vampiric magic with the other.

The black magic glittered a little as I mentally connected with it. A few shiny wisps of black smoke rose from the pointed tip of the gem, floated toward my chest, and disappeared into the lacing of my shirt.

I felt as though ice crystals were growing on the sides of my lungs. Within a second my entire chest was so cold and weighted down that it barely seemed worth my effort to try to take a breath. My stomach dropped down into my legs and settled at my feet, and a vast black void replaced off my guts. Hunger, sadness, and sheer exhaustion whirled together inside of me and combined together into a deep internal emptiness. I was a shell wrapped around a giant sucking nothing, a nothingness so immense that it needed to negate something-ness just to stay nothing.

I hadn’t felt this bad when I’d used the vampire assassin’s magic, but I hadn’t been using offensive vampirism then. Now all I had to do was figure out how to aim my all-consuming emptiness at the mosquitoes somehow.

“Zayre, whatever you’re doing, stop it!” Taslyn commanded as she slapped at her exposed neck. Her pupils were huge black pools of infinite depth, and I knew that she was seeing exactly what was happening to my aura. “You’re damaging your own energy body.”

“It’s just temporary,” I reminded Taslyn. The words came out of me like sludge as I tried to settle into the vampiric magic. I could feel the black nothingness filling me up to the brim, but I could also still feel the waves of brown earth magic colliding in the air and creating new waves and ripples in the cloud of mosquitoes. I wasn’t entirely sure that applying the black vampiric magic to the brown earth magic would eradicate the mosquitoes, but I didn’t know what else to do that wouldn’t poison the rest of the campus.

“It looks like it’s eating you alive, Zayre,” Noura cried, and her body was wreathed in spouts of blue flame.

“We’re all being eaten alive,” Janel grumbled as she pulled her hood over her eyes. A low, humming tone came from her hood, and the mosquitoes around her began to fly around her temples in a spinning halo. Her tone rose higher and higher as she raised her hands, but the ring of mosquitoes that circled her head only grew thicker, and she stopped with a loud, gusty sigh. “I don’t think I can do much about these bugs. I think music is a little too sophisticated for their tiny brains to process.”

“Leave it to me,” I sighed. My soul was so full of hunger that I could barely move, and I knew that I had to engage my energy body if I was going to manipulate any of the magic. I let the cold, dark hunger gather in my lungs as I blew out. When my lungs were as empty as I could get them both physically and mentally, I started to suck in a deep breath. I pulled in as much of the black magic as I could into my lungs until I felt as though the chokingly oily emptiness was burbling out of my mouth. I held my left hand up to my mouth, opened my palm to feel the earth magic glittering on my skin, and blew out the vampiric magic toward the brown sparkles on my fingers.

The vampiric magic tumbled out of my mouth in a slow stream like a fire hose of honey. It rolled over the brown sparks of magic and enrobed them in a slick black coat. It was a dynamic that should have quenched the sparks of brown magic, but I could still feel them sparking and moving inside their black magic coating. The blackness spread from spark to spark and moved quicker and quicker as it spread. In less than ten seconds, every spark of brown earth magic that I’d summoned from the gem was covered with black vampiric energy.

The black cloud of mosquitoes that hovered over the treetops started to clear away, and the overwhelming droning hum grew lower and a little quieter. As the sparks of brown magic extinguished themselves within their gleaming black prisons, I started to hear a faint ‘paf paf paf’ sound like snowflakes falling. The bugs were falling out of the sky and onto the moss, and their droning buzz was dying with them.

I shook out my left hand to disconnect it from the dying brown magic, then started to swat every inch of exposed skin on my body. I could feel the pinpricks of the active bites soften and fall out of my skin, but the agonizing tickle of the bugs’ legs didn’t stop until I crushed them under my palm. I scratched my fingers across my palms to rid them of the mass of dead bugs, then started to scratch the dead and dying bugs off of the rest of my body. My palms were already smeared with what I was pretty sure was my own blood already, but as I scraped my fingertips across the painfully hot bumps that had started to rise on my skin, I realized that I was bleeding where the insects had pricked me. I forced myself to stop scratching my skin, bit my tongue to distract me from the insane itching, and used my thumb nail to pry out squashed bug and congealing blood from under my fingernails.

The mosquitoes were dead, the droning was gone, and the sky was once again blue, but now the deceased insects covered the moss like spidery black snow. The bugs had dined well on us before I’d used the vampire magic to snuff out their souls, and the three corporeal beings in the clearing were still itching and covered in blood.

“I’m showering off,” Taslyn announced as she stomped toward the laboratory.

“I’ll race you there!” Janel started to scramble up off the picnic blanket.

“Please, let me!” Noura raised her hands, spread her fingers, and drew downward lines in the air with her fingertips.

“Thanks, Noura.” I was suddenly freshly washed again, but I still itched all over. I reached over my shoulder and angled my wrist back to get at a particularly bad patch between my shoulder blades. “Is there a chance you can do anything about the welts?”

“I could summon a cure, but I’m not sure what would cure something like that.” Noura frowned. “I’m not used to treating most human illnesses, I’m afraid. Just the odd hangover.”

“Aloe, honey, garlic, and rosemary,” Taslyn muttered as she swiveled on her heel. “I can get some from the cafeteria.”

“All we need is a combination of colcothar and philosopher’s wool.” I stuffed the ruby into my trouser pocket and headed toward the lab. “I’ll whip up a quick suspension.”

“I can summon all of that, if you like,” Noura said, and she raised her hands to snap her fingers.

“No, let me make it from scratch.” I slid my hand over my shoulder and under my shirt to scratch at my shoulder blades as I walked. “There’s a whole procedure I need to go through so the salve will work.”

“Well, show it to me!” Noura’s bare brown feet nearly floated over the moss as she kept pace with me. “That way I can follow what you’re doing and replicate it later.”

“Perfect.” I swung open the door of the lab and waved to the girls. “Come on, ladies. This shouldn’t take too long.”

I’d inherited the secret recipe for what old Professor Meinke called kal-y-myne lotion, but I was excited to show it to someone who would actually be able to replicate the process without stealing it for their own practice. I wasn’t worried about Janel or Taslyn setting up their own shops, so I demonstrated the method while Noura watched eagerly and Taslyn and Janel scratched impatiently. I didn’t take long to put the liquidy salve together.

We all stripped down to where the mosquitoes had bitten us. I’d been bitten most on my chest, but a few mosquitoes had made it through my trousers, and more than a few had crawled under my collar. Taslyn’s legs and hands were covered in red welts, but she insisted that the mosquitoes hadn’t gotten through her bodice. Janel shed her huge gray tunic to reveal a clingy, sleeveless white shirt that showed off her dark brown nipples and her dark red mosquito bites. Noura spread the lotion over my body while I worked on Janel’s, who carefully applied the salve to Taslyn’s body, but none of the touching was especially sensual, since we were all covered in itchy bites. Our bites started to shrink and the itching was extinguished within just a few minutes, and we all went back outside to let the lotion dry on our skin.

“So is practice over for today?” Janel grabbed the picnic blanket, gave it a shake, and winced as dead mosquito corpses fell off onto the moss. She spread the blanket back onto the ground and spread herself out on it like a flower drying on a piece of parchment. “I don’t really feel like getting bitten up again right now.”

“No, I need to get the hang of this.” I sat down on the blanket next to her and frowned at the ruby. “I know I can master this magic. I just need how to learn to aim the mosquitoes at an actual target.”

“I for one do not volunteer.” Janel grabbed for her tunic. “Noura, darling, would you perhaps cast some protective shields around us so we don’t get eaten alive again?”

“The mosquitoes might not be all the magic can do,” Taslyn said, and she sat down on my other side and spread her cloak across her lap. “Try summoning something else. A squirrel, for instance.”

“Why a squirrel?” I asked as a protective shield shimmered around me for just a moment. “This can probably do bears.”

“Because there are undoubtedly squirrels nearby, and they’re less dangerous than bears,” Taslyn said. “I don’t want to try to summon some sad bear-baiting specimen and have it take six hours to break out of its chains and come find us. Just ask for a squirrel.”

“I don’t know if this will do squirrels, but let’s try.” I held the chevron in my hand and thought intensely of squirrels. I imagined their big fluffy tails, they way they chittered angrily at anyone coming by their tree, and the way their little paws would clutch huge pieces of fruit.

I didn’t feel any brown energy erupting from the ruby. I could hear the familiar rustling of small animals going about their business in the trees, but none of them seemed to be heading towards me. I waited for a count of one hundred and fifty before I hung my head in mock defeat.

“That’s too bad,” Noura said. “I’ve never seen a squirrel.”

“I happen to know that you’ve seen squirrels on this very campus,” Janel said. “Or what did you think those little creatures with the fluffy tails were?”

“Some kind of small cat, maybe.” Noura shrugged. “We don’t have them in Diafloria, and nobody bothered to tell me what they were. Now that I know, I could summon a whole bunch of them for you if you like.”

“Nah.” I shook my head. I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to summoning a giant swarm of squirrels either. Judging by the way the magic had felt to me, it didn’t so much summon things out of thin air as it did summon them from wherever they happened to be nearby. I didn’t know if there were many bears within the Bergtory city limits, but I was also confident that the four of us mages could take on a single bear if we really needed to. “Maybe for target practice later. I want to see what this ruby is capable of first.”

“If you make me fight a bloody bear today I’m going to be very annoyed with you,” Janel groaned. “I don’t know any songs in the key of ursus.”

“I love you, darling,” I sang to Janel as I got up and strode to the center of the lawn. I rubbed my finger over the chevron, mentally selected a single spark of the brown earth magic, and thought very hard about hairy, brawny bears.

A single spark of brown magic rose up into the air and flew out over the purple and red treetops. After a moment, I lost connection with it entirely.

“I felt a spark of magic get away from me, but it’s gone now,” I reported to Taslyn.

“But you did feel it,” Taslyn confirmed as she scratched in her notebook. “Maybe it faded out because it couldn’t find a bear within range.”

“It’s possible.” I squinted at the ruby. “I think I might try the mosquitoes again. All I need is a target.”

“Please, not again today,” Janel begged as she pulled her hood over her sunglasses. “I’ve had enough bites!”

“We all have anti-mosquito bubbles around us,” Noura reminded Janel. “We ought to be fine.”

“One, the rest of the campus doesn’t,” Taslyn said. “Two, there might not be any mosquitoes left to summon. That seemed like a particularly intense effect.”

“Maybe more power would draw mosquitoes from further away?” I suggested. “Anyway, I need a target, preferably living. And if I can't summon a squirrel, maybe I can get a bear.”

“We may have to just go trap something,” Taslyn said. “Zayre, where do you think they’re likely to set rat traps out on campus? By the dining halls?”

“The rats in the traps ought to be dead, oughtn’t they?” Janel asked. “Will they even work as targets?”

“Hey, Noura, can you summon a live rat?” I asked. I was a little glad that Aylara had decided not to get up early to watch me at practice. I didn’t know if she felt any particular kinship towards rats, but I felt like the talk of traps might have upset her a little.

“I can give it a try.” Noura held out one hand with her palm up, cupped her other hand, and slowly brought it down as though she was clasping a small animal gently. She started to stroke the invisible mass in her hand until a tiny gray cloud suddenly formed on her pal. As Noura petted the cloud, it slowly gathered definition and color. In just a few seconds, the djinn had a perfectly realistic rat sitting in her hand.

The rat breathed slowly and sat perfectly still. The slow rise and fall of its chest showed that it was alive, but its scaly pink tail hung motionless, and its ears didn’t even twitch.

A worried tingle started to arise at the back of my mind, and I could feel Ferox raising his little brown and white spotted head. The half-terrier, half-falcon perked up from where he’d been curled up napping. His ears pricked up, he raised his nose to the air, and he barked. He usually warned me about danger, but sometimes he also just got excited about something he wanted to chase.

“Uh, how alive is that thing?” I brought my finger up in front of the rat’s nose, then nudged its pointed face gently aside. I didn’t encounter any resistance as I turned the little rat’s head, and when I took my finger away, the creature’s head stayed turned. I didn’t think the rat looked like a fun quarry for Ferox, but maybe he just wanted an easy hunt for a change. “It’s not acting like any rat I’ve ever seen before.”

“It’s my first time actually trying to make something alive, all right?” Noura pouted at me. “I’ve only ever made illusions of anything living. It’s breathing, and I can feel its heartbeat. Doesn’t that make it alive?”

“It barely has an aura.” Taslyn’s obsidian pupils widened inside her amber iris as she peered at the rat. “I mean, even for a rat.”

“But it does have an aura.” I took the rat from Noura’s hand and held it up to study it. I could feel its heartbeat thud gently under its warm, hairy hide, but its little claws didn’t scrabble or clutch in my hand. I turned and headed over to a stump near the edge of the field to set the rat down. I could feel Ferox growling in the back of my mind, but it was possible that he just sensed the weirdness of Mr. Plaguey’s general existence. “Which means it’s workable as a target.”

“Do you think it will--” Noura broke off and clapped her hands over her mouth as a rustling came from the trees. “That sounded big, Zayre. Do you think it’s the bear you summoned?”

“I really don’t think I summoned--” I broke off myself as something big, fat, and upright stepped out of the trees.

“Zayre.” Otso raised one of his huge, clawed paws. Otso was a bear-man with half-moon ears that stuck out from his unruly brown hair. He wore a deep green tunic that clung to his huge muscles, a brown fur cape with a golden bear head brooch, and brown leather leggings wrapped with green ribbon. Otso had been my rival’s foster-brother in life, and since Otso was an honorable type, I was pretty sure he was still true to Valerys’s memory.  “Janel. How are you now?”

“Uh, good, good.” I stuck the ruby into my trousers pocket, thought about dropping the rat, but decided to keep it clutched in my hand. I knew that where Otso was, Cad would likely be trailing behind, and I didn’t want either of them to stick around for very long. “What’s up, Otso?

“Why are there so many bugs?” a higher, petulant voice grumbled. Cad stepped out of the trees next to Otso. The sallow blonde Elvenborn had pale blue eyes, a mass of bleached and curled hair, and an elaborately styled goatee and mustache much like Valerys had used to wear. He wore an emerald green robe embroidered with golden leaves and had a silver-scabbarded sword with a ruby-studded handle at his side. The half-elf had been Valerys’s best friend and his toady in life, and he was eagerly taking up the title of Astra Argent Academy’s smarmiest bastard. His mouth curved down in a frown as he stared at the bugs that crunched around his silk slipper-shod feet. “Testing out some new poisons today, Zayre?”

“Yeah, and look what they did to this rat!” I held up the lifeless-looking rat. Its little paws dangled in the air as it breathed in and out. “Still breathing, but dead in every way that matters. Imagine what it could do to you.”

“It’s a pleasure to see you both, as always,” Janel deadpanned. She raised her cup of coffee and nodded at Otso. “But please do make it brief. We’re working, in case you can’t tell.”

“We just wanted to check on you,” Otso rumbled. He nodded toward me. “You haven’t been to any practices. Wondered if you were all right.”

“Otso thought you might have had a sports injury.” Cad stuck his hands into his robe pockets and inclined his head toward Janel. “And everyone knows Janel hasn’t been showing up to practice for weeks.”

“I’m taking a break from my studies after the tragic death of my fiance,” Janel scowled. “You can hardly expect me to focus when I’m so consumed with grief. I’m spending the day with some friends.”

“Self-care is important.” Otso nodded slowly, then turned to me. “And you, Zayre? Something keeping you away from Battle Magic? You know you need to come to class and practice if you’re serious.”

“Are you undergoing some kind of hardship?” Cad clasped at his chest. “We’re all your teammates, you know. We’re here to help you. Good of the team and all that.”

“I’m honestly just a little busy, guys,” I said. I brandished the gray rat at Cad, who lifted his upper lip in a disgusted snarl. “I have a lot to finish up this semester. Coach Patricia is basically letting me audit this year so I can focus on wiping my slate clean, so I’m coming to class when I can. I appreciate the check-up, but you guys don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be around when I’m around.”

“I see you’ve got a few lady friends to help you out.” Cad raised his eyebrows at Noura and stroked his beard. “As enticing as the fairer sex may be, I do find that they can sometimes pose quite the distraction. Do you need any somewhat sturdier assistance? Moving furniture, that sort of thing?”

“I can lift anything you need to be lifted.” Otso raised his huge, thick arms. His dark, furry skin rippled with muscles, and his biceps nearly jumped out of his clothing. “Just name it. We’re not doing anything until the afternoon.”

“No heavy lifting required today, but thanks for offering,” I said and I held up the rat again. “Unless one of you wants to stand over on the other side of the field while I try out a new offensive spell. I was planning to use this little guy for a target, but I could use a much bigger one.”

“I thought you said you were trying out a new poison,” Cad said, and he pulled a mock-sympathetic face. “You must be pretty swamped here, Zayre. It looks like you can’t even keep your own experiments straight.”

“We’re multi-tasking,” I told Cad and I wiggled the little rat so that its paw shook and its tail wagged. “Mr. Plaguey has been through a lot today.”

“He’s got a lot of things to test out,” Taslyn said. “I’m directing the experiments as his tutor. We’ve got it all in hand, thank you.”

“You are making him practice his Battle Magic, aren’t you?” Cad asked Taslyn. “We all heard about how Zayre couldn’t even summon a little gust of wind.”

“He’s practicing, yes.” Taslyn pressed her lips together. “I’m seeing to it.”

“It was just at first,” I protested. “I needed to learn how to connect with the element of air. Taslyn had me aligning my chakras and doing everything the Coach didn’t have time to help me with herself. I haven’t been doing this as long as you guys, and I do need a little catch-up time, you know.”

“And you’re getting ready for next semester by seeing what you can put a rat through in a day, are you?” Cad raised one of his carefully groomed eyebrows. “You know, you ought to be methodical about these things, Zayre. Otso and I would be only too happy to help you carry out your experiments in a more methodical fashion.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to get too happy, there,” I replied with a wink. “Listen, don’t let me keep you guys from lunch, all right?”

“Listen, Zayre.” Otso stepped forward one step and held out his hand to me. “If you want to practice without eyes on you, I’ll spot you. I won’t judge what you can’t do.”

“Not the way the rest of the Advanced class will.” Cad shook his head. “Honestly, it’s better that you’re not coming to practice while you catch up. Learning to connect with the elements is freshman-level stuff. We get it, but not everyone else will.”

“Thanks for your understanding.” I rolled my eyes.

“So have you had any success in connecting with the subtle element of lightning?” Cad leaned forward and put his hands behind his back. “I’ve heard that you’re still having quite the time calling it down. It’s only the element of divine inspiration and judgment, you know.”

“And you’ve got plenty of that judgment to go around,” I volleyed back.

“I’m only repeating what I’ve heard.” Cad raised both of his hands defensively, and little blue and yellow sparks flew from his manicured fingernails. “Even the least magical Elvenborn can usually summon up a few sparks by the time they reach puberty.”

“I prefer flint.” I glanced at Noura and gave her a slight nod. I didn’t want to fight with Cad today, but I knew that if it came to it I’d have a fire-slinging djinn on my side.

“What I’m saying is that I’ll be happy to lend you a hand in your more remedial studies,” Cad sniffed. He wiggled his fingers as slender bolts of blue lighting danced from fingertip to fingertip. “It’s quite easy once you get the hang of it. I can come ‘round on Moonday and Windsday after last practice to help you find that spark.”

“I’m good with Taslyn, but thanks,” I said to Cad. “We work well together.”

“Well, you can hardly be making any progress if you can’t even summon up a little spark.” Cad’s smarmy look fell into a frown. “Just let us help you out a little, Zayre.”

“If you’re serious about the Battle Magic team, you’re going to need to keep up,” Otso affirmed.

“Listen, I’ll call you if I think I need your help.” I said. “But right now, I’d really appreciate it if you kept away from the alchemy lab for a little while longer. It’s not going to be safe in a few minutes.”

“Why?” Otso frowned. “What are you doing?”

“I’m showing him how to activate alchemical compounds using energy manipulation.” Noura waved a hand around the clearing. “We’ve already poisoned nearly all the bugs on campus. But we do need more targets, would you like to volunteer?”

“If it’s all the same to you, we’d rather not,” Cad said, and he hooked his arm into Otso’s and began to back away. “Enjoy tormenting your rat.”

“I look forward to seeing your progress when you get back to practice.” Otso saluted me, then turned and began to lead Cad through the woods.

“Oof.” I let out a loud breath as soon as they were out of earshot, and turned to my ladies. “Looks like I’m going out to catch lightning in a bottle today.”

If I was going to pretend that I had the full range of a normal mage, I needed to catch a lightning creature.