Chapter 48 - Rituals with Professor Paracelsus

 In the eyes of the Bloodline Magic, Bjorn was now kin.
He took the name Morsin without challenge -
Not from a court, nor from the grave.
And so the blood-runes burned with new purpose:
Bjorn, once thrall-born, now Regent,
Ruler in name and fate, until young Seamus would come of age.
But the child was small, and time was long.

The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 28

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Felix dragged his feet on his way to rituals. Ahead of him the other seven students were laughing and chattering excitedly about the charms class, and the first spell they’d managed to cast.

“How’d you do that?” Vivian asked Alex.

“Do what?” She hissed.

“With the spell! All those lights! How’d you manage to get it to do so many different colors?”

Alex shrugged.

“It was just a natural application of what Professor Runeblade was telling us. Imagination matters! I thought about different colors of light, I made different colors of light.” She whispered.

Felix had to hustle a little closer to the group to hear Alex, and prayed nobody asked him about his pathetic performance. 

“I tried that!” Vivian said, half stomping her foot in frustration. “It wouldn’t change at all! You’ve got to be a genius at this.”

Even Felix could see Alex’s cheeks turning the same bright red as her fox tail ponytail.

“Well, I’ve been practicing.” She said.

“You’ll have to show me!” Erik said with a bright smile. “Maybe we could practice together?”

“Maybe.” Alex whispered.

“The homework sucks though.” Sora complained. “The fundamental wand movements? Come on! Even I know that!”

“We are in the remedial class.” Erik reminded her.

“Which is not our fault!” Sora complained. “They should’ve let us take the CATs, we don’t belong in here.”

“But we’re here, and we need to play the hand we’re dealt.” Erik said. “Maybe you can give Felix pointers?”

Sora grumbled at the idea… but secretly looked a little pleased.

“I got through a class without an accident.” Odric suddenly said.

“Now you’ve jinxed it.” Felix joked, happy to move the subject away from casting. 

“Now I’ll have to see if I can make it through the day.” He said. Everyone was staring at the boy. Erik took a large step back, mirth dancing in his eyes.

“Maybe I’ll make it through a whole day of classes.” Odric said wistfully… but the laughing undertone to his words hinted at the joke.

“Does anyone know where the rituals classroom is, or are we all following each other hoping one of us knows what they’re doing?” Emily asked.

“We know.” Erik, Felix, and Sora said in unison.

“Why we’re hurrying there like there’s cursed fire behind us I’ll never know.” Sora joked.

“Time to reread my notes before class starts.” Felix answered. Sora mimed horror on her face, and ran behind Erik for protection.

“Bossman! Help! I didn’t know… I didn’t know he was a swot! Help, help, I’m afraid it could be infectious!”

Basically everyone burst out laughing as Erik tried and failed to swat Sora, including Felix. Any thoughts of his poor performance went out the window.

“You know, you’re right…” Erik tapped his lip with one finger. “I’ll protect you. The only thing I know of that’ll ward one off… sadly, tonight we must study.”

“Nooooooo!!” Sora cried out, dramatically falling back against a door. It opened, and she tumbled into the rituals classroom. Professor Paracelsus looked up from his desk.

“I’ve had many entries to this class, but that one takes the cake. Well, you’re all a bit early, but I suppose we have quite a lot to cover. Come in, come in, take a seat.”

Felix had a brief moment of concern as he was at the back of the group, but it was for nothing. He was able to get a seat at the front of the room, and neatly pulled out his supplies for the class. Nobody was sitting next to him, and he let himself spread out. 

The room was wicked. Diagrams littered the walls, and Felix recognized quite a large number of pentagrams and other star shapes. The room had a number of doors at the back, and Felix wasn’t sure if they were supply closets or extra rooms. The ceiling was beautiful. 

The rituals classroom clearly was picked because of the massive orrery that was hanging overhead. The sun was at the center, and all the other planets were progressing around. Even the asteroid fields were represented! There was no Pluto though.

“Good morning everyone.” Professor Paracelsus definitely had a ‘teaching voice’. It was smooth and rich, with an accent that was European but couldn’t be placed. “I am Professor Paracelsus, your ritual professor here at Camelot for the next eight years. Yes, I am the Immortal Alchemist. Yes, that one you’ve read about in books and history. Yes, I am soulbound to the philosopher's stone. No, I will not teach you how to make one. If you manage to get accepted to my alchemy course, and should you pass a rigorous ethical and mental examination, I would be willing to teach you why. Now, I am regularly inundated with questions. I will take five minutes to answer any personal questions. After, I expect questions to be related to Camelot, rituals, courses, or other such topics that are not prying into my personal affairs. However, first, attendance! Brown, Emily.”

“Here.” The girl said, and the professor went through the list.

“Now, you have five minutes to pry into my affairs. Go.” Paracelsus said, turning over an hourglass.

Erik’s hand was the first up.

“Morsin.” The professor said.

“Why doesn’t the gold you make cause massive economic problems?” He asked.

“Because I am careful.” The professor said. “I’ve had a long time to build my personal wealth, and I have no pressing need to dramatically increase my coffers. I’ll create and sell gold now and then to help continue funding my admittedly plush lifestyle, but there is no sense in bringing utter ruin to myself and others for extremely short term gain. I am immortal, I have no desire to piss off the BAT and have my activities and existence declared illegal. We will be covering the extensive legal framework surrounding rituals this year. Yes, Renard?”

“Did you make the philosopher's stone?” She whispered. Paracelsus shook his head.

“My dear, until you fix your voice I must insist you sit in the front. Sutter, if you would?”

Felix grumbled as he moved his supplies over, and an embarrassed and angry Alex plonked down next to him.

“What are you looking at?” She hissed as Paracelsus answered Alex's question.

“Now, that was quite an astute observation, usually only my alchemy students notice that. No, I did not create the philosopher's stone. You could say I'm it’s victim more than anything. Yes, Park?”

The questions flew thick and fast, but the sands of time were relentless. Felix was finding every question fascinating, and while we had a number of his own, he knew he wasn’t nearly well informed enough to ask good ones. He let the other students ask, and was furiously taking notes.

“And time!” The professor interrupted a question Vivian was asking. “One point to each of you who asked a question. Three points to Sutter for taking notes. Now, settle down, and I will attempt to boil down the bare essence of rituals for you.”

Felix only needed to flip a page while everyone else was scrambling.

“The BAT has attempted to define rituals as ‘wandless non-personal magic’, which is so utterly vague as to be entirely useless. The only aspect I will agree on is that a spell is not a ritual. With that said, channeling magic through a wand or casting particular spells at particular times can be found in rituals, and there are a number of spells that I would personally classify as a ritual.”

Paracelsus paused to let everyone catch up on their notes.

“Rituals take endless forms, and the entirety of Camelot could be devoted to the teaching of rituals and still barely manage to scratch the surface. Alas, we have a bare one, perhaps two, classes in which to learn the necessities of rituals. There are the direct classes, which I will be briefly teaching you the fundamentals of. If you have the talent and inclination, you can continue to study them during your adept years. Pentagrams and the chanted rituals are this year, as are the fundamentals of covens and group work. Next year is potions. Third year we will study wards,  and crossover with your rune class for enchantments, and in the fourth year, should the BAT not successfully ban the practice, will be summoning and soulbindings.”

Paracelsus started to rub his fingers together. Felix was furiously taking notes, cursing his poor handwriting and difficulties he’d have later on translating things.

“Rituals tend to be far more powerful than wanded spells, but are far more dangerous. Wands are inherently safe. A miscast spell will fizzle and do nothing. You will be lucky if a miscast ritual only kills you. It is why the BAT continues to stick their overly large nose into what should be magic, and attempts to ban or restrict various rituals.”

“Now what I was saying before. The study of rituals is the study of the oldest, most powerful magic, and should be an entire schooling dedicated to it, not just a class. You should be learning geometry and art. You’ll need to know sciences, weights, and measures. How to prepare ingredients and run a lab. Languages and runes, bless the headmaster for having the course taught here. Ethics should be its own course, as are negotiations and wordplay, laws and legal framework, and the history of rituals throughout the ages. Then each of the subjects I mentioned we would briefly cover should be their own class.” Paracelsus looked up at the spinning orrery wistfully.

“Alas, I only have a single class to try and teach you enough material that you have a half-baked idea how to approach rituals. And a half-baked ritual is possibly worse than no ritual at all. Write this down again.”

Paracelsus leaned forward, his eyes intense.

“Rituals will kill you if done wrong.”

He leaned back and waited for everyone to write it down. Felix circled the words and underlined them, before turning to another page. 

“With that being said, I would be a terrible professor if I didn’t try to help and guide you. Bring me the rituals you are planning, and I will look over them. I will tell you if it’ll kill you or worse.”

Felix was going to shave Paracelsus's golden mutton chops off his smug, square face. Safe his ass!! Nothing -NOTHING - he had encountered so far could remotely be deemed safe!! ‘Significant risk of death or insanity’ was wildly different from chemistry class!!

Although, maybe he had a point. There were a number of external hazards in Sacramento that didn’t seem to exist here. If nothing else the cops wouldn’t hassle him.

Felix made a note to check if a poor wand and sluggish magic was bad for rituals. Probably… but maybe the wand wasn’t an issue since rituals explicitly didn’t use them. Except when they did.

Ugh.

“With all those warnings, rituals are the most powerful magic you will encounter, bar none. Merlin severed the world as a single mage. Love him, hate him, one wizard managed to copy the entirety of Earth, and formed all of Arcadia. One wizard managed to duplicate the entire world, although he missed the mark a bit on souls. Soulbindings are the single most powerful aspect to a wixen. Each and every one of you could possibly gain the ability to fly unaided, reshape flesh at a whim, peer through the future, turn to shadow, transform into the form of your core, or a thousand other possibilities. It’s the trait that’ll define your lives, as being soulbound to the Philosopher’s Stone has defined mine. There are more witches than wizards in Logres and the rest of Europe because of a Roman ritual. The four…”

Paracelsus’s passion was shining through as he continued to list examples of powerful rituals, even if he didn’t give all the details, and Felix’s pen was occasionally flicking off ink with how quickly he was writing. Alexandria was not amused, but she didn’t say anything, bent over her notes with a fervor. 

“Now, one of the important things to note about rituals is they are imprecise. If all eight of you performed the same ritual, we will likely get eight slightly different results. Unlike the wanded arts, where casting the same spell has the same result.”

Felix wasn’t the only student to shoot their hand in the air - Alex almost took his head off with how eagerly she thrust her hand up - but he was the one called on.

“Sutter.” The professor said.

“Sir. We just came from charms and cast the same spell, but we all got different colors of light. Isn’t that the same spell causing different results?” He asked, but already the professor was shaking his head.

“No, they all generated light, and you’d be hard pressed to make the spell do anything but generate light. That is the sort of broad classification we’re working with. But when we get to a similar ritual later in the year, some of you will get light. Some of you will end up conjuring a fire. Electricity and related knickknacks are starting to occur when we practice the ritual, and so on and so forth. No two people have the same mind, magic, and discipline, and it shows far more in rituals than in other fields. Now, if you’ll turn your textbook to page 26…”

Felix opened his notebook, wished for a highlighter, and studiously continued taking notes.

Rituals seemed like a lot… but if there was so much, perhaps it would respond well to dogged work, over simply having the power and wand needed. It was too soon to tell, and each answer was generating three questions, but Felix had a sneaking suspicion that he was going to enjoy Paracelsus's class.