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GPCiMW Chapter 21
🕑 Added 2025-01-27 04:56:28 +0000 UTCHi. I've kinda gone out out of contact so far this year but lets see how many things I can get out before the end of the month. Didn't think this was going to be my first post of 2025, but I guess my muse decided otherwise!
I started towards the stairs that led up to the student tower, then paused and turned around. Daphne, who was outwardly trailing after me obediently like a good witch should, didn’t react in time and bumped into my shoulder. She yelped at the sudden contact and took a hasty step back, only to trip over her own two feet and lose her balance. I caught her before she could fall, my hand clamping down around her bicep to steady her, and found her skin clammy with sweat.
I quickly looked around, my fingers digging into the thin layer of fat that covered toned muscles tight with tension. My conversation with Professor Alex had gone past the end of his usual office hours and it was just after five in the afternoon, so most people were either in class, in their rooms, or at dinner, but I was still relieved to find the hallway completely deserted but for my witch and I. I would have hated to have to punish Daphne for so publicly embarrassing herself and thus me by proxy.
She stood stock still in front of me, her head bowed and her hair falling down in a shimmering silver curtain that half-covered her face. I gently pressed a finger against the cleft of her chin and she obediently raised her head until our eyes met, vibrant purple staring blankly into my own pale blue.
I watched her for a long moment, taking in her wide-eyed stare, the subtle tension in her stance, and the faint tremble I only noticed because I was actively touching her. My lips narrowed into a tight line and sharp anger rumbling in my chest. It was subtle, but Daphne looked almost as bad as when I’d blown up at her about what happened with Christopher, the idiot who’s witch I’d snagged from under his nose. Whatever Shella had said or done to her had deeply scared and unsettled her, and that was simply unacceptable. Daphne was my witch, part of my coven. The only one allowed to hurt her was me.
I took a deep breath and let it out, ruffling the few strands of hair still hanging down across Daphne’s face. I needed to hear what exactly had gone on between Daphne and Shella, and then I was probably going to have to talk to Professor Alex. I was not looking forward to that conversation, but neither could I allow someone to so brazenly attack me and mine.
If he couldn’t control his own coven members, he shouldn’t be allowing them to run wild. Sidhe were dangerous and tricky, one of the few species of fuckmeat that could kill even an experienced wizard if caught unaware and prone to finding every possible loophole in the orders they were given. There were plenty of books on the proper way to keep such creatures properly restricted and it was horribly irresponsible of the professor to be so lax.
I was tempted to head straight back to my room so I could interrogate Daphne about what had happened or possibly to the library to look further into what Professor Alex and I had discussed, but I wanted to give Daphne some time to relax and I doubted a single evening would offer significant progress in researching an apparently completely unknown phenomenon. Instead, I released my grip on Daphne’s arm and gently patted her cheek. “Let’s go get something to eat.” A few bites of real food would cheer her right up, and I was starting to get hungry as well.
The great hall was mostly empty when I arrived. The students who’d run in to grab a bite to eat before the evening time slot were long gone and the main dinner crowd hadn’t arrived yet. I scanned the hall, looking for familiar faces. I wasn’t planning to stay long, just grab a few plates and then head up to my room to eat in peace and privacy, but I was hoping to catch Kazuma so I could ask him about the Alchemy homework we’d been assigned in class today.
My eyes passed over a table of fourth-years––one of whom had his witch bent over the dinning table as he showed off the elaborate and clearly magical tattoo that covered her entire back to his classmate––a few first years I vaguely recognized from class, and eventually landed on a familiar head of spikey blue hair.
Ah excellent, he was still here. He and Teveus had told me they were going to grab an early dinner and invited me to join them, but I’d worried they’d have finished in the time it took me to meet with Professor Alex. It looked like Wyll had either left already or not yet made it down, but that was probably for the best. He tended to hang around the duo and I was slowly learning to tolerate his antics, but he could very quickly exhaust my patients and I didn’t have much of that left this evening already.
I made a beeline towards their table, weaving through a sea of empty chairs until I reached the corner where we sat whenever it was available.“Hey Teveus, hey Kazuma,” I called as I approached. The two boys looked up and Kazuma twisted around in his seat to wave at me with his usual cheerful energy and broad grin.
“Hey Sev! Tev thought you weren’t going to make it, but I knew you’d manage to get away eventually! That Alexander guy doesn’t look like the running type and you’re fit as a fiddle!”
Teveus groaned loudly and covered his eyes with his hand. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the nicknames––neither of us were all too keen on Kazuma’s relentless attempts to shorten our names, though at least Sev was better than Vicky––or the awful attempt at a joke.
I rolled my eyes and Kazuma laughed as I pulled out the chair across from him and summoned a cushion for Daphne to rest on. He plucked a small golden-brown ball out of the bowl of sweet syrup in front of him and plopped it in his mouth, then lowered his hand so Haimi could lick his fingers clean with an expression of bliss on her face. I vaguely recognized the dessert as something I’d had at an Indian restaurant once. If the ones served here were half as sweet as those had been, the layer of syrup left on Kazuma’s fingers very well might be the most sugar Haimi had ever had in a single sitting.
“Thanks for waiting for me. I hope I didn’t take too long.” I still wasn’t fully clear on the relationship between the three of us. I had initially mostly stuck with them on Daphne’s advice––she’d told me they were important in some nebulous, seer-related way––but over the past few weeks I’d found that I enjoyed spending time with them.
Kazuma could be funny sometimes, and his general joyful attitude towards life was infectious. Teveus was a lot more subdued, but he was smart and had a lot of interesting insights into wizarding society and history. As far as I could tell, they enjoyed spending time with me as well, or at least didn’t intentionally push me away, so that probably meant we were friends now?
Kazuma waved his (non-syrupy) hand dismissively. “Eh. Wasn’t going to be doing anything productive anyway, and there’s a lot more food available here than back in my room!” Teveus tapped his finger against the textbook open in front of him, then clicked a nail against the rim of his half-empty coffee cup and shrugged his shoulders.
“Still, I appreciate it.” I set my things on the floor opposite where Daphne was kneeling and gestured towards the buffet. “I’m going to go grab something to eat, and then do you mind––”
Kazuma made a shooing motion. “Yes, yes, go eat! You look half-starved! Get some meat on those bones. I already agreed we can go over the extra credit question today. Honestly, it's not due till next class! You two are way too responsible. If I had it my way, I wouldn’t have looked at it till Sunday morning at the earliest!”
Teveus sighed deeply as he was wont to do and I shook my head ruefully as I walked away. One moment I was fit as a fiddle, the next half-starved. Come on Kazuma, at least be consistent!
I spared a glance (a long glance, my eyes lingering on the curve of her butt) for Daphne, who still seemed a little tense, but less so than she had been right after leaving Professor Alex’s classroom. She knelt with perfect poise––back ramrod straight, chest thrust forward, head bowed, and knees spread to shoulder width––almost like she had been the first time I’d seen her.
As I began to fill up a plate, I eyed a number of serving platters, wondering what sort of thing Daphne might like. She’d eat anything I gave her––anything served to wizards was infinitely better than her day-to-day feed––but I wanted something that would make her feel better without being too much for a body unaccustomed to consuming real food.
Talking to Kazuma might end up taking longer than just a quick dip to grab dinner. I could afford to give her a little treat in public, I decided. It wasn’t really a particularly polite thing to do outside the privacy of a wizard’s home, but the room was all but empty and I’d seen plenty of other wizards doing it from time to time. Not everyone did it, especially not the more traditional House-born who’s witches tended to be kept bound and gagged when out in public, but I’d even spotted Brenden Wilkens––one of the most prominent wizards in our year––feeding Yosay something out of the palm of his hand.
I returned to the table with two plates and trailed by a lilin server carrying a pitcher of faerie tea. It was hard to say for certain, and I doubted most of my classmates would know the difference, but I thought she was probably one of the oldest lilin I’d seen working at the school so far. Lilin could vary immensely from fuckmeat to fuckmeat, but between the tail wrapped thrice around her waist like a belt, the ridges along the edges of her tiny vestigial wings, and her lush curves, I judged that she was well into her second century of life. The way she walked––her steps quick and even, completely unhindered by the chain connecting her ankles––suggested the same.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she filled my glass, then gathered Teveus’s used dishes, bowed, and glided away. Most wizards didn’t think much of lilin. Despite being the second most populous breed of fuckmeat after beastkin, very, very few wizards bothered to add one to their coven. They made excellent servants and laborers, and were bred and trained on an industrial scale for just that very purpose, but most wizards thought that they didn’t bring anything particularly special to a coven that you couldn't get from a witch or superior breed of fuckmeat.
My father had disagreed. Knowing what I did, I had to agree with him. If only he’d managed to get his hands on one a year or two earlier, perhaps things could have turned out differently.
I took a bite of curry rice and pushed the thought aside for the time being. There was no point dwelling on what-could-have-beens. The past was in the past, immutable to even the mighty High Lords. What mattered now was learning from it.
Half an hour later, Wyll arrived to find Kazuma, Teveus, and I huddled over Teveus’s alchemy textbook, loudly arguing about what exactly the difference between dicing and finely cubing was when applied to a plant with a perfectly rectangular stalk. We were so engrossed in our argument that none of us noticed him standing behind Teveus’s chair until he physically reached out and closed the book, at which point we all turned to glare at him.
“Hey! What did you do that for?” Kazuma exclaimed, sounding more offended than he’d been when Wyll crashed bodily into Haimi on signup day.
Wyll took a step back and raised his hands defensively. “Guys, guys, you’re talking in circles! I don’t think you’re going to find the answer to the bonus question in our textbook.”
Teveus frowned. “I’ve heard good things about Professor Claywright. He is strict, but fair. I do not believe he would have assigned us a question without also providing a path towards finding an answer.”
“Exactly! Here,” he scooped the textbook off the table and flipped it open to the appendix that took up the last forty pages of the nearly thousand page book. He flipped around for several long seconds, then set the book down and jabbed his finger at a single line of text that looked like a faerie must have written it.
Teveus leaned in until his nose was almost touching the page, peering at the spot Wyll had indicated. “The Proper Care and Preparation of Tetra-, Quadra-, and Penta-stalk Etherfronds by Archmaster Viktor Carr,” he read aloud. He paused, then sighed again and sagged back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. “That would probably have it,” he deadpanned.
Kazuma rounded on Wyll. “How the hell did you find that? I do not believe for a moment that you memorized the appendix of our alchemy textbook!”
“Hey, what does that mean? Did you think I don’t know how to read?” Wyll asked, then laughed when Kazuma glared at him. “Nah, just kidding. I overheard one of the second years telling that ass Irgam about it.”
Kazuma deflated.
“Here, I know just the thing to make you guys feel better. It’s absolutely gorgeous out. How about we grab some ice cream to go and take a gander around the grounds.”
I was surprised when Teveus was the first to respond. He pushed his textbook away and shrugged. “Why not. Not like I have any plans for the evening but homework.”
“Great!” Wyll exclaimed. He turned to Kazuma, who was clearly waffling. “What about you?”
Kazuma sighed explosively. “I’d love to, but I should probably go see if the library has that book before someone else checks it out.”
“Oh!” Wyll snapped his fingers. “I knew I was forgetting something.” He turned around and snatched one of the books June––his witch––was holding from near the middle of the stack. He turned back towards us, seemingly not noticing the way the rest of the pile teetered precariously. June scrambled to fix it without dropping the whole thing, bobbing back and forth in an impressive display of balance and coordination until the pile settled.
He unceremoniously dropped the book onto the table. “There you go! I have it till Thursday but you can hold onto it for a few days.”
Kazuma picked up the blank-covered book––more of a journal, really––and flipped it open. There at the top of the first page was the very title Wyll had pointed out to us in our textbook, though from this angle I couldn’t read the scribble that was probably supposed to be Archmaster Carr’s signature.
Kazuma dropped it back onto the table, then pushed it away and shrugged just like Teveus had. “Fair enough. Guess I’m done.”
“Awesome.” Wyll finally turned to me. “And I guess that leaves you, Sev! What do you say?”
I bit back my first cutting response. Kazuma could get away with nicknames from time to time, I actually liked Kazuma, but Wyll… Well. Just no.
In any case, I had much better things to do with my time than wander around. There was only one more week till the first monthly challenge and I wanted to get a head start on my homework. “Um, maybe n––“
And then Daphne elbowed me in the leg. Hard. I was so surprised I nearly bit my tongue off, stopping mid word to look down at her. She looked back at me, her eyes were wide and bright, and no trace of her earlier distress visible on her face. The moment our eyes met, she rapidly nodded her head several times, her hair whipping around, then jerked her head towards Wyll. By the time Kazuma had leaned to the side to see what I was looking at, she’d returned to her previous position, a few strands of out-of-place hair the only sign that she’d done anything at all.
Well. That was quite a reaction. I could definitely take a hint, especially when it came from my little seer.
“Actually, that sounds like a great idea. I’d love to come!”
Teveus gave me a strange look, but Wyll didn’t seem to have noticed anything. Sometimes his utter obliviousness could come in handy. “Fantastic! The more the merrier! I’ll go grab the ice cream while you guys finish up, ‘kay?” And then he was gone, rushing off with June struggling to keep up with him.
