Chapter Forty Six

Awkward. Harmony had rushed the potion here. Tasha had been awake while Alex snored in the other room. This reaction was unexpected. [Analyze]  didn’t mention the risk level. The potions reference  book rated  “assured” as one step below guaranteed in quality.

What was bothering the redhead so much? “If you want, I could have…” Harmony began.

“Oh, I know you didn’t show this to Verus or any of the instructors here. Even Maester Gregor, who loves me like a granddaughter, would hold me down and pour that thing down my throat just to see what it does.”

“We’re students. Not lab gnomes.“ Harmony reminded her.

“Says the girl who has told me what they have her do to prisoners this morning in the pillar’s class. All the teachers here work, not out of the goodness of their hearts or love for the children, but because they feel like they can find something that will help them advance. And I’ve got like three alchemists in my family, and this is exactly what they’d want. If it didn’t have my name, and I wasn’t wearing the bruises I got from you milking me for what you needed for it, I’d have thought you’d stolen this from Maekus Von Trell or someone near ascending. This isn’t something a new student should be able to make.  You didn’t have him make it?”

“No.”

“Well, I might feel better if you did. But considering his reputation, I might feel worse.”

“If you feel that way, then why did you choose to go to The Academy?”

Tasha ran her hands through her hair and pulled at it before continuing. “For all the jammed-up bearings and bits in life, I can’t understand you, Harmony White. You’re both the most innocent, curious, and naive girl I’ve met here, as well as the most vicious, stubborn, and wary one. And I’ve been paying attention to you. Alex is all distracted by the way you fill out your jacket, and not that I haven’t admired it. Tun-Knee already acts as your subordinate. Xera is both maddened by you and worships you.  I’d honestly have left this circus and pulled Alex with me even after you helped him train his bear if it wasn't for the honest love of your adorable idiot savant of a pet. I know they say every pet loves their master, but it’s a primal bond, not a slave one. He’s talked about Ambrosia, how you like to dance, your bookish penpall Len.”

What exactly was Prince Adric telling everyone? Not that he’d spill her actual secrets. It was probably better than the rumors flying around campus.

“Then what am I missing?”

“Everything and nothing. We all come here wanting to get stronger and more powerful. It’s sometimes selfish and bloody. Then, out of nowhere, appears a mystical, beautiful girl who turns everything upside down. Waves her hand, and the bear is tamed. Pillars fall over themselves for her attention. And yet she plops a potion in front of me, more valuable than my family can afford, and tells me to drink it with no strings attached.  Those stories never end well for girls like me.

The funny thing is, I also see you fight for every speck of progress you make. The sleep you sacrifice. The money you spend. A warpath of effort, and you’ve yet to even quicken into your levels. You’re not a magical pixie dream girl, at least then you’d be tiny with wings. You’re a… Wreck me!”

The bottle flew straight from the table to Tasha’s hand as quickly as she released her ammunition on the range, and with one smooth motion, her thumb flicked off the seal, and in one quick shot, she downed the potion whole.  Too fast to interrupt. Too fast for even Tasha to stop herself.

Here and now hadn’t been the plan. This was Harmony showing the girl she’d done it.

When the bastard Felix nearly killed Kenny, the half-step lunar body potion took effect nearly immediately as an energy lattice formed over him. Some of Harmony’s literal blood and sweat, and a lot of her necromancy, went into this potion so she could feel this one taking its time getting to know the person it was attuned to. “How are you feeling?” Harmony asked.

Tasha seemed a little confused, too, looking at the empty bottle. She’d probably seen more people use half-steps than Harmony had. “I hadn’t heard that it would hur…” With a spine-twisting jerk, Harmony caught sight of blood coming out of the redhead’s eyes as a more shell-like white lattice ripped out of her skin, tearing off her clothes and encasing her, leaving bloody shreds of fabric on the floor.

“Rot!”

“Gweep?!” Hyacinth asked, finally, getting involved from his resting spot in her pocket.

“No. I don’t know what I did. You could have said anything at any point while I was cooking up this potion until I brought it here to show off. Aren’t you my voice of reason?”

“Gwa!”

“So, you’re my voice of vengeance, and Adric is my voice of reason?”

Adric had been called through her primal bond.  [Analyze] was in action. It called it a transformation cocoon. Soul sight couldn’t pierce it. A nibble of fate had that vision give her a headache as the white turned into a mess of swirling colors. [Manipulate Dead] couldn’t touch it, and while it was physically here, the thing operated on a different level of reality.

The prince showed up, shirtless, but for his underwear, one boot on a foot with no sock, and one sock on a foot with no boot, as panicked and rushed as Harmony felt. “What happened?”

“I brought Tasha the potion I made, and she drank it. Then this.”

The bloody clothes were clearly wrong.

Alex stumbled out of his room, a new stuffed bear in his arms. Something he had made to honor his new relationship. “What’s burning?”

There was no smoke. Alex’s words had her now smelling what he did with his more sensitive bear-modified nose. The smell of heat, metal, and meat, more like a meal gone wrong than a wooded fire pit.  

“What did the potion say, Harmony!” Adric demanded.

“Bleeding…” She pulled on [Recall]. “A potion assured to give Tasha Wainright a unique body type.”

“So she drank the…” Alex looked at the cocoon in his living room and the bloody clothes all around it. “Oh, bother.”

“It’s not giving her a half-step body,” Harmony answered, connecting the dots before Adric did. “I’m guessing there is a reason why full body types are things you earn before your first evolution and need to gain half-types after?”

“Yeah, because they change with your whole body on a more fundamental level rather than modify it after. That’s why they’re better, and they grow with you.”  Alex answered.

The burning smell intensified. “I think it is getting rid of the old to replace it with the new,” Adric answered.

Alex, in his panic, started  to shift the bear features, twisting his face with fur. Emotional imbalance could lead to spiritual imbalance, and Harmony had already seen that mess today in the hexio’s class. [Cold Touch] mixed with [Renew Spirit] and [Final Silence] and a good dousing of the cowering aspect of [Shadowed Graves] to shut that man down, causing him to slump in place.  Harmony couldn’t have a second disaster she caused happening today.

Help! She needed help! Teammates discarded. Teachers. Potion makers cared about the concoctions, not the people after they drank them. Mortuary Mell… no. The strongest person she knew was…  “Is there a way to get Maekus Von Trell here? Surely this can’t count as politics?” Harmony asked.

“He’s only here for office hours and teaching his class as far as I can tell. That’s why it took so long for Flint to schedule that meeting. I don’t think he has a residence in Ricort.” Adric answered.

[Recall]. [Recall]. She knew Maekus kept a calendar posted in his messy office, but it wasn’t like she paid that much attention. [Mana Rotation] surged, and she wove in [Renew Spirit] as she pushed on [Recall] again. It tapped into chronostasis, and she felt herself shift into the memory of the last time she was in Von Trell’s office. It was a state that found her mental presence ripped out of the chaos of everyone panicking around her and into a mental construct similar to the woods she’d seen in Alex, but one crafted out of her memories. New, hopefully useful, she focused on the recent memory.

In the several weeks Von Trell had been at The Academy, he’d cluttered his office, including the fancy desk she’d helped build. Papers, knick-knacks, food containers, clothes, unusual bones, even  an apple that was half eaten with a touch of mold, disgusting, but less so considering a few weeks ago it had been fully eaten and desiccated but was slowly recovering more every visit, how though?

Harmony gritted her teeth until they hurt. That’s what her thoughts had been on as she sat in Maekus’s office, wondering if the apple had been a gift, a clue to how she could potentially use her revivalist class. She had to rip her attention away from the actuality of the memory to the periphery.  “This is not a disciplinary hearing. From your description of the incident, Flint probably blames himself for not having taken enough precautions when handling forbidden materials. Your secrets are probably safe, if inquiries are made, [Two Against the End] famously overpowers skills.”

Not the words. Focus on what was around Von Trell. Somewhere in the mess was his calendar with his schedule. She spotted words on objects, but all from the angle she was sitting at, often obscured by the apple or Maekus’s face. Keaton… shipping… no Shipment. Something about a red foot.  If only she could…  Tapping into, not the skill of [Stride Before the Fall], but the mental experience of separating herself, Harmony stood up and ripped herself from the seated position she had been in during the meeting, allowing her mind to extrapolate what  things should look like from a different angle.  It wasn’t comfortable, but being able to move freely might make it easier.

“Harmony, you shouldn’t think about me too hard.”

Maekus Von Trell’s directed voice nearly had her jumping back into her body. The memory of him had even shifted to stare at her. “What?” Harmony asked.

“I can’t see what you’re thinking, but clearly it is about me. I have this ability. It’s quite useful when approved persons need to contact me. Also, for keeping track of enemies or those who really want to kill you.  Cream or chocolate? Never mind, I’ll head your way soon. Just stop thinking about me, return to what you were doing. These thoughts are making my tailbone itch.”  The memory copy twitched back into place.

Sure, return, that was something she’d learned. She’d died as a copy last time, and it had been a panicked emergency that forced her into this mentally constructed office to get this information. Breathe, she felt her lungs inhale and exhale, as they still existed, like all her skills, all her soul, all of her body. None of these were a mental construct; she needed an anchor outside. Following [Familiar Bond], she traced her connection back to Hyacinth. Who begrudgingly gave her a little tug out of her trance.

“Harmony!” Adric screamed into her face, his worried eyes on the cocoon that was starting to glow faintly.

“Help is coming.” She assured him.

Not soon enough, as Alex fought the silence and forced himself into a standing position, his body transformed into that of the bear. A roar vibrated the air in the room [Friendships Call]. It was one of the bear skills they hadn’t quite figured out yet in training. With that, he pitched forward and collapsed into a furry pile on the floor.

Two black swirling portals appeared in the air. One dropped a very wet and naked Xera with a bathtub's amount of water on the ground, and the other, a fully suited Tun-Knee, claws out, ready to strike. The portals snapped shut.

A very inconvenient time to get the answer to what the bear’s mystery ability did. Not like Harmony needed a magical way to call the rest of her team here at this very moment. Harmony grappled with salvaging the scene even as she mentally adjusted to what she’d just done to herself.

The ripped clothes and floor rug around the cocoon burst into flame from the heat, and Adric grabbed the nearest object, a towel, from the kitchen, swatting at the flame in his already half-naked, panicked state.

Xera screamed, trying to cover herself.

The tiger kept his claws out, confused.

Hyacinth the stinker couldn’t help but chuckle at Hyarmony’s irritation despite this being a serious situation. “He he he.”

Chaos everywhere as Reality ripped and spread in a fissure as Maekus Von Trell stepped into the room carrying a box filled with pastries.  There, he froze with as perplexed a look on his face as he could have. “Is this a bad time?” He asked.

“Wait!” Harmony cried when it looked like he might depart. “I really need your help.”  Asking was hard. Asking amidst the embarrassing chaos made it harder. This wasn’t her life on the line, and Maekus, for all he was capricious, unknown, and a touch off, he was also old, knowledgeable, and available if he was willing. If there were a price for his help, she was willing to pay.

“Go on.” He answered

The quick explanation of what happened also filled in Tun-Knee and Xera, who, still soggy, got wrapped up in the singed towel.  Harmony kept the points as salient as possible as the fire still burned and the heat rose in the room. She hadn’t put it out with [Cold Touch] for fear that it needed to happen, despite the disconcerting roasting smell.

Maekus kept his eyes on the cocoon with pursed lips as she talked. “It’s definitely time to break out the apes.”