~Chapter Thirty: Celebration~

Eola did, in fact, smell like death. Worse than death; the spell she’d built had protected her nose from the worst of it, but the unmistakable odor of skunk, overcooked broccoli, and her uncle’s hunting clothes after a week of stalking trogs hung around her. Worse, her heartbeat was still out of control, pounding away in her chest.

She’d won.

She’d planned to win. She’d done everything in her power to set herself up for a victory. Her spell research—and her friends’ help—had been invaluable in that regard. Without them, she’d never have figured out the exact sequence of spells and actions to survive the spell-trading. But even armed with all those tools, she hadn’t expected to actually win.

She fled the dueling pitch, heading not for her dormitory room’s shower, but for the locker room just outside the library. There were a handful of showers there, and it’d mean trailing her…unique…perfume through the halls for less time. She found a stall, stripped down, and let the frigid water run over her hair and back for as long as she could stand, scrubbing the scent magic’s residue off of her.

She’d won!

As the stench slowly retreated against the relentless assault of cold water and plain soap, Eola thought back to the fight—and specifically, to Catrine’s accusation of theft. She’d known that some noble houses had ideograms they considered to be their family’s, and their family’s alone—Lord Card of Greenarbor had three individual spells, if rumors were to be believed—but she certainly hadn’t attempted to steal House Andrese’s magic. And she definitely hadn’t gotten it from Patrice. No, that was all her hard work, and no one else’s.

She turned the rusty valve that cut off the flow of water, cracked the curtain enough to reach for a towel, and took it. Then she froze. She hadn’t brought a towel—or a change of clothing.

“For a genius at runes, you’re kind of bird-brained, aren’t you?” Patrice asked.

“Y’aer curse it!” Eola jumped a little behind the curtain, and her towel dropped to the floor.

“Don’t move. I’ll get it.” A moment later, Patrice’s hand snaked through the curtain, holding the towel.

Eola grabbed it and furiously scrubbed herself dry, then stared at the curtain. The last thing she wanted was to have to put on her stench-filled—

“I brought you a new set.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Of course. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you’d actually win. Catrine’s been holding back in Magical Dueling.” Footsteps echoed across the washroom, then stopped. “I’ll wait outside. Instructor Tarik wants to see you when you’re presentable. He’ll be in his office. And we’ll take your clothes to the laundry on the way there. I have no idea what to do with your breastplate. At least it’s metal, so it shouldn’t hold the stink too bad.”

Then, just like that, Patrice was gone.

Eola finished drying off, changed into the robes, cloak, and leggings Patrice had definitely gotten from her room without asking permission, and bundled her filthy clothes up. The reeking pile of cloth went on her armor, and she picked the whole thing up, nose wrinkling. Patrice was right; the breastplate would need some special attention.

But still…she’d won!

Thirty minutes later, Instructor Tarik wrinkled his nose slightly as Eola stepped into his office and took her seat. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“I did.” The professor steepled his fingers over a half-graded rune sketch. One eyebrow raised. “First, congratulations on your victory. It’s not often that House Andrese loses a duel of honor. They’ve managed to leverage that spell of theirs into a rather large amount of political power amongst the Governing Lords.”

“Thank you.”

“Second, I insist we discuss the spell you used during the spell-trading.”

Eola remembered Instructor Tarik’s face after the duel. He’d looked confused, and he’d stared at her the entire time until she’d left. “It’s…complicated.”

“It’s more than that. I don’t understand what you cast.” Tarik rubbed his eyes, lowered his hands, and locked eyes with Eola. “I’m the Ideograms professor at Varin’s Academy, and I have no idea what you cast. Please draw the spell for me. I…I need to understand.”

Well…the professor had been her ally so far, and he’d helped her with not only the duel, but also with her magic and with avoiding expulsion over her lack of ability. Eola blew air through her lips, then started talking, voice low. “To explain it, I need to start with what Patrice told me—the basics of House Andrese’s scent attunement. Once I knew that, I started to tinker with a piece of Child’s Magic from my spellbook. It was a spell I’d learned from watching a duel in Greenarbor. All I did was add and subtract modifying marks from it until I had the most disgusting-looking First Order scent magic I could imagine—at least on paper.”

“You…reverse-engineered the House Andrese spell?”

“Did I?” Eola asked. “Is that…good?”

“It’s…I wouldn’t call it good or bad. It represents a shift in how you see ideograms, however. Could you…no, never mind. I’m not here to ask about that process. So, you built a horrifying stink-bomb. Then what?”

“Then, I spent three days working on the opposing spell for it.”

“Show me what you came up with.” Instructor Tarik slid a pen and bottle of ink her way, then unfurled a piece of parchment.

Eola sighed, dipped her pen into the ink, and got to work. “The basic premise was as follows, sir. I needed a spell that shielded my mouth and nose so I wouldn’t taste or smell what Catrine was doing. I’d learned the Child’s Magic from my father. It needed to activate when I needed it, to only affect me, and to activate twice to protect me during the later part of the duel. The modifying mark selection was easy, but creating a spell-chain that wouldn’t completely drain me was harder.” As she talked, she sketched out the symbols she’d used.

“So, you purpose-built a spell? And it was expensive, I assume?”

“Very. I followed up with Bright Ball instead of something useful because I didn’t have enough Mana left to cast a good spell.” Eola finished, turned the parchment around, and slid it back toward Instructor Tarik.

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“I see.” He stared at the page for a full minute, then shook his head. “How much Mana do you have?”

“At the midterms, I could fill eight bars and part of the ninth.”

“That’s ridiculously inefficient. But…”

“But what, sir?” Eola asked.

“If you could solve Miss Andrese’s spell and create opposed magic in three days, could you also develop an answer to another mage in a similar time limit, given their spell and a base cantrip?” Instructor Tarik asked.

Eola hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m not very good at magic.”

“Y’aer save me from foolish students,” Tarik muttered. “Eola Lemiene, you are a prodigy at magic. What you’re doing is—or should be—impossible. I’m an eleventh-bar archmage. I can sketch three ideograms that would drain seven bars of Mana to cast, and they’re all Third Order. Your soul is already prodigious. Further, countermagic only exists if you know your opponent’s spell and have a spell that opposes theirs. What you’re doing is the closest to true counterspells that I’ve seen.”

For a moment, the room was silent. Eola’s mind was on what Instructor Tarik had said. He was right. The cost of casting her spells was too high. But she didn’t see a good way to fix that, and both she and Colin had been working on it.

“Keep me updated on your magical research, Miss Lemiene,” Instructor Tarik said as the silence stretched awkwardly. His rabbit lifted its head and stared at Eola, and she glanced away. “You’re making progress, and that progress could give us insights into the stale magic problem. You’ll be by tomorrow for grading, correct?”

“Yes, sir.” Eola stood and slipped out of the room. It was only when she was halfway back to her dorm that she realized a tin of cookies had been sitting, open, on Instructor Tarik’s desk.

By the time Eola got back to her room, locked the door, and let her shoulders slump as she slid her cloak off, her stomach was in full rebellion. She’d had the opportunity for cookies, and she’d completely missed it.

At least her suite mates seemed to be out, giving her a moment to breathe.

She collapsed in her chair and stared at the mess on her desk. Parchment covered every inch of wood, and a half-cleaned ink spill had dripped onto the floor—in her haste to get the spell figured out, Eola had sacrificed cleanliness, and now that the duel was over and done with, she didn’t have the energy to tidy up after her past self. Instead, she sat there, arms hanging loosely from her shoulders, and closed her eyes.

“You’re not going to thank me? That’s rude, you know.” Atta bounded down from the loft, landing in the middle of the parchment and sending it flying. She lay down, right in the middle of the ink spill, and stared up at Eola. “I did help you win that duel, after all!”