Fallen Mage Regressor

The world shrunk to a fine pinprick.

Lusia’s body shuddered. Her skin faded from its healthy pallor to a pale white in a few seconds.

Mal blinked and the setting had changed. He was no longer in his dorm room. Instead, he was inside of a castle of black stone, torchlight the only source of illumination. A woman lied on the ground in front of him, blood pooling beneath her, expanding across her clothes and soaking it like red dye.

He forced away the image and blinked again. Back in reality.

He dropped to his knees, his heart pounding in his chest at a rapid pace. He brought his ear to Lusia’s lips.

Breathing. But it was shallow, weak.

He checked her pulse. Fluttery, mistimed, not the steady drumbeat that it was supposed to be.

This was his fault. Why had he been so foolish? Why hadn’t he done more research—no, he’d done the research, and they’d said that all of the risk was on the brewer, not on the receiver. If anything was going to go wrong, it should have gone wrong while the infusion had been in the process of going.

I don’t have time for this, I need to stabilize her! he thought.

But how? Could he go to the clinic? No, she was getting weaker by the second.

The handful of minutes it would take to find Cassandra might be enough to kill Lusia. And besides, there was no guarantee that Cassandra would have the ingredients needed to cure something of this specific of a niche.

Mal was on his own. He would have to use whatever resources he had available to him to save Lusia.

He stared at her rapidly paling skin. In the handful of seconds that he’d been thinking through what to do, her condition had already become noticeably worse.

She’s going to die, he thought. She’s going to die, again, and it’ll be my fault again!

In the back of his head, the words repeated themselves, insidious and low. My fault. My fault. My fault. My fault. My fault—

He needed a way to see what was happening inside of her. He needed to know what was going on. How was the potion affecting her?

He glanced over at the flecks of mana floating in the air.

If he could just see. If his vision was just sharper.

The light of the mana flecks grew brighter, all of them, around him.

What?

He stiffened. He willed the light to grow even brighter.

He focused on his eyes, trying to force the sensitivity to go up. The light turned even more blinding than it normally was, to the point where he had to instinctively shut his eyes.

Mal could manipulate the sensitivity manually. Under normal circumstances, this would be cause for celebration. Right now, he was mostly focused on how it could help Lusia.

He turned his vision back to her and forced his sensitivity as high as he could. The light from the mana around her grew brighter. Even so, he was still able to make out something else, beyond the light.

Inside of her body, mana was flowing.

There were two competing streams of energy flowing through her body. A bright golden yellow mana that he’d never seen before, and the red infernal mana that had been supposed to unlock and modify her core.

The two streams were slamming into each other and flaring brightly whenever they met. It was like a small war was going on inside of Lusia’s body. It was that golden energy. Mal had no idea what it was, but it was fighting the infernal mana and that was the cause of their current set of problems.

Mal had to get the mana out of her body.

But how? How was he supposed to do something like that?

Desperate for any solution, he grabbed her fingertips and tried to enforce his will over the mana in her body. It was the equivalent of trying to draw water through the world’s longest straw. In theory, it might have been possible. But in practice, there was no way it was going to happen. Even so, Mal tugged and tugged with every bit of magical muscle he’d built up in this body.

Nothing. Not a single twitch from the other end.

Lusia let out a pained wheeze.

His eyes widened and he hurried to her side.

”Lusia?” He pressed his hand against her cheek to make her look at him. ”Lusia, I need you to focus. Remember the exercises we did where you learned how to manipulate mana?”

No response.

”We’re going to have to do the opposite. Instead of me pushing mana into you and you moving it around, I need you to push the mana into me. I’ll be pulling it in on my end, but I need you to concentrate.”

A few moments of silence.

A weak nod.

He grabbed her hand and pulled with his mind.

”That’s it, Lusia,” he muttered. ”Stay awake, focus on your mana flow.”

She didn’t respond.

Mal’s heart beat faster and faster inside of his chest.

She was trying—he could see that she was pushing as hard as she could in Mal’s direction.

But either because of skill or weakness, it wasn’t moving fast enough.

Her breath stopped for several seconds longer than before and Mal almost thought she’d died before the breath came back in and he felt his own lungs respond in turn.

Mal was completely out of options.

No.

There was one last move he could make.

The link between him and the dark forces of the world was still there. The encounter in the library had proven it.

He shut his eyes and took his hand away from Lusia’s.

“I know you can hear me,” he whispered. “I know you’re there.”

A beat of silence.

A cold whisper from behind his left ear.

“I thought you’d never ask,”

Mal had promised himself that he wouldn’t do this. That he wouldn’t dabble in dark magic. That he’d picked a different path.

But if it was his dignity or Lusia’s life, Lusia would win every time.

“So you attempted a core modification ritual?” the voice whispered behind his left ear. “Searching through your memories, it seems like you did everything right.”

Mal wanted to grumble about Golial searching through his head, but he knew that it was needed for Golial to provide advice and help.

Besides, if Mal really wanted, he could have found some way to push Golial out.

“So then the complicating factor has to be Lusia herself.”

A soft hum.

“Indeed. But it can’t be her hollow core. Open your eyes, let me take a look,” Golial said.

Mal complied and the world and his vision was flooded with light.

He scanned Lusia’s body, going slowly to give Golial plenty of time to categorize and absorb the information.

A chuckle.

Then a laugh.

Then full-blown howling.

“You idiot!” Golial shouted. “Did you—you’re really helping her? Her, of all people?!”

“We don’t have time for this.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just—” Golial let out a few more cackles. “Seriously, what are you thinking? Is this a part of some sort of plan? Are you trying to turn her?”

“I’m just repaying a debt. And I fail to see what’s so funny.”

“Mal, Mal, Mal.” Golial’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You can fool everyone else. You can even fool yourself. But you can’t fool me. You know exactly who she is. Maybe not up in your head, but deep down in your heart you have to know who she is.”

Mal slammed his palm against the ground and a growl ripped out of his throat.

“I don’t care about who she is, or who she’s going to become, or a damn thing you’re talking about,” he said between gritted teeth. “I want an answer. How can I help her?”

“You had the right idea,” Golial said. “Dragging out the complicating infernal-type mana. Unfortunately, neither of you have the strength to actually execute it.

“Right now. But if I’m willing to make a sacrifice—”

“You’ll have to move fast. And it’ll be a terrible ritual. You’ll be shaving years off your life for a temporary boost in power.”

“I don’t care, feed me the information.”

Bits of knowledge floated into Mal’s head and instantly assembled itself into a completed ritual.

Dark magic. The sort that deals with souls. Thankfully, it would only be his own, and not Lusia’s.

“No questions about if you can trust me?” Golial asked.

“I already know you don’t lie,” Mal said. “It’s the one rule you’ve ever followed.”

Mal got to the ground and wrote out a ritual circle using a piece of chalk that he had on the table. He gently lifted Lusia up and onto the circle.

She wasn’t going to be a sacrifice, nor would any of the magic touch her. It was only to assist in the transfer of energy later on.

He touched his hands to the ritual circle.

Pain shot up his spine like a knife through his nerves. Purple lightning crackled along his hands and up to his shoulders. Abruptly, he felt a strong increase in his mana-pulling ability.

He grabbed Lusia’s hand and tugged.

The infernal mana ripped out of her hand and into Mal’s own body. Hurriedly, he expelled it through his shoulders and red mist filled the air.

Inch by inch, bit by bit, he systematically moved the infernal mana out of her body, into his own, and into the air.

After a minute, it was over. He slumped over and sweat splattered from his forehead against the ground.

Her fingers twitched. The pale whiteness of her cheeks and hands began to color and turn back to normal.

Relief crashed into him.

“She’s fine now, right?” he whispered.

“That’ll cost you. I was willing to lend you a freebie before, but—”

“Never mind. Screw off.”

“Is that any way to treat someone who just helped you save someone’s life?”

Mal wanted to retort, but couldn’t say anything. Without Golial, Lusia would have died.

“—Master?”

Lusia tilted her head and blinked her eyes like they had lead weights attached to them. “What happened?” she said. “Was it a success?”

Mal’s jaw flapped open and shut.

By any conceivable metric, it was almost certain that the attempt had been a failure.

All of that anguish, all of that struggle, all of that fear—and it had been for nothing.

He took a deep breath and averted his eyes. “I... I’m sorry, Lusia—”

She suddenly jerked up into a sitting position, eyes as wide as frying pans.

“Lusia?” Mal gripped her shoulders and shook her.

“Lusia, what is it? Are you hurting? Maybe there’s still more infernal mana left in you—”

She slowly shook her head and stared down at her hand. “Do you always feel like this?” she said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Like there’s a storehouse of energy inside of you. Life, breathing in and out and flowing through your veins.”

“Lusia, what are you saying?”

She didn’t answer. She held out her palm facing upward and furrowed her eyebrows.

Mal saw the mana shift through her body and approach her hand.

His mouth went dry and goosebumps ran down his back.

A small golden orb appeared on her palm.

An arcane sphere.

Lusia squeezed her fist and the golden sphere disappeared. She opened up her fist again and another arcane sphere appeared in its place.

It was the only source of illumination in her dorm room. She was supposed to be asleep, but instead, she was huddled underneath her sheets and repeatedly casting the spell over and over and over.

Her master had decided to help her practice the arcane sphere spell until she had it down reliably. He’d explained that from what he could tell, her core was still “stabilizing,” as her mana signature seemed to be unstable and constantly shifting. He suspected that regular usage of her core would likely help in this stabilization process.

When Lusia had asked what this meant, he explained that what it came down to was that there was no telling how powerful she would be. This was only a taste of magic.

But how delicious this taste was. It was more than Lusia could have ever dreamed of. It was intoxicating. It was the greatest gift that anyone had ever given her.

Unbidden, her thoughts wandered back to the feeling of Mal’s fingers intertwined with her own.

She tried to push away the image, but it kept on coming back over and over. The warmth of his hands seemed to be inscribed on her very heart.

And she didn’t quite understand why.

It was rather annoying to be so focused on such a meaningless interaction. What was it about his warmth that seemed to be so debilitating toward her mind?

The arcane sphere in her hand sputtered and died as soon as her focus shifted.

She would have to figure out why exactly her mind was doing this to her, but that was for a later date.

She lied back in her bed and shut her eyes.

She was going to be a wizard.

She was going to be a magic user.

And it was all thanks to her master.

Her master, and that strange circle he’d written on the floor.

I should look up and research what that was, she thought.

But I shouldn’t bother Master about it. He pushed himself so hard for my sake.

Yes, she would indulge her curiosity, but without bothering him. She owed him enough.

Her thoughts drifted away and she found herself falling asleep.