Chapter 7 Snow And Ravens #2
Caelum knew if he turned his head the other direction, he’d see the snow-covered hill leading to the colleges, with Grathrock being the closest. He might even see Alaric and Leda’s footprints left in the snow as they made their way back to Valarian.
But thinking about Leda just got his blood pressure up again.
It wasn’t even primarily because he’d found her and Alaric in his bed (although he still had words to say about THAT, and not only to fucking Greythorne, who was damned lucky he hadn’t been dangled out of the tower by his neck).
He’d never gotten so much as a moment alone with her, and he could feel not only his body and mind screaming about that, but his magic.
In fact, his magic screamed loudest of all.
He could feel that familiar ache building in his chest, along with a near-panic that disturbed him even more.
It reminded him of how he’d felt as a child, if he went too long without one of Blackstone’s magic suppression potions.
It crawled beneath his skin the same way.
Worse, it felt related to things around being left alone in that fucking stone hole as a child.
Did Shadow calm his magic more than he realized? Not just by helping him drain it, but by actually helping him manage it in some way?
She certainly did something to it.
He strongly suspected Leda was the reason his father hadn’t been able to get to his magic for the Sanctum Occulus job.
Malefic ranted that morning about Caelum finding some way to “thwart” or “block” him from accessing his magic, but Caelum hadn’t done anything.
Not consciously, at least. The only thing that had been different was Leda.
Caelum didn’t understand it. He couldn’t explain it, but his gut told him it was the only answer that made sense.
His father had known, too.
Guessed, at least.
Although Caelum knew he should be horrified by that, and even more worried for her, somehow his magic absorbed that information differently.
All his magic wanted was for him to merge their magic together, and fuck until both of them were hallucinating.
He almost had to admire his magic’s single-minded indifference to their lives being actively in danger.
The thought of that, again, instead of horrifying him, made him shiver.
He still hadn’t even had an opportunity to properly thank her for saving his life.
He stretched his leg out straight again, and grimaced.
When he glanced at Blackstone, the old fuck was still screwing around with his cauldron.
Apparently he wasn’t going to talk to him, not willingly at least. Was there a reason, something to do with the Golden Sun?
Or had Caelum finally managed to do the thing he’d thought impossible?
After all of these years, had he actually pissed the old bastard off?
A soft hmmpf reached his ears and he turned to find Blackstone looking over one of his narrow shoulders at him.
His long, black hair fell well down his back, reminding Caelum of his father briefly, partly from the angle, although their hair couldn’t be more different.
Whereas Malefic’s was so straight it could have been ironed, Blackstone’s was thicker, and had heavy waves he controlled with some kind of smoothing product.
Unlike his father, Caelum had also never seen Blackstone wear his hair tied back, despite all the time he spent hanging over boiling cauldrons, not to mention the delicate work of constructing talismans.
Talismans were how Blackstone made his name in the academic world.
His were subtle, ingenious, unique, and often deadly.
Blackstone, Caelum happened to know, was an Oracle.
It was a fact few knew, even around Malcroix Bones, at least by the students who didn’t work under him directly.
Because Blackstone didn’t work primarily in the traditional forms of Seer Arts, most assumed him to be a ordinary mage, if an eccentric one.
Professor Vivian Underwood was thought to be the only Oracle among the regular faculty.
The other professors likely knew.
Many steered clear of Blackstone, Caelum had noticed.
But Blackstone had been in his, Caelum’s life, for as long as he could remember.
The long, delicate, eerily pale fingers plucked a half-constructed talisman off a shelf and fingered over it carefully.
It appeared to be made primarily of cat bones, possibly those of a wild cat.
It also contained a raven feather, a polished black stone with a hieroglyph for Osiris, something black and dried that Caelum’s magic told him had been a living heart once (another bird?
a drakai? possibly the cat’s?), and molten gold.
He wondered what purpose the gold served on the talisman.
Was it the same purpose it served on his chest? Another bridge?
Or was it some kind of protective function?
Blackstone’s protective talismans were infamous and particularly dangerous.
The serious ones could kill anyone who tried to harm the person or thing they protected.
Other creations of his reputedly had the ability to drive their targets slowly mad, or cause them to fall in love––lust, at least––or its opposite.
They could instill hostility in a Magical towards another person, or even towards an idea.
Some talismans could create suggestive dreams.
Others tormented their targets with nightmares that left them sleepless and neurotic, or with phobias they found difficult to shake.
Most variations were generally meant to shift the mental frame of their targets in small or large ways, so really, it wasn’t all that strange that an Oracle might be particularly gifted with them.
Talismans might look harmless, but they could be, and often were, extremely dangerous. When made by a master crafter like Blackstone, that danger went up exponentially.
They were highly regulated, as a result.
Many of those types for which Blackstone had became famous were illegal to purchase, and could only be constructed inside research environments, like this one.
Blackstone had put down the talisman though, and walked to his raven.
He stroked the bird’s back, feeding it what looked like half an unshelled walnut.
Whatever it was, the raven took it greedily in its black beak, set it carefully on the iron bar to grip it between its toes, then began attacking the shell with sharp, stabbing jabs to get at the nut inside.
Caelum watched it, fascinated, then glanced at Blackstone.
The Oracle was staring at Caelum’s leg where he’d stretched it out, a faint furrow in his brow. From the way he stared, Caelum suspected the mage used more than his eyes.
He wondered, not for the first time, just how old Blackstone was.
Magicals aged differently, depending on their castes.
Supposedly Oracles and Obeah lived longer than regular Wizards, while Warlocks tended to average out at roughly thirty to forty years fewer.
Speculation remained that Warlock lifespan averages were distorted by how they generally lived, but supposedly, even in surveys where data controlled for military and other dangerous occupations, they still didn’t live as long.
Regular Magicals tended to top out somewhere between two hundred and fifty to two hundred and eighty years.
Warlocks rarely lived over two hundred and twenty, assuming they survived their occupations.
Oracles and Obeah, on the other hand, had been documented to live more than three hundred years.
Supposedly there had been documented cases of Oracles whose lifespans surpassed three hundred and thirty solar years.
Blackstone had to be over a hundred, didn’t he?
According to Caelum’s father, Corvid Blackstone looked old back when he’d been in school.
Malefic had to be over sixty himself, (not like he’d ever admitted his true age to his son), which was still considered young for a mage, but also meant Blackstone had to be well over eighty when he’d taught the Bones patriarch at Malcroix.
The tall, specter-like professor stood maybe six and a half feet tall, with dark, reddish-tinged skin and that thick, black hair, which fell in perfect waves from a center part.
His hair and skin tone contrasted markedly with his milky-blue and strangely opaque eyes, which shone with their own opalescent sheen, and always seemed to glow from their deep-set sockets.
His eyes had always struck Caelum as both blind-looking and like they could see directly through his skull.
He’d never met another Magical with such preternatural stillness.
Blackstone stared at Caelum now from by his raven’s iron perch, long hands folded at the base of his spine over a knee-length black coat with black embroidered detail along the lapels.
As was usual with him, he wore silver jewelry around one ear that ended with a spike through the cartilage on top.
That same piece snaked around the back of his ear and along the edges, decorated in green stones that looked like emeralds.
He’d always struck Caelum as somehow elven in appearance, even though Caelum had always understood elves to be purely a myth. Unlike centaurs or giants or faeries the size of full-grown Magicals, elves weren’t extinct but had never existed at all.
Blackstone cleared his throat, pulling Caelum’s eyes back to his.
Those blind, milky-blue eyes analyzed him from across the room.
“You look calmer now,” Blackstone observed.
Caelum frowned, assessed his own mental state, and immediately grew suspicious. He cast out a net of his magic, looking around at Blackstone’s workspace. As soon as he had, he found the source of his sudden “calm.”