Fallen Mage Regressor

"Can you explain to me how exactly digging up animal manure is supposed to help me develop my witchcraft?"

A puff of smoke.

"What, do you plan to steal herbs for my garden every time you want to make a brew? You're gonna have to start a garden eventually."

"Okay, but what does manure have to do with that?"

When Mal had shown up for after-hours lessons with Cassandra (wow, that sounded awful), he thought that they'd do more leaf plucking. Instead, Cassandra had grabbed a coat and walked toward the entrance, then asked him if he was coming. Mal, unsure and confused, shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

The next thing he knew, they were in a pigpen out behind someone's butcher shop.

Well, he was. Cassandra was outside and seemingly as far away as she could get from the filth. She told him to take a wheelbarrow, a shovel, and get to work.

"For your information," she said. "That manure is full of all sorts of nutrients that'll make your plants grow up nice and healthy."

"I'm just supposed to dump crap onto my plants?"

His nose twitched as he caught a whiff of the strong scent. Mal didn't know much about gardening, but this seemed kinda crazy.

"You're actually about 50% right, brat." Cassandra put a dollop of oil onto her finger and dabbed it under her nose. "As it is now, that stuff would be like poison for your plants. You'll need to break it down over the next six months."

"How? Is there a spell or something I can use?"

She scoffed. "There are shortcuts, but you're going to learn how to do it the good old-fashioned way."

"And what exactly is this good old-fashioned way?"

"Composting, of course."

Mal vaguely remembered the term from one or two books that he'd read, but he'd never seen it in action.

"You're gonna have to explain to me how exactly that works," Mal said.

She shrugged.

"It's really not that hard to figure out. You basically want to take waste products—food scraps, manure, dying green things in general—and mix it together in a heap with some dryer, bulkier things like twigs, bark, and straw. The decomposition process should start breaking it down and turning it all into one big pile of dirt."

"If I want dirt, couldn't I just go out of the city and get some?"

She scoffed and waved him off.

"The kind of plants you're going to be growing are gonna need soil that's top-quality and packed with as much life as you can put into it. Do you really want to invest dozens of hours taking care of a rare plant, only for it to die because you weren't willing to give it some decent soil?"

"And there really isn't any kind of spell that can speed things along? There's no weird witchcraft brew that will give me good soil with minimum effort?"

She pulled away her pipe and gave him a level stare.

"Malfrasius," she said. "You have to remember that witchcraft is about working with nature, not against it. There are things like that, I'll admit. But you've got to get a deep understanding of how these processes work without magic. You need that understanding if you want to make progress in witchcraft. That's just how it is. There are no shortcuts for that—if you wanted those, you should've stuck to wizardry."

Mal clicked his tongue, but didn't argue any further. The whole philosophy still bugged him, but then again—there seemed to be some degree of truth to what she was saying, given his magnificent failure with harvesting those leaves from that plant.

Cassandra shuffled on her feet and awkwardly looked away.

"I will admit that this is my least favorite part of the process." She shivered. "All of those diseases and germs. One wrong move while doing this could get it onto you."

An evil grin flashed on Mal's face. She paled.

"Don't you dare —!"

Mal flicked his shovel in Cassandra's direction. There was very little manure left, only a little amount on the tip of the shovel.

Nonetheless, that was enough. It flew through the air and landed with a splat on the edge of her leather jacket.

She stared at the stain. The alley was silent.

Faster than he'd ever seen her move before, she tossed the jacket off of her and jumped backwards by several feet. She held out her hand and a ball of fire appeared in front of her. It launched forward and crashed into the jacket, lighting it and turning it into ashes in seconds, nothing remaining but a pile of ashes.

Mal stared at the remains of the jacket. He'd been expecting an irritated response, but that was way beyond what he thought would happen.

She turned and looked at him, and the expression in her eyes made even him a little fearful.

She held up her hand, then another spell materialized into existence—this one a set of blades of mana infused with water.

A droplet of sweat rolled down Mal's back.

It was in that moment that he knew he'd messed up.

After barely surviving his teacher's murder attempts, the two made their way back to the school. Mal was pushing a wheelbarrow containing a mixture of manure, banana peels, and some spinach that had turned a weird color after being left outside for too long. The sun had long since set and they were more or less the only people on the street, save for a handful of pedestrians and the occasional carriage. Cassandra was instructing him on how to build a composting bin when he yawned into his hand.

"What, are my instructions that boring?" Cassandra glared at him. "You should consider yourself lucky that I'm even talking to you after what you did to my jacket, brat."

"I didn't do anything to your jacket!" Mal said. "You were the one who set it on fire!"

"What, did you think that it was still wearable after you put that substance onto it?" She gagged. "Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous."

Mal rolled his eyes and focused on taking one step after another. His eyes were drooping and his legs felt like jelly.

Cassandra continued to look at him as they walked. Her frown grew sharper and sharper with every second that passed.

"Seriously, what's with you? I didn't notice before, but you look absolutely exhausted." She chewed her lips. Her tone grew quieter and she seemed to be talking to herself. "Have I been pushing you too hard? You've been having to show up pretty late —"

Mal shook his head. "It's not it. The lessons have been great. You're probably the best teacher that I've ever had, honestly. If anything, I wish that we had more time to work together."

At that, Cassandra's eyes widened and she looked away.

Mal looked over at her in confusion. Had he said something?

"Good," she said. "That's good. That you're getting value out of this, you know?" She shook her head back and forth. "But my point still stands. You look like crap."

Mal wanted to explain the fact that he was a little bit worried about how one of his circle mates might potentially be part of the Bird Eaters, and how he had found out that two students were either pretending to be or were junior members of the Bird Eaters. But he felt that such a topic would be far too heavy to spring onto the woman out of nowhere. Besides, better to avoid linking himself to the situation and raising questions about what he was doing.

Instead, he went with something a little bit lighter.

"I've been having migraines in the middle of the night," Mal said. "The pain relief tea that you've given me has been really helpful, but I think I'm starting to build up a little bit of an immunity, of course."

Cassandra clicked her tongue. "Dammit, how could I have missed that? Of course you're dealing with that, your mana sensitivity is ungodly."

"On the plus side, it's very easy to see when people have started casting a spell," Mal said. "Which is way too unfair of an advantage. But the downsides are pretty sucky."

"I can imagine." Her face scrunched up and she crossed her arms. "Just to double check, you don't experience that kind of pain in my greenhouse or in my home, right?"

Mal was about to shake his head when he stopped and nodded. "Come to think of it, you're right. Whenever I'm in either of those two places, I don't feel that kind of pain."

"Part of it is the plants that I have in both of those places," she said. "Remember, plants give off aligned mana. Aligned mana and unaligned mana repel each other."

"So if I do the gardening thing inside of my room, that should give me some relief?"

"It will. But in the meantime, there's something else that you can do—actually, you should make it a habit, it'll make the plants' job easier. It'll make them grow better too, if you're going to set them up indoors."

Mal tilted his head. "What's this technique you're talking about?"

She looked away from him and stared around the street. Her eyes locked onto a broom to the side of some person's doorway. She walked away from him, grabbed the broom, and threw it at him. Mal snatched it out of the air and raised an eyebrow.

"Why did you just steal that person's broom?" he asked.

Cassandra walked back over to them and flipped a coin behind her to the place where she had taken the broom from. "You need it more than he does."

"What exactly am I supposed to do with a broom?"

"When was the last time you cleaned your room?"

Mal's breath caught in his throat. "Uh —"

"Never, got it." She nodded. "That right there is how you're going to purify your room. It's real simple. All you have to do is flood the broom with your internal mana and start sweeping. Do that with any cleaning utensils you use from now on. It should eject the excess aligned mana along with getting rid of any general bad juju."

Mal stared at her, then the broom, then back at her. He held her gaze for what felt like a full minute before he finally spoke.

"You're screwing with me," he said.

"Not in the slightest. It's a proven technique. Of course, you could probably make do with your hands or something, but that's trickier and unnecessarily difficult."

Mal put the broom perpendicular to his grip on the wheelbarrow, awkwardly holding both. "Fine, I'll give it a shot."

"That's all I ask."

She stepped forward like she was about to start heading back to the school with him when she stopped.

"One more thing," she said. "You've been doing a good job so far. I think you deserve a reward."

Mal perked up. He could get behind a reward.

Cassandra reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a sealed brown packet. Mal took it from her and inspected it. There were no markings on it save for 'NL' written in black ink on the front.

"What is this?" Mal asked.

"Dried Nettleleaf. Not super rare, but definitely uncommon."

"What does it do?"

"Lots of things. The main selling point is that it's one of the few plants in the world that has blood type mana."

"Is this like a test and there's some kind of secret super cool thing you want me to brew? Because if that's the case, I'd rather you just tell me."

She rolled her eyes and stuffed her hands into her pockets.

"No," she said. "Trust me, I've had that sort of teacher—I don't want to be like that. It really is just a cool gift. Eat it, make a tea out of it, use it for your compost—I really don't care. Just use it for something, don't let it sit on your shelf. Even though it's dried, it still loses its essence over time."

Mal put it into a pocket in his robes. "Understood. I'm sure I'll be able to find a use for it."

She glanced up at the moon. "It's almost the Worm Moon—third month of the year. The spring equinox. You should do a ritual, or at least meditate."

Mal turned and gave her a look.

She sighed. "I swear, you're going to be like this for every new thing I try to teach you."

"Can you blame me? Even you've got to admit some of what you say sounds pretty insane."

"There's nothing insane about it! These are techniques that have been passed down from mother to daughter for generations!"

The two argued for the rest of the way back to school.

It was strange, but Mal had to admit he hadn't had so much fun in a long time.

By the time Mal returned back to his dormitory, it was well into midnight. He found himself thankful for the fact that there was no curfew—though he did receive a strange look from the Keepers who'd been stationed at the front gates.

As he approached the door, he immediately caught sight of black ash on the ground. There were footprints leading away from the door—two sets. He sniffed the air and noticed a burning smell.

A small, tight frown appeared on his face. He reached his hand out for the doorknob and opened it.

Nima jumped up like a bunny. Around him, the few possessions that they had in the living room had been wrecked. The table was in shambles and one of the chairs was still on fire. The school calendar had been ripped to the ground, and there were stains and cracks in the wall.

Mal looked around in a circle, then turned back to Nima. "Did you do this?"

An incredulous squawk came from Nima. "Me? Of course not! It was those two idiots!"

"And by those two idiots, you mean Rolam and Philo."

Nima stomped the ground, scattering some ash over the floor.

"They completely lost it." Nima ground his fingers into his hair. "It was another one of their stupid arguments—I'm not sure what happened. The next thing I knew, Rolam had jumped on top of Philo and punched him in the face. Philo fought back, and by the end of it, the entire dorm was a mess!"

As if to accentuate his point, the table—which was already half destroyed—cracked clean down the middle and fell with a loud thud.

"I can see that," Mal said.

It didn't surprise Mal that things had boiled over to this point. They had hated each other from the first moment they saw each other, and it'd been allowed to fester and grow with nobody intervening. Even the school agreed—putting a draconid and an elf onto the same circle was a horrendous idea. They'd managed to tolerate each other, but it was only a matter of time till their feelings had spilled over.

Mal walked over to his bedroom door. "I'm going to go to sleep. Good night."

"Mal?!"

Mal stopped and looked back at him. "If you want me to clean, I'll help tomorrow. Just leave it for tonight."

"That's not the —" Nima groaned into his hands. "That's not the issue."

"Then what is?"

"Shouldn't we do something about it? Get them to reconcile?" Nima asked.

Mal shrugged. "If you want to give it a shot, be my guest. But even if I wanted to get involved in some stupid interpersonal conflict, there's nothing that we'd be able to do. You can't fix generations of enmity through a single conversation."

Nima looked absolutely incredulous at this statement. He opened his mouth to speak when the sound of a bell rang from the outside. The bell was struck again, and again, then again. Each time, Mal felt his heart drop lower and lower into his stomach. This had to be a prank, some sort of joke—but if that was the case, why did he feel like this?

The bell finished ringing—a grand total of thirteen times.

Nima's face had turned ghostly white. He knew what that signal meant, just as Mal did.

The school was under attack. And not only that, but Philo and Rolam were unaccounted for.

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