Chapter 37 

Illegal batches of MyCast supplements like M-Juice, Zip Pouches, and Haze are crafted by less-than-reputable scientists known as Chem-Docs. These mad scientists are also the main suppliers of other illegal drugs like Ink, Pixie Piss, and more. Chem-Docs are also known for running experiments with illicit substances, chemicals, and Myst without telling their subject. Some unwitting Orc just wanted to get high but found himself bursting into flames or sprouting tentacles.

Day 373 Castestday

On this particular Castestday, Rose and I had already had two rounds of sparring. I snatched victory in the first round, but she came back with a win in the second. But I made her work for that victory. We were resting before the third of the day. My shirt was slashed and punctuated in several places, bloodstains painted around freshly healed scars. Rose had also left a couple of scorch marks on me from fire and lightning and even ate a hole in the shirt on the center of my back from acid.

However, I had left my share of marks on Rose and her attire, a menagerie of slashes and scorch marks to rival what she left on me. When the match was called, and we dropped our guards, I saw that Rose was looking more than a little ragged. Even with sweat plastering her uniform jacket to her chest and back, she still refused to remove the article of clothing. Gasping for air, she half-heartedly mentioned the need to take a break. Before Thallos could give the okay, she turned and staggered before she hurried back to her bag. I watched her as she took a seat and began guzzling water as if we had trapped her in the Iron Desert.

I was breathing hard, but not nearly as bad as she was. It seemed like as I was improving and getting my act together, Rose had been degrading. I couldn’t help but wonder if Rose had ever really been as good as I thought or if I had just imagined it all while I was performing at a barely functional level.

The delusion theory didn’t explain why she had been acting odd the past couple of weeks. She’d gone back to avoiding Nel and Ferris outside of class, and she barely spent time with me outside of class. She claimed it was just a cold and that it would pass after a few days, but it had been over two weeks at this point, and she had only been getting worse. When I told her she should see a healer, she snapped at me for the idea and didn’t talk to me for two days afterward.

“Hey Uncle, is it just me, or is she looking worse today than she did on Igniday?” I asked my uncle as I pressed my interlaced fingers against the back of my head for easier breathing.

“No, you’re right, boy. I noticed her decline about two months back.” Thallos confirmed.

“Then why haven’t you told her to visit a healer and take a few days off?”

“Well, normally, when a pupil catches whatever bug, I push them to work through the discomfort. In her case, I was letting her continue till she found her breaking point. But I’m starting to think I need to tell her when to stop before she hurts herself permanently.”

He waved to get Rose’s attention from where she stood in the corner and signaled her over. She stopped by her bag for a moment before jogging over, a bit more spring in her step than there had been before. I made note of that, thinking it odd.

“I’m calling the session here, you two.” Thallos pointed to Rose. “You’re about to put yourself in critical condition in the ER if you keep it up at this pace. I want you to go see a healer before you take the next six days off from class.” He turned to me. “I want you to escort her to the Med Center, boy.” He pointed from me to Rose repeatedly to emphasize the need. He brought his focus back to me. “Oh, and I’m putting you on half course time to rest up for your combat final, but not get lazy. I’ve got something I want to talk about if you pass the final I give you. Am I clear?”

We both nodded before changing into non-bloody clothes and gathering our stuff to headed to the elevator. When we were both in the mirrored box and the doors closed, Rose let out a sigh as if she had been holding her breath. She turned to me with a look of pleading in her feline eyes. “Ive', I have a serious favor to ask of you.”

I shot her a look of weary curiosity. “What kind of favor?”

“I need you to lie to your uncle about taking me to the Med Center.”

“Excuse me?”

“What? It’s not like I’m asking for murder.” She pointed out in exasperation.

“I beg to differ! Rose, you’ve been getting worse these past few weeks. I don’t think what you have is a simple cold. I think you need serious medical help.”

“It’s not that big a deal.” She waved off my concern. “If the Mystagogue gave me a few days of bed rest, then I’ll be fine.” She leaned against the back wall, her eyes closed as she pressed the top of her head against the glass behind her.

“I still think you need to see a healer.” I pressed.

“Will you Shut Up about the damned healer! It’s just a headache and some trouble sleeping.”

I focused on the whites of her eyes when she turned to look back at me. The white of the sclera was laced through with thick red veins that looked more like roots digging into the soft ivory flesh. Her shoulder sagged with an invisible weight. Her hands twitched occasionally when not in active use. She brushed a lock of hair from her face with a shaky pair of fingers as she took a deep breath.

“I’m just saying let Tess check you out and see if she can help.”

“I’m not letting that creepy little Gnome anywhere near me any more than is absolutely necessary.” She sneered.

“Creepy? Come on, Rose, she’s a friend.”

“Your friend, not mine.”

“I’m going to take you to the Med Center, even if it means I drag you there kicking and screaming.” As I made the proclamation, the car slid to a stop, and the doors opened.

“You’ll have to take my corpse in because I won’t be going there alive.” Just as she said this, she moved to take a step and toppled. Her leg crumpled beneath her, unable to take the weight. She cursed and spat venom at no one in particular as I knelt down beside her.

I shouldered her bag on the same side as my bag before I took her arm and draped it across both shoulders. I slowly raised, helping to bear her weight as we passed out of the elevator. Her face was turned away from me in what was, no doubt, shame. Shame of showing weakness. Shame of needing help for such a simple task as walking.

We didn’t talk as we passed through the halls of the academy. The silence was so heavy you could have almost heard it dragging behind like adamantine weights. As that thought crossed my mind, I couldn’t help but smirk at the brain-twisting irony of silence having a sound. This made me feel a little better about the situation. How mad would I have to be to think silence had a sound? Or did it? My mind went to the ringing of total silence in a room with no one in it, but one’s self.

As we passed through the front gates of Aegis Halls, I decided my madness best be left for crackpot philosophers. I turned my focus back to the matter of Rose and her condition.

“Rose,” I started.

“Yeah?” she muttered back.

“Why are you fighting this so hard? Is there someone at the center that’s done you wrong?”

“No. Let’s just say that I have my reasons.”

“Come on, Rose. You said that you trusted me. You even admitted to possibly having feelings for me. That’s gotta mean I can be trusted with something like this.”

She pushed away from me, staggering backward before barely catching her balance.

“I, Have, My Own, Damned, Reasons, Shit stain.” She snapped nearly every word with enough force that it almost felt like a whip was being cracked at me. “Now give me my damned bag back.” She snatched for the bag, clutching the strap over my shoulder with a death grip.

I knew that if she tried to take the bag back, she’d just collapse all over again. Because of this, I clenched the other end of the strap in a fist, leaning back to counterbalance her weight pulling away from me. When she tried to pull away with all her weight, I heard the sound of clinking glass from the bag. At the moment, I barely even noticed it. Then she gave another ferocious yank, and there was the sound of seams bursting. Her end of the bag tore free from the body of the garment and we both fell back in a splay. A gaping hole marred one end of the black bag, with something spilling out. I adjusted to look at what was falling out of the bag to find a case of empty hypo-jection syringes. Eighteen vials scattered across the ground, each about six inches long, one-inch in diameter, with rounded glass at the top end and a self-injection mount at the other end. All of them spilled out from within a plastic case with a dark grey gel-foam cutout to cushion the glass bodies.

I looked at the scattering of empty vials, picked one up, and gave Rose a look of distrust before I went digging in the bag. Just from the glance I gave the girl, I saw the look of utter horror plain on her face, eyes wide, ears folded back, mouth ajar. I pulled free two more cases of the Hypo-jection vials. One case was half empty like the first one, but what disturbed me was what I found in the still full glass tubes, a swirling opalescent fluid that shone in the light of noon with threads of any of a number of colors.

I checked to see if anyone had witnessed the display. When I knew we were alone, I stuffed everything back in her bag, clutched the open end in a white knuckle fist, and warped my other hand around Rose’s wrist. I stormed away towards the woods, not caring if she could keep pace. I’d literally drag her the rest of the way if I had to. She barely kept pace with me, her staggering gait sloppy. She lost her footing a couple of times, but I didn’t stop. It was only her dexterous nature, and the hard training we had gone through that allowed her to get back to her feet before I dragged her like a sack of stones.

I was on a warpath, my face a careful mask of mundanity as I closed the distance to the cover of the sapphire oaks. We passed the tree line, and I kept going. This time, Rose did lose her footing because of the rough terrain, and I didn’t stop. As promised, I dragged her by the wrist through stones and roots.

“Iver, stop, IVER!” Her voice rose to a desperate shout, but I didn’t look back. Instead, I stopped in an almost robotic manner, the end of movement smooth and sudden. I shifted my position as Rose clambered to her feet and hurled her in a shoulder throw before she even had her balance back. Her back cracked against the trunk of an old oak, and her head landed in the soil. I heard the wind rip from her lungs as she landed, but I had enough kindness left to let her get her ass under her before I verbally tore her apart.

I hadn’t had a rush of anger since I had been medicated, but this new development brought me to a rage that, deep down, scared me. That was the first time I had come anywhere near close to the level of fury that I felt when my father was butchered. The thought brought flashes of those moments to mind, and the phantom smells of blood and a burning cabin.

I shook the images from my head and focused back on Rose. She had just righted herself and pinned me with an enraged glare that I met with no fear. She pressed herself into the nook of the tree’s roots and trunk, trying to keep her distance from me. The stupid girl still tried to be defiant to keep up an image of courage. Before she could retaliate, I spoke.

“M-Juice! Really?! I can not believe that you are that stupid.” I raised the bag to my face level and violently shook it, causing the contents to rattle. “You couldn’t naturally have magic. So what? You decide to start taking liquid myst. And for what? An hour or two of playing at caster.” Every word I spat had an edge, and I didn’t stop even as I threw the bag down at her feet. “You know this stuff is government-regulated for a reason. The stuff is known to be addictive for lots of people. And I know without a doubt that you do not have the clearance seal on your profile allowing you to use the stuff. So where did you get it?”

Rose scooped up the bag and cradled it against her breast. “It’s not dirty if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t get it from some mad chem-doc on the street.”

“That is not what I’m asking, and you know it.”

Her only answer was to bare her teeth at me. I met her snarl with my own stony mask of defiance. It only took me a few moments of ruminating in the heavy silence to puzzle the mystery out. My eyes lit with understanding as it all fell into place.

“Neckar…” I muttered, my focus falling into the middle ground as I put the pieces together. “Master Mystagogue Necker.” I locked eyes with Rose again to see her panic and shame. “The head magic instructor was prescribed MyCast for her condition. She normally used M-Juice, but she was forced to take Zip Pouches because someone stole her stock of prescription.” I snatched the bag back, ripping it from her clutches. “You’re the thief!”

She clawed forward, snatching at the bag, but I pulled it out of her reach. “So what? I was aiming to become a Mastlok anyway, and that was going to be my proof so I could become Phase Wolf.”

“I knew you were aiming to join the Sightless Eye. But this is taking it out of hand. So you had the drug in hand, and what? You decide to start taking it to fake your way into my uncle’s mentorship?”

She got to her knees and put one shaky foot down. “It wasn’t that simple and you know it!” She dragged herself to her feet, drawing herself up to her full height, a full three inches taller than me. But I wasn’t about to back down.

“I don’t know if I can trust anything I know about you. You lied to Thallos. You lied to me. I worked my ass off and pleaded with my uncle for you to join the course. Even after you lashed out, I told you how I felt. I thought I could trust you.” The rage ebbed, and the emotional wound began to ache. My vision blurred even as I tried to maintain a glare at the Primal. Tears streamed down my face, and I saw her anger soften.

Rose stepped away from me, dropping her gaze and clutching at her left elbow. “I didn’t mean for this… I didn’t mean for things to get this far. It’s just…” She threw her head to the side before turning to face the tree. With her back turned to me, she pressed the top of her head against the rough bark. Her next words were a mutter that I only barely caught. “I was so upset that Kiem picked you. Jealous really. I had been trying to catch his eye since last year, but he never looked my way twice. But you start bleeding fire, and suddenly his nephew, who I saved several dozen times, has the skill to learn under the master. He was playing favorites with you, and I was pissed. I had been jipped the chance of a lifetime because of an orphan crybaby with emotional issues. I was so pissed that I decided I was going to catch his eye by stealing something from a Master Mystagogue.”

She rolled around to put her back against the tree. She slid down the rough bark, drawing out a harsh scratching sound, to end in a crouch. “Everyone Tier one knows Neckar is thirty pounds of crazy in a three-pound box, so she’s prone to being a space case. I faked sick for the class and waited for her to leave her quarters for the day. Picked the lock, yadda yadda, looked for something pricey and impressive to walk out with, and found the cases of the MyCast under her bed.”

“And you just took them all.” I accused.

“As if.” she snapped back. “I took one case at first. Then I got the idea that if all of her MyCast went missing, the instructors would go crazy. All I’d have to do is present these to Master Mystagogue Kellar, and bam. I’m in the Sightless Eye. But when no alarms were raised, I got worried. Then I got curious. If no one was going to come looking for the stuff, then was it any good? I wondered. Well, if no one was going to miss the stuff, I thought I might as well keep it. I got curious about what it was like to use the stuff.” She gave a snort. “Hells, the day I snapped at you was the first day I used it. I had been trying to figure out how to use it and was irritated. Go figure when you come up to me, I lose my cool and flash freeze the grass.”

“That really was your first dose? I don’t know if I can believe it.” My ire was rising again.

“Oh, don’t give me that freak face!” She retaliated, “Yes, that was my first dose. I only used it occasionally. I was toying with the idea that I could join Blackened Crown under another Mystagogue other than Kiem. But then you talked him into taking me on and I was so happy.” She flashed a sad smile and gave a huff of amusement. “But to keep the role of my dreams meant that I needed to keep taking the stuff.”

I looked at her in horror as I realized my role in the facade. “But each dose only lasts two to three hours. That means…” I tried to do the math, but Rose beat me to it.

“Three doses a day, twelve doses a week. My current count is two hundred and sixteen.” She gave me another one of those sad smiles.

Panic rose in my gorge as I realized what that meant. She was still holding her left elbow, which hinted at how bad things were. I rushed to her and grasped her wrist in a death grip in my left hand while I used a blade from my gauntlet to split her sleeve.

There had been a reason she hadn’t taken off her jacket in the past couple of weeks. I thought it was just the shame of the scars, like myself. But I was wrong, and as I sheered the sleeve past her elbow, I saw the truth. There in the crook of her elbow was a series of injection scars and open wounds in tissue that looked to have glowing blue-green chemical burns, the color of burns tracing her veins halfway down her arm. But the crook of her elbow was an utter mess, partly covered in lesions.

“Myst burns.” I whispered as I stared at the damage. I reached into the bag and pulled a Hypojection vial from the collection. I shot to my feet. “I need to tell Thallos.” I told myself more than Rose, but she still replied in panic.

“Iver, No! Please! If you really do love me, you will not tell a soul about this and let me rest.”

I swallowed the gorge in my throat and turned to her. I pocketed the MyCast vial as slyly as I could manage while making it look like just one of the motions in taking off my jacket. “I’ll get you back to your room, but first, we need to trade jackets unless you want the whole academy to know what’s going on.”

She looked up at me with genuine joy as she slipped from her jacket. I stuffed the thing in the damaged bag before helping Rose back to her feet. My jacket was two sizes too small, but it hid the damage. I helped her into the article of clothing but still drew a couple of winces and hisses of pain despite how gentle I tried to be. I supported her as I had before and walked her down to the dorms. She gave me her room number, and I helped her to her bed. I tried not to stare at the floor carpeted in laundry and weapon care supplies. ”I don’t want you leaving this room for the next six days.” I said sternly with a matching expression and a proclaiming index finger. “I’ll bring you food, so don’t worry. Do you want me to stay with you?” I offered.

She gave me a tired smile as she shook her head in the negative. I helped her lay back on the bed before turning to leave the room. As I reached the door, she spoke one last time. “Hey, Iver,” I turned to look at her. “I really do like you too. I don’t know if I can call it love, but I want to give it a shot.”

I masked my agonizing emotional pain with a patient smile. “Get some rest.”

As soon as the door shut, I ran, full tilt, to find Thallos. I pushed myself like the forces of hell were on my heels because, for all I knew, Rose might only have minutes or days before she died from myst poisoning.

I found Thallos in his office, looking over papers with a bottle of scotch open on the desk beside him. He looked up as he noticed me in the doorway. He took one look at the expression on my face and shot to his feet faster than my eyes could track. “What’s wrong?” He demanded.

I gasped out, “Rose, myst burns, it’s bad.” As I said this, I pulled the hypo-jection vial from my pocket and showed it as proof. He snatched the device from my hand in a striking cobra motion before pushing past me. I followed, hot on his heels.

“I’m messaging Tessa to meet us at Rose’s room.” He stated as he hustled down the hall.

We met Tess at Rose’s door, and with no preamble, he swiped his all-access B.I.C to open the door. Thallos glided through and was beside the bed before either Tess or I could enter the room.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” Rose demanded in panic as she sat up in bed.

He spoke to me as he forcefully examined her eyes and took her pulse. “Do you know how bad it is?”

I told him how many injections she had in total and at what rate of use the last seventy-two days. “Injection site?” He continued.

“Crook of the left elbow.” I stated.

My uncle slit the sleeve of my jacket up to the shoulder with a blade I never saw him draw. He closely inspected the damage before taking a step back to gesture Tess into his place. “Do you know how to heal myst burns and poisoning?”

“N-no.” she stammered as she fidgeted with her hands, and eyes flitted across the room.

Thallos stepped up beside Tessa and began instructing her in a calm and level tone. “First, draw out and disperse the alien myst. Then flush the system with the same technique you would use to pass as standard class-one poison.”

Tessa just stared at the burns while she shifted weight from one foot to the other, her hands almost moving of their own accord in a series of nonsense gestures. Thallos locked a hand under her jaw and drew her to look him in the eye. “Don’t panic. There is no immediate danger. Just think of this as a normal lesson, like any other. I am walking you through the process and you’re following the instructions.” I saw her eyes lock on his and freeze. They stopped flitting around the room and looked into my uncles. After he got her calmed down, he explained a process that went well over my head. As soon as he finished explaining what Tessa needed to do, he turned to Rose and started asking her questions.

“Be honest, girl, do you know who you are and where you are currently?”

Rose looked at him in total confusion. “I’m Roserra Swiftpaw, and I am currently in my room. My privacy clearly violated despite my wishes.” She shot me a murderous glare.

Thallos flicked her between the eyes to get her attention. “Don’t blame the boy. Now focus. Have you seen anything strange or out of the ordinary? Do you think someone or something is after you?”

“What? No. Not unless you count backstabbing cheats.” She gave me another betrayed glare.

Thallos locked his hand on Rose’s jaw this time and did the same thing he did to Tessa. “I said, focus. Have you been moody lately? Needlessly depressed or angry?”

I answered this one “Yes. Definitely.”

“Problems sleeping or constantly recurring headaches?”

“Yeah, both, actually.” Rose answered, this time with no hint of scorn in her words.

Thallos stood and proclaimed his diagnosis. “You are suffering from class-two Myst Madness. These symptoms may stop after a while if you quit using. But with how frequently you’ve been dosing, the damage may be permanent.” Without waiting for a response, he turned to Tessa, “Finish up healing her and check in on her for the next six days. Routinely flush her system as before. If she starts experiencing withdrawal, come find me.” He ushered me from the room, himself stopping in the doorway just behind me to give one last command. “And Roserra, after the six days are up, come find me. We will need to talk.”

I walked beside my uncle as we passed down the hallway. He was gripping the bridge of his nose between his eyes as if in pain. “So what happens next? I’m guessing she can’t stay in the program without magic. But what comes next for her?” I asked.

“She’s staying under me to study. I just have to change my methods.”

“What?! You mean it’s okay that she was illegally using MyCast that belongs to a Master Mystagogue?” I demanded.

“So that’s where she got it. Regardless, the answer is the same. She used elements of her environment to get what she needed. Swiftpaw wanted to study under me. She found a supplement that allowed her to meet all standards for my training.”

“But the theft!” I almost shouted. I didn’t want her to leave the training, but the theft was simply not acceptable.

He stopped just inside the doors to the dorms to look at me. “This is a lesson you’ll need to learn and learn fast. You get the job done by any means. If you need to steal, steal. If you need to kill, kill. What matters is the end result and the mission.”

“But theft just isn’t right.” I half-heartedly stated as my uncle’s lesson sunk in.

“Boy, the only thing that is clear black and white in this world is Lumina and Umbra Myst. No one is all good or all bad. Every hero has done wrong, and every villain has some speck of decency. Think on this before you come to class tomorrow.”

I was staring into the distance as I mulled over his words. The next thing I knew, he was gone, left without another word, and just vanished. I’d need to learn that trick. But at that moment, I needed to think about the black-and-white thing. I decided I was going to meditate on it.

Back in my room, I lay on my bed, hands clasped loosely over my chest, eyes closed. I had found this to be the easiest way for me to meditate. I did some breathing exercises to get my mindset into place and thought long and hard on a world with no black and white. If there was no pure good or bad in the world, then that meant the world was a place of moral gray-scale. If that was the case, what shade of gray was I? And more importantly, what shade of gray will I be after a few years working with The Company?