Blood Curse Academia - Orientation

Chapter XII (12)- Turkeys and Concoctions

Kizu sat alone in his Elemental class. Like the other F classes, it drew a significantly smaller crowd than the C and E classes he had attended earlier. A few little cliques of students were chatting, but for the most part everyone sat silently on the wooden benches scattered around the class.

The Elemental classroom was no classroom at all, but rather a walled-off courtyard that felt more like a garden than a place of learning. A moat of running water encircled the courtyard, gurgling quietly and keeping the air fresh. The tall, vine-covered stone walls cast shadows over the little yard.

Long after class should have begun, a fat turkey waddled to the front of the class and stepped up onto the pulpit. Kizu assumed it must have been their professor’s familiar, or else a conjured animal carrying a message for the class. He doubted a mundane turkey would be able to wander in here from the kitchens.

“Good afternoon, class,” the turkey said. “I will be your professor for Elemental F. My name is Professor Oasaji.”

Kizu covered his mouth with his hand, but other students weren’t so subtle. Shocked laughter echoed in the little courtyard.

“Get that out of your system?” the turkey asked dryly. Kizu noticed its beak barely moved as it spoke. It simply opened it and words came out. “If that’s done with, let’s get on with your lesson. Elemental magic is arguably the most versatile of the schools taught here at Shinzou Academy. Earth, fire, air, and water are the four basic elements at the heart of what you will be studying in this course. Those of you here today are the ones with no practical knowledge of elemental magic. Or maybe you’re here because you were taught such horrible habits that returning to the basics is your only way forward. Regardless, today you will be focusing entirely on the element of water.”

Oasaji raised a wing and the benches jolted all at once, repositioning themselves so the students all sat facing the moat.

“Place your appendages in the water.”

Kizu knelt at the water’s edge alongside the other students and placed the tips of his fingers in the water. The chill made his hair stand on end.

“The very first thing you need to learn about elemental magic is manipulation. Focus entirely on imposing your will on the element in front of you. Today’s goal will be to shift the temperature of the water.”

Oasaji strutted around behind them, giving little pieces of advice or criticism, and occasionally gobbling.

“Ione, what are you doing?” Professor Oasaji asked a girl at the end of the row.

Kizu looked and realized he recognized the girl the professor had spoken to. It was the triangle player from Music F. She had removed her shoes and rolled up her uniform’s pants. She was soaking her feet in the moat while lying back on the grass and looking up at the clouds.

“You said appendages, fowl professor. My feet are appendages, are they not?”

Kizu expected the professor to lash out and kick the girl out of his class. Instead, the turkey gobbled with good humor. “You never cease to goad me, girl. Carry on then. One appendage is as useful as any other.”

Kizu was hardly the only one flummoxed by the exchange. A few students even dared to laugh along with their professor. But Oasaji swiftly redirected their attention back to the chilly water.

By the end of class, Kizu thought he might actually have accomplished something with the water, but it was impossible to tell with his fingers shriveled and numb. He tucked them into his armpits as Oasaji dismissed them all with a flap of his wings.

With that, Kizu followed his orb down the halls to his final class of the day. Brewing S. All the other students in the halls looked about as weary as Kizu felt, but he forced himself onward. He only had to get through one more class. Just one more, and he was free.

His orb led him into a cave. It was different from the one he’d had to go through to get to the testing tower. This one was on the other side of campus, and it seemed like an actual cave carved into the side of the mountain. A rickety door stood at the entrance. A message written in the Universal Script warned of danger. Though, Kizu noted, it didn’t clarify what kind of danger to expect. Probably because there were too many to list.

Just as he laid his hand on the doorknob, it slammed open from the inside, sending him stumbling back. A plume of black smoke accompanied the half a dozen coughing students who scrambled out, their uniforms scorched and covered in soot. Not a single one of them gave the cave a backwards glance as they fled.

Inside, he heard a mad cackle. Kizu smiled slightly, the sound reminding him of the crone on one of her better days. When she got to brewing, she became almost amicable.

He entered the cave, using his scrying orb to light his path. Condensation clung to the walls, keeping everything inside clammy and moist.

When the cave opened up, Kizu saw a thin man with white hair in the style of a cat’s hairball, and a single eyebrow. He stood in the center of the cavern - classroom? - in front of a simmering cauldron. Rows and rows of ingredients lined the walls. He was already ordering students around, ordering them to grab certain things and throw them in the pot in front of him. His eyes bounced in two different directions as he scanned the room for what he wanted. When he saw Kizu, his teeth flashed maniacally.

“Kaga! What a happy surprise you are! Nothing better, no, nothing! Quickly, tell me what kind of ingredients I would need to brew a love potion?”

“Hagsroot, glacier water, a bit of succubus blood, and harpy feathers,” Kizu answered automatically. It was an easy enough concoction, if all the ingredients were on hand.

“Hmm, not a crushed siren’s tooth? Why choose succubus blood?”

“Succubus blood is more potent. If you wanted to just make someone more favorable, then sure, a siren’s tooth is a lot more subtle. But you asked for a love potion, not a friendly acquaintance potion.”

“Excellent answer! You see? This is what I’m looking for! You lot, take notes!”

Every other student in the room glared at him.

“Now then, my dear S class. Sit down, sit down,” the man said. He wore the robes of a professor, but they were filthy and fit him poorly. He looked like he’d shrunk a few sizes since obtaining them.

They sat on moldy stools that looked freshly rolled in from a swamp.

The professor counted them out. “Ten! The perfect number for a class. The very best the academy has to offer! You all tried so hard to get here. Number 11 is probably weeping and wailing about how his spot was taken by our dear Kaga. Oh Kaga, the enemies you unwittingly create. If only friends were so easily made as enemies. The tragedy of adolescence. Bumble forward!”

Again, the students in the class glared at him. As Kizu looked around, he realized that for the first time, the students in his class actually looked older than him. He wondered which ones were fifth years. Then Kizu recognized a student. Ione again sat in the class with him. This time, though, instead of looking carefree and bored, she looked furious. She glared at him from under her bangs. He hadn’t noticed the two straight tendrils of hair that framed her face. They made her look angrier.

The professor continued to ramble on about the things they might achieve and the dire consequences of failure at their level of brewing. He told a nonsensical cautionary tale about a mouse who brewed a potion that turned him into a bat, only to lose all his friends at the last moment to an earthquake. The other students diligently took notes, but Kizu just waited. The crone often wasted time like this, testing his patience and amusing herself with the sound of her own voice before moving on to the true lesson.

“Now, brew me something nice!” the professor finally said with gusto. “All the ingredients are yours to use. You achieved greatness the moment you set foot in this class, and now it’s time to prove you’re worthy of your seat! Brew me something grand. And pair up!”

Five cauldrons popped up in front of them. Immediately, the other students latched onto one another. They all seemed to know each other from previous years. Soon, only he and Ione remained. He walked over to the cauldron in front of her.

“Ione, right?”

The look on her face went from one of loathing to one of absolute contempt.

“No. My name is Sene.” She offered no further explanation.

“Okay,” Kizu said, trying to remain pleasant. “Well, I’m still Kizu. What do you think we should make?”

“There is no ‘we’. I will concoct a potion, and you will leave me alone.”

“Yeah, no.” Kizu dropped the polite facade. It was getting easier and easier as time went on. “Let me put it this way - either you tell me what we’re making, or I do everything in my power to sabotage the brew and we both go down in flames.”

She rolled her eyes, blowing him off. She went to the shelves and grabbed pickled mandrake roots along with a jar of wisp ectoplasm. She went for a few other things after that, but Kizu stopped paying attention. It was obvious what she was trying to brew off those first two ingredients, and he knew exactly what he was going to add to the mix.

Scanning the shelves, he approached the cave wall and gathered up a handful of dried lizard tails and a pair of peacock eyes. They were hardly flashy ingredients, and nobody paid him any attention as he mashed them into a paste with a mortar and pestle. When it was done, he added just a dab of fermented kelp. Then he waited.

From the edge of the room, he watched as Sene brewed. She did everything exactly like a book would instruct, without any nuance or experimentation. When she chopped, she did it in precise increments. When she poured, she used a cup with specific markings.

As she stirred in the final ingredients, Kizu walked up. She continued to completely ignore him right up until he dropped his paste into her brew with a splash.

“Whoops,” he said.

She froze mid-stir. The potion foamed, shifting colors slightly. It took her a moment before she turned to him. The room temperature dropped and he could feel the air thinning. She opened her mouth, as if to scream.

“Okay, okay!” The professor clapped his hands and smiled brightly at them all. “Time is up! Let’s see what you have for me!”

The professor launched himself out of his seat, rubbing his palms together. He peered into each cauldron, either sniffing or tasting - or in the case of one unfortunate duo, spitting in - each one.

When at last he arrived at Kizu and Sene’s cauldron, he beamed at them.

“Let me guess, hmm, an invisibility potion based on the ingredients left on your cutting board. Matches Kajima Sene’s usual strategy of choosing the most complicated thing in the book.” He leaned over and sniffed it. “But it doesn’t smell quite right. I imagine that must be Kaga Kizu’s contribution. What could that little zing be?” He reached into the pot and touched the liquid.

“Don’t!” Sene cried out, horrified, as he put his finger into his mouth.

The lights in the room all winked out immediately, and then the professor erupted with light. All the students shielded their eyes as the professor stood there with his arms outstretched looking like some avatar of divine justice.

“Ingenious!” the professor howled. “Absolutely innovative! An invisibility brew relies on a disruption of light, so you took that and altered it so that the user instead absorbs in all sources of light then reflects it back out with a bang. Nothing quite like that in the textbooks! Greatest minds of the academy!” Then he cackled and buckled over onto the floor, convulsing like a mad fallen angel until the brew’s effects faded away and the lamps returned to normal.

The hostility in the room did not fade, least of all from Sene, but Kizu hardly cared. He basked in his accomplishment, completely satisfied with the result.