Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (45/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here's the Work in Progress for Chapter 45 I hope you guys enjoy! :D 

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Living Room. Local Time: 12:10 Hours.

Thalmin

Dread, fear, panic, and anxiety… all of these emotions threatened to rush to the surface with the unbridled ferocity of a berserker out of mana.

Dread, for the sudden disappearance of a peer in all but name. 

Fear, for the consequences that will inevitably follow.

Panic, for the abrupt disruption of a straightforward plan, and the directionlessness that came with it.

Anxiety, for the potential of failure, and the ramifications of that failure on those around me; those that I have promised nothing short of a complete victory.

A second was all it took for these thoughts and emotions to surface, and a second more was all that was needed for those very thoughts to take root.

I couldn’t give them that chance.

It was just not the Havenbrockian way.

The proving dens had taught me better than to succumb to the whims of the runt-born heart.

It taught me the importance of control of one’s emotions, and the difference confidence and stoicism made between life and death.

From the battlefield, to the banquet table, and the maprooms of the great hall; this rule had kept the Havenbrockian house afloat despite the challenges we faced.

This situation was no different.

In fact, if anything, it called for an adherence to the lessons of the proving dens; as I called upon feelings of anger and frustration to temper the encumbering emotions all belonging to the weaker end of the emotional spectrum.

Ultimately though, all this boiled down to one thing: I couldn’t fail Thacea or Emma.

Not when the issue at hand was barely an issue at all, if it wasn’t for the Academy’s vague threats of draconian punishment.

Alright. I began taking a deep, growl-ridden breath.

Action is the ward to indecision. So act.

HUFFFFF HUFFFFF

I took a deep breath, this time not out of frustration, but practicality.

For I had one final card to play, a gift of the lupinor heritage that would take over from where my eyes and mana-perception had both failed.

SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF

I still had my keen sense of smell to rely on.

The world around me practically lit up in a dizzying array of scents. This was where noble sensibilities born out of the Nexian reformations clashed with the intrinsic nature of Lupinor heritage.

The Nexian Reformations claimed that the measure of one’s civility was determined by the distance one placed between the animal and the person. Etiquette and the social decorum that followed was thusly determined by how far one distances themselves from what the Nexians considered as animal-like behaviors.

Civilization was, after all, the testament of the triumph of the mind over the desires of the flesh. And to be civilized meant the adherence to that which delineates the person from the animal: culture.

Our keen sense of smell, our ancestral drive for the hunt based on scent alone, was simply incompatible with this worldview.

But when the choice was to do or to not, with the latter being arbitrary and the former being innately useful… then there was no choice to be made at all.

That was lesson 394 from the proving grounds, courtesy of my uncle.

And it would quickly prove to be a valuable lesson for the present.

For within the scents I was quickly becoming familiarized to within this domicile: the distinct fragrance of the fresh linens, the nutty earthiness of the venerable furniture, and the… lizardness of the blue-scaled lizard, there was something new here that just did not belong. Something new that was incredibly subtle, strangely so, but that hit me hard the moment I started focusing.

It was the smell of acrid pungency, one that tickled my nose with what felt like bits and pieces of coarse dust that was invisible to the naked eye.

It was the undeniable smell of smoke, and the distinct sensation of ash.

A renewed surge of confidence took over me, as I felt my heart suddenly pumping with a renewed vigor. My pupils dilated, and my whole body felt ready to surge forward at a moment’s notice.

I was now, well and truly, on the hunt.

Or more accurately, I was as ready to defend myself if it came to it.

Keeping my eyes peeled, and my mana-perception open, I moved swiftly to the source of this foreign smell.

This led me to a pile of refuse that was the Vunerian’s secondary nest, a mish-mash of soft bedcovers, pillows, stuffed caricatures, and other such garbage. I made short work of this, peeling back layer after layer before I was hit with the source of that acrid scent.

It was a letter.

Or rather, was a letter.

One that had been completely incinerated by the Vunerian’s breath.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, not without a restoration spell, which was the kind of subject matter that was taught at the Academy and not common knowledge.

So I kept searching for clues.

This eventually brought me to one of the room’s cabinets, over on the Vunerian’s side of the domicile. It was here that I found another burned letter.

This one, however, was only partially burned.

“Mandatory… assembly… announcement… attendance is…” I didn’t need to see the rest of it to confirm what it was.

There was no doubt about it.

This was definitely the letter the insipid apprentice blocking the library was talking about.

Which meant Ilunor must have seen the letter, before purposefully setting it ablaze.

So I continued searching, once more relying on scent alone to trace the origin of all of this acrid smoke.

It wasn’t hard to do.

The blue thing’s little demonstration of nothing but soot-breath at the night of Emma’s weapons inspection had given me more than enough to work with.

So with that memory fresh in mind, and the very strong reminders of that particular scent still present in the air, I began tracing the room.

He must have been close, if not still in the room itself.

I could smell the source getting closer and closer. Each step leading to increasingly intensified soot-breath.

This meant the lizard must be here, in spite of my inability to sense the presence of his mana-field.

I couldn’t say whether or not that was a result of my own inadequacies in mana-field tracking, or the lizard’s inherent talents in mana-field masking.

Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in the middle.

Either way, the sheer lack of anything in the mana-streams wasn’t at all normal. Barring Emma, or a wizard of higher standing like one of the professors, mana-field masking such as this was simply unheard of.

And yet here I was, getting closer and closer towards what my nose told me was the source of all of this wanton use of magical fire.

The scent eventually took me to the second-floor loft of the domicile, one which circled the entire perimeter of the room. It was here that the ashen sensation tickling my nose dissipated, replaced instead with an increasingly thick acridity that grew and grew until finally… I passed it.

I’d passed the point of maximal intensity without seeing anything out of the ordinary.

Backtracking by a good few feet, I began honing in on the specific point of maximal intensity, bringing me to a walk-in closet right across from the Vunerian’s bed. One of the two we’d split between us.

I began opening up my mana field even more now, pushing, pulling, tugging against the latent currents… and yet… there was nothing.

No signs of life.

Not even a hint of a soul.

And yet, I could smell the pungent smoke, all while being unable to actually smell the Vunerian anywhere.

So with all of these conflicting senses, with only the lupinor in me screaming that we’d finally found him, I gave in. I put faith in my lupinor heritage, and SLAMMED the double-doors to the walk-in-closet open with such force that I could feel the wood buckling under the strain.

It was there that I was hit with several things at once.