WINTER TERM - January 8th
It's been a few days since the love potion incident with Aries. He's hesitant to try it again, not that we really need it. Now that he knows I'll let him, Aries kisses me often- my knuckles, my cheek, my mouth. We didn't talk about it with anyone exactly. But Aisling tried, "So you and Aries are…?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
Aisling's smile faded. "I was about to say I was happy for you. Maybe figure out if I should be happy first, alright?"
I rolled my eyes. At least Aries was happy. He was getting semi-regular blowjobs for the first time in his life, so happy might be an understatement.
In Divination class, Aries stole Aisling's seat beside me, but instead of getting mad, she just flipped through her tarot deck and took the chair next to Noodle. She held up one single card to me. The Fool - she'd meant it as an insult. And later, during the lecture, when Aries, a little bored, took to hanging on my shoulder, Marblebrook smirked at the two of us, more fond than it warranted.
And then there was Blackclaw's Hostile Scenarios class. We'd had two field lessons interrupted by poor weather, so this was our first where Blackclaw would have our groups take on simulated "hostiles." My group was, just as Nadine and Stellan predicted, the two of them plus me and Aries. Maybe Blackclaw really did want to keep all his monsters in one place…
But even then, it was hard to say I wasn't looking forward to the class. For this term, while there was a textbook and we were encouraged to read it and learn to cast the spells in it, we weren't held to a set schedule for learning them. And more than that, casting spells that came from independent study outside of class were also encouraged. I wasn't going to be pulled into remedial lessons just for opting to learn a cooler spell this time around. It was one less thing to worry over. Especially given that I was still trying very hard not to rely on wolfsbane solution. I kept it on hand, of course. But I'd gone a little over two weeks without taking any of it.
The wolf in my head was always awake these days, chiming in with its half-formed thoughts, willing me to linger longer on new scents and sounds. It was mostly unhelpful.
"We're starting off easy with this one," Blackclaw said to the class. "A team of four against one construct. Your objective is to protect yourselves as well as the other members of your party while you and your party neutralize the hostile in any way you can." Easy enough.
I didn't see a construct yet. The practice field was empty but for two barrels. I already assumed that the barrels must have contained the constructs. It couldn't have been especially large to fit inside, and for that alone, I felt pretty good about it.
Or I did until Blackclaw enchanted one of the barrels and the construct sprung into being. It hadn't been inside of the barrel - it was the barrel. Suddenly, long metal legs and arms with knobby bolted joints emerged from between its wood slats. It stood nearly twelve feet. A little woven basket atop its lid sat like an ugly head. It pinwheeled its arms.
I realized immediately, this was nothing like dueling. There was no countdown. No basic rules. This was chaos.
I cast shield as one arm came dangerously close to my head. Nadine was faster to take offensive measures, lobbing a melon-sized fireball at its wooden frame. The fire didn't catch on the barrel, but on the grass below it, but now the construct had turned its attention on her.
"Put out the grass," she shouted, looking to me and Aries. Stellan was already mid-casting something else to hit the construct with.
I begun casting frostbite - my spells for putting out fires were still pretty limited. Luckily Aries had stepped in with a simpler dispel spell that quelled the flames a little faster.
Over his shoulder, I saw Stellan hit the construct with a bright lightning bolt. That did what the fireball hadn't, setting the barrel ablaze. The flames quickly engulfed the little basket head and made the thing look far angrier than it had only moments ago.
I didn't love the idea of fighting a construct that was currently on fire, especially as its metal arms continued to pinwheel out, swatting after Nadine and Stellan. Burning it, while it probably would hurt it eventually, didn't seem to be doing much in the short term. Though, I was pretty sure I knew of at least one spell that might work faster. Ruin.
I'd been itching to cast it. My hands raced through the gesture and the spell shot off like a grenade. It hit the construct at the joint where its metal arm connected with the barrel and the arm shot off. There was a hole in the side of the barrel where its arm had been. The cracked wood was still on fire. The basket head was gone, either lost in ash or blown away by the force of my spellwork.
It was a real hit. I'd actually managed something worthwhile. But then, I realized, the construct was still standing. The fight wasn't over. And now, it was charging straight ahead at me and Aries.
Aries was casting something, but this thing was coming at us way too fast.
"We gotta shadow step," I said.
He looked at me just long enough that his concentration on casting broke. We had to do something. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had already decided I wasn't going to cast shadow step until I'd already seen that he had. I already had it prepared. I was going to grab him and pull us out of the way.
In the second he turned to me, the construct's remaining hand smacked forward, striking Aries hard on the back of the head.
I hadn't pulled him out of the way.
Aries dropped.
I didn't even see him hit the ground.
At the first sign of my rage, the wolf surged through me and before I could even think of what was happening, I was shifting. I'm fairly certain I'd never shifted so quickly. It was an explosion of pain. I couldn't think through it, the wolf seized control. I felt its teeth in my mouth. I felt red and raw. But I was suddenly on all fours and gunning for the construct.
I caught its one remaining arm in my mouth. The metal burned hot from the flames coming off the barrel. The fire at least now had eaten away at the wood barrel. I wouldn't have known as the wolf, but the construct with moments away from collapse.
I wrenched the other metal arm free and was racing to take it on again, when Blackclaw shot me down with his all-too-familiar lightning bolt.
I don't know how long I lay there, still a wolf, stunned in place. It was long enough that the construct collapsed and someone stepped in to put out the fire - it wasn't me.
Eventually, Blackclaw grabbed me by the muzzle - I was a little burnt from the construct's metal arm - and poured a mouthful of wolfsbane solution down my throat. After, he had Stellan fetch me a patchwork potion. Between Blackclaw's lightning bolt and the wolf's attempt to eat a construct while it was still on fire, I'd seen better days. It took a few moments to shift back, a little longer to feel the effects of my new wounds healing over. As soon as I was able to sit up on my own, I remembered what had caused this in the first place.
Aries was hurt.
I rose to my feet. Blackclaw and Nadine were hovering around him. Aries was still on the ground, seated, not collapsed, but it had been a hard hit. It didn't even occur to me immediately that I was completely naked - shifting that quickly had torn through pretty much every seam. I didn't think of it.
Aries rubbed the back of his head with his hand. He was still sipping from a patchwork potion, but while it healed, it didn't take away the pain immediately. My mouth was still feeling a little charred even if now looked quite a bit better.
"Are you alright?" I knelt down beside him, searching for eye contact.
I didn't get eye contact exactly. "You know your dick is out," Aries mumbled.
At least he sounded like himself. I touched the top of his head, tried to be gentle, not sure where it was still hurting him and hung my head close. "You didn't break anything did you? Could have cracked your skull."
"I didn't," he said. "And it's my own fault for getting hit. Least I've got a big, strong werewolf to come to my rescue." Aries rammed his forehead up against mine. His nose grazed mine. He might have kissed me, but Blackclaw, hovering, cleared his throat.
"An idiot werewolf," Blackclaw said. I almost forgot he was there. And so was Nadine. "You'll be learning this term to fight with magic, Ashbourne, not your teeth."
It wasn't as though I could explain I'd never just shifted like that before. Before this, it had been on the full moon and only the full moon. But Luna was waning, the new moon was next week. It wasn't the moon this time.
I drew back. "It won't happen again," I said to Blackclaw.
Stellan came over holding out an extra pair of trousers.
I stood up and grabbed them, quickly put them on. "Maybe just keep an extra pair on you for a while," Stellan said. "I still do."
Blackclaw dismissed the rest of the class and tasked me and Stellan with piling up the debris from the ruined construct. Aries sat by. The potion might have prevented the effects of a concussion, but he still seemed a little dazed and he was in now shape to use magic at the moment. I wasn't really able to do any casting either for that matter. Another spell, even if it is something like shadow step could be enough to make me pass out.
"How come Nadine gets out of all this?" Aries asked.
I hadn't really thought of it. The construct had been big but it didn't have many pieces. We probably didn't need the extra set of hands, even if Aries was only watching and not helping.
"She's working too, don't worry. Blackclaw has the vampires work on some kind of research project," he said. "That's probably what she's doing. She's his research assistant, supposedly."
"You don't think so?" I asked.
Stellan tossed one of the construct's metal arms onto the debris heap. "I don't really know. He only hires the vampires and they don't talk about it. They won't talk about it. Even Nadine."
"So, you and Nadine are close? Even if she's a vampire?" I asked a little later. We'd finished collecting all the pieces of the construct, yet were still hovering over the wreckage.
Stellan dusted off his hands. "Not the way you're thinking. Not like you and your idiot over there."
"Oh, we're not-" I cut myself off when my eyes caught on Aries. He was far enough to be out of earshot, reclining on the grass, eyes skyward and content. Stellan looked skeptical anyway.
"Nadine's older than she looks. We're friends… or friendly, at least. She started as Blackclaw's assistant after his last vampire protege, Simon, left," Stellan said. "It sits wrong. That's all. You ever notice he always smells like spilled blood?"
I was already angling for use to walk back to Aries. I didn't want us to keep him waiting long. I was going to have to take him to Kelyn's office. See if he needed another cup of patchwork potion.
"You mean Blackclaw?" I asked. I'd noticed it, or the wolf had. It was hard to miss.
"I think he's been giving them blood," Stellan said.
But that didn't sound right. Why would he do that? I was pretty sure he resented the fact that he had to come babysit me every full moon. Why would he go out of his way to feed a vampire?