[Omen of the Witchblade] Chapter 87 — History Lesson

“Why did you give her the branch?” Heath asked. “Is that just something Magi do? I’m having a hard time figuring you guys out.”

“No,” Gwen said. “Not usually. Thomas sure didn’t, and he has more aspect skills than me.”

“Then?”

Mel tuned them out while she conjured a [Condensate] nail, sacrificing a portion of her coat to do it.

It glistened wetly, like it was a blood popsicle that would melt at any moment. She tossed it up and down in her hand. In the blink of an eye, she summoned her twinblade with the nail still turning over in the air. She struck it with a blurring strike.

Rather than shattering, the nail bounced off the blade and went spinning off into a pool of colorful, scalding hot water.

Under such relentless heat, the nail melted. Red threads of blood drifted and disappeared into the water.

Impressive. I wonder what else I can do?

“Lots of reasons,” Gwen said. “Look at what she’s doing now. So much of her potential is waiting to be awakened. She got two branches, and suddenly our spicy shortstack can fly.”

“I mean, yeah, but I still don’t…” Heath trailed off, uncertain.

“It’s the best way to protect Mel. And support her goals,” she said more quietly with an undercurrent of heat. “A challenger as brilliant as Mel with half the average Magi’s aspect skills? That’s deeply wrong.”

“Damn, your group must have a lot.”

“It’s harder to tell now,” Gwen admitted. “We’ve been fractured for over a month. Still, she is the reason we can hunt these beasts. And Mel didn’t even think to demand, let alone ask a price. She’s changed.”

“Usually that’s a bad thing. What do you mean?” Heath asked.

“Mel has a power to find stronger monsters that has…well, earned her the claim to victory. I consider a branch my price of admission to the plateau beasts.”

While her [Condensate] was on cooldown, Mel went over her other skills. What else would be changed by consuming blood instead of mana?

One skill particularly came to mind. One that she couldn’t shake felt…cheaty to use with [Blood Magic]. However, [Blood Magic] didn’t restrict her from any specific skill.

The only skill she couldn’t use with [Blood Magic] was, unsurprisingly, [Blood Magic] itself. Not because it was restricted though. You couldn’t buff something that was, in itself, a buff. It needed a target to enhance. Without a target, it did nothing.

Shocker.

Mel closed her eyes and drew on her [Sanguine Coat] at the same time as she used [Blood Magic] with [Sanguine Coat] to remake the coat into something better. It felt weird. Like she was pulling and pushing on herself at the same time.

When she opened her eyes, she fully expected it not to work. After all, it felt a little bit like troll physics.

Her coat rippled across all its surfaces, darkening and growing more leathery than watery. The shine it possessed reminded her more of her favorite motorcycle jacket, polished leather instead of highly reflective liquid.

“If only I could be so lucky to have friends like you all,” Heath said with heartfelt sincerity. “The Emerald eyed Demoness, the Thundergod, and the Dreadwolf all together.”

Mel turned around, looking at herself, stretching her arms to see the coat more fully. It was smaller and thinner from consuming so much blood, but it was well worth it.

Even thinner, Mel could tell that the coat was sturdier, its properties enhanced with [Blood Magic]. How much? She would have to wait and see.

Crossing my fingers that this keeps it around instead of disappearing the moment I go to sleep, Mel thought wistfully to herself.

Gwen sighed. “Aw man, I got another wolf alias? Guess I haven’t been subtle with the claws and the mantle.”

“Makes sense,” Thomas said with a chuckle. “You took out those competitors that stabbed me in the night.” He looked up into the sky wistfully. “It was like watching lightning strike.”

“Yeah, okay, mister Thundergod,” Gwen teased him with amusement.

“Mel’s is the coolest though,” Health said, beaming with pride. “Speaking of, what’d you do with your coat, Mel? It looks different!”

Mel looked over. “What? Oh. I cheated.”

“Sounds about right,” Thomas said, still mulling over what aspect skill he wanted to awaken with his kindling branch. He rolled it over in his hands in idle thought. “You used [Blood Magic] on your coat, right? Reforging it into its present form?”

Gwen moved well into his personal space, sniffing the branch. Her nose scrunched up with displeasure.

Mel’s elated expression drooped. “Why are you like this?”

Thomas roared with laughter. “Great minds think alike, that’s all.”

“It took me hours to realize I could do it,” Mel muttered petulantly to herself. “But yes, that’s what I did. Used the blood from my [Sanguine Coat] to create another [Sanguine Coat] with the help of my new skill. So it’s stronger and better without spending a single drop of mana.”

“That’s some sick resource efficiency,” Gwen said.

“That’s why it looks so thin,” Thomas said with a nod. “We should go out hunting to replenish your stores.” He shut his eyes and the branch in his hand vanished in a puff of motes. “And I can test out my new skill at the same time.”

“You’d think so,” Mel said. “There are some serious drawbacks though. I can only hold so much blood at once, for starters.”

“Can you take it from other people?” Heath asked nervously, his fingers fidgeting.

“Anything that has blood, yeah. I don’t see much in the way of wildlife here. It’s looking pretty desolate.”

“Hold on,” Gwen said. “You can pull blood out of us?”

Mel shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve tried, but I imagine it would be no different. I doubt aspect skills see a difference between friend and foe, unless you make them.”

“No wonder it’s called [Blood Magic],” Gwen said, eyes glittering darkly.

“Listen, it’s not like I can pull the blood out of your eyeballs or anything,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But if you left a little blood on the ground…who’s to say?”

“Could always let you try. Not the eyes though. I like seein’.”

“If you want to donate, sure. The blood I use changes the properties of my coat.” She motioned to the dark, leathery blood coat she wore. “This is from the plateau beast, so it’s stronger than usual. Of course, as soon as I go to sleep, it’ll go away.”

“Try on a living monster first, maybe? Then again…” Gwen’s voice trailed off.

The implication was there. Werewolf blood could be useful.

Mel shook her head. “Intrinsic weakness to silver? Nah.”

Gwen frowned at that. “I suppose your rings would end up doing damage to yourself.”

“Probably not me, but that might be true of the coat.” She turned to Thomas. “What’d you get, Thundergod?”

“Don’t listen to Mel. I think your title is suitably impressive,” Gwen told Thomas with a wink. “Completely unrealistic to us, but in the eyes of Earthers? Especially those Disjoined from their time period. Of course they’d come up with Thundergod.”

Thomas didn’t even roll his eyes at Mel. He merely grinned with a brilliant, unsettling twinkle in his eyes. “You’ll see.”

Mel folded her arms. “At least tell us the aspect.”

“Summer.”

Mel tried not to laugh. “Gonna give me some nice summer rain to revitalize my drooping begonias?”

Thomas opened his mouth to say something, but Mel suddenly latched onto what Gwen was saying. She put up a finger to stop Thomas. “Bup-bup-bup! This is not the first time I’ve heard that word, ‘Disjoined’ when talking about Earth.”

Heath looked especially confused by that. “You don’t know what–”

“She has memory loss,” Thomas said, still glaring at her for shushing him.

Gwen studied Mel’s face thoughtfully.

Mel stared blankly at Gwen. “You’re not going to drag the memories out of me by staring at my gorgeous pixie face.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said reluctantly.

“So, are you ass clowns going to tell me what a Disjoined person is, or am I going to have to use my—” She lifted her hands up and spread them out in an arc away from each other as she said, “—Imagination?”

“Relax, Mel.” Gwen crossed her arms. “Disjoined is a common term referring to lands and cultures that were brought forward in time during an anomalous event that affected the entire globe. People from across Earth’s history were suddenly living alongside each other.”

“This is not a multiverse thing,” Heath added helpfully. “This is an Earth thing.”

Sitting on a rock, Thomas stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles, reading the Shardscript to his new skill.

“Nana Wimpley always explained it as a really bad stitch job,” Heath said. “Like somebody had tried to bring pieces together to cover gaps and holes, but they didn’t have everything they needed so they just sorta…pulled from whatever they could. Sometimes that ended up being a town in 1990s California, others it was the 1550s in Europe. I heard there were still viking settlements from the 800s popping up in Scandinavia.”

Mel frowned. “So it’s like an ongoing thing?”

“Nobody knows,” Heath said simply. “It’s hard to tell if it’s because they weren’t inclined to contact the outside world, or if it’s because they just appeared. Like, if you were a viking and saw an overpass, would you want to go near it and all the cars? And even if you did, how many people would understand you?”

Gwen looked away nervously.

“Probably think you were going to a convention or something,” Mel said.

“Right.”

“Was it just time then?” Mel asked.

“I don’t follow.”

Mel motioned to Gwen. “Were werewolves always a thing?”

Gwen looked up at Mel with great surprise. “Well, yes. There’s always been the supernatural lurking on the fringes, out of public knowledge. My father is a regal werewolf, and my mother was raised within a Magi household.”

Heath looked surprised at that. “I…didn’t know. Does….does that mean magic has always been a thing!?”

Bless his dorky, weird little heart, he’s so excited.

“There’s a lot those outside of the Magi circle don’t know,” Thomas said distractedly. “It’s part of our job to keep the supernatural away from most humans.”

“To protect us?” Heath asked.

Thomas laughed darkly. “Hell no. To protect them. Humans are fine on their own. Individually, your standard human is full of hope and optimism, they can be reasoned with and enlightened. The creature you call a group, however, is flighty, panicky, and prone to snap judgments of unremitting horror.”

“They’re not that bad,” Heath argued weakly. “It’s not like whatever you guys do.”

“Which is?” Mel asked curiously.

“Well…” Heath looked away. “I’m not saying I mind, okay? Just…I want that clear, okay?”

“Sure, sure, you don’t want anybody to hate you for your undoubtedly shitty take,” Mel said, rolling her wrist to tell him to keep going.

Heath hunched his shoulders. “I noticed it most with Mel. At first, I figured it was just her. However, it’s all of you. Most normal humans abhor violence. They have to psych themselves up to hurt another person or thing. They need to hate them or be backed up into a wall or…something. Each of you go from calm and placid to a murderous tornado of violence in less time than it takes a normal person to realize there’s a threat at all. By the time a person would normally identify a problem, you’ve already got your hands bloody.”

Thomas nodded. “Ethos shaving.”

“What?” Heath asked.

“I suppose you could call it Magi conditioning,” Mel explained. “Every Magi undergoes it at their own pace. It’s part of what makes a Magi…a Magi.”

“But what is it?”

“Remember when you said ‘normal people’ need to psych themselves up to hurt another person?” Thomas asked.

Heath nodded.

“Magi don’t need to do that.” He glanced at Gwen. “Even those that do…well, they don’t need to.”

“Sometimes, I try to give people who don’t know what they’re getting into a chance,” Gwen explained, handing over a tin of [Armament Polishing Oil] to Mel. “Admittedly, it’s never the first thing I think of.”

Mel got to work, restoring some of the lost durability of her twinblade.

Thomas motioned to Mel. “Mel is a good example. You’ve no doubt seen her in action. That conditioning that needs to be done, to turn another person, monster, creature, or whatever into a target, isn’t necessary with us. We have only a razor thin margin between action and inaction. Most people need a reason to attack.” Thomas shrugged. “Magi don’t have that limiter that stops a person from killing somebody else. I know that makes us sound like monsters, but it’s necessary when you’re dealing with creatures who can’t be reasoned with or understood. Things that wouldn’t blink twice at consuming your soul and twisting your body into a bloody pretzel for its own amusement because it doesn’t think you’re really alive. Not like it is, in any case.”

Heath looked from one person to the next. “That. Sounds. Awesome. How can I get that training?”

Mel laughed. “Leave it to Heath to see the value of ethos shaving.”

“Hell yeah!” Heath said. “I didn’t even think to fight back against that old lady that stabbed me—”

Mel rolled her eyes. “Here we go again.”

“—instead, I worried that I was about to make a mistake. I was afraid. Not of her, but of my own actions. I didn’t want to hurt her. It was like some barrier inside my own mind pushing me back.”

Thomas nodded along thoughtfully. “That’s precisely what it is. It keeps people civil.”

“And you don’t have it?” Heath asked.

“We remove it, but most people have it. Those that don’t are people with other issues.”

Sitting down, Heath hunched forward and shook his head. “Like psychopaths? No, it makes sense. Little wonder whenever a true psychopath has been born, they usually rise to prominence. We must look like sheep to them.” He looked at Mel, then Gwen. “To all of you.”

“Oh, I do like eating sheep,” Gwen said wistfully, thinking with her stomach and missing the point.

Mel put a comforting hand on Heath’s shoulder. “We’re not psychopaths. It’s like saying you have a…” Mel looked around, searching for an analogy. She looked at Gwen and found the perfect one. “It’s like having a ball and chain shackled to your leg.”

“Hey!” Gwen said.

Mel waved away her concern. “Shush. The ball and chain is the problem, not the limb it’s attached to. Being born a psychopath is like being born without that limb. Therefore, no ball and chain, right? However, they also don’t have that limb. That makes them very different. Your average human in a group—psychopaths included—however, is a terribly dumb and untrustworthy creature. There’s more to Magi than making us more prone to casual violence.”

Thomas looked over. “The intelligence of any group of humans drops precipitously with every added member until you’re left with nothing more than a mob. So, back on topic, no we aren’t protecting the humans. We keep the supernatural hidden in all its beauty and glory to protect them.”

Gwen smiled at that.

Heath frowned. “But aren’t you human? You keep saying ‘human’ as if we are different from you.”

“I’m a Magi first, human second,” Thomas explained. “You are always a Magi first and foremost. Above race, creed, nation, even blood.”

“That would explain a lot,” Heath said thoughtfully.

“I probably would have been burned at the witch trials,” Gwen said casually, maintaining her clawed weapon by the fire now that Mel was done. “Still, it was rough for Earth, but it was better than the alternative.”

“Wait, what alternative?” Heath asked, eyes bright.

“Darkshard Lormar invading. The very place of nightmares that has joined us in being uplifted into the multiverse.”

“That’s just an old wive’s tale though,” Heath said. “Some sort of mass hallucination that people had, right? Horrible dreams, something about a magnetic storm causing it.”

Gwen’s sympathetic smile told Heath all he needed to know.

Heath pursed his lips in thought. “Nana Wimpley did always believe in the Savior,” he said slowly. “We just figured she needed something to latch onto in her old age. Some shred of hope.”

“She was closer to the truth than most.”

“Well, hold on now,” Heath said, putting his hand out like a crossing guard. “She also believed in storing pee in jars and using it to coat the doorstep to ward against demons she called the ‘Vacant’.”

Thomas and Gwen both grimaced at that.

“Did it work?” Mel asked.

“She said she was never bothered, but the cousins also didn’t want to visit her farm during the summer for that same reason. It got really bad when the summer heat baked it into the air.”

“Well,” Mel said, “horrifying stories about old women doing weird things aside, I appreciate the history lesson. It’s weird that I can’t remember that stuff when I remember so much else.”

“Memory loss is often spotty,” Thomas said soothingly. “It will come back on its own with time.” He gestured at the sky and the surrounding thermal springs. “A battlefield is not a good place for healing. It is little wonder that you haven’t remembered anything.”

Mel was sure that wasn’t the reason. She was having a harder and harder time ignoring the obvious signs in front of her. There was one thing that Thomas said, however, that she clung to.

A battlefield was not a good place for healing.

She would have time after the trial was over to chase these threads. To find out where her place was in this new multiverse and with the Magi. As much as it pained her, she only needed to wait a few more days. Until then, she needed to stay focused on the trial.

After taking out the assassins, she had gone from #19 to #12. Another plateau beast might push her into the single digits. From there, she would be within spitting distance of the coveted top three.

With her two new aspect skills, she was more prepared than ever to take on new threats. Mel stood up suddenly, drawing all eyes to her. “Let’s go find something to kill.”