Chapter 33

The man stood dumbfounded. He clearly felt the dripping of fresh blood down his fingertips but found no corpse in sight. There was no head in his hands when he awoke. No dead would be thieves around him. In his groggy half awakened state he yawned and said as if to himself. "Interesting." And then left town.

As I read this turn of events, I'm left baffled and confused. Book doesn't say he'll be returning any time today. Doesn't even say he'll be returning any time soon. But who was he? Why did he give up so easily? What does he intend to do now? Every time I tried to ask book for what he was going to do I found something strange about his actions.

He's smelling flowers, he's planting an apple core. He's taking a bite out of a tree. He's feeding the ducks… to the dogs. He seems to be acting erratically. Like how book suggested I act. Perhaps he's acting strangely to throw off my predictions. Does he also have an oracle ability? What was happening with his hat and why did I want to take it.

These thoughts flooded through my head as I sat waiting for my self-defence spells to heal the damage to my open veins. It seems it took a minute for the spells to even register damage was done to me. I must have been sitting there for a while with my eyes unfocussed because when my mind finally settled, and my thoughts cleared my pet was sitting in front of me as I sat with my head in my hands and my knees at my chin.

"Are you done with your labored breathing and terrified shaking?"

"I almost died today."

"Which assassin did they send?"

"I didn't catch his name. It was a man in a hat."

"Is that all he was wearing?"

"Yes… No! I don't remember. All I could see was his hat at the time like it was drawing me in. I almost couldn't resist taking it." As I recalled the experience my body began to tremble again. The feeling as though my body was not under my own control as if someone had reached into me and forced my hand.

"Why did I try to seal his hat?"

"They sent him?"

"Wait who?"

"Don't put too much stock into this because it's just a rumor I heard but I'll tell you."

I shakily nodded and gestured for her to continue. "I heard once that a friend of mine knew someone who heard a screaming homeless man rave about an assassin with a cursed hat that forces people to try and steal it. That whoever could steal this hat was worthy to wear it and whoever was cursed to wear it was cursed to not rest until they found someone more worthy than themselves. The hat wants someone to kill the person wearing the hat and take it for themselves."

"That is quite a lot of hearsay."

"I know. He kept screaming about it and the person who heard from the homeless man himself asked how he could possibly know that. How he could have overcome the curse of the hat. He said the curse doesn't work on the people who know about it. Except of course for the user. I've heard the current owner of the cursed hat can almost control the curse and so it only activated when he's asleep."

"Ok that might actually line up to my experience."

"What do you mean?"

"I felt drawn to steal his hat from him but that feeling dissipated the more I saw him start to wake up."

"Then if the rumors are true you should be fine now."

"Alright then."

I checked book and after confirming that our next meeting would not end in my death, I told my parents and my girlfriend about it. I told them over telepathy individually and my parents had a question to ask me.

'Are we ok to fight the vampire now?'

"What? Oh yeah. It should be fine. He's served his purpose." I checked book. "Be sure to hit him with a radiant spell while he's monologuing before actually starting the fight otherwise, he'll start with the upper hand and you'll have to retry the fight a few times."

'Thanks sweetie.'

After ending the call with my mom, I began teaching my pet the cloning spell. After hearing my explanation for how I thought the spell worked and essentially everything I knew about the spell she responded. "No that's wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"My instincts are telling me that while you will indeed make physical bodies that match the old ones the part about putting yourself into them upon death is a separate spell entirely."

"Isn't it just wonderful being a magical creature irreparably connected to magic as you now require it to survive endows you with magical knowledge rivaling my own?"

"That's an odd way of saying my magical knowledge increases with age as a race trait but sure."

"I wonder how fast you can learn magic with access to magical literature."

"What do you mean?"

"Most liches are known to learn all their magic through pure experience. They write down the spells that are taught them by the very flow of magic energy in the air around them and they become master casters by simply growing old. So, I was wondering how fast a lich can grow with their natural understanding of magics if taught spells on purpose instead of just learning the natural way."

"Now you're looking at me like a researcher… I liked it better when you saw me as something useless. I get the feeling I'll be subjected to more painful experimentation now."

"It doesn't have to be painful." The glint in my eye and innocent smile on my face must have scared her because she soon ran away. I'd ask the club advisor, but it would be weird for me to spend the first half of the day out of school only to rejoin at the end to make it to Magic club.

Suddenly I received a telepathic call from the vice president of the club. 'Hey, remember when you told me to find you a transmutation mage before you'd teach me space-time magic?'

"Yeah?"

'Well, the president's fourth cousin thrice removed said she could meet us in three days after school.'

"Is she also a student?"

'No, she's a professor at a well renowned magical Academy across the continent. She wants to learn space-time magic because it's so similar and yet so different from transmutation magic. She wants to create spells based off of space time magic to mimic them via her favored domain.'

"Why would you want to mimic a spell that can call matter from the aether in a domain that fundamentally changes the structure of one matter to another."

'Why do you need transmutation if you already have a kind of magic that can just make whatever you want?'

"Space-time magic's a bit more complicated than just calling whatever you want into existence there are limitations to it. And if you want to overcome these limitations the magic becomes more complicated and convoluted."

'So, you want transmutation because it's easier?'

"No, I have materials I want to change into other things."

She blinked a few times. Though I couldn't see it the mental image of the action was conveyed over the telepathic message. 'Yes, that is what that domain does.'

I stared at her like she couldn't tell I just didn't want to tell her what I wanted to use transmutation magic for; she looked at me as if my answer was unsatisfactory and it's my fault she answered stupidly. These astral projections of ourselves we made and sent to each other non-verbally for a good few minutes.

Eventually I got distracted told her, "Just come over to my new house when you have the time and you can use my pendant to teleport us over to where you expect the meeting to be so I can get us there on my own when the time comes."

'Why not just go there together when we need to go?'

"I get the feeling I might run into a sibling while there and would like to bring my parents so they don't detract from our learning."

'You don't like your siblings?'

"It's not that, it's just been so long since we've spoken, they might try to rope me into something completely outside my plans if I come across them. It'd just be a major time suck."

'So, you want to go there in advance to get it out of the way now.'

"Perhaps."

'You'd rather learn magic than get reacquainted with old relatives?

"It's not like you're planning on spending too long getting reacquainted with your old acquaintance."

'Fine… I'll be at my house waiting for you after school. If you can find where I live I'll take you there today.'

"Wonderful."