Friends in High Places

I had always liked potions.

Not in the way that a wizard loved books. But like a drunk loved spirits.

I. Liked. Potions.

It started when I was young. Very young. I had a minor injury, a fracture in my leg while at the academy, and was fed a healing potion. The… rush. The warmth.

It changed my life forever.

I experimented with them whenever I had the opportunity. Stone Skin. Fish Gills. Smoke Sight. Anything I could fine. But none compared to the simplest one of all.

Or, not simple. But rather… unlikely.

Mana Sensitivity.

On that day, when I forcefully expanded my Well. I felt it for the first time.

Life.

From the plants. The trees. From my friends and myself. I felt it. Even through the coldest darkness to exist in these realms, I felt it.

Life.

There were few things I've ever yearned for as much as I have for that feeling.

Core's Record. Ch 4.

***

"Jaimess is another Marulean student of the scholarly archetype. He's rarely had hostile encounters in the Wilds, not because he is incapable, however. Quite the contrary. Jaimess has proven to have expert control of his affinities, Paper, Carbon, Silicon, and Obsidian. While primarily defensive by nature, Jaimess has shown to adapt his spells to many a situation. However, we have yet to see the full extent of his offensive capabilities."

"Hopefully we can be impressed today. Thank you, Sir Zurich."

Yes, thank you, Zeff. Because I couldn't deal with this shit anymore. Eiriol's words were eating me alive. Titus' overbearing nature was getting to my last nerve. And for some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to happen.

Not something bad necessarily, but something unexpected. Which very well may have been worse.

Much, much worse.

It went without saying that Jaimess was Amun's vassal. He was from Maru. From Odissi. He was one of the few with four affinities cores and utter mastery over the elements.

And he was one of even fewer who had the experience of a graduate.

I saw it frequently over the past six months. Not as much as I saw it Cooke Party, but it was there. It lied in his inability to underestimate his opponent. To get his encounters over with as quickly as possible like Toril, but unlike the one they called master.

He was amiably aloof like Amun too.

He stood in light armor that appeared almost like a scaffold across his body, covering his chest and back with a five-sided plate of black and tan. Thin strips of metal covered his arms and while he had a registered helmet, it was nowhere to be found. Giving us a clear view of the amused grin slowly peeling across his face as he read his orders.

"So I'm being hunted. Just like old times."

And that confirmed it. For me at least.

A few others too. But most of them expressed sheer confusion before it evolved into utter shock.

With levels of grace that came from years of practice, Jaimess reached behind his back to pull a dull blue potion from his pack and chugged the contents in one swift motion. Then stepped off into the portal without delay.

With a single step, he was transported an impossible distance. Through the woodwork and out the other side, he emerged at the base of the Ligin Mountains some 130 kilometers away from the small hamlet of Ullortheas, with a wide, stony smile spread across his face.

"That was a mana sensitivity potion, was it not? Why so much?"

Rather than Titus, it was Ms. Mask who asked. And not to me, but to both Corym and Indra, for she knew Eiriol would do nothing but laugh in her face.

And still, Eiriol laughed in the same demeaning way she'd done since I was a student at the Bodhi Tree. Not just at the fact that Ms. Mask had asked, but because the wood elves refused to even exchange glances with The Cowl's Head Alchemist.

Fucking elves.

They knew something interesting was bound to happen. Even Eiriol stopped her giggling and focused once Jaimess got his bearings and seemed to lock onto something. His arms were draped to his sides. His mouth slacked open. All his focus was trained on some ambiguous point high atop the mountain. And then, chaos.

The wind fluttered with a mad rage, picking up black and white dust and stones and countless shards of paper that swept around Jaimess' body until it died down to nothing. To an empty forest with no Jaimess in sight.

From black to a blur of tan and green, the perspective switched and switched again as it struggled to keep up with Jaimess' blinding ascension.

"Somethings wrong."

I heard my words echo back to me moments after they'd left my mouth, and hardly. They'd been drowned out by the cacophony of similar remarks, some stating the obvious and others not. And throughout it all, Eiriol sat back and watched with unbridled levity.

"He was slated to fight a Griffon. But… where in all the realms is he going?"

That was the question of the hour, and no one who seemed to have an answer was willing to give it. We could only watch the screens flicker with constant motion, struggling as they bounded higher and higher to eventually halt at the edge of a stone platform atop one of dozens of summits.

"That's-

The shock was the first of many to echo when Jaimess landed. One of the dozens that'd been cut off from shock.

"Impossible!"

There it was. And there it began. The remarks and clauses and justifications everyone conceived in order to make sense of the inconceivable unfolding before our eyes.

Centered on our screens, scattered across the dais on which the scrying was focused were four beings.

Three stood in a line before Jaimess. Humanoid in size and appearance, with somewhat loose-fitting monk's robes pigmented with gold and red dyes. The skin on their hands and faces were red, almost like an Oni's, but with a white and red texture that appeared to be a mix of fur and feathers. Great wings sprouted from their backs like a Celestials', stretching two meters across and flapping like great fans to levitate motionlessly above the platform.

But the most prominent feature of all were their faces. Turned and twisted into angry scowls with dark red skin and elongated noses pointed right at Jaimess.

"Tengu!"

I'd never seen one before. Much less three. I was, however, sure that many of the more accomplished people here had. Which made their reactions to Jaimess all the more interesting.

They sat at the edges of their seats, dumbfounded while Jaimess still had that same dumb smile on his face.

Like he'd spent the last few hours around a smokeleaf bonfire and emerged to see the world for the first time, he stared wide-mouthed at the Tengu while the magic around him shifted. And then I noticed it.

Stretching two meters across Jaimess' back was a pair of angelic wings, black and grainy as if they were made from powder. The same material stretched across his entire body like a second skin, and as he stared, it warped and shifted into somewhat loose-fitting monks robes and a wrinkled scowl that featured an elongated nose.

Suddenly, each of the Tengu assumed the same low fighting stance, and the chaos inside the room peaked. But a single voice brought it down to silence at once.

"What we're witnessing here is a miracle. They approached him for a reason. To play. And Jaimess looks like he's game."

No one turned to face the Headmaster. No one could. We could only come to terms and agree with what was said. Up until the moment that we couldn't.

It came in a blur of motion that was too fast for me to perceive. I only registered a shift in the four figures before the perspective backed away from a shockwave to show something rocketing away from the summit like cannon fire. It trailed silently for seconds before a great rattle shook the frame. Then Jaimess was seen rocketing back into view, his hand outstretched before him until another blur came.

The screen shifted again to show him impacting a nearby slope with enough force to topple trees and boulders from the face of the mountain. But his paper, his obsidian, and his silicon and carbon- whatever those even were, kept him unscathed.

He flew forth again, reaching out in an attempt to close the distance while the third Tengu was seen in the background, whistling through the air as it raced around to deliver an air-shattering kick to the back of Jaimess' head.

"Do not intervene unless he's about to die. Their play shall not be disturbed for any reason less than that."

The Headmaster's voice was cold and absolute. But I knew he was one of the most knowledgeable about such things among us. He and possibly the wood elf twins. And the three of them were utterly enamored with what they were seeing.

But… still. "You can hardly call this playing."

The three hits Jaimess took sent him flying to dislodge ancient rock and ice from separate mountains. And each time Jaimess returned at a greater speed than he'd left.

This time, the Tengu remained clumped together, their fists and legs raised in an obvious effort for a simultaneous attack but Jaimess flew forward with the same smile he'd had since he stepped through the portal.

Just as they swung, Jaimess' wings flexed and his body spun with unnatural force. His arms and legs flung out with wild abandon a moment later, weaving through the Tengu's attacks to slam into their torsos and heads with just as much force as they'd given him.

"This is unreal!"

The Tengu recovered and scattered in the wake of Jaimess' attack and the lad followed. Together, they covered hundreds of meters in seconds, weaving through and between the trees and each other in a deadly 'game' of tag.

Suddenly, Jaimess soared from beneath an overhang and swooped down the face like a falcon, weaving between the trees to evade a Tengu on his tail when another came from his flank to slam the heel of its palm above Jaimess' ear.

With a… laugh, he recoiled at once. Twisting the air with his wings and manipulation to create a vortex that induced him into a front flip, spinning his heel around to dig into the Tengu's ribs before they were forced hundreds of meters apart.

And still, he recovered in midair to arc and cut through the skies, taking and giving blow after blow until their playful battle culminated in an explosion of felled rock and dust at the base of the mountain.

A sudden flash blinded me and the next thing I knew, I was teetering off the edge of a cliff next to Olga, Zeff, and Felicity Licht.

"He's not here. Fan out!" Felicity disappeared with a wave of her hand and a flash of light. Leaving the rest of us to gawk in amazement at the upturned environment.

"To think someone as quiet and unassuming as Jaimess could do this." I wryly chuckled.

It looked like a natural disaster befell the place. Though, in a sense, that was exactly what happened. Even now, rock slides were making their way to the basin. Carrying tons and uncountable tons of rock, dirt, and trees to form a new spur on the mountainside.

"It's like they say." Olga chuckled this time. "It's always the quiet ones."

"I found him!"

Felicity's voice spread through the air like light from the sun. It was overbearing for a moment, consuming my entire mind before it cleared to reveal a platform of mosaic stone tiles placed high atop a mountain summit.

Under normal circumstances, non-consensual blinking was an object of ire for me. I hated everything about the experience and knowing made it a little less bad. But now, such ire was replaced by sheer awe.

Awe, which led to curiosity, which- according to Eiriol, led to fear.

I could feel it germinating within me. I could see it sprouting in Felicity. In all of us. We were afraid to move. Afraid to act. All because we were faced with the unknown.

It was simultaneously the most amazing and terrifying thing we could've seen.

A trio of small creatures. Teardrops with wings, long noses, and humanoid mouths curled up into the same dumb, amiable smile Jaimess was still wearing as he laid unconscious on the ground.

One of them sat atop Jaimess' head, its eyes closed and its body rattling as it purred softly with breaths synchronized between the four.

Another sat in the crook of his neck, the feathers in its wings fluffed and wrapped around Jaimess' neck like a scarf as if it were hugging him.

The last was snuggled under Jaimess' arm, snoring loudly with no pause other than the times it tried to bury itself deeper in Jaimess embrace. And each time, he subconsciously returned the gesture.

And like parents who found their child playing with monsters, all we could do was watch and wait and occasionally make comments about the obvious until we got a chance to rescue the child from the monster.

Only, we couldn't.

"Like a boy and his three dogs." Olga shook her head in disbelief. Because honestly, it was unbelievable. "They're napping!"

"Yeah." I cackled weakly. "A boy and his three heavenly dogs."

"Did he just. Tame… Tengu?"

"I think befriend would be the appropriate word." Felicity airily laughed. "I mean- they're… they're healing him."