Chapter 11 | Magnus

Chapter 11

Magnus

I WAS ALREADY FEELING weak, drained, and lethargic, yet I knew what I had to do. In order to keep Ravinica safe and Grim out of academy jail for false accusations against him, I needed to keep coming to these . . . leeching sessions.

I had no other way to describe them.

It was trying. Just casting a simple shadow-beast this morning had nearly drained me completely. How much of my blood did these bastards need to get the results they wanted?

For the past week, ever since admitting my guilt over Astrid and Corta's murders to Hersir Ingvus Jorthyr, I'd been assigned to meet in a specific location on specific days.

Today was one such day.

I arrived at Fort Woden, staring up at the monolithic black structure that looked more like a gothic cathedral than anything else. It was interesting architecture for people of Viking heritage, with twisting spires, four towers at the corners, and numerous stories of secrets inside those blackened stained-glass windows impossible to peer into.

There was a reason the central structure of Vikingrune Academy was called a fort, and why it was dedicated to Odin, the All-Father, chief of our gods.

Initiates like me were forbidden inside. Upper classmen could not go in without express directives. The high doors were guarded by countless Huscarls, who stayed on a perpetual watch all through the day and night.

There would be no breaking into Fort Woden as I had Mimir Tomes. I suspected there were some underground tunnels that led here, since the spiderweb of labyrinthine caverns and corridors seemed to trace the entirety of Academy Hill. If there were, the Lepers Who Leapt had not found the entrance yet. Or they kept that information close to the chest.

Fort Woden was the command center of the academy. It was the place where the Hersirs did their dirty work. From here, they watched the rest of the world, to make sure inhabitants from other realms—other worlds—were not encroaching upon Midgard. It was also home to many of the Hersirs, including the Gothi, Sigmund Calladan.

I wondered about the secrets the place held, as I stared at the edifice of the fortress and waited for my escort.

My prisoner exchange.

Eventually, four Huscarls came to greet me at the wrought iron gates. They surrounded me and wordlessly led me through a dark foyer with the slatted ceiling of an arboretum.

At the main entrance, the Huscarls passed me off to a masked, hooded acolyte. It was interesting to see the black-robed helpers of Mimir Tomes here in Fort Woden, which I considered a military encampment rather than a scholarly one.

A hood was placed over my head, before we stepped inside. It came abruptly as ever, with one of the Huscarls blotting my sight with the hood and then pushing me forward.

I followed the footsteps of the acolyte down marble hallways, onto rugs, through darkness. I could only see vague shapes through the wicker-pattern of my hood.

Eventually, a door slid open. I was led to the testing room, which I had become accustomed to over the past week.

The hood was unceremoniously pulled from my head, and I let out a deep breath. My eyes squinted against the harsh light of the overhead bulb strips—like the emergency room of a hospital.

This was one of the more alarming secrets Fort Woden held. In essence, a laboratory, with countless rooms in the large space. Misty windows partitioned the different labs where acolytes did their studies and tests.

I was one of the test subjects.

I didn't recall this place from my youth, as a whelp when the academy had first leeched me, because most of the memories I had of that time had been blocked through magical amnesia. I only had vague fragments in my mind. Nothing here looked familiar—not the blurry windows, the robed acolyte scientists, or the tables of beakers, vials, and potions.

Someone was either protecting me from the horrors of my past, or hiding it from me. I had no idea which was the truth at this point, but I intended to find out.

Coming here was a first step in the right direction.

From my studies in Mimir Tomes, I knew what the academy wanted from me—what they wanted from any rare bloodrender. The academy wanted my blood so they could use it to create something. Super soldiers, perhaps, who could utilize my abilities to amplify their own; other bloodrenders, with scars marring their skin as a physical reminder of the sacrifice it took to use our unique magic. Maybe the academy just wanted to know how I operated, and where I came from.

I was just as curious as they were, in that regard.

The acolyte led me into the same small chamber I'd been in three times over the past week. She sat me down in leather chair, pushed a button to recline me, until I was staring up at the blaring lights. I felt like a surgeon's patient about to go under. My heart started to race—not out of fear, but out of hesitance and nausea.

No one liked getting stuck with needles. At least not involuntarily. I was used to drawing my own blood to the surface in order to bloodrend, but this was different. This was caustic and invasive. A complete thievery of my safety and independence.

I told the acolyte, "You can't keep draining me without filling me back up. I'll die before you get what you want."

The acolyte hummed. She stuck my arm with a needle before I could respond. "That's what we're doing first, initiate."

I couldn't see her face under the hood because of her mask. I only recognized her femininity by the shape of her body under that robe, and her voice was a giveaway.

Warmth flooded my system. I closed my eyes. Slowly, I seemed to drift off. My thoughts became mangled, and it became hard to breathe. I winced and writhed in my seat, not from pain, but from discomfort.

The flood of blood to my system was a foreign sensation. It wasn't like draining Astrid, which had been empowering and invigorating. No, this was wrong . Synthetic. Fake. It gave me no strength, but rather sapped me of my sanity.

When I opened my eyes, an unknown amount of time had passed. I stared up at another masked face, with a simple black fabric crossed over the surgeon's nose and mouth. Dark eyes stared down at me, and a hood hid the person's features.

During my first leeching session, they'd told me the masks and hoods were to prevent retaliation. I'd said, "You think you're going to piss me off enough that I'll try to find and kill whoever leeched me?"

It wasn't a misguided thought, even though I'd sounded incredulous.

The acolyte had spoken for the doctor, saying, "You drained the silvermoor, didn't you? What's stopping you from doing the same to one of our esteemed scientists?"

It was a fair point. I was untrustworthy in the eyes of the academy at this point. It led me down dark thoughts—wondering if the academy would rid themselves of me once they'd stolen what they wanted from me.

They may not attack Ravinica . . . but what was stopping them from killing me once they had as much of my blood as they wanted? This isn't a sustainable thing. How much longer must I come here?

Being a test subject for heartless surgeons and shamans was terrible. I was finally seeing what it felt like to interact with heartless people . . . like me. People who showed no emotion, no care for my wellbeing.

After the acolyte injected me with plasma, she said, "We begin."

"When will it end?" I croaked, feeling weak as I stared up at the bright ceiling.

Again, the acolyte standing behind the surgeon spoke for him. I had never heard the voice of the man draining my blood—another measure to prevent potential retaliation, I assumed. If I didn't know what the madman working on me looked or sounded like, how could I ever find him?

"When we have what we want," the acolyte said simply. "We've already told you that, initiate. The blood goes bad after testing it. So we need more."

"Then I hope you find what you're looking for soon, dammit," I grunted out, and then grimaced when another needle stuck deep into my left arm. "This is untenable."

This was not a simple blood draw at the doctor's office. It was painful. Whatever they were doing was abnormal. I left these sessions disoriented and weak. My stomach soured easily. I couldn't hold food down. I had random hot flashes throughout the day. My mind wandered in ways it never had before, as if my body was fighting an infection of my soul.

I worried they were injecting me with something changing my physiology or genetic structure. Odin only knew what they were doing, since they made it impossible for me to look over and see.

Leather clamps whirred and encircled my wrists to bind me in place. At the base of the chair, my ankles were bound until I was firmly immobile, imprisoned in the leeching chair.

When the blood-sucking began, I growled. The growl turned into a grunt. I shut my mind off to the intensity of the sucking sound coming from their machine—the vacuuming of my life-force.

It went on for what felt like hours, though I suspected it was mere minutes until they had their vials full of my precious essence.

I breathed heavily, panting, and opened my clenched eyes. The pain let up. A wave of dizziness washed over me, dulling my senses as they finished their session and filled me with something that would numb my mind until I was out of Fort Woden.

The silent surgeon was already gone, like a serpent slunk underneath the dreary black waves of the ocean. I could hear the clanking of glass vials in his hands, receding down a hallway, before I was alone with the acolyte.

She raised the chair, unclamped my wrists and ankles. I stood on unsteady legs, putting a shaky hand to my forehead, feeling a layer of sweat.

She walked me out of the room, into the bright jumble of the testing chamber, where other acolytes roamed and did their business like ominous wraiths.

The hood fell over my head, disorienting me, and I was led back through the halls. I counted my steps, noted the turns, and tried to hold onto the fleeting memory as much as I could.

I told myself, If I ever come back here on my own volition, I must be able to retrace my steps to the science chamber, even without seeing it.

Once I was brought to the front gate of Fort Woden, standing beside four Huscarls, the hood was ripped off my head.

"Two days," the acolyte said. "We will see you here, Herr Magnus." She slammed the door in my face before I could respond, cutting off any visual to the interior of the fort.

A new thought came to me, and it horrified me. What if they already have what they want, and they aren't draining my blood to test, but rather . . . to store? If that's the case, I may never escape this dreadful fate.

As I had every day since agreeing to this, for the sake of Ravinica and Grim's safety, I wondered what the fuck I had gotten myself into.