King and I - 18

You were pulled away from your reading session by the arrival of another guard, who hastily informed you of the upcoming training session for your magic. Warm didn’t even seem to notice as you told her you were leaving for a while. She was too busy burying herself into the selection of paranormal books.

Sombra’s training sessions seem like a distant memory after recent events, but you know for a fact that it was only a few days ago he had you boiling buckets of water to teach you about variable manipulation. You were grateful for them, but you’d never admit it to his face. You haven’t found much opportunity to use your new abilities. An in the once case you did use them it resulted in the “accidental” killing of a rebel.

Your musing leaves you on autopilot and before you know it you’re back out onto the dirty training field. You’re picking up on the castle layout much faster than you expected, mainly thanks to the new freedom you’ve been given. Sombra Is already here waiting patiently, two fresh metal buckets at either side of him. You stop in place as you notice the crimson liquid that fills them, is that blood?

He follows your gaze down to his left, “Oh, how silly of me. Today, we are going to elaborate on your talents, with some real blood magic.” A book is placed in front of you, a deep gray with red trim. “Blood Magic” is hastily scribbled on the front in what seems to be white paint. It’s dried incorrectly with streaks of run off smearing the leather cover.

“Not the most professional looking piece of literature, but this is one of the few remaining copies in existence, the other being locked away somewhere in a Canterlot vault. The others unknowingly held by collectors and opulent nobles who don’t realize what they’ve bought. This particular book has quite the history behind it.”

“What do you want to teach me?” You ask, cutting to the point. He quirks a brow before letting out a breath into the cool air.

“A lot of things. Most ponies don’t know the true applications of blood magic, it’s been a well-kept secret buried by the sisters for centuries. Most are simple minded towards it much like the dark magic that I have mastered, it’s considered evil.”

“Evil?”

“They make it seem very black and white. Dark magic is only used to corrupt and destroy, blood magic is only used to enslave or kill. It plays perfectly into their hooves. The parents tell tales at night about the dark magic user hidden under their bed, a self-perpetuating system to spread fear among their populace and build support for their war campaign against me.

I can only presume they’ll do the same to you. They don’t know about your potential yet. You need to learn everything you can before that happens, because they will come for you, just as they have come for me.”

He levitates one of the buckets onto the target range motioning for you to line up with it. You take your place at the firing line and wait for his instruction. He walks next to you, his magic flipping through the pages of the makeshift book. “How do you know they’ll come for me? Can’t I just hide my magic from them?”

He shakes his head between the covers. “Of course not, they’ll find you out eventually; perhaps by a chance reflex while in your presence or a simple accusation from one of the elite. There’s a good reason as to why there are no known blood mages left, they slaughtered them. They don’t see the pony behind the magic, they only see the aura. According to them the only ponies who can use such magic are inherently evil or chaotic.”

“I’m not evil!” You protest.

“But by your simple presence between the veils of our worlds, you are a creature of chaos. Whether or not that grants you the ability to use this magic is another question entirely. These are questions you can answer in your own time, but believe me when I say that the benevolent sisters will not grant you the mercy I have.”

Déjà vu, this is the same conversation you had with him the first time. You need to stop repeating yourself so much. “Can we get to training then?” You ask.

He nods, “Pay close attention to what I say, these spells are much more advanced than anything you’ve done before, and you may need to practice over weeks in order to learn them properly.”

Much to your surprise the training was actually really easy. Sombra seemed surprised at your aptitude himself, commenting on your natural talent. The spells themselves weren’t anything flashy, certainly not worth the buildup he gave them during his explanations.

First off was a spell not far removed from the levitation you had tentatively used over the course of your stay. According to Sombra levitating blood should have been difficult due to its liquid properties; forcing the user to twist and manipulate their levitation field to the contours of the blob, or just brute force it by surrounding it in a box.

Not for you, in fact you found it even easier than usual. Sombra didn’t say anything, but you could tell from the twitch on his frown that he hadn’t thought you’d pick it up so rapidly. You can’t imagine it was because it was ruining his schedule.

He chewed his lip for a moment before flipping past a few more pages. He smiled triumphantly as he found something he was sure you couldn’t do.

“Blood sight, a difficult spell. It gives the user the ability to enchant a volume of blood and use it to look out from others. This spell saw much use on the battlefields before it was outlawed.” His magic pulls one of the buckets to you, leaving it a few inches away from your body.

“Look to your target, the other bucket down range. Then, look down into the reflection and will it to be your eyes into the world.”

Vague as always and not much help you think in annoyance. You do what he says, looking over to the far blood bucket, and then down into your reflection in the one in front of you. “Will it to be your eyes?” You whisper, focusing intently on the two locations.

Channeling the magic, still unsure of yourself, you push the energy down onto the surface of the red liquid. With the field in mind you imagine looking out from the other bucket.

For a moment nothing happens, but just before you give up to try again you notice that a subtle change has occurred in the reflection. Instead of your curious visage the reflection is now pointing to a blue sky.

That’s it? Underwhelming is the word you’d use. Either way Sombra is impressed. “You truly are a natural at this. That Rose cutie mark must have a hidden meaning I do not understand.”

“My full name is Blood Rose, is it not?” You quip in a posh accent, remembering that little detail from the story you read back at home.

“Ah, of course. How could I forget? Even still, you have an amazing capacity to learn, or maybe you are a very lucky mare and all of these successes were simply flukes?”

“Flukes that happen one after another in succession? Not likely.” You boast.

“Pride doesn’t suit you,” he mutters under his breath unaware that you can clearly hear him.

It turned out that those two spells were the only ones he had prepared for; acting under the assumption that it would take you the latter half of a day to preform them correctly. He gave you a small congratulation and trotted away without a word with the blood filled buckets in his grip. You decide to go back down the library and see if Warm has finished her reading queue. Along the way you spot Fury hurrying himself past you to an unknown destination.

Maybe you can go seem him after you chat with Warm. You want to learn more about this mystery cabal you’ve been inducted to suddenly and without explanation. Did he explain it before? You vaguely remember Fury talking about your unique magical talent. That makes sense. He wants to have the world’s only blood mage in his ranks.

You stop for a moment, just outside the library doors. You do all work under Sombra though, he shouldn’t need to.

Pushing the thought from your mind you trot over to Warm, who amazingly has managed to dig through the pile and is currently reading the final book. “You should have been a librarian or something,” you comment, nodding to the stack of discarded literature.

Warm jumps out of her trance. “I always enjoyed reading,” she says flipping to the next page, “it was a cheap hobby and money was usually tight back home. I got really good at it because I went to the library a lot, and had to scan through the books to finish before they closed for the day.”

“Couldn’t you just go there the next day?”

“Not when I was busy, and sometimes ponies took out the books I was partway through, I hate loose ends.” She sighs, closing the last book and placing it on top of the others. “What do you wanna’ do now?”

“I was thinking of going to see Fury for a while, you can do whatever you want really.”

Warm smiles, “Oh! That’s good; I might stay here for a little while longer then.” You nod and turn to leave, “Wait!” She whispers. You swivel in place back to meet her. Her eyes shift from left to right, looking for guards. “I found something that you might like.”

She reaches over and pulls an unmarked, red covered book from her pile. She places it down onto the table and slides it over to you. “I managed to smuggle this away back when they were re-arranging the library, sometimes they throw them out to keep things hidden. I was curious so I kept it. It’s a detailed book on the history of blood magic!”

You open the cover, “Blood Magic” is written in a similar style to the book Sombra held. This must be his go-to book on the subject, Warm has it. So he must have had to make do with that ratty makeshift one instead. “You could get into trouble for this.” You whisper harshly, suddenly conscious of the area around you.

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them. They have another copy somewhere anyway.” She reasons.

You chew your lip in thought. Do you want to take the risk? Subverting Sombra isn’t anything new, but this could lead back to incriminate Warm instead of yourself. “Just take the thing,” she scoffs. She pulls herself from the table and begins to pull the other books into her arms. “I have to go put these back on the shelves, just take a little peak and then hide it somewhere. They don’t check up on this place anymore.”

She doesn’t give you time to argue back as she carts off into the jungle of wooden shelves, leaving you along in the quiet hall. You look down to the book, and as if it were going to bite you hesitantly turn to the first page. When it doesn’t kill you with some ancient case you visibly deflate, and with one last self-conscious look around the room, begin to read.

The book isn’t nearly as exciting as you were expecting it to be, considering how “illegal” it is in Warm’s own words. Nothing from the book screams at you to be censored by a dictator, simply delving into various blood magic users and how they affected history. One thing the book does say is what kind of things you can do with it.

Initially it’s quite tame, leading on from the things Sombra has taught you personally over the last few weeks. But then it begins to divulge into things much darker than you initially imagined.

It was no secret that you boiled your assailants blood in his veins, that much you figured out. But the book forgoes simply listing what the spell is, but it also lists some common uses; “Torture” being the primary heading.

“Blood Mages are infamous for their ability to boil internal organs and fluids. Their reach into the body is unmatched by any other, making them exclusive candidates for true, magic based torture. Under duress of dying a painful death at the hands of a skilled blood mage, enemy soldiers will spill their greatest secrets.” You shake your head and turn the page, hoping for something less horrible.

“Puppeteering is a highly advanced skill in which a blood magic user exerts their will upon another, and using the ability of blood control (Page 46) are capable of forcing them to preform acts upon their behalf…”

You slam the book shut. You should take a break from reading. You open the front cover and look at the index, instead deciding to skip the skills segment and simply read up on some history. Considering the grim subject matter it’s pretty boring aside from the occasional footnote about the mutilation technique used.

After a few minutes of reading you’re firmly convinced that this book doesn’t’ hold anything of note, no new spells, no useful information, nothing. The final page has a list of notable blood magic users from recent history not mentioned in the long summary. Every single one of the names has an associated date of birth and date of death.

An unsettling pattern soon emerges; the vast majority of them were killed on the same date of “3rd cycle, 15th day, 206 BLR”. A few survivors are taken out soon after. You don’t understand the pony date system, but you presume that this was a long time ago. BLR? “Before Luna Return” perchance?

You move onto the glossary, scouring it for any mention of the date. You find one reference, page 206. You move back, keeping a close eye on the page number. “210, 209, 208, 207, 204… 204?” You whisper. You hole the page in a hoof, keenly aware of the obviously torn out page at the binder.

Somebody didn’t want people looking up that date, but it’s fairly obvious that some kind of focused effort to eliminate blood magic had occurred. Both from the vast number of deaths and the torn out page trying to cover it up, Sombra’s story must have had some level of truth to it.

“A lot of these books are incorrect,” you remind yourself, remembering your conversation with Warm. But if the events were forcibly censored like this, there must have been some truth to it, a truth the culprit didn’t want getting out.

You look back to the list for any more clues, but beyond the dates that you can potentially cross reference there’s little else to pick up. You scan the list of names for anything familiar, your eyes widening in shock as a recognizable name meets your gaze. You let out a squeak before shakily reading it out loud.

“Silver Shield, 1st cycle, 1st day, 163 BLR - 3rd cycle, 15th day, 206 BLR”