Chapter 284: Something's Wrong with This Successor
Staring at the blue-and-gold bird, Merlin felt a storm of emotions.
Could it be that the nature magic he prided himself on was actually easy to learn all along? Had it simply failed to pass down because he'd never found the right successor?
No. Impossible. He had found plenty of young witches and wizards with strong affinity for nature before. Every one of them had struggled painfully with nature magic. The best of them had barely managed to grasp the most basic form of nature mimicry.
If it were easy, the druids would never have vanished.
If the magic wasn't at fault, then the problem had to lie with this young man.
This successor was not normal.
Back then, the original had only told him that, many years in the future, a successor would come here, and he was to teach that person the fundamentals of nature magic. He had never specified where that successor would come from.
Merlin's gaze slid, almost of its own accord, to the Dark Wizard King still teaching in the flower garden. Remembering how she had behaved since arriving, a horrifying thought flashed through his mind.
The original… had not gone and done something irreversible, had he?
While the fragment spiralled down that line of thinking, Evans had already shed the bird form and turned back into himself.
Merlin shoved those worries aside for the moment and blurted, a little too eagerly, "Well? How did it feel? Anything strange?"
Even now, he could hardly believe this boy had tossed out a nature mimicry on his first casual attempt.
"Felt easy enough. Nothing difficult about it," Evans said honestly after a moment's thought.
Diricawl Apparition was his oldest, most-refined talent. After using it for so many years, his understanding of the bird's abilities ran bone-deep.
He had simply never heard of nature magic before. All his thinking about his gifts had gone into reverse-engineering them into spells anyone might use.
But once Merlin laid out the theory—how nature magic ran, how its flows worked—putting it into practice wasn't hard at all.
Run his magic along nature's channels, overlay the Diricawl talent's unique circuit, borrow a few concepts from Transfiguration, and it all clicked into place.
If anything, Merlin's slack-jawed expression was the strangest part of the whole thing.
"What are you so shocked about? I'm not some first-year who just picked up a wand. I've been using a Diricawl's talents for years. Tweaking a few circuits is hardly complicated."
"But—nature magic operates completely differently from ordinary spellwork," Merlin protested. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then finally just shook his head in defeat.
"Fine. It seems you really have put in the work with your talent."
A trace of pride softened his bruised features. He looked Evans up and down.
It did feel like leaving things in good hands.
Unfortunately, his smile tugged at a particularly nasty bruise, sending a spike of pain across his face and twisting the expression into something rather odd.
Come to think of it, this "successor" wasn't matching any of his expectations.
Most successors, surely, would have fallen to their knees the moment they saw him—crying that they had finally found their master, begging him to teach them all his secret arts.
This one showed not the slightest respect for his senior status, had dragged an outsider in here specifically to hunt down his original, and had learned the first major technique he offered before Merlin had even finished his introduction.
There was no satisfaction in this at all.
Slightly depressed, the fragment launched back into his explanation of nature magic, sharing every tip and trick he knew.
Growth and decay. Life and the turning of the seasons. When he got truly carried away, he stood and looked out over the garden.
With that single look, plants all through the garden went wild, surging upwards, twisting together into a colossal vine that tore free of the earth and lashed back and forth, churning the air and flinging dust everywhere.
Which was how he ended up being beaten down again for ruining the flowerbeds and interrupting the Dark Wizard King's lesson.
He picked himself up, bowing and apologising for a solid minute before daring to retreat. When he finally turned back, he glared daggers at the young man still quietly absorbing every word.
There was definitely something wrong with this successor.
Time flowed on. Once the Dark Wizard King and Merlin's fragment had both finished saying everything they meant to say, Evans checked the time and decided it was about time to head back to Hogwarts.
The day had been productive. He had learned how to trigger nature magic, and Sothia had recovered a solid chunk of her spring nymph inheritance.
With those in hand, he felt much more confident about the trip to the lake ahead.
Before leaving, though, the Dark Wizard King did not return to the red orb. Instead, she drifted over to Merlin.
The moment he saw her coming, the fragment's brief relief curdled back into alarm.
"I've told you everything I know. What more do you want?"
"Are you certain he's in that sea?"
Looking down at him, her eyes glittered with a dangerous light.
"Not… completely certain," Merlin said. Seeing her expression darken, he rushed to add, "But he contacted me about ten years ago, and that time his location was near the sea where Viviane faded."
He thumped his chest. "You know how I am. Once I pick a place to live, I stay there for decades at least. There's a very good chance he's still there."
She held his gaze for a long moment, as if weighing every word. Then she finally looked away, turning toward Evans, who was standing a little distance off, deep in quiet discussion with Sothia.
"When are you free?" she asked calmly. "I want to go to that sea. To search for him."
If she could, she would have already gone alone. But bound as she was to the orb, she couldn't leave it. She couldn't carry it either. In this world, she had no one to rely on but the young wizard who shared her goal.
Evans considered for a moment. "Where exactly is this place? I'll need rough coordinates at least."
He'd heard "the sea where Viviane fell" several times now. He knew the stories of the Lady of the Lake, but he had no idea where that sea actually lay.
"The approximate location…" The Dark Wizard King thought it over, then answered, "The north-western flank of the Scandinavian Mountains. If the geography hasn't shifted too drastically in the last thousand years, it should be there."
"Scandinavian Mountains?" Evans muttered, riffling through half-forgotten Muggle geography. He pulled a worn map from his pocket and traced a finger across it. When he found the right region, his eyes widened.
"The Sea of Wraiths?"