Keywords: capability, competence, willpower, desire

“…And as you’ll find, past the technical nature of it all, that the most influential ingredient you can add to your spells, is your soul! – No, no. I’ve got to come up with something else. They never take that seriously, lord knows I never did,” the woman muttered to herself under her breath as she straightened papers and arranged her desk.

Once new and pristine, it had been colored with stickied notes and spilled coffee over the years – not that she had seen the surface of it in quite a while, with how busy things had gotten. The desk threatened to take up half of her small office, with stacking boxes and papers looming over the other half. Maybe she’d get more done if she actually cleaned the place proper for once, though the thought of a task that daunting resulted in only a sigh. Pulling up a small mirror on her desk, she tied back her long black hair, white strands falling by her eyes.

A knock on the door. “Professor Goodeye?”

She jerked upwards into proper posture in her seat with surprise, hastily twisting the hairband in place. “Oh! Is that…” She brought her reading glasses to her eyes. “Miss Aurora! What a pleasant surprise!” She rose from her seat, chuckling as she made her way to the door, arms outstretched. “Why, I haven’t seen you since graduation!”

Aurora returned the gesture, wrapping her old professor into a tight hug. “Sorry I haven’t visited, Professor. I’ve been so busy with research.”

“Oh, to be young again!” Professor Goodeye broke the hug. She stared fondly at her former student, now in front of her as an accomplished young woman. “I’m getting on in years.” She tapped the glasses with a wink.

Aurora grinned. “Nonsense Professor! You’re one of the youngest and coolest teachers here. You were always my favorite, at least.” She looked to the side, abashed. “Besides, you’re only—”

“Miss Aurora!” Professor Goodeye scoffed in mock indignation. “That’s forbidden knowledge!” The two of them burst into giggles.

There was a lot of mystery about Professor Goodeye – how well-accomplished she was according to the other professors, though they remained tight-lipped about the specifics, how she got a teaching position so young in the school’s early history. She’d often joke that she was older than she appeared, pointing to strands of white hair parted to the side in bangs, but she’d had those ever since her tenure, and she wasn’t yet old enough for grey hairs. The running rumor among the student body was that a spell had backfired on her and left its mark, but the thought of a spell that even Professor Goodeye could not master was somehow more ludicrous. Her mysterious past, yet genuine personality had made her one of the more well-known and popular professors, and snared the hearts of many students, Aurora initially among them.

“But, thank you. For what it’s worth, and I know professors shouldn’t say this, but…” Professor Goodeye winked at her. “You were one of my favorites, too.”

Aurora blushed. Maybe still among them. She had worked hard in her studies, strived to do her best to stand out in the crowd of students, and she had succeeded. She had been the professor’s first and last teaching assistant, and over the years of her education, had grown close with her favorite teacher. It was more difficult to keep in touch now that she had graduated, but part of her visit today was to rectify that.

“It’s good to see you, Miss Aurora, truly. What brings you back to school? You couldn’t have missed it that much!”

“Well, actually…I came to see…uh, you!” Aurora smiled shyly.

“Oh! What can I help you with? If memory serves correctly…” Professor Goodeye chewed on her lip. “You joined Professor Whitman’s team, yes? If memory serves, they were studying…”

“It’s actually an independent project,” Aurora offered. “I’ve been doing some of my own research. Actually, could we talk in your office?”

Professor Goodeye smiled. Aurora had always been modest and shy, but the way her eyes lit up when she was passionate about the magic she studied warmed her educator’s heart. “Come on in. I’m afraid there isn’t a lot of space,” the older woman muttered apologetically, closing the door behind her and clearing folders off a chair. “But please, have a seat.” She took her own across the desk from her pupil.

“I just want to preface this with – I respect you tremendously, Professor Goodeye.” Aurora drummed her fingers nervously on the table.

“Thank you, Aurora. Students like you are why we do this.” Professor Goodeye clasped Aurora’s hands with her own. “You may have graduated but you’ll always be one of my students. We are forever learning and exploring this vast world of ours, no?”

Aurora perked up. “Yes! I’m so glad you agree! And, I respect you, and my time here, and we learned a lot but there’s just so much – things we can’t even imagine past that!” The words tumbled out of her mouth in an excited hurry.

“That’s right!”

“So I wanted to ask if I – if you would help me access the Forbidden Library.”

Professor Goodeye’s smile faded. “Whatever would you need from there?”

“Just, I want to learn more, so much more than what’s currently widely available, and in school we were never allowed to even broach the subject but now—”

“The Forbidden Library is forbidden, Miss Aurora. Not only to students, but to the vast majority of our society.” Her voice grew tense.

“But not to you. Right?” Aurora pleaded.

“Miss Aurora.” Professor Goodeye attempted to pull her hands back, only for Aurora to cling onto them with hers.

“Please. Professor Goodeye. They say you’re the best of the best. I know that you know so much more than what you teach. Why do you keep knowledge from your students? We’re always learning, right?” Aurora's voice grew frantic.

The tired educator sighed, struggling to hide the disappointment in her face. “Not this knowledge, Aurora. Please. Take it from me, not as your teacher, but as a friend—”

“Liar!” Aurora burst out, her fingers now uncomfortably clenched around the professor’s own. “You’re hiding it because you think I can’t handle it, because you think I’m just some kid in over her head—”

“Aurora—!” Professor Goodeye took a breath. “Miss, Aurora, you are a competent young woman. I am not here to restrict you. I want to help you to the best of my capabilities as an educator. However, this is one thing I cannot assist you in. Frankly, your insistence is…troubling. I know that rumors might make the Forbidden Library seem amazing, but—”

“But!” Aurora interrupted. “It’s not the rumors! I know, actually know more about the Forbidden Library, you told me once in my last year, and…I’m not approaching this whimsically.”

“Precisely why your persistence is worrying! After everything I’ve told you!” Professor Goodeye scolded in a terse whisper. “Magic is for harmony. For the betterment of humans, not for…” Her voice lowered even further. “Not for the control of them.”

Silence hung thick in the room as both women collected their breaths. Professor Goodeye looked at her once-shining pupil sadly. What had gotten into her?

“I won’t…” She sighed. “Protocol would have me report you to the headmaster. I won’t. I understand your heart’s in the right place, that you want to learn, but I implore you…do not seek this matter any further. At the least, I, will not be helping you. I don’t understand how this could possibly pertain to your research, but if you’re not careful someone else will not be as understanding as me. Is this understood?”

“It’s my personal research,” Aurora mumbled.

“Perhaps if you seek help from your advisor, they’d be able to better understand your intentions. As it is, I cannot help you.”

“Professor Whi—she couldn’t tell me anything,” Aurora growled. “She was so useless.”

Professor Goodeye’s lips formed a tight line. “That’s no way to talk about your advisor—”

“She’s not my advisor! Not anymore. She didn’t understand!” Aurora’s voice rose, her grip on Professor Goodeye’s hands squeezing tighter and tighter.

“Miss Aurora, you’re hurting me—!”

“But it’s okay, see!” Aurora continued, her voice carrying a frantic and manic tone. “I found one of the books, one of them from her bookshelf! She was only using the one chapter as it related to our research but I understood, I understood Professor Goodeye! I knew that there was so much potential in it, so much power, I read it front to back over and over again and—”

“That’s enough, Aurora!!” Professor Goodeye yanked her hands from Aurora’s and slammed them on the table. “Out of my office. Now. I cannot condone this.” Her voice was a low whisper. Even now, she prayed that nobody had overheard their conversation from outside.

Aurora rose from her seat, her hands behind her back. “Well…Professor Goodeye. It was a pleasure to see you again.”

“I sadly cannot say the same, Miss Aurora.”

Aurora looked forlorn. “What happened to us, Professor? You said…you said earlier I was your friend. Not just a student, but...”

“Friends, Miss Aurora, would not enable this behavior either.”

“Why so formal?” She gave a tired smile. “Just…call me Aurora.”

“…Aurora. I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Professor Goodeye swallowed a lump in her throat.

“Could I…” Aurora hesitated. “Could I have your name? Could I use it?”

“You should already know it.”

“Yeah but, could I…again? Could you give me your name? Please?” Aurora asked, softly.

Professor Goodeye looked at her skeptically. “…Alice. Alice Fiera Goodeye.”

Aurora’s face broke into a wide smile, the sudden shift in manner unsettling the nervous teacher. “Thank you, Miss Alice Fiera Goodeye.” She brought scarlet-tipped fingers to her smile, playing at demureness, and licked them.

Professor Goodeye’s confusion was replaced with sinking terror as her eyes widened. She looked down at the table and raised her trembling hands. Aurora had clawed her nails in so deep earlier that they drew pinpricks of crimson blood.

“Don’t do–! This…” Her eyes began to droop with unnatural heaviness as she lost balance, stumbling against the wall. She couldn’t muster the energy to stand, let alone look up. Aurora’s footsteps grew closer.

Aurora looked down at her professor with glee. It had worked. At least, the first part. Excitement swelled from within, her heart beating rapidly, her eyes laser focused on the powerful woman on her knees in front of her. She swallowed her hesitation. This was it. Everything was going perfectly. There was no turning back. She savored the view of the attractive older woman struggling for control of her own body in front of her.

“Professor. You don’t look so well.” She walked closer step by step. “Are you alright?”

“Miss Aurora,” Professor Goodeye gasped, her words slurring. “Blood magic is forbidden, it’s—it’ll change you. Miss Aurora, please…” Her ears were ringing with the sound of blood rushing through, her pounding heartbeat, her quickened gasps. Already, she could feel her control over her body fade as it grew heavier by the second. Aurora hadn’t drawn much blood. It couldn’t last long. If she could just hold out…

“No no, not blood magic!” Aurora chirped as she drew closer. “See, that’s the problem with you professors. Even your worst nightmares aren’t imaginative. The book was banned for its knowledge on blood magic, but I could tell there was so much more potential to it.” She ran her fingers through her professor’s hair.

“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured, before balling her hand into a fist and yanking it, pulling the older woman’s eyes up to face her. “You’re so beautiful. That’s why I wanted you.”

Professor Goodeye’s body had grown limp, almost completely raised by Aurora’s grasp in her hair alone. Her eyes barely shifted upwards to make eye contact. Her lips trembled, as if to open and speak, though she could not muster even an ounce of energy to do so.

“Just a little…soul magic. I think I’ll call it that. It’s all brand new really, I’m the first one to do it,” Aurora bragged childishly, as if unaware of the gravity of the situation before her. “Just a little something that binds you, to me, and that binds me…” She dropped her hold on Professor Goodeye’s hair with a slump. “To you.” Aurora pulled out a small pin from her pocket and pricked her thumb. One hand holding the limp woman’s chin up, the other painting symbols in blood on her forehead, Aurora bit her lip with anticipation. Her heart raced, her cheeks flushed. Sweat trickled down her brow. Her body thrummed with arousal at the overwhelming power she now held over the woman she once had a schoolgirl crush on.

Professor Goodeye’s listless body was now all but paralyzed. Drool leaked from the corners of her mouth, her eyes fluttered bordering on closing, and as her mind and body slowed to a halt, all she could focus on was the eager, anticipating girl in front of her.

“That’s it, Professor,” Aurora hummed absent-mindedly, “just like that. You know how you taught us how to paralyze someone? When you use blood magic to do it, it shuts down everything. Body and mind. Such a simple thing, already miles better than what you taught us. So scared to teach us efficient ways to cast, and for what? To avoid something like this?” The hand holding the professor’s chin wiped away a trickle of drool. “But it feels so good, for you and me both, we could have this forever…at least, you would.”

A soft moan escaped Professor Goodeye’s throat.

“Good Professor, good…just breathe. Breathe all of this, breathe me in. Breathe your soul out. You won’t need it anymore, will you?” Aurora whined in a patronizing tone. “I’ll hold onto it for you.” She brought her face down to her teacher’s and breathed in tandem with her slowing, heavy breaths. “You always did say the most important part of a spell was our soul,” she whispered. “You just so happened to offer yours for this one.”

She thrust her pricked thumb into the professor’s mouth and whispered foreign chants underneath her breath. “Gift to me your title and your essence, and partake in mine, and bind your unnamed soul to mine from here on out.”

The professor’s tongue sprung to life as it licked the blood from Aurora’s finger. What started as soft, hesitant licks shifted into greedy desperate suckling as the woman who was once a professor moaned around her student’s digit.

“Thanks Professor,” Aurora murmured softly. “I knew you’d come around. When you have a free moment after you’re done, you’re going to help me get into the Forbidden Library. Aren’t you, Professor? And thank me while you’re at it.”

The disheveled woman pulled back from Aurora’s finger with a gasp and a lazy smile.

“Yes, Miss Aurora. Thank you, Miss Aurora.”

Inverted Keywords: manipulation, trickery, untapped potential