ADAD Chapter 28: Working on oneself

 Darius disliked that he was back in the white walls of the academy, rather than out there, taking bounty jobs with Anastasios. The vampire had signed up for private tutoring for his Charisma mastery, which was the only way he had managed to get the headmaster to let him start his second mastery. While... Darius was in anger management. 

He hated it here. The class was full of demons, who wanted to get a grip on their bloodlust, and none of them were nice. It was as if the tutor had done his best to collect the most troubled youths, well, not youths, per se. Most of them were a century old. Darius was the youngest in the group, and therefore, ignored. 

"Turn in your pictures, and we can talk about them," professor Asmen, an old demon littered with scars, told them. Darius looked at his picture. The theme was, feelings during a bloodlust.

 Darius had painted some red shapes, and plenty of red sprinkles. Going by his muddied memories of what he had felt back then, when he killed Kilkreath. It looked awful, and Darius hoped that the professor would see it and not show it to the rest. 

When all the pictures were on the desk, Darius's nightmare began. Of course, professor Asmen didn't respect the right to privacy of his students. He held up Darius's picture, which hadn't even been at the top of the stack, and called out to him. Darius went to the front of the class, his body rigid. 

"You seem to have no control over yourself. Tell me, Mister Loreth, what snapped you out of your blood haze?" Asmen asked, and Darius's shoulders sagged. 

"I woke up. Anastasios told me I curled up next to him in the bed, and fell asleep," Darius admitted. As usual, when one spoke before this class, the rest of the students just gave the speaker cold looks. 

"Do you think that, had prince Vicente not been your soulmate, you would have killed him?" Darius looked at the professor, who nodded at him. 

"I think so," Darius said, his head hung low. 

"I will tell you now, how to wake up from the bloodlust. I am afraid that, contrary to the rumors, that has nothing to do with meditation," professor Asmen took out a notepad, which already had things written on it, and wrote down something in such an ugly scrawl, that Darius's eyes widened. 

"I will not take medication," Darius protested. What if he became sleepy? What if his movements slowed down?

"You will because you must," the professor leveled him with an icy glare. "All demonic bounty hunters are on medication. You won't be the first, or the last." 

 "What is the point of these classes, then?" Darius snapped, and the professor just sighed tiredly. 

"It is the headmaster's opinion, that you have to get it off your chest. There was a time, when I believed in the same. A couple of massacres done by Orestria students convinced me in the opposite. Still, you can't go around with such a heavy weight in your souls. Speak, what triggered your bloodlust," the professor urged him. 

Darius looked at the crowd before him. None of the demons looked happy to be here. Their tails were bristling. Their postures were hard, and their eyes were giving off icy glares. 

"There has to be another way? A rune, perhaps?" Darius suggested. 

"You are the runesmith, that makes the tattoo runes, correct?" Professor Asmen asked, and Darius nodded.  

"If I understand the bloodlust better, then I can invent a rune that can deal with the problem," Darius insisted. The professor just shook his head. 

"And how would it be different from these," he waved the prescription in the air. Darius chanced a look at the other demons in the room, and saw that some of them looked hopeful. They might have ignored him, until now, but his name was a household one. 

"There won't be any chemicals influencing our brains, for one," Darius said, and then took in a deep breath. "I won't drink the pills. I will make the rune." 

"You will need healer classes for that, and the year already started," professor Asmen told him, but Darius just shrugged. 

"There is no rule against sitting in on classes, that you are not signed up for. I can study the healing arts. Heck, one of my friends, Harvey, had a healing elective. He can give me his old books and notes," Darius said. Granted, Harvey should give him only the notes that had to do with the brain, but that was neither here nor there.  

"If you take on this project, then I will write it off as if you attended these classes," the professor said, and then looked at Darius from the corner of his eye. "You have a year to create the rune." 

"Can I go to the library now?" Darius asked. 

"You may," the instructor told him, and Darius went to his desk, and collected his things. It didn't escape him, that the professor was copying the same prescription in the copy machine. Before he managed to exit the lecture hall, the professor waved him over. 

"Buy these, and if you feel a headache, drink them. Otherwise, I will tell the headmaster that you are skipping classes," Asmen didn't waver, when Darius glared at him. 

"I have your permission!" Darius protested, but the man just shrugged. 

"And you can lose it, boy. Now, go to the apothecary, and get the pills," the tone of the aged demon brokered no arguments, and Darius stormed out of the lecture hall, the prescription clutched in his fist. 

I need to calm down, or they will force me to drink the damned pills. 

Darius began to breathe in and out, trying to get his mind into a meditative state. Fifty years of practice saw him calming down within a minute. With a clear head, he went to the apothecary, and got the pills.

He didn't drink them, though. Rather, he stuck them in his cabinet, in his old room, which he used to share with Harvey, and did his best to focus on the task ahead.