Takes place about a week after chapter 10.

Chapter 12 – A Half-Truth Told

Hongbin groans when the blinds open and bright light spills across the room.

“Get up,” Ravi orders, shaking Hongbin.

Ravi normally woke up at an ungodly hour to set some potions brewing and then slept for a bit in the late morning after they were done. Usually Hongbin followed that schedule while he was living with Ravi but last night he’d stayed up late studying and the older man had let him sleep in.

Hongbin sits up and rubs his eyes groggily. Ravi chuckles a little and fixes the other man’s hair.

“I got a message from Hakyeon that said I should start teaching you spells.”

“But you can’t do spells,” Hongbin mumbles through a yawn.

Ravi pushes him and the younger man falls back onto his pillows. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know how they work.”

Hongbin sits up again, this time throwing off his covers and getting to his feet. He can feel Ravi’s eyes on him as he gets dressed but he isn’t sure the potion maker knows he’s staring so he doesn’t point it out.

He’s right, Ravi doesn’t realise he’s staring. He’d lived with Hongbin for a total of three weeks now and he can’t believe he’d never noticed how incredibly hot the apprentice is. As his eyes roam over Hongbin’s body he wonders how many opportunities like this he’d missed.

Ravi suddenly comes back to himself, feeling his cheeks heat he clears his voice and looks away from the younger man. He feels like a ert until he sees Hongbin is watching him – Hongbin wouldn’t admit ever that he’d sort of been putting on a show – and then he just feels like an idiot.

“So, spells?” Hongbin asks, raising an eyebrow.

Ravi jumps on the opportunity to move past the weird situation they’d just been in. “R-right, spells! Yes.” He clears his throat again and stands up. “Let’s go downstairs.”

Ravi’s place is small, upstairs from the shop. It was open living – more like never designed to be lived in – so the kitchen, bedroom and lounge room were all in one space. Despite this it was homey and Hongbin preferred it to Hakyeon’s ridiculous house, probably because all doors led to where they were supposed to.

Downstairs was just as squashed, fitting the workroom, Ravi’s huge book collection – not that Hongbin had ever seen the potion maker use a recipe – and the shop. The library area is where Ravi leads Hongbin to, motioning towards the lonely chair – because only one fit in the space – and for Hongbin to sit.

Hongbin had spent a lot of time in this little area, studying the books that Ravi told him to and doing a little extra reading just for fun. In the last week Ravi had also had him helping with the potions, making him responsible for any potions that he had learned but taking care of the rest himself.

The apprentice seats himself down and watches as Ravi rummages through a couple of books. He doesn’t appear to have that many spellbooks and the few he does have look fairly neglected.

Ravi scowls as he flips through one of them. “I don’t know why you want to learn spells,” he grumbles. “They’ll just corrupt you and ruin your life.”

Ravi doesn’t want Hongbin to learn spells as he’d seen firsthand what they did to people. At the same time he’d seen the joy on Hongbin’s face when he successfully made a potion and knew that in order for Hongbin to progress he needed to learn some spells at least.

Hongbin frowns at the older man’s words but accepts the offered book. “Hakyeon told me that using unnecessary magic is what corrupts you.”

Ravi crosses his arms over his chest. “Using spells at all is what corrupts you. Using unnecessary magic just pushes you closer to that edge faster.”

“Is what Hakyeon said a lie?”

“No...” Ravi hesitates, he hadn’t meant to bring this up. He doesn’t hesitate for long, however, figuring that Hongbin needed to know this.

“More like a half-truth. Deliberate magic corrupts your mind, you know that. Everybody who starts learning magic knows that. Having a bigger reserve of deliberate magic just means you’re more likely to become corrupt. Hakyeon’s teacher used a lot of magic but he lived to a pretty old age without going crazy so I think Hakyeon probably knows a few tricks.”

That being said Hakyeon himself is ridiculously young to be as corrupted as he is, Ravi adds silently.

Hongbin looks at the book sitting on his lap. “Do all sorcerers go mad?”

“It’s not really about ‘going mad’, not really. A lot of things can happen. You can lose control of your magic, become depressed or anxious, or become obsessed with an idea or ideal. Sometimes it’s just weird little habits that you can’t get rid of. For those that become obsessed then they’ll pretty much start out angry about something and then do anything without stopping to question whether they should in order to ‘fix’ whatever it is that made them angry in the first place.”

Hongbin wonders why Ravi looks so sad as he says that. Ravi catches him staring and smiles.

“Sorcerers who don’t use creatures in their potions or only do magic when they have to usually don’t get corrupted. Even the guards in the palace don’t do that much magic unless they’re attacked. The ones in the army on the other hand have a high turnover rate. They’re constantly using magic. That’s why they use spells with physical components and charms as much as possible, because it uses less deliberate magic.”

“Oh,” Hongbin mutters. “I didn’t know there were so many ways it could affect you, Hakyeon made it all seem like one thing.”

“I wouldn’t take everything Hakyeon tells you as absolute truth.”

That doesn’t seem good, Hongbin thinks. “Why?”

Ravi considers how much he should say. Hongbin deserved to know – in his opinion – since he was relying on Hakyeon as a teacher. With a sigh Ravi decides on what to say.

“Hakyeon had to use a lot of spells when he was younger, that puts a strain on the mind. He’s probably used more magic that someone should in a lifetime.”

“What was he doing?”

Ravi smiles apologetically, wishing he could be more direct. “He worked for the king, developing spells and potions for the army. Experimenting goes through a lot of ingredients. Hakyeon had already been somewhat of a genius, working there he also built up a giant reserve of deliberate magic.”

He’s corrupted, Hongbin guesses. “Does he do anything bad?”

Ravi’s face says yes, Ravi does not. Hongbin isn’t sure what to make of all the information he’d just gotten. Was what Ravi had said a warning? Was it just fact so Hongbin knew what he was potentially getting into? Did he need to be more cautious of Hakyeon? His mind flashes to last week when he’d found out about Leo, how intimidated he’d been by Hakyeon.

Ravi yawns and leans against the bookshelves. “Do you want to learn spells or not?”

Hongbin sighs. “I want to make potions.”

Ravi accepts that answer as a ‘yes’ and directs Hongbin to open the book.

“Are you ready to go?” Hakyeon asks.

Leo nods and holds his hand out to the sorcerer. Hakyeon takes it and gives it a squeeze.

“Should we have told Hongbin?” the Anyethi asks quietly.

The question had been crawling around unpleasantly in the back of his mind since he’d dropped the apprentice off at Ravi’s a week ago. Today they would be going after Hongbin’s old teacher and the other apprentices Hongbin had studied beside for two years.

“We would have had to explain everything…”

But what if he’s loyal to his old teacher? What if he finds out what we did? Leo chooses not to say these things out loud. He didn’t want to give Hakyeon a reason to doubt Hongbin. Insinuating that Hongbin was a danger in some way was probably the worst thing he could do.

“We should explain everything.”

“Maybe,” Hakyeon mutters, more to himself than to Leo. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.”

Leo grips Hakyeon’s hand tighter in his own and teleports.

“Turn to page 394,” Ravi drawls. (This almost made it into the chapter)

Just to clarify (because I got confused), this is how long Hongbin has been at different houses.

2 days at Hakyeon’s
2 weeks at Ravi’s.
3 weeks at Hakyeon’s
1 weeks (so far) at Ravi’s.