COSMOS (Summer Challenge, Cheeseburger + Brownie)
‘Verse: ☽ Natural Forces ☾
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Summer Challenge ‘14: Special Brownie #17 (You understand now why you came this way) & Akutaq #18 (the great one), Cheeseburger #8 (omg/zomg) + Brownie (*flails*)
Rating: PG-13
Title: COSMOS
Summary: A quest! A grand quest!
Notes: Doing a bit of retconning here. All the characters appearing (except for Gwen, of course) now live in the same time frame. Words: 5,076.
She came to me in a dream, the first time. She didn’t introduce herself, as there was no need: the same magic that allowed her to speak to me in the first place helpfully supplied that she was the mage, the first great pioneer of the magical arts in the chaos following the Awakening. Gwen Sculland - though I hadn’t known her last name; it had always just been “Gwen, Our Founder” on the placard beneath her portrait in the the main hall - my mind supplied when the fog of an already-forgotten dream parted, to focus on her, standing in the mist, looking just like her portrait. Not as she was when she died, as I knew that she had been so old at the end that even her magic had failed her.
Wait, how did I know that? The woman in my dream, sharper and clearer than anyone by the light of day, smiled gently and said, “You are dreaming. Anything is possible, anything can be known, in this realm.”
“Er,” I mumbled, not really understanding. “What’s going on?”
“Many things. The world is turning at the exact same rate as it was before the Awakening, you know, and yet so much has changed.” Gwen gestured for me to look to my left, and I saw.
I saw the world as it must have been, a hundred-some years ago, spinning at a frantic pace, so fast it seemed after a moment of staring to not be moving at all. Dotted across the blue-green surface were patches of gray, and the moment I wished myself closer to inspect them, I felt myself floating over to the Earth-ball, it growing larger and larger, getting bigger faster than I was moving.
It filled my vision. I blinked, startled, and a golden light washed over the surface of this planet, my planet as it was a hundred-some years ago.
“The Awakening,” said Gwen from over my shoulder. “It didn’t actually look like that, but I imagine it was a pretty big jolt for those of us who were awake at the time.”
“You weren’t?” I said, not looking back. It was true, after the light passed, Earth looked just the same. If I stared unblinking, it seemed the patches of gray were gradually disappearing, and maybe the west coast of North America hadn’t looked quite so jagged before, but the sheer speed was making my head spin. My world didn’t move like that. Couldn’t be.
“No,” was all Gwen said, and when I turned back, too dizzy to inquire further, it was to find that the fog was gone, and my visitor was sitting comfortably in an overstuffed armchair. We were in a room with no doors, but walls of books whose spines blurred out of focus when I tried to read them, a pot of what smelled like tea on a little stand, and, dominating the room, the two armchairs. “Have a seat, dear.”
It occurred to me that since this was a dream, there wasn’t much of a point to anything. It was my dream, wasn’t it? Couldn’t I just push off from the floor right now and float through the ceiling if I wanted to? But my feet stayed rooted to the polished wood, and there was Gwen, gently smiling at me.
“Sorry, dear. I’ve hijacked your subconscious, as it were. You know your magic well enough - my school has served you well, I think - but I have had many more decades of practice than you. Come now. I just need to talk.”
“Talk about what?” This was getting frustrating, fast.
Her eyes, gray as smoke from a wet-log fire, turned distant, then snapped back into focus. She brought up her hand, flexed her fingers, and an orb shimmered into view on her palm. “This. Do you know it? Not many do, in this time, for which I am glad.”
I tilted my head, suddenly caught by curiosity. It didn't look familiar, but then I couldn't possibly know every magical artifact in existence (maybe a more dedicated student than I would?) though this one did look ominous. Inky black, but with a sheen of many colors that shifted in the light - which, given that there were no visible sources for it in the room, seemed to come from everywhere at once - small, and from the way Gwen held it heavy, with a line of runes marching around the middle.
“No,” I said shakily, “I don't know what that is.” I felt an urge to reject it, and I did: “but I get the feeling I don't want to, anyway.”
Gwen held the orb close, looking at it rather than me as she said, “it's a necromantic tool.”
Necromancy! The Forbidden School was not tolerated under any circumstances, in any place of learning anywhere in the world. It was not for the ethics of it - Image and Life-magics offered just as much control over humans for the power-hungry mage, if not more - but for the sheer danger. At least, that was what I had always been told, by every mage who had ever taught me, from my father to Mage Pryla herself. The danger of Death-magic was common knowledge, but not the specifics. That part had always been vague. Not that a little child needs to know the mechanics of burns to know not to stick her hand in the fire.
“More things than souls lurk in the Aether,” Gwen said softly, watching my face now.
“Oh,” I sigh-gasped, the breath suddenly knocked out of me, though it was more a creeping foreboding than the wallop of terror.
“Yes, and do you know why no one has said exactly what the danger is? Because they don't know. They don't know because the only one who has ever gone that far is dead, and she refused to tell within her lifetime. Some things defy words.”
She was- What was she telling me? “You?” I asked, eyes so wide they hurt. It felt like betrayal, for my idol to be, to have been, a Death mage. It was forbidden!
Gwen had the grace to sound regretful. “Me.”
I dropped, finally, into the chair offered to me. It was comfortable, too comfortable. I wanted to curl up in that chair and shut the world away. My eyes dipped shut, and when I opened them some moments later, Gwen was still there, hands folded in her lap in a gesture of patience. I could not escape. But some part of me still trusted her, simply because she was the Gwen. Such an influential figure for magical education had to have her reasons. She had to be wiser than me.
I hoped so, anyway.
“You’re upset, I know.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it of a jumble of thoughts and a looming headache. “Just… just tell me what’s going on. You can’t have come here just to tell me you were a Death mage.”
She sat back, a strange look flitting across her face. Was that… disappointment? “No. I didn’t.” She produced the orb again - it had disappeared at some point, without my notice - and cradled it in her hands. “I’m getting there. My granddaughter, Nimue - tell me, is it common knowledge what became of my family after I passed?”
I raised an eyebrow, wondering, again, what the hell that had to do with anything, but I humored her by trying to think back to my history studies. “It is said that they fell apart, so to speak. Your son became an… alcoholic, I think?” Gwen nodded - obviously she had been observing during this time, or she had gleaned it from my own mind, the crafty bitch - and I continued, more confident. “He killed himself in ‘42. His wife became a recluse after that. I heard his daughter - your granddaughter - was going on her apprenticeship, but that was a few years ago. That’s all I’ve heard about her. Why?”
Gwen took a breath and blew it out, reminding me, oddly enough, of a frustrated teenager. It was hard to imagine that she had been young once - her portrait was of her in her forties, I guessed, and the version of her that appeared in my mind was the same, even the same robes - but that reminded me starkly. Once she had been my age. Once she had been younger. “Because my granddaughter, Nimue - there’s no easy way to say this - she’s followed my footprints in ways I never imagined, never wanted. She’s used an orb, like this one, to summon one of the deadliest monsters of the outbreak back to life.”
I still didn’t quite see the problem, though we were getting closer. “This monster died once, didn’t it? Surely it can die again?”
“It could’ve easily been destroyed, if that child hadn’t merged with it. Nimue is irrevocably linked with the monster - Achan - and the resulting abomination is far, far stronger than either of them alone. Dear child, Nimue is beyond saving. She must be stopped.”
Okay, I saw the problem now. I just still didn’t understand what it had to do with me. “And I’m supposed to do this?”
“You must, or someone else will. Probably after she has already revealed herself. By then it may be too late. But not alone, child. Never alone.”
This was too much, too fast, but Gwen had me caught in her spell and I could not escape back to the way I was. I tried to at least stand up, so I could pace, but when I braced myself against the arms of the chair my hands sunk into the plush fabric and I fell back. I did not have the strength to try again.
“I will come to you when you need me. You’ll need a dream token - you have a prodigal friend, yes? A young man?”
She knew exactly who Tiz was, but she seemed to be trying not to scare me. Too late. “Yes. What about him?”
“Go to him and tell him everything. He is the only one we can trust who can make a proper dream token, and you will need him on your journey besides.”
“What the hell is a dream token, anyway?” I fidgeted in the chair and, like a spider’s web, it rewarded my struggling by sticking me to it. I was trying desperately not to panic. I hated being restrained.
Gwen’s eyes narrowed slightly at my language - I did not care - but she answered evenly enough. “If you carry it, it will allow me to visit your dreams more easily, without risking malevolent spirits of the dead or… other things coming as well. The more I open your mind’s barriers with my magic, the more likely something will slip through. It’s not a commonly needed thing - if a mage needs to talk to a dead person, they have to rip their spirit from the Aether directly, or get someone else to do it - but before I died, I laid layers of charms on my soul that would prevent that. I was afraid that someone in the future, perhaps more powerful than I, would attempt to chain my spirit to their will.”
I blinked at that, having been unaware it was even possible to prevent a soul from being affected by Death-magic. For that matter, I had hardly thought about my own demise and after. That was the boon and the bane of being young, I supposed. What would happen to my soul anyway? Gwen had mentioned the Aether, which I’d thought was just a theory - since Death-magic was banned, the mechanics of after-death were an ignored field of study for most people.
“All right,” I said after a moment. “If I’m going to destroy this thing, how am I supposed to do it?”
“After you have the dream token and your companion, ask him about the Tower.”
“The… what?”
She did not answer, merely quirked a brow. She knew that I had heard her clearly.
“Fine! Fine. If that’s all you’re going to give me, fine. It’ll be your fault when what’s-her-face destroys the world or takes it over or whatever it is she’s going to do.” It was petty, and it was cruel, but I was done with this dream-turned-nightmare. It wasn’t Gwen’s sidestepping, particularly, but the chair’s snug hold was making me more short-tempered than usual.
Gwen half-smiled at me, a tiny smile that was meant to be reassuring, but it only had me wiggling more, desperate to get out of my plush prison. “One more thing, now,” she said, “and I’ll let you go.”
I forced myself to be still, shuddering to a tense stop. My back was rigid as the stone walls of the College I called home. Ready to spring, as my mother would say. “What?” I ground out.
“Your journey will take you many places, and you must be open to change. When the mouse-child asks, listen. I have not seen more than this - my view from the Aether is hazy - but I hope that any information I can give is helpful, child. Farewell.” Her fingers twitched, and I popped from the chair like the cork from a bottle of sherry.
I flew like the cork from a bottle of sherry, too, soaring away from an amused Gwen and through where the ceiling should have been, to a land of fluffy clouds and a rising sun over the ocean. I flew like a bird, feeling great wings on my shoulders, and I tore my gaze away from the distant landmass to see my shape reflected in sparkling seas below me: I was a bird, an albatross, and I laugh-called, flapping my wings ever harder. The land came closer, lushly green and inviting, and I zoomed over it too, passing forest and long-broken cities and deer that scattered before my shadow, until I came upon a sprawling castle-like estate, the College that was home. The dawn was just arriving, touching the women’s dormitory tower in pink, and I soared straight through my open window just as my time-charm went off, melting the bird and the girl into one as I awoke.
~☾~
I blinked in the sunlight, the blare of my alarm ignored for the moment as I tried to disentangle my dreams from each other. There was something important there.
“Orsana! Shut it off already!” yelled one of the other girls, probably Vena. She was never happy in the morning; hence the cocoon of blankets (most of them stolen from someone else in the dormitory) that dominated her bed. She was most likely in that cocoon now, but I could never tell.
“I am awake,” I said, and let the magic flow from my lips; the siren that came from everywhere in the room at once quieted.
“Holy hell, Orsana, you really need to put some Image into that thing so it’s only audible to you,” moaned Jasmine, rolling over to look at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said distractedly, having remembered the dream. I rose and dressed quickly, the girls around me grumbling with every creak of the floorboards. I slung my bag over my shoulder. “I’ll be back.”
“I’m sure you will!” Vena poked her face out of her nest to yell at my retreating form before I closed the door behind me. I was an early riser even on restdays, which had not endeared me to my bunkmates. I participated in the gossip, though, which mostly made up for it. The alarm was going to be the tiebreaker, I could feel it, and I made a mental note to only use it when I had something to do early and could not go without it.
Right now, though, I needed to find Tiz. He was probably still asleep (he could afford to sleep, the lucky bastard) in the men’s dormitory, or else in the library; he loved that dusty place and would stay there into the wee hours of the morning sometimes.
I padded to the elevation shaft, a column of shimmering blue light in the center of the tower that would take me straight to the bottom, or to one of the other dormitories if I wanted. “Ground”, I whispered, stepping out into the air and letting the magic cradle me. It was rather like diving in the ocean, something I had done once many summers before, only without the water pressure or the bubble of magic around my head to keep me alive. The pure magical energy surrounding me sent my fine - and useless - arm-hairs to standing on end, and a not-wholly-unpleasant tingle down my spine. The Change-magic mages who designed this particular feature of the College had created it with comfort and much use in mind, and it came with options to tweak the speed of the ride - for example, I could have said Ground, fast, and I would be at the bottom at about twice the speed I was going now, or Ground, slow, and I would go down so gently I would barely feel it. At the busiest times - right before a big class, usually - the elevation shaft would be filled with the dormitory’s residents, some going the slow speed, more going at the default speed, and the vast majority zooming up and down so fast the other users could only see them as a blur.
I floated to the bottom of the shaft, alighting on the circular stone landing pad and letting my body readjust to being on terra firma. This time of morning on a restday the corridor ahead was utterly deserted but for the soft blue anti-lamps bobbing in place. I passed them by and they drifted after me for a few steps before returning to their spots.
The library was closer, so I went there first. The oak doors were never locked. I cracked one and slipped in. It was dark inside, very dark, but I sent up a mage-lamp and let the stark white light chase the nearest shadows away. Beyond the orb’s reach, though, everything was that much darker and the bookshelves themselves seemed to loom ominously in my direction. I stepped forward, knowing it was just an illusion. There was a side room I knew Tiz frequented just for its comfy armchairs, so I padded around the shelves through the smell of dust and old, weathered pages, where the mag-elamp gleamed off the spines of more books than I would know what to do with. Desks and straight-backed wooden chairs were nestled in the gaps where one shelf ended and another began.
“Tiz,” I called softly as I neared the side room, a single oak door set between the shelves in such a way that it was easily looked over even when the library was well-lit, and nearly invisible now. No reply, but that was not unusual or alarming. I turned the knob and nudged open the door with my shoulder. It was a small round room, with three chairs arranged in a rough circle around a brazier. “Tih-iiiz,” I called again, seeing the flicker of magical fire in the brazier throwing a shadow from the nearest chair across the floor.
“Oh!” a woman’s voice said, and the shadow shifted, like the person in the chair was leaning forward. The sternly wrinkled face that peered around the side of the chair most certainly did not belong to Tiz, but I recognized it nonetheless.
A flush spread over my cheeks. “M-Mage Pryla…” I stammered, bobbing my head.
The head of the school blinked at me in the harshness of my mage-lamp, which, now that I was still, rotated in slow circles above my head. “Student. What…? Oh.” She stood up, brushing her voluminous robes down with one hand. The other held a book whose pages contained symbols I did not recognize. “I fell asleep.” She turned her rheumy blue eyes to me, looking through me as she always had, with everyone. “What did you need, student?”
“Uh, I was looking for…” I cut myself off, trying to decide if telling Pryla about my mission - either the immediate one or the greater one - was the best idea.
Pryla’s cracked lips twisted slightly into a frown. “Is there something I should know about, student?”
Crap. “I’m looking for Tiz, actually.” There. Hopefully she wouldn’t ask about why.
“Hm. That boy… Always bringing trouble.”
I quirked a smile at Pryla’s gruff assessment. I was the one bringing trouble this time. Or Gwen Sculland, if you wanted to get technical. “Have you seen him recently, Ma’am?”
“Don’t call me that, it makes me feel old,” she said. I was surprised by her attempt at… humor, I think? She had never been a casual person; it was hard to be, running an institution such as this nearly-single-handedly well into her nineties, even with the help of Life-magic. “Hm. I haven’t. But that boy is always coming in by the main hall late at night - I can see him on the records.”
There were many records in the College, but the one she was referring to was a particularly nifty spell that kept a list of magical signatures that passed through all doors and windows in the building. Every student and faculty’s unique signature was in the files as well, and cross-references were easily done. As for unrecognized magic, another, though rarely-used and highly advanced spell existed that could track where it went, like a dog could trace someone’s smell. Thus the College was as safe an institution as was ever likely to exist. “Really?” I murmured, wondering what Tiz could possibly be doing outside at night. He was hardly a party animal, I thought.
“I haven’t asked him what he’s doing though. He has always had full run of the College - he’s been here since he was a wee thing, did you know that?”
I smiled, not replying, and she waved me off with a remark as to the late - well, early - hour. I slipped out with an intense relief washing over me. That meeting could have gone very badly had Pryla been more alert and less good-humored. She was well known for her strict attention to policy, and disliked students interrupting her business. That I had woken her up… well, I was very lucky to escape with my hide, much less some information to go on.
~☾~
The cool air of an early summer’s morning met me as I stepped outside. It was a long shot, given that Tiz was returning in the night and not the dawn, but I was reluctant to go to the men’s dormitory; Mage Pryla had tweaked the elevation shaft spells in each dorm to not admit residents of the other dorm without her express permission. For this, I would never dare to ask.
I wandered out onto the grounds, where the mists hovered over the grass and the birds were swooping from tree to tree. The restaurant and bar on site, where Tiz had taken me on our first date, was mostly dark but for a single orange anti-lamp in the window.
Goosebumps arose on my skin as I passed through the low-lying fog, water clinging to me. It was… refreshing. I walked out towards the treeline in the distance, where the College’s lands ended and the wilderness began. When I reached the thick-grouped wood, I stood there for a moment, eyes roving over the shadows. None moved. I don’t know how long I was there, standing in the gloom where the trees blocked out the new day, butit was probably just minutes before the dew on my skin set my skin to chattering. I stepped away then, back into the weak sunlight, and dried myself with a beginner’s-level Change-magic spell. I turned back towards the College. Another fruitless venture.
That was when the sun rose up just high enough to cast a rosy light over the north end of the main building’s roof, and by pure chance I spotted the dark shape curled on the shingles, so very high up that I was sure it was a cat at first. But then the thing moved, stirring by the illumination of dawn, and I saw that it was bigger than I first thought: a human, dressed in black. A tingle ran up my spine and I stood perfectly still, unsure what exactly I was observing. When it stood up and started to pick its way down the slope of the roof, I ducked back to the shadow of the treeline and watched.
The figure half-hopped, half-slid down the shingles as if it had done that very thing countless times before. At the edge of the roof, it simply stepped off the eaves and floated down as easily as I had in the elevation shaft. When it reached the ground I finally realized that the person was Tiz himself, floppy hair and glangly limbs unmistakable even across the great distance between us.
“Tiz!” I yelled, jogging towards him. “Tiz!”
He jumped and turned towards me, having started off to the College’s main entrance. “Wha-? Orsana, what are you doing out here?”
I reached him and grinned even as I doubled over to catch my breath. “I’m glad I caught you,” I said when I straightened back up. “We need to talk.” The look on his face was one of utter panic, and too late I realized how my words could be taken. “No! I mean- its not about our relationship. Well, sort of. If you really want to stretch it that way it could be a huge thing, but I’m not breaking up with you. I actually need your help.”
Now he just looked confused, poor thing. “Er… okay. I’ll see what I can do. Anywhere in particular you want to, uh, talk?”
“Privately. And this might take a while to explain…”
He rolled his eyes. “It always does. Come on, I know a place.”
~☾~
“Right,” Tiz said slowly, after a long pause during which I tried to remember if I had relayed everything Gwen said. “Well, I have to say that actually makes sense now.”
“What does? I’m not crazy!”
“No, no. I mean Nimue hasn’t been heard from in several weeks. The Aito school sent out a tracker, but it lead nowhere. They want her on theft - apparently she stole something from them before she disappeared - and have all the schools on lookout, which is how I know even if most students don’t. And, we’ve been seeing some strange magical patterns in the world charts. Most of them in the area of Aito…” He trailed off, fixing me with scrutinizing brown eyes. “Well, this is exciting.”
“Exciting? It’s insane! We’re just students - not great masters or the kind of people who set off on quests to save the world! Holy hell, I thought that was only in books!” I was panicking now that the magnitude of my appointed destiny was sinking in.
“Yes, exciting. But also terrifying. Which is why I suspect that dream token will be more valuable to us than we can foresee now.”
I groaned and clapped a hand over my eyes in exasperation, slouching back in the tiny chair-desk. Tiz had brought me to a small long-abandoned classroom. Image-magic lay like a blanket all around us, shielding us from being seen or heard by anyone, even if they happened to open the door. But, as Tiz had explained, that was unlikely: this classroom hadn’t been touched for ten years, ever since a student had Summoned a monster within and been left as little more than a scorch-mark on the hardwood. (The mark was still there, imprinted into the floor with such a burst of unimaginable horror that no amount of effort, magical or mundane, could ever remove it.) Even before that, Tiz said, this room was avoided: it had no windows and was in an awkward position in the far corner of the Life-magic department. So we were safe.
It was ironic, I know.
“Luckily,” Tiz continued, “a dream token is easy to make. I have all the materials either with me here or within reach around the grounds. But I suspect there’s a way to find Nimue without Gwen’s directions, that is, if she can give us any at all. The Aether is a hazy place of half-truths and unrealized dreams, or so Murm always told me.”
“Oh?” I murmured, leaning forward again. He was on a hunt, and I was content to follow his lead at the moment. He was constantly surprising me ever since we met with his wealth of knowledge on the strangest and most obscure, but also the most surprisingly useful, subjects. I was a bit jealous, to tell the truth, but I knew it was a feeling without direction or purpose.
“I think the patterns I’ve been seeing in the monitor spells are our clue.”
“You mentioned those before. What exactly are you talking about?”
He blinked. “Oh. There’s a spell Mage Olero invented a few years ago that tracks the levels and kinds of magics used around the world. It’s still in development - I’ve been helping him, but neither of us can figure out how to get it to put out numbers instead of visual data - which is why it’s very hush-hush, but it’ll be useful for research we think. Anyway, over the past few months, every time I’ve used the spell I see a lot of activity of all kinds around Aito. Too much for that school’s population or specialty. We’ve seen Image, Summoning, Life, Curse, Change, even some uncategorized magics. Olero is seeing the same thing.”
“So something strange is happening in Aito…”
Tiz hummed in agreement. “On a grand scale, no less. I don’t know if we’ll find anything out there that no one else has, but that spell also has a local function, which could lead us within a few feet of the spot where the spells are being cast. It only works in the area though.”
“I guess this really is a quest in the traditional sense then?”
He shrugged, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I suppose. Are you ready?”
GOLD LEVEL ACHIEVED!!!
*dies*
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Summer Challenge ‘14: Special Brownie #17 (You understand now why you came this way) & Akutaq #18 (the great one), Cheeseburger #8 (omg/zomg) + Brownie (*flails*)
Rating: PG-13
Title: COSMOS
Summary: A quest! A grand quest!
Notes: Doing a bit of retconning here. All the characters appearing (except for Gwen, of course) now live in the same time frame. Words: 5,076.
She came to me in a dream, the first time. She didn’t introduce herself, as there was no need: the same magic that allowed her to speak to me in the first place helpfully supplied that she was the mage, the first great pioneer of the magical arts in the chaos following the Awakening. Gwen Sculland - though I hadn’t known her last name; it had always just been “Gwen, Our Founder” on the placard beneath her portrait in the the main hall - my mind supplied when the fog of an already-forgotten dream parted, to focus on her, standing in the mist, looking just like her portrait. Not as she was when she died, as I knew that she had been so old at the end that even her magic had failed her.
Wait, how did I know that? The woman in my dream, sharper and clearer than anyone by the light of day, smiled gently and said, “You are dreaming. Anything is possible, anything can be known, in this realm.”
“Er,” I mumbled, not really understanding. “What’s going on?”
“Many things. The world is turning at the exact same rate as it was before the Awakening, you know, and yet so much has changed.” Gwen gestured for me to look to my left, and I saw.
I saw the world as it must have been, a hundred-some years ago, spinning at a frantic pace, so fast it seemed after a moment of staring to not be moving at all. Dotted across the blue-green surface were patches of gray, and the moment I wished myself closer to inspect them, I felt myself floating over to the Earth-ball, it growing larger and larger, getting bigger faster than I was moving.
It filled my vision. I blinked, startled, and a golden light washed over the surface of this planet, my planet as it was a hundred-some years ago.
“The Awakening,” said Gwen from over my shoulder. “It didn’t actually look like that, but I imagine it was a pretty big jolt for those of us who were awake at the time.”
“You weren’t?” I said, not looking back. It was true, after the light passed, Earth looked just the same. If I stared unblinking, it seemed the patches of gray were gradually disappearing, and maybe the west coast of North America hadn’t looked quite so jagged before, but the sheer speed was making my head spin. My world didn’t move like that. Couldn’t be.
“No,” was all Gwen said, and when I turned back, too dizzy to inquire further, it was to find that the fog was gone, and my visitor was sitting comfortably in an overstuffed armchair. We were in a room with no doors, but walls of books whose spines blurred out of focus when I tried to read them, a pot of what smelled like tea on a little stand, and, dominating the room, the two armchairs. “Have a seat, dear.”
It occurred to me that since this was a dream, there wasn’t much of a point to anything. It was my dream, wasn’t it? Couldn’t I just push off from the floor right now and float through the ceiling if I wanted to? But my feet stayed rooted to the polished wood, and there was Gwen, gently smiling at me.
“Sorry, dear. I’ve hijacked your subconscious, as it were. You know your magic well enough - my school has served you well, I think - but I have had many more decades of practice than you. Come now. I just need to talk.”
“Talk about what?” This was getting frustrating, fast.
Her eyes, gray as smoke from a wet-log fire, turned distant, then snapped back into focus. She brought up her hand, flexed her fingers, and an orb shimmered into view on her palm. “This. Do you know it? Not many do, in this time, for which I am glad.”
I tilted my head, suddenly caught by curiosity. It didn't look familiar, but then I couldn't possibly know every magical artifact in existence (maybe a more dedicated student than I would?) though this one did look ominous. Inky black, but with a sheen of many colors that shifted in the light - which, given that there were no visible sources for it in the room, seemed to come from everywhere at once - small, and from the way Gwen held it heavy, with a line of runes marching around the middle.
“No,” I said shakily, “I don't know what that is.” I felt an urge to reject it, and I did: “but I get the feeling I don't want to, anyway.”
Gwen held the orb close, looking at it rather than me as she said, “it's a necromantic tool.”
Necromancy! The Forbidden School was not tolerated under any circumstances, in any place of learning anywhere in the world. It was not for the ethics of it - Image and Life-magics offered just as much control over humans for the power-hungry mage, if not more - but for the sheer danger. At least, that was what I had always been told, by every mage who had ever taught me, from my father to Mage Pryla herself. The danger of Death-magic was common knowledge, but not the specifics. That part had always been vague. Not that a little child needs to know the mechanics of burns to know not to stick her hand in the fire.
“More things than souls lurk in the Aether,” Gwen said softly, watching my face now.
“Oh,” I sigh-gasped, the breath suddenly knocked out of me, though it was more a creeping foreboding than the wallop of terror.
“Yes, and do you know why no one has said exactly what the danger is? Because they don't know. They don't know because the only one who has ever gone that far is dead, and she refused to tell within her lifetime. Some things defy words.”
She was- What was she telling me? “You?” I asked, eyes so wide they hurt. It felt like betrayal, for my idol to be, to have been, a Death mage. It was forbidden!
Gwen had the grace to sound regretful. “Me.”
I dropped, finally, into the chair offered to me. It was comfortable, too comfortable. I wanted to curl up in that chair and shut the world away. My eyes dipped shut, and when I opened them some moments later, Gwen was still there, hands folded in her lap in a gesture of patience. I could not escape. But some part of me still trusted her, simply because she was the Gwen. Such an influential figure for magical education had to have her reasons. She had to be wiser than me.
I hoped so, anyway.
“You’re upset, I know.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it of a jumble of thoughts and a looming headache. “Just… just tell me what’s going on. You can’t have come here just to tell me you were a Death mage.”
She sat back, a strange look flitting across her face. Was that… disappointment? “No. I didn’t.” She produced the orb again - it had disappeared at some point, without my notice - and cradled it in her hands. “I’m getting there. My granddaughter, Nimue - tell me, is it common knowledge what became of my family after I passed?”
I raised an eyebrow, wondering, again, what the hell that had to do with anything, but I humored her by trying to think back to my history studies. “It is said that they fell apart, so to speak. Your son became an… alcoholic, I think?” Gwen nodded - obviously she had been observing during this time, or she had gleaned it from my own mind, the crafty bitch - and I continued, more confident. “He killed himself in ‘42. His wife became a recluse after that. I heard his daughter - your granddaughter - was going on her apprenticeship, but that was a few years ago. That’s all I’ve heard about her. Why?”
Gwen took a breath and blew it out, reminding me, oddly enough, of a frustrated teenager. It was hard to imagine that she had been young once - her portrait was of her in her forties, I guessed, and the version of her that appeared in my mind was the same, even the same robes - but that reminded me starkly. Once she had been my age. Once she had been younger. “Because my granddaughter, Nimue - there’s no easy way to say this - she’s followed my footprints in ways I never imagined, never wanted. She’s used an orb, like this one, to summon one of the deadliest monsters of the outbreak back to life.”
I still didn’t quite see the problem, though we were getting closer. “This monster died once, didn’t it? Surely it can die again?”
“It could’ve easily been destroyed, if that child hadn’t merged with it. Nimue is irrevocably linked with the monster - Achan - and the resulting abomination is far, far stronger than either of them alone. Dear child, Nimue is beyond saving. She must be stopped.”
Okay, I saw the problem now. I just still didn’t understand what it had to do with me. “And I’m supposed to do this?”
“You must, or someone else will. Probably after she has already revealed herself. By then it may be too late. But not alone, child. Never alone.”
This was too much, too fast, but Gwen had me caught in her spell and I could not escape back to the way I was. I tried to at least stand up, so I could pace, but when I braced myself against the arms of the chair my hands sunk into the plush fabric and I fell back. I did not have the strength to try again.
“I will come to you when you need me. You’ll need a dream token - you have a prodigal friend, yes? A young man?”
She knew exactly who Tiz was, but she seemed to be trying not to scare me. Too late. “Yes. What about him?”
“Go to him and tell him everything. He is the only one we can trust who can make a proper dream token, and you will need him on your journey besides.”
“What the hell is a dream token, anyway?” I fidgeted in the chair and, like a spider’s web, it rewarded my struggling by sticking me to it. I was trying desperately not to panic. I hated being restrained.
Gwen’s eyes narrowed slightly at my language - I did not care - but she answered evenly enough. “If you carry it, it will allow me to visit your dreams more easily, without risking malevolent spirits of the dead or… other things coming as well. The more I open your mind’s barriers with my magic, the more likely something will slip through. It’s not a commonly needed thing - if a mage needs to talk to a dead person, they have to rip their spirit from the Aether directly, or get someone else to do it - but before I died, I laid layers of charms on my soul that would prevent that. I was afraid that someone in the future, perhaps more powerful than I, would attempt to chain my spirit to their will.”
I blinked at that, having been unaware it was even possible to prevent a soul from being affected by Death-magic. For that matter, I had hardly thought about my own demise and after. That was the boon and the bane of being young, I supposed. What would happen to my soul anyway? Gwen had mentioned the Aether, which I’d thought was just a theory - since Death-magic was banned, the mechanics of after-death were an ignored field of study for most people.
“All right,” I said after a moment. “If I’m going to destroy this thing, how am I supposed to do it?”
“After you have the dream token and your companion, ask him about the Tower.”
“The… what?”
She did not answer, merely quirked a brow. She knew that I had heard her clearly.
“Fine! Fine. If that’s all you’re going to give me, fine. It’ll be your fault when what’s-her-face destroys the world or takes it over or whatever it is she’s going to do.” It was petty, and it was cruel, but I was done with this dream-turned-nightmare. It wasn’t Gwen’s sidestepping, particularly, but the chair’s snug hold was making me more short-tempered than usual.
Gwen half-smiled at me, a tiny smile that was meant to be reassuring, but it only had me wiggling more, desperate to get out of my plush prison. “One more thing, now,” she said, “and I’ll let you go.”
I forced myself to be still, shuddering to a tense stop. My back was rigid as the stone walls of the College I called home. Ready to spring, as my mother would say. “What?” I ground out.
“Your journey will take you many places, and you must be open to change. When the mouse-child asks, listen. I have not seen more than this - my view from the Aether is hazy - but I hope that any information I can give is helpful, child. Farewell.” Her fingers twitched, and I popped from the chair like the cork from a bottle of sherry.
I flew like the cork from a bottle of sherry, too, soaring away from an amused Gwen and through where the ceiling should have been, to a land of fluffy clouds and a rising sun over the ocean. I flew like a bird, feeling great wings on my shoulders, and I tore my gaze away from the distant landmass to see my shape reflected in sparkling seas below me: I was a bird, an albatross, and I laugh-called, flapping my wings ever harder. The land came closer, lushly green and inviting, and I zoomed over it too, passing forest and long-broken cities and deer that scattered before my shadow, until I came upon a sprawling castle-like estate, the College that was home. The dawn was just arriving, touching the women’s dormitory tower in pink, and I soared straight through my open window just as my time-charm went off, melting the bird and the girl into one as I awoke.
~☾~
I blinked in the sunlight, the blare of my alarm ignored for the moment as I tried to disentangle my dreams from each other. There was something important there.
“Orsana! Shut it off already!” yelled one of the other girls, probably Vena. She was never happy in the morning; hence the cocoon of blankets (most of them stolen from someone else in the dormitory) that dominated her bed. She was most likely in that cocoon now, but I could never tell.
“I am awake,” I said, and let the magic flow from my lips; the siren that came from everywhere in the room at once quieted.
“Holy hell, Orsana, you really need to put some Image into that thing so it’s only audible to you,” moaned Jasmine, rolling over to look at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said distractedly, having remembered the dream. I rose and dressed quickly, the girls around me grumbling with every creak of the floorboards. I slung my bag over my shoulder. “I’ll be back.”
“I’m sure you will!” Vena poked her face out of her nest to yell at my retreating form before I closed the door behind me. I was an early riser even on restdays, which had not endeared me to my bunkmates. I participated in the gossip, though, which mostly made up for it. The alarm was going to be the tiebreaker, I could feel it, and I made a mental note to only use it when I had something to do early and could not go without it.
Right now, though, I needed to find Tiz. He was probably still asleep (he could afford to sleep, the lucky bastard) in the men’s dormitory, or else in the library; he loved that dusty place and would stay there into the wee hours of the morning sometimes.
I padded to the elevation shaft, a column of shimmering blue light in the center of the tower that would take me straight to the bottom, or to one of the other dormitories if I wanted. “Ground”, I whispered, stepping out into the air and letting the magic cradle me. It was rather like diving in the ocean, something I had done once many summers before, only without the water pressure or the bubble of magic around my head to keep me alive. The pure magical energy surrounding me sent my fine - and useless - arm-hairs to standing on end, and a not-wholly-unpleasant tingle down my spine. The Change-magic mages who designed this particular feature of the College had created it with comfort and much use in mind, and it came with options to tweak the speed of the ride - for example, I could have said Ground, fast, and I would be at the bottom at about twice the speed I was going now, or Ground, slow, and I would go down so gently I would barely feel it. At the busiest times - right before a big class, usually - the elevation shaft would be filled with the dormitory’s residents, some going the slow speed, more going at the default speed, and the vast majority zooming up and down so fast the other users could only see them as a blur.
I floated to the bottom of the shaft, alighting on the circular stone landing pad and letting my body readjust to being on terra firma. This time of morning on a restday the corridor ahead was utterly deserted but for the soft blue anti-lamps bobbing in place. I passed them by and they drifted after me for a few steps before returning to their spots.
The library was closer, so I went there first. The oak doors were never locked. I cracked one and slipped in. It was dark inside, very dark, but I sent up a mage-lamp and let the stark white light chase the nearest shadows away. Beyond the orb’s reach, though, everything was that much darker and the bookshelves themselves seemed to loom ominously in my direction. I stepped forward, knowing it was just an illusion. There was a side room I knew Tiz frequented just for its comfy armchairs, so I padded around the shelves through the smell of dust and old, weathered pages, where the mag-elamp gleamed off the spines of more books than I would know what to do with. Desks and straight-backed wooden chairs were nestled in the gaps where one shelf ended and another began.
“Tiz,” I called softly as I neared the side room, a single oak door set between the shelves in such a way that it was easily looked over even when the library was well-lit, and nearly invisible now. No reply, but that was not unusual or alarming. I turned the knob and nudged open the door with my shoulder. It was a small round room, with three chairs arranged in a rough circle around a brazier. “Tih-iiiz,” I called again, seeing the flicker of magical fire in the brazier throwing a shadow from the nearest chair across the floor.
“Oh!” a woman’s voice said, and the shadow shifted, like the person in the chair was leaning forward. The sternly wrinkled face that peered around the side of the chair most certainly did not belong to Tiz, but I recognized it nonetheless.
A flush spread over my cheeks. “M-Mage Pryla…” I stammered, bobbing my head.
The head of the school blinked at me in the harshness of my mage-lamp, which, now that I was still, rotated in slow circles above my head. “Student. What…? Oh.” She stood up, brushing her voluminous robes down with one hand. The other held a book whose pages contained symbols I did not recognize. “I fell asleep.” She turned her rheumy blue eyes to me, looking through me as she always had, with everyone. “What did you need, student?”
“Uh, I was looking for…” I cut myself off, trying to decide if telling Pryla about my mission - either the immediate one or the greater one - was the best idea.
Pryla’s cracked lips twisted slightly into a frown. “Is there something I should know about, student?”
Crap. “I’m looking for Tiz, actually.” There. Hopefully she wouldn’t ask about why.
“Hm. That boy… Always bringing trouble.”
I quirked a smile at Pryla’s gruff assessment. I was the one bringing trouble this time. Or Gwen Sculland, if you wanted to get technical. “Have you seen him recently, Ma’am?”
“Don’t call me that, it makes me feel old,” she said. I was surprised by her attempt at… humor, I think? She had never been a casual person; it was hard to be, running an institution such as this nearly-single-handedly well into her nineties, even with the help of Life-magic. “Hm. I haven’t. But that boy is always coming in by the main hall late at night - I can see him on the records.”
There were many records in the College, but the one she was referring to was a particularly nifty spell that kept a list of magical signatures that passed through all doors and windows in the building. Every student and faculty’s unique signature was in the files as well, and cross-references were easily done. As for unrecognized magic, another, though rarely-used and highly advanced spell existed that could track where it went, like a dog could trace someone’s smell. Thus the College was as safe an institution as was ever likely to exist. “Really?” I murmured, wondering what Tiz could possibly be doing outside at night. He was hardly a party animal, I thought.
“I haven’t asked him what he’s doing though. He has always had full run of the College - he’s been here since he was a wee thing, did you know that?”
I smiled, not replying, and she waved me off with a remark as to the late - well, early - hour. I slipped out with an intense relief washing over me. That meeting could have gone very badly had Pryla been more alert and less good-humored. She was well known for her strict attention to policy, and disliked students interrupting her business. That I had woken her up… well, I was very lucky to escape with my hide, much less some information to go on.
~☾~
The cool air of an early summer’s morning met me as I stepped outside. It was a long shot, given that Tiz was returning in the night and not the dawn, but I was reluctant to go to the men’s dormitory; Mage Pryla had tweaked the elevation shaft spells in each dorm to not admit residents of the other dorm without her express permission. For this, I would never dare to ask.
I wandered out onto the grounds, where the mists hovered over the grass and the birds were swooping from tree to tree. The restaurant and bar on site, where Tiz had taken me on our first date, was mostly dark but for a single orange anti-lamp in the window.
Goosebumps arose on my skin as I passed through the low-lying fog, water clinging to me. It was… refreshing. I walked out towards the treeline in the distance, where the College’s lands ended and the wilderness began. When I reached the thick-grouped wood, I stood there for a moment, eyes roving over the shadows. None moved. I don’t know how long I was there, standing in the gloom where the trees blocked out the new day, butit was probably just minutes before the dew on my skin set my skin to chattering. I stepped away then, back into the weak sunlight, and dried myself with a beginner’s-level Change-magic spell. I turned back towards the College. Another fruitless venture.
That was when the sun rose up just high enough to cast a rosy light over the north end of the main building’s roof, and by pure chance I spotted the dark shape curled on the shingles, so very high up that I was sure it was a cat at first. But then the thing moved, stirring by the illumination of dawn, and I saw that it was bigger than I first thought: a human, dressed in black. A tingle ran up my spine and I stood perfectly still, unsure what exactly I was observing. When it stood up and started to pick its way down the slope of the roof, I ducked back to the shadow of the treeline and watched.
The figure half-hopped, half-slid down the shingles as if it had done that very thing countless times before. At the edge of the roof, it simply stepped off the eaves and floated down as easily as I had in the elevation shaft. When it reached the ground I finally realized that the person was Tiz himself, floppy hair and glangly limbs unmistakable even across the great distance between us.
“Tiz!” I yelled, jogging towards him. “Tiz!”
He jumped and turned towards me, having started off to the College’s main entrance. “Wha-? Orsana, what are you doing out here?”
I reached him and grinned even as I doubled over to catch my breath. “I’m glad I caught you,” I said when I straightened back up. “We need to talk.” The look on his face was one of utter panic, and too late I realized how my words could be taken. “No! I mean- its not about our relationship. Well, sort of. If you really want to stretch it that way it could be a huge thing, but I’m not breaking up with you. I actually need your help.”
Now he just looked confused, poor thing. “Er… okay. I’ll see what I can do. Anywhere in particular you want to, uh, talk?”
“Privately. And this might take a while to explain…”
He rolled his eyes. “It always does. Come on, I know a place.”
~☾~
“Right,” Tiz said slowly, after a long pause during which I tried to remember if I had relayed everything Gwen said. “Well, I have to say that actually makes sense now.”
“What does? I’m not crazy!”
“No, no. I mean Nimue hasn’t been heard from in several weeks. The Aito school sent out a tracker, but it lead nowhere. They want her on theft - apparently she stole something from them before she disappeared - and have all the schools on lookout, which is how I know even if most students don’t. And, we’ve been seeing some strange magical patterns in the world charts. Most of them in the area of Aito…” He trailed off, fixing me with scrutinizing brown eyes. “Well, this is exciting.”
“Exciting? It’s insane! We’re just students - not great masters or the kind of people who set off on quests to save the world! Holy hell, I thought that was only in books!” I was panicking now that the magnitude of my appointed destiny was sinking in.
“Yes, exciting. But also terrifying. Which is why I suspect that dream token will be more valuable to us than we can foresee now.”
I groaned and clapped a hand over my eyes in exasperation, slouching back in the tiny chair-desk. Tiz had brought me to a small long-abandoned classroom. Image-magic lay like a blanket all around us, shielding us from being seen or heard by anyone, even if they happened to open the door. But, as Tiz had explained, that was unlikely: this classroom hadn’t been touched for ten years, ever since a student had Summoned a monster within and been left as little more than a scorch-mark on the hardwood. (The mark was still there, imprinted into the floor with such a burst of unimaginable horror that no amount of effort, magical or mundane, could ever remove it.) Even before that, Tiz said, this room was avoided: it had no windows and was in an awkward position in the far corner of the Life-magic department. So we were safe.
It was ironic, I know.
“Luckily,” Tiz continued, “a dream token is easy to make. I have all the materials either with me here or within reach around the grounds. But I suspect there’s a way to find Nimue without Gwen’s directions, that is, if she can give us any at all. The Aether is a hazy place of half-truths and unrealized dreams, or so Murm always told me.”
“Oh?” I murmured, leaning forward again. He was on a hunt, and I was content to follow his lead at the moment. He was constantly surprising me ever since we met with his wealth of knowledge on the strangest and most obscure, but also the most surprisingly useful, subjects. I was a bit jealous, to tell the truth, but I knew it was a feeling without direction or purpose.
“I think the patterns I’ve been seeing in the monitor spells are our clue.”
“You mentioned those before. What exactly are you talking about?”
He blinked. “Oh. There’s a spell Mage Olero invented a few years ago that tracks the levels and kinds of magics used around the world. It’s still in development - I’ve been helping him, but neither of us can figure out how to get it to put out numbers instead of visual data - which is why it’s very hush-hush, but it’ll be useful for research we think. Anyway, over the past few months, every time I’ve used the spell I see a lot of activity of all kinds around Aito. Too much for that school’s population or specialty. We’ve seen Image, Summoning, Life, Curse, Change, even some uncategorized magics. Olero is seeing the same thing.”
“So something strange is happening in Aito…”
Tiz hummed in agreement. “On a grand scale, no less. I don’t know if we’ll find anything out there that no one else has, but that spell also has a local function, which could lead us within a few feet of the spot where the spells are being cast. It only works in the area though.”
“I guess this really is a quest in the traditional sense then?”
He shrugged, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I suppose. Are you ready?”
GOLD LEVEL ACHIEVED!!!
*dies*