Guild Mage: Apprentice

Inkeris lifted his hand silently, first two fingers raised, while he checked to be certain that everyone was in position. Sohvis and Rika each had two men with them, while Keri had three, all of them armored in enchanted steel. They’d never cracked a cell of the cult that had more than a dozen, and the Unconquered House of Bælris held a threefold advantage: in training, magic, and equipment. He was confident that he’d brought more than enough people to handle things.

Sohvis and his men were lined up opposite Keri, on the right side of the entryway, while Rika and her guards hung back as a reserve. That had been part of their deal: there was no way he would risk her not coming home to their son when this was over. After making eye contact with each of them in turn, Keri chopped his hand down and forward, toward the dark tunnel into the earth, giving his cousin Sohvis the signal to move in.

The cult’s cells made their shrines in out of the way places where they hoped to pass unnoticed. Over years of hunting across the north, Keri had broken down the doors of abandoned barns, and ripped up the floors of modest homes. He’d dug through a mess of frozen fish to find a secret hatch, and climbed above the tree line to where blood-spattered shrines clung to rocky crags. Today, they’d tracked their targets to a stretch of forested hills northwest of Al’Fenthia.

This particular hill had been excavated and braced, with a stone doorway built into the earth itself, leading down into darkness. It would be cramped, dim and dangerous to follow their prey into this particular rat hole. At least the word of Bælris could deal with one of those problems.

Sohvis and his men moved as soon as the signal was given, Keri’s cousin darting down into the tunnel with a muttered invocation. Light burst out of the doorway: with any luck, the sudden glare would catch the cultists by surprise and blind them. Keri counted to ten slowly, then took his men and followed.

The tunnel was just as tight as he’d feared it would be, and Keri grimaced. His spear was a better weapon for this sort of thing than Sohvis’ blade, but his cousin had insisted on going first. Up ahead, the ring of metal on metal told Keri that their forward team had made contact.

Keri picked up his pace, dashing out of the tunnel into an open chamber no more than thirty feet across, and perhaps ten high. A full third of the place was taken up by the grotesque altar built into the far wall: the figure of a nude woman, sculpted from clay, holding her swollen belly with both hands. Her head was adorned with braided and knotted cords of yarn, in a dozen or more shades of red, and her eyes had been set with pale stones. Beneath her, a shallow pit had been dug into the earth and lined with tightly packed and mortared stones. Oil lamps lined the irregular walls of the chamber, illuminating the pile of bones heaped around the feet of the icon.

The stench was horrible: blood, offal and rot, the air so thick with it that Keri nearly choked. They’d waited until the cult had come to perform their dark rites, in an attempt to catch them all at once, and as a result there was a freshly killed chicken in the sacrificial basin at the base of the statue, still leaking blood.

It also meant the room was filled with people. Keri caught a glimpse of Sohvis spinning his blade through the neck of a middle-aged man, decapitating him with a single cut. Keri’s three men piled into the chamber, and he saw a young woman in the simple garb of a merchant or shopkeeper make a run to get past him. He thrust forward with his Næv’bel, taking her in the thigh, and she screamed, clutching the wound. Instead of pulling the blade of the spear out, Keri muttered the invocation to a spell.

"Savelet Aisarg Æ’Næv’bel." The words carried his mana up from inside, down through his arms, and out into his spear. The blade, still buried inside the woman’s thigh, flashed with light and heat, causing her to cry aloud in pain once again before he drew it forth. Smoke wafted up from her charred flesh, but she would not bleed to death before he was able to question her.

"Keri!" The cry came from behind him, and Rika charged out of the tunnel into the subterranean shrine. "Something’s happening," she said, drawing herself up short at his side. "The sky-"

"Blood and shadows," Sohvis cursed, and Keri spun away from his kwenim to see his cousin scrambling back. Above the sacrifice, a swirling vortex of blood was sucking in every bit of viscera and gore that had been spilled during the raid. The pulsing orb consumed the blood of the dead chicken, but also that of the man Sohvis had beheaded, and seemed to feed from the very wounds of the defeated cultists.

Before anyone had wrapped their minds around what was happening, a lash of blood whipped out, taking one of Sohvis’ men around the neck and jerking him up into the air. The man dropped his blade, trying to pry the tendril of gore away from his neck with his own fingers. The horror spawned in front of the altar gave him no time: instead, it swung the man, headfirst, into the mortared stones of the sacrificial basin. When it jerked him back up again, limp, Keri watched the blood leaking from his split scalp drawn inexorably into the hovering orb.

"Burn it!" Keri shouted. He repeated his spell, and the blade of his spear erupted into blazing, hot sunlight. Then, he charged.

☙

Jurian of Carinthia had still not quite gotten used to the life of a professor at Coral Bay. In the time since he’d walked the halls of the College of Vædic Grammar as a student, little had changed with the school itself. No, he was the one who had changed. He’d gotten old, for one thing.

Twenty-five - no, it had been twenty six years, he corrected himself. When he’d been a student here, Master Coleridge had occupied this office, and it still didn’t feel like a place that Jurian belonged. Eating his evening meal in the office was still preferable to dining with the students or the other professors, however, so here he was, sitting in front of the open windows that looked out on the bay at sunset. At least the sea breeze was nice.

The food, on the other hand, he was getting well and truly sick of. Years on the road had accustomed Jurian to eating in all manner of common rooms, sampling hearty meals from all across the kingdom of Lucania, and beyond. From the market stalls of Al’Fenthia to the Dancing Lady in Calder’s Landing, he’d loved the variety. And not only that, but the experience of sharing a meal with good friends. Companions that he trusted to watch his back in the deadly chaos of an eruption.

Swallowing yet another helping of mana-rich lobster bisque, alone in his office, it was hard not to feel like he’d lost something. "You were right, Genny," Jurian said to break his own solitude. "It’s possible to get sick of anything. Even seafood."

He finished off his goblet of watered wine, and fished the locket out from inside his academic robes. A flick of his thumb, a click, and the silver cover swung open to expose the miniature portrait within. The artist had been skilled; he’d not only got her hair right, but her eyes, as well - the wildness of the first, the bright glow of the second. "I should get rid of this," he told himself, for the hundredth time.

Screams from outside the window broke through Jurian’s maudlin mood. That didn’t sound like a duel, and no one should have been teaching combat classes but him. He thumbed the locket shut, tucked it back under his robes, and got to his feet, hurrying over to the window.

Below, students were pouring into the courtyard, backing away from Professor Annora’s infirmary. Jurian frowned. What sort of trouble, in the name of the trinity, could the students possibly have caused in there? If this was another prank by that Hobart boy-

The window of the infirmary exploded outward, unable to halt the momentum of the person who’d been thrown into the glass. A grey-haired woman in professor’s robes tumbled across the cobblestones before coming to a halt twenty feet from the building, and Jurian recognized Annora. She’d be fine; anything that didn’t kill her would be quickly dealt with by her healing magic, but at the same time, there shouldn’t have been any threat on the campus capable of rag-dolling a mage of her experience.

The thing that stalked his colleague out of the infirmary lashed out in every direction with whips of some viscous, red liquid, shattering stone and catching a slow student by her leg. The center of the thing pulsed and spun, glistening wetly. It was, Jurian realized, as if someone had gathered up every wound on every patient in the place, scooped them all up, and then sent what clumped together out to kill.

Jurian grinned. "Finally," he said. "Something to liven the place up." He reached out his hand, and the staff of driftwood, silver and gold he’d carried since his days as a student shot across the room into his palm. It felt right. Without a second thought, Jurian climbed out the window. A plane of shimmering blue and gold sparked into existence a few feet below him, remaining corporeal for just long enough that he could push off it with his boot, aiming for the next point in his descent. Ephemeral step by step, Jurian made his way down from the third floor of Blackstone Hall, landing in the courtyard.

"It ripped through my patients," the professor of healing shouted to him, from where two students had helped her to her feet. The girl who’d been caught by the leg was little more than a smear on the ground.

"I’ll clear you a way back inside, Nora," Jurian called back to her. Best to speak aloud for the next bit: it wasn’t something he did often, and he’d rather not make a mistake. "Aluthet Aiveh Demia," he called out. It was going to be a large spell, so he pulled in the ambient mana in the courtyard around him, especially the traces carried on the sea breeze, from the shoals of the Tidal Rift, gathering up every scrap of power he could. Then, he shaped it with his intent, building a dome of raw magical force just large enough to surround both himself, and his prey.

Curved panes of shining blue light, sparking gold, snapped into place one after the other, interlocking like the scales of a fish, until everything outside of his chosen arena was barred from interfering.

The sphere of blood, lashing about with its whips, turned its attention to Jurian and began to float toward him.

"I don’t know what you are," Coral Bay’s professor of combat said. With a practiced thought, raw mana condensed into a blade in his left hand, plates of armor about his body. "But you have no idea how much I have been missing this."

He stepped forward with a grin that would have terrified his students.

☙

The world shook around Wren Wind Dancer. Above her, the sky was blotted out by a plume of ash and smoke. Below, down the slopes of the mountain, the trees were burning, set aflame by the rivers of lava spilling down from the site of the eruption. The air was so hot she could barely breathe.

"Father!" Wren screamed. The shrine had been obliterated in the first explosion, when a column of light had linked the peak with the ring in the sky above, and shards of black rock had shot down the mountain. Everyone else who could fly had already left, darting between burning cinders on black wings, heading down toward the river. Those who were too young or old had been sent away days before, and would be waiting there. But her father had been inside the rift, and he still hadn’t come out.

It had taken them years to fight their way through the shoals to the depths, clearing the mana-beasts as they went, bleeding for each precious foot of ground. Wren had been a vital part of it, which was the only thing that helped her find the entrance to the rift now, when the entire mountain had been so altered. Everything green was gone, leaving only a burning nightmare.

The doorway was of obsidian, sharp and polished to a glossy finish, and it was a miracle that it still stood. Wren murmured a thanks to the goddess, ducked inside, and hoped that the eruption had not collapsed any of the tunnels. A part of her knew that was the least of her worries: it would be far worse to rush around a corner and find the entire passage obliterated by a river of molten lava.

It had been nearly twenty years of work, first to take the heart of the rift, and then to hold it against every creature that absorbed enough mana to grow mad and dangerous. Wren couldn’t count how many warriors they’d lost, waiting for the next eruption to come. When the blood-letters had finally announced the signs, her father had declared he would wait at the heart of the rift himself, standing vigil until the appointed time. She’d begged him to let her stay at his side, but Nighthawk, Chief of the Red Shield Tribe, had refused.

"If something should happen to me," he’d said, putting his massive hand on her shoulder, "you must lead our people. Succeed or fail, do not let our memory pass away from this world. Survive."

Wren slid around the corner which marked the transition from the shoals to the depths, skidding on the stone, then found her balance and kept running. Something was wrong: when they’d first made it this far, even she had been able to feel the heaviness of the mana in the air. Now, there was absolute emptiness, instead. There was nothing to do but keep going, so she pressed on to the tomb itself.

Even the blood-letters had not been confident the old stories were true, but her father had never lost faith. And there, at the very depths of the rift, they’d found it. The chamber where, a thousand years before, the goddess’ last, faithful servants had taken her body, after the day the sky fell.

Now, the massive doors of stone were cracked open. It had taken weeks of work, with chisels and hammers, while warriors stood guard all the while. Wren slipped through, into the tomb itself. "Father?" she called into the darkness.

The faintest sound, of something shuffling on stone, and two red eyes, shining like hot steel in a forge, turned to Wren. A great weight pressed down on her, and she could not help but fall to the floor of the tomb, first onto her hands and knees, and then finally flat on her belly, cheek to the stone, hair in her face.

Something assaulted Wren’s mind, and she heard herself screaming as if from a great distance. Memories flickered: her mother, before she’d died coughing up blood. Her father, showing her how to fletch an arrow. Faster and faster, the memories came, flickering like the wings of a moth, until Wren couldn’t keep track of them any longer.

The last, however, slowed. She paused in the window of Castle Whitehill, the white statue of the goddess in her hand, the girl with the pointed ears staring at her in the moonlight. "It doesn’t belong to your baron, either," Wren said, in her memories. "It was stolen, and brought here from Varuna, across the sea. I’m just taking it back. I’m sorry you woke up tonight, girl. They’re going to blame you for this, and you don’t deserve it."

"Rise, child," a woman’s voice said, filling the chamber. The memories slipped away, and the pressure eased. Wren sucked in a breath, got her hands under her, and pushed herself up from the floor, onto her knees.

"Goddess?" Wren gasped. "My father-"

A great bulk moved in the darkness, a shadow. A woman’s hand, delicate and pale, rose up, bringing a dim, red light into the chamber. Ractia’s dark hair hung loose past her shoulders, and it was the only thing she wore. Her eyes were shaped oddly, and the features of her face as well, though Wren couldn’t have put into words how. Her hips were wide, her belly gently curved, and her breasts full and heavy. Like the idol Wren had stolen near twenty years before, the Lady of Blood was no young woman, but a mother goddess.

"Be at peace, my daughter," Ractia murmured. "Now that I am returned, there are a great many wrongs to be set right. You and your father will stand at my side for all of it."

The shadow at Ractia’s shoulder stepped forward, revealed by the ruddy light, and Wren looked upon the face of the chief. Nighthawk Wind Dancer’s visage was grim, set as stone, and he showed no expression at the sight of his own daughter on her knees.

There was nothing left of Wren’s father in his red eyes.