After a good dinner, and after getting some time to lay back and rub my belly in lazy comfort, I pull Mustafá aside to show her my broken, reclining couch. With a grin I tell her to just watch, showing her the malfunction in the old piece of furniture: no matter how much I tried, it refused to recline. I put my hands on the thing and take a deep breath, focusing… and whispering the Tracing rune.
“Shi.”
I follow Mort’s instructions with a confident grin, closing my eyes and imagining…
First, focus on the knowledge you want to acquire: imagine you are scanning the object, physically.
… a greenish light goes through the whole couch, and for a moment I feel connected to it, aware of its every nook and cranny.
You will feel how knowledge fill your mind, random words at first, try to focus and demand a schematic.
Indeed, just as Mort said, whispers begin to fill my brain with random information. How this chair was made in Santic, in 1956, and how it had been ‘serving’ my family for years now. It was like being told a story by a voice I can’t really identify. With a frown, I demand order in my brain, and a detailed schematic of the couch is suddenly burnt in my mind.
Once you have the knowledge you need, focus on the part you wish to fix. Remember that this is technically transmutation, so it will turn your Astral into the materials it’s missing unless you are holding them in your hand.
As I was fearing, I can see several gears missing and a few broken pieces. This will be costly… but, just to try and impress my teacher, I push on and whisper.
“Aka.”
The energy is drained from me in a sudden motion. My legs feel woobly again, I fall to my knee… but I can feel it, how the chair fixes itself. Not only did it fix its insides, the damaged felt and the ugly armrests got repaired as well! At the cost of my precious astral, of course.
When it is done, I take my hands off the thing and sigh, rubbing my temples softly. My head was pounding a little bit, but when I tried to use the reclining function of the old thing, it moved back like no one’s business. It was perfect, just like it was sold that morning in Santic 56 years ago!
Mustafá nodded slowly, clapping a few times and then actually patting my head again. I let out a little cheer.
“You may the making of an alchemist in you.” She said.
I slowly climb up to the couch and recline it all the way back, closing my eyes and suddenly falling asleep.
I needed it. I really, really needed it.
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My nap lasted an hour, and after that and a quick cleaning of my face, Mustafá insisted that it was time to work once again. I acquiesced. We filled some tiny bottles with curry sauce, some others with water, and we were ready.
We left at around 11 in the night (if I’m remembering correctly), and since then it’s been thirty minutes of walking through empty, cold streets. The streetlights did their best effort to make everything less frightening but, really, the contrast between cones of warm orange and pitch black darkness was a bit jarring.
As if this trip wasn’t anxiety-inducing enough, I have to keep up with Mustafá’s pace! She walks ever so slightly faster than me, so I have to uncomfortably accelerate if I want to remain by her side. Worst part? It’s not even that bad, it’s not exhausting or noticeable from an outside perspective! It’s just annoying and hard on my feet…
“Where are we going?” I finally think of asking, now that we’re deep in the city proper.
“The Pillar.” She says, serious as ever.
“Didn’t that sink like, two hundred years ago?” I’m already getting excited. Maybe this is one of those towers that mysteriously raises back to the surface at night in the eyes of the mages or something!
“Yes. We may need to dig. I am still thinking about it.” Mustafá raises a finger to her lips.
With a sigh, I obey and keep quiet, looking up to the skies. There are very few stars tonight, the lights of nearby buildings and all that smoke in the air probably cover most of them. It feels a little lonely, compared to the night sky in my native Sumpf, where even with the light of town I can still see most of the galaxy in a clear night such as this.
Thinking of Sumpf makes me immediately think of my Parents, and Vito too. I wonder, how are they feeling right now? Is Vito sleeping already? What about Mom and Dad? They usually stay up a little later than Vito and I, talking about the day, discussing what’s on their minds, often arguing…
They probably think we can’t hear them, that we don’t know how worried they are about the future and the world in general. How much more worried they would be if they knew what I am up to these days? ‘Oh hey Mom, Dad! There’s this lady who tried to kill me and now she’s teaching me actual, real life magic!’. Despite their curiosity, they would be reasonably distrustful of Mustafá and this whole situation in general. Really, I should be too!
“What would happen if she suddenly decides it’d be easier to kill you than to teach you?”
She promised she wouldn’t harm me.
“One can promise many things. What’s stopping her from appearing at home one night and killing you while you sleep? Or maybe erase your memories?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
They’d probably say the same, at least Dad would. Mom would be equally scared and curious about this whole deal, but I think I could convince her of at least letting me try to earn a thing or two from Mustafá. Now,Vito? He would be the most distrustful of them all, probably advising me to strike first, fast and hard so she doesn’t mess with me or something. Oh that Vito… wait…
“... Oh hells.” I say, louder than I expected. “I forgot to ask Vito!”
“Ask what. Who’s Vito.” Mustafá turns to look at me. Saints damn it.
“My brother. Today he made some strange predictions and I want to ask if he’s a mage…” I rub the back of my neck.
“Are there any mages in your family?” She asks, taking the possibility quite more seriously than I expected.
“None that I know of.” I always suspected some of my aunts of being witches but, more in the old-hag sense and not so much in the mystical sage sense.
“Then the chances are very low.” My teacher shrugs, turning away again. “What predictions did he make, anyways?”
“He spoke of a coming Civil war in Bisontia.”
Mustafá stopped all of a sudden. I gulp… and against my better judgment, I keep talking.
“Yeah, the terrorist attack against the Emperor? He knew about it. Not the details but he knew that something happened.” I walk in front of the mage to look at her in the face. She was deep in thought. “Now that I think about it, you knew of it too, didn’t you?”
“I see why you have suspicions now. If he’s not a mage, then this is quite dangerous.” The mage nods. “You must interrogate him at once. His own security depends on it.”
“If I just ask him who his contacts are, he’ll just call me a cop or something.” And that makes me grin. Prickly asshole, he can be. He’s smarter than he looks. “I guess I can inquire about a few things though.”
“We will talk about that later, probably tomorrow.” With a nod that was probably more to herself than to me, she continues walking beside me. “We’re almost there.”
Saüle’s Independence Plaza is dangerous at night, everyone knows that. There are groups of people who gather here in the late hours, bad people. People who hurt others out of desperation, hunger or mere boredom. They take over the four quadrants of grassy land, sit by the water fountains, smoke on the benches. Delinquents, thieves… With a sigh, Mustafá looks around us and, when she is sure none of the little groups sitting on the grass or chilling by the benches is watching us, she passes me a piece of paper.
This one is easy to decipher: ‘Not-seen’. The paper tells me the pronunciation…
“Joltraush.”
Mustafá suddenly grabs my hand. The world becomes lighter, the skies turn white, every shadow becomes a light and every light turns to darkness. Everything has inverted, colours have turned into different shades of gray and it is very disorienting! I don’t have much time to gawk though, my teacher pulls my hand and forces me to walk straight through the plaza. No one turns to look at us, not even for an instant… I guess we are invisible, in this state.
As we reach the center of it all, we stop in front of the barricaded section trying (in vain) to protect the colourful concrete patch from vandals who keep graffiting it. We jump over the barricades and walk on the monument like it’s nothing. Mustafá turns to me, passing me two things: another piece of paper, and a headlamp…?
“Now.” She whispers. “I will drop us in. As soon as you feel air hitting you again, turn on the lamp and read this rune. Do not answer me with words or you will break the invisibility spell. Understood?”
I stare at her for a few seconds. Drop us in? Air hitting us? I can’t really say anything, and I can feel the rune-paper I am using for this spell breaking down and losing power, so I just pout and nod.
“Good. Hold your breath.” She squeezes my hand a little bit as she whispers. “Ja’iio loi.”
Now that’s a bunch of words I’ve never heard before. I will have to remember to ask for those runes.
A shiver climbs up my spine as we suddenly sink into the floor, as if it was liquid! My eyes open widely and I manage to gasp for air before we are fully encased by concrete. I see nothing by darkness as we descend, feeling the strange sensation of gravel grinding on my everything.
I feel like I will run out of air, when suddenly we pop out of the concrete. Just as Mustafá said, I feel air hitting on me. There’s nothing under my feet, we’re falling. All the air I have left escapes my lungs in a scream, as I desperately let go of Mustafa’s hand and turn on my headlamp. We’re in a cave? A vertical cave (a trench, I guess?) I see nothing but motes of dust as we continue to fall… or, well, I continue to fall. Mustafá suddenly just stops falling.
“The note, read it!” She orders, before I lose sight of her. Right, the note!
Two runes!? So this is an actual phrase! I don’t have time to fangirl about that though.
“Ja chau!” I yell, probably far louder than I need.
My descent begins to slow… until it comes to a sudden stop. I am floating, right in the middle of nothingness, feeling my heart racing so violently in my chest and drops of sweat falling from my face and into the void. I am breathing so loudly and so intensely I fear I may hyperventilate any second now. Oop, yep, here it comes, I barely feel any oxygen reaching my brain. Oh saints above help your servant!
“Don’t be so exaggerated.” I can hear Mustafá’s voice approaching. Soon she descends from the darkness above and my weak little headlamp can actually illuminate her. She illuminates me back with hers. “See? You survived again. You have a knack for it.”
“You could have been more specific about what you meant!” I complain, feeling like I could break down crying again at any moment! It’s not my fault, I am not usually this emotional! But I am also not usually thrown down bottomless pits!
“If I was, you would have refused or, worse, you would have exclaimed something, broken the invisibility spell, and accidentally revealed our nature to a bunch of bystanders.” I… hate that she is absolutely right.
“Well, I guess I understand now what you meant…”
My eyes look up and down. Yep, we’re definitely underground, this place does indeed exist, and there’s a gigantic, possibly ancient tower just, laying down underneath the city. Nothing to worry about in the slightest, no? There’s no chance this tremendous bubble of air could suddenly cause a landslide and destroy the entirety of the city’s square? No no, none of that!
Mages, man. I think I definitely hate them.
“Swim down. We will eventually reach the top of the tower.” Mustafá starts moving her arms and literally swims past me, as if we were floating underwater or something. Without more sanity in me to refuse her, I just sigh and swim down with her.
“So… shouldn’t we be wearing gas masks or something? The air here must be stagnant.” I venture to question between motions.
“Do you have gas masks?” She asks back.
“No.”
“Neither do I.” The crone shrugged.
“But you do have headlamps?” My eyes narrow.
“Listen. You will be fine. Stop worrying. Just don’t breathe with your mouth.”
Did she just call me a mouth breather!? I really want to get back at this woman someday, somehow! The disrespect and the dishonor are going to kill me at this point.
After an undetermined amount of time (fifteen minutes or something, if my phone can be trusted), my lamp catches something in the distance. A dark stone surface, upon which rested several planters, pots and a lot of gardening equipment, most of it rusty and clearly abandoned. When we reach this floor, I lay down on it for a good moment to try and readjust to my newfound horizontality, while Mustafá threw away her levitation spell paper. I guess we won’t be needing it anymore? I throw mine away as well when I stand back up.
“This… this is the damn tower, right? The one that was in Saüle like two hundred years ago, the one that sank one day?” I say, still a little dizzy from all that ‘swimming’.
“It was sunk.” She corrects me, looking around and then pointing at a trapdoor not too far from us. “There, we will enter. Once we do, stand on your guard. This place is probably full of fairies.”
“You mean like, pixies?” My hopes rise a little bit.
“No.” As always, she refuses to elaborate. With a sigh, I look upwards and wonder how far down we really are right now… I resist the impulse of yelling ‘ECHO!’, and just decide to follow my teacher closely. As she opens the trapdoor, I finally come to ask.
“What are we looking for here, exactly?”
“A Dragon.” She answers, sliding down a frail looking set of ladders.
I freeze. Absolute terror and intense, utter excitement fight in my brain for supremacy.
I think terror is winning so far.
