She had watched in interest as the two arrived on her sanctuary’s shores. The child that was more than he appeared, the spirit that was more than it seemed. She remembered how the creature had defiantly held her gaze, such arrogance for one requesting a favour. In any other circumstance, she may have sought to chastise it before banishing the creature from her isle, but the child, oh! The child!
The light of his soul was something she’d never seen before, it was so much brighter than the others and the colours within, the seed germinating at its core. It was as if she looked upon a dream made flesh. The realisation of that thought was enough for her to understand just what she beheld. The shroud of power woven about him and the guardian spirit poorly pretending to be a myre-bird would have been enough of a clue even had her sight somehow failed her.
The Guardian watched her warily as she wove a form of flesh and blood. It did not fear her, she knew, even in the seat of her power where her strength eclipsed its own. A battle between them would result in a pyrrhic victory for her given their natures. It was strong enough to wreak havoc upon her sanctum and escape her wrath intact if not unscathed. She would be left vulnerable with a new enemy to watch out for, two, if her guess at the entity’s patron was correct. However, it wouldn’t need come to that because of the child, oh! The child!
As her newly formed fingers clutched at the reed basket in their delicate, ivory grip, the two immortals came to an understanding. Gently, she lifted the sleeping babe to her bosom and her finger stroked his cheek as soft lips instinctively latched onto a pink nipple. The sensation left her shivering in joy as she gave her blessing freely there and then on that pebbled shore bordered by dark waters.
The Guardian watched her imperiously with its golden eyes. It turned its head hither and thither in stark contemplation. Seeing something that pleased it, the creature issued her an imperious nod. Its jet-black beak suddenly expanded into a great fanged maw that issued a simple proclamation in a tongue of crushing boulders, dark silence and fiery retribution.
“YOU’LL DO.”
She paid no heed as the spirit took wing and faded into the forest. Its gaze could still be sensed, watching them, an unspoken promise she had no intention of testing. Her mind had already turned to the task at hand. She softly sang to the babe as her thoughts laid out what needed to be done. A home for shelter, a garden for food, a song to soothe.
The soothing song came easily, though a firm reminder was given to her retainers that the chorus should hold no undertones of deathly rest. Instead the refrain touched upon the promise of new life and growth. Her subjects shivered their leaves in excitement as the lesser spirits shared in her rapturous delight. Budding flowers glistened as boughs groaned in synchrony, parting to allow sunlight to push back the gloom. Daintily she stepped forth, cradling the babe as she marked off the perfect spot for the new seedling’s nursery.
Oh, a child! A child!
The chiming call echoed through the blissful memory as it faded, leaving behind the form of a youth meditating upon a leaf-strewn stone bench. Branches swayed in the wind as if reaching down to cradle the one sitting below. With his eyes closed, Myrelin smiled as the aspen tree beside him hummed a whispery, shivering melody.
Oh, a child! A child!
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Derwyn Pews, Acolyte of the Second Rank struggled to control his breathing as he performed a moving meditation. The intricate movements incorporated a series of stretches in carefully held poses and deep, measured breathing. They were performed in synchrony with deep gusty breaths timed to pulsations deep within his soul.
Unseen, an ethereal aura expanded from within him reaching out into the aether. Faint motes of magical essence wandered across the immaterial boundary of his aura only to be caught like fireflies in amber. Having reached as far as it could go, the aura contracted inward dragging the scattered lights with it. The motes were drawn deep within his soul gathering together, shedding minute impurities and being refined by his sense of self until what was left condensed into a single scintillating bead of quintessence.
The bead floated within the core of his being for a moment before diffusing into a varicoloured haze of power that flowed out of his soul. It circulated through Derwyn’s mind and body before returning to his soul again. He’d always found the process of respiring magic to be a wonderous sensation. It was strange soothing cool combined followed by an aching burn that permeated through him before giving way to a feeling of euphoria and invigoration. In some ways it felt even better than sex if not for the fact that he couldn’t dwell upon the experience. The energy had scarcely completed a second circulation before Derwyn’s aura expanded again, expelling the impurities, fragments of power rejected by his identity as he began the process of gathering magic again.
He’d once overheard a legion instructor say that training to use magic was like exercising a muscle. His conclave mentor had explained the concept in greater detail using far more complicated terms which meant the same thing in the end. Personally, Derwyn preferred the instructor’s allegory over talks of psycho-symbology and autohypnotic, metaphysical soul-body interactions. He wasn’t an unintelligent man but many of the things the legion taught him were so new and astonishing that the part of him that remembered being a mere crofter’s son latched onto the simpler words.
To begin, petty magic was something that most people were capable of to some degree. Often times it was an ability manifested during a frustrating or stressful event. A petty spell could allow a man to run faster when being chased by a predator, cause wounds to clot and heal without corruption or find one’s way to food and shelter when starving and lost in the wilds. Most people hardly even realised what they were doing was magic. It was something instinctual and, in most instances, merely a shade beyond what was possible without magic. In the world they lived in developing such abilities were the only way most people were able to survive to adulthood.
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The method that his imperial instructors taught involved using magic to manipulate and carry out tasks at the very limits of their ability. For the soldiers of the infantry this was a series of outrageous feats of physical strength and stamina that slowly but surely stepped into the realm of the superhuman. Men and women like Derwyn who early on showed a marked talent for manipulating their petty magics externally were given different tasks.
Their mentors instead directed them to use petty magic to perform certain jobs daily. Where the infantry recruits ran for miles carrying heavy loads like pack mules, those of the conclave busied themselves projecting sendings, tending forge fires, patching damaged structures or in the more advanced classes laying simple enchantments on legion gear like making boots resistant to wear.
A common exercise involved levitating stones and shaping them into different forms. Derwyn’s time as a new recruit had seen him shape countless pavers until it seemed his eyes would bleed. Once exhausted the neophytes would perform a resting meditation meant to passively restore their magic and encourage their bodies and souls to grow stronger. Time and continued practice would eventually see them increase in ability until eventually after a year or two of effort most were able to carry out the exercise with a chunk of stone weighing 144 libra for a full day without rest.
Upon achieving this feat, neophytes were confirmed as rank one acolytes of the first circle and taught the first of the moving meditations that he was performing. The first circle was where the legion conclave began to differ from the hedge witches and wizards of his birthplace. It was encapsulated within a simple dogma held as truth.
Meditation, exercise and practise made for stronger sorcerers.
The training system of the legion’s mystical conclave was quantified using a system of circles which were further subdivided into ranks. It was a policy established through the works of imperial sorcerers who over centuries had worked to investigate and develop hypotheses put forward by the even more ancient Hellani philosopher kings, or so he was told. By the standards of the legion, most barbarian magic practitioners who commanded notable power unsupported by the aid of a spirit be they divine or infernal, ranked within the lower six divisions of the twelve ranks comprising the first circle.
Few and far between were those who completed their first circle and gained the ability to use the major incantations of the second. Such were men and women held the power comparable to a junior officer of the legion. Rarer still were sorcerers of the third circle and higher who possessed the qualifications to dictate terms to kings or found dynasties in their own right. He’d heard that within the far-off core territories such individuals lived lives of luxury as studs and brood-mares for nobles when not anchoring the empire’s defences against its rivals or dealing with some calamity, mystical or otherwise.
Easing out of his meditative trance, Derwyn eyed his leader. The man was a second circle adept who was in the process of laying down a Maior Sanctuarii enchantment over a line of foundation stones. The stones were set in a wide and shallow trench a hundred paces long. What was to become a new section of imperial roadway was steadily being worked on by the scores of acolytes following in the man’s wake laying Derwyn's dreaded pavers.
Judging from their progress, Derwyn decided that he’d have enough time to get a meal and some rest before it was his turn again on the rotation. The meditation session may have been invigorating, but his time in the legion had taught him to rest while he could. As he turned to leave, baying howls rose up behind him, causing a grimace of distaste to cross his features. His feet carried him even faster toward the safety of the barracks and cook house.
‘Fucking forest!’
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Acanthus nodded in approval when a scout’s sending relayed the news he had been expecting. There was a pack of dire wolves heading toward the unfinished road and work crew. It was now up to the guard force to protect them. There wouldn’t be enough time to redeploy the traps that had been set but that wasn’t a problem. There’d be more attackers later, there always were.
The thing about the Magna Sanctuarii was that it didn’t physically prevent magic beasts from entering, it dissuaded them. The spell preyed upon the creatures’ primitive instincts to avoid wandering deeply into the territory of a more powerful magic beast. The inside of the valley up to the foothills and shore was as forbidding as such a thing could get to these creatures.
However, lesser magic beasts were actually drawn to such areas as living in the very outskirts provided security from the more powerful of their kind. Such creatures were often wary that their incursion might accidentally provoke a response from the territory's owner. When the legion had been in a defensive posture this population of magic beasts had been seen as an advantage. Armies trying to bypass the fortress at the mouth of the valley would be swarmed by hordes of lesser magic beasts. Unfortunately, this also meant that the mundane and mystical commotion caused by the road crews was drawing a near constant stream of attacks on their guards.
Acanthus and the other serjeants of the guard force had been using the whole thing as a training exercise. The group under his command were primarily made of green soldiers with a few veterans of the occasional Thorsican sea-raids to fill things out and keep their juniors alive. This was to be a blooding for the new soldiers to help ingrain the legion tactics. Losing the men to rabid beasts in any significant numbers before the new offensive the Dracones was obviously planning would be counter-productive.
The lesser magic beasts were not a problem with veterans anchoring the lines but there was occasionally a beast or two that required Acanthus’ personal attention. An almost certainty with the incoming a pack of dire wolves. The pony sized beasts always followed an alpha. A creature likely too strong for even a veteran in the higher ranks of the first circle to defeat. That one his men would leave for him to deal with.
A reverberating howl split the air as the wolves entered the clearing. Their charge stymied by the spears projected beyond the shields of the front rank, the creatures split off to the sides losing only one of their number. The expected sneak attack from the flanks came in the form of a grey blur leaping from the canopy of a tree. A trio of javelins thrown by a sixth rank veteran defeated the gambit. The unenchanted iron heads failed to penetrate the beast’s hide but carried enough force to smash the disposable weapons into unrecognizable pieces and drop the wolf into reach of a serjeant who dispatched it with casual ease.
Acanthus smiled lazily. Magic beasts were smarter than mundane animals but their tactics could be predicted by those with experience. The alpha wasn’t the female howling in the rear of the pack. It also wasn’t one of the beasts waiting in the shadows at their flanks. The founder of the Reman Empire took a wolf’s head as his standard for a reason and Acanthus had placed himself at the rear for that very same reason.
So, when his shadow twisted into a fanged maw that clamped onto his leg, he simply grinned in answer and stabbed the magic beast in the eye with a glowing hot spatha before the entire limb was ripped off.
“Hello, Mr. Fur Pelt.” He cooed.
He decided that he’d make this one a rug.