The restaurant is called the Emerald Tiger. I stand outside of the glass-paneled door, looking up at a sign that sports the image of a huge cat with even larger fangs. The two incisors, as long as my arm, have a trout impaled on them as the green cat roars at a fleeing fisherman. I am puzzling out how the cat is possibly going to eat the fish when a man leaving the restaurant nearly bumps into me. He apologizes as he steps past into the street, disappearing into the noonday traffic.
I pat down my dress. I don’t need to worry about the dress Arabella Willian gave to me being classy enough for this restaurant that I had never heard of before today, I am sure that anything the woman owns likely costs more than I have seen in my entire life. I reflect on the thought a moment, it probably isn’t true any longer after I plundered her essentia vault.
I breathe out a controlled breath, pick some grime out from beneath my fingernails, and step inside. White cloth is the theme of the place. From the tablecloth to the napkins to the uniforms of the serving staff, a white so bright that it blinds when near the windows shines out of the dimly lit interior. There are only ten or so tables in the entirety of the dining area, and with only three occupied, it isn’t difficult to find my party.
The weaving breeze of Arabella’s effervescent hair gives her away before anything else. Seeing her sitting at a table with four others, I mutter an apology to a woman asking me a question I don’t pay attention to and walk past her toward the table. Arabella greets me warmly as I join them, standing and throwing her arms around my shoulders before turning to the rest of table.
“At long last, our sixth arrives,” she says. “Everyone, this is Charlene Devardem. She will be joining us on our voyage into adventure and toil.” Looking at the table, I recognize two of the faces that look up at me from plates filled with an assortment of cheeses and breads. One is the elven woman I met in the hallway of Arabella’s home the day before, Coriander Mel’Draven, the daughter of a Viscount. She glances at me with uninterested, orange eyes, lingering on my face for a moment before she looks back to her plate to rip apart a piece of bread with claw-like nails. The other face I recognize comes as bit of a shock.
“Ms. Devardem,” Kendon, Jellian’s nephew says as he stands and offers me a slight bow. “I was unaware that you would be joining us today. I am pleased to see you again.”
“I was unaware you two knew each other,” Arabella says, taking her seat again. She motions demurely toward an empty seat at the table, which Kendon rushes to pull out for me to sit in.
“His uncle is in my brother’s party,” I say, taking the offered seat. I can’t help but notice the satisfied grin Kendon wears as he returns to his own chair. It is an alien thing to look at him now with through new eyes.
Kendon Esfelle(Rank One)
Devastation Conflux
It is not just his seeing his rank and conflux, but my new eyes notice other differences as well. His eyes aren’t the same as Jellian’s, I realize, Kendon’s are a deep red, like an apple, whereas Jellian’s are crimson. I spot the calluses on Kendon’s open palms as he lifts a flute of white wine, and perceive his left shoulder tenses just a little too much with the motion. Perhaps he injured it in the trial. Despite the plainness of his clothing, I can see easily that they are expensive in make. I can’t spend time on wondering how exactly I know this, but move on.
“We should acquaint her with the rest of our little group,” Arabella says motioning to the elven man sitting on her right. He is another elven man, so close in stature and features that I don’t need my new powers of observation to tell that he is Kendon’s brother. “This is Kendon’s brother,” Arabella says anyway, “Macille Esfelle. When putting together this group I found that the brothers functioned too well together to split up.”
Macille Esfelle(Rank One)
Guardian Conflux
The elven man with the platinum blonde hair opens his mouth to speak, smacks chapped lips together, takes a sip of water, and tries again. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Devardem,” he says with a nod.
“I believe you have already met Coriander Mel’Draven,” Arabella says, motioning to the woman.
“I have,” I say, inclining my head to the noblewoman. “A pleasure.”
Coriander looks up from her bread, her eyes falling on my left eye and lingering. Her stare is so intense I have to look down at my hands. “You are much changed from how you were yesterday,” Coriander says. “Much changed.”
Coriander Mel’Draven(Rank One), Daughter of Viscount Goram Mel’Draven of Tristrum
Nova Conflux
“Yes,” Kendon says, earning a glare from Coriander for his interruption. “It would seem that you attained your set of essentia. I am glad to hear of your fortune.”
“Are you insinuating that one of the people chosen for this group of potential prodigies was a woman whom had not even attained a full set of essentia?” the last member of the table asks. It isn’t until I turn my attention his way that I sense the spite in his words. “How fantastic for us.”
Jor’Mari(Rank One), Son of Duke Cla’Mari of the Mari Dutchy
Demon Conflux
He is a Celenial, the first one that I have ever met in person. The pure whiteness of his eyes, and the snowy color of his hair bear the telltale Celenial color, but it is the sharpness of his teeth that draw my attention when I turn to him. Past the ethereal features of the Celenials, the sharp features of an elven man tell that at least one of his parents are elven. All of a sudden, it makes perfect sense to me how he might have a noble father. Jor’Mari sits reclined in his seat in perfectly-tailored, rose-colored dress robes embroidered with green flowers and thorns, hanging onto the back of his chair as he slouches low, waiting for someone to correct his posture.
“I apologize if I displease you, my lord,” I say, to the man, still looking at my hands.
“There, you do it again!” I look up at the accusatory words, seeing Coriander Mel’Draven pointing at me, smirking to herself. “You know his lineage. How?”
“I had thought we were avoiding that topic,” Kendon says, attempting to come to my rescue.
“Avoiding what?” Jor’Mari leans forward in his chair, the front two legs clapping loudly to the floor as he rocks forward. “You have something to say, Esfelle?”
“Nothing to say,” Kendon replies, meeting the man’s hungry eyes. “I believe that was what I was expressing. Was it not?”
“Peace,” Macille, Kendon’s brother says, putting his hand into the space between the two men. “Civility in front of these fine, ladies if you can manage it, gentlemen.”
Jor’Mari snorts and leans his chair back again. “Do not challenge me, low-blood. You would not survive the contest.”
“I will leave you that delusion,” Kendon says, leaning back in his own seat.
“I have missed this masculine preening,” Arabella says. At her gesture, a serving girl scurries over and delivers her a flute of wine so deep in its red that it could be purple. Without asking for any of our input, she orders food for the table and waves the girl away. “Now that the five of you have assembled, rest assured that this is the extent of the junior magicians that I have taken under my wing.” She looks about the table, allowing a slight frown to pull at her lips. “Not as eclectic an assemblage as I initially envisioned. Now for--”
“That eye is an artifact,” Coriander says, snapping her fingers and cutting off Arabella, pointing a claw-like nail at me. “That explains it, nicely.”
“I don’t--” I try.
“How did a human get their hands on an artifact?” Coriander asks.
“I will invite you to recall,” Arabella says, her words calm and metered. As she speaks, I watch as the smoke of her aura lashes out and surrounds Coriander Mel’Draven with a shroud of wintery silver. The pale woman’s teeth begin to chatter as mist vomits forth from her mouth. “That I have specifically stated to you how peevish I find interruptions.”
Coriander is shivering by the time Arabella’s words finish. A blush of red stands out on Coriander’s face and fingers as the cold saps the life out of her. “For…Forgive me…Ms. Willian. I…for…forget myself.”
With a cheshire smile, Arabella reclines in her chair and I watch as her soul aura retreats from Coriander, leaving her shaking in her chair. “Regretful. I trust it shall not happen again. You nearly caused me to need and repeat myself. That is not something allowable.” Before Coriander can reply, she looks to me and continues. “Yes, I have given Ms. Devardem an artifact before she rose to the first rank. I thought that it might put her on a similar footing with the rest of you.”
Jor’Mari barks a laugh. “You have a favorite then.” He turns his head my way, the only way I know he is looking at me with his pure-white eyes. “What makes you so special to warrant such treatment? Other than you two both being human, that is.”
“You speak as if you are not being treated specially,” Kendon says, again intercepting the man’s words for me.
“Let us not begin this round again,” Arabella says. I think that I am the only one at the table who sees her aura flow out and press into all of us. Just the kiss of the cold power rolling off of Arabella quiets the table. “I forget sometimes how difficult it is to wrangle the young. Let me be clear, until I say so, I expect silence from you.” She once again releases the flood of her aura over us.
I nod at Ms. Willian as the aura retreats to a bare trickle of power boiling off her pale skin. Macille nods as well with me, but Kendon looks to have taken the rebuke a little too harshly, bowing his head sincerely.
“You got it,” Jor’Mari says. While Arabella gives him a withering glare, the strange man reaches onto the table with a perfectly pedicured foot to seize his own wine flute between red-painted toes. With an incredible dexterity that is both mesmerizing and disturbing, he brings the glass to his lips and pours back his drink, not spilling a drop.
I look at the elven faces arrayed around the table, realizing then that I am out of place within this group. Two of them are nobility, and no one could mistake them as something lesser. The two brothers at the other end of the table look the spitting image of any young girl’s imagining of shining knights. Their arms and chest bulge beneath their finely tailored shirts, as if the hardened metal of armor is the only thing that might be able to contain them.
“Allow me to disabuse you of any illusions you might be holding about your own personal powers as we begin the task that I have arrayed before each of you.” Arabella begins. “You are not powerful. You are not unique, though I am certain words will not be enough to convince some of you of that; I will show you, eventually. I am certain that when I tell you that you are young, all each of you want to do is deny it and tell me that you are adults. You are, adults that is, but only just so.
“You are all still the first rank. Compared to what you little monsters might grow into--to borrow a regional metaphor--you are all still tadpoles; only some of you know that you swim in a pond with catfish.” Arabella focuses her eyes on me, silently asking if she got the metaphor right. I nod my head, a little confused. “It is fair to say that compared to yourselves twenty years from now, if you survive that long, the vast majority of your power is still potential. That is what I saw in each of you, what tempted me to pluck you out of whatever mundane destinies were already spinning out for you, and place you on a more predictable course.
“In two days’ time, we shall be leaving the town. We shall depart on my ship for far shores and not stop until we have arrived at our destination. The passage will take just shy of two months, and when we arrive, the lot of you shall be placed in a gauntlet of life-threatening peril.
“You shall not be alone; members from the Willian Guild all around the planet are doing just as I am with you. Standing amidst hundreds of individuals with as much promise as each of you, I wonder if some of you will be able to keep up your delusions of grandeur. I am forbidden from speaking on specifics of the challenges you will face once we arrive, that would be considered advantaging the lot of you unfairly. However, that does not mean that I will allow our passage to be time for you to each rest and relax. I have been working on a prescription for training for the each of you. Fail to complete your tasks for even a single day, I will throw you off of the ship myself.” The shine in Arabella’s eye as she looks around the table in front of her lets me know how serious the threat is. “Now, any questions?”
Stolen story; please report.
“Where are we heading?” Coriander asks.
“I cannot say,” Arabella answers.
“How long will we be there?” Jor’Mari asks.
“You have somewhere to be?” Kendon asks him.
“How long you stay will depend on your performance,” Arabella answers. “If the guild finds you lacking early on, there will be little requirement for them to invest substantial resources into your future training. Likely, you will be put to work somewhere doing something inconsequential, working off the debt you owe.”
“Debt!?” Macille exclaims.
“Did you not read the contract?” I ask. Eyes snake my way, and my instinct tells me to sink away from the looks, but another part of me screams that if I cannot handle a little attention from important people such as these, I will have little hope succeeding in whatever Arabella is going to make me do. “I assume you had a similar contract to mine. It stated quite clearly that failing to meet standards will result in debt accrual equal to the monthly stipend outlined. Two ounces of gold a month.”
The brother’s faces fall open in shock, while the two noble children seem undisturbed by the information.
“I told you we should have had Stefen read that contract,” Macille tells his brother.
“I read it,” Kendon says, shrugging.
“You knew about this?”
“That only happens if you fail,” Kendon says. “Do you really think that we are going to fail?”
“Probably not,” Macille hesitantly agrees. “You still should have said something.”
“Maybe you should have read it yourself.”
“If you require a loan to cover the cost of your impending failure, then I would be more than willing to help a spunky go-getter such as yourself,” Jor’Mari tells Kendon.
Before the other man can begin his own snipe back at Jor’Mari, Arabella interrupts him. “While you are all not a team, I had been hoping that we might effect a civil air together.” She blows a long breath and flicks the crystal of her wine flute a few times with a long nail. “Perhaps some sort of team building exercise is in order. Get you all to a place where you might at least exist within the same room at once.”
“I have no issues with anyone here,” I say.
“Neither do I,” Macille adds.
“Great,” Arabella says. “Still, that will not exempt the two of you.”
The sound of ancient stone doors settling closed echo throughout the rounded chamber made of gray stone and shadow. Torches of hay and bound bamboo shoots stand about the massive room of circular stone, giving a slight shimmer of light to the floor. The ceiling overhead ascends into total darkness.
“Are you ready?” Macille says to my right.
I look at the elven man. Away from the pressure of the unexpected, high-class luncheon, just the two of us in this singular room of stone, I let my eyes linger on him as he turns and messes with the cuff of his steel gauntlet. Him and his brother Kendon, they are the two most muscular elves I have ever seen, though considering that I spent most of my life picking pears on an orchard or running through the backwoods with hooligans, that isn’t saying much. He wears shining steel armor that covers his body from head to toe, ringlets of mail peek through the joints in the armor. He looks back my way, gifting me with a dashing smile as he scoops up the massive shield he’d left to lean against his leg.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say. I tug at the stitching of my old, worn gloves, feeling the crossbow on my hip bang against my thigh as I shift. My mind skips, staring down at my hands. I threw out these gloves. They didn’t fit anymore.
“How did we get here?” I ask Macille.
He shushes me with a gesture, pulling the sword from the scabbard on his hip. “Something watches us,” he says. “Here, take this.” He cuts the air with his sword in my direction, and I feel a wash of magic splash against my skin.
I don’t know if the magic is invisible to him, but my Dragon’s Eye sees it as a flowing out of soft, green light that sticks to my clothing and his. A sign springs into view over Macille, an identical one apparating over my still-flexing fingers.
Guardian’s Bulwark
The defense of armor worn by individuals under this spell’s effect is greatly increased.
I don’t have time to linger on the magical effect that clings to me. Something shifts in the shadows above, but it goes unseen by Macille. My right eye catches the movement, barely, and ice shoots through my veins as I realize how huge the creature in the shadows is. My imagination doesn’t have time to conjure its nightmare in my mind’s eye. The creature releases whatever hold it has on the ceiling and falls like a meteor to the stone floor beneath it.
Something out of a fisherman’s nightmare stands in the center of the torchlight. The monster has the body of a lobster; its spiked, orange carapace shakes as it recovers from its fall, the grinding plates that protect its body sound like steel as they scratch against each other, harsh enough to make me wonder if my ears will start to bleed. Instead of a lobster’s head, the monster looks at its next meal, me and Macille, with beady black eyes housed in the skull of a beetle. The great horn of its nose rises five feet into the air in front of its face, and its terrible three-part mandibles snap as it drools a puddle of ichor onto the floor. The monster would be comical if it didn’t stand as tall as a horse.
Desert Spearman
“Stay behind me,” Macille says, stepping between me and the monster.
As the monster takes a tentative step forward on its spike-like feet, I feel the weight of its mass reverberate through the stone beneath my feet. Somehow, I keep my knees from shaking, and remember that I am not some helpless girl in distress.
“I can burn it,” I tell him as orange dragonfire spreads over my right hand.
Macille shakes his sword and shield, flexing beneath his armor. “Now that is a nice spell.”
“Be careful. That monster is rank two,” I say.
Macille’s face becomes serious as he squares up with the monster that has only yet taken a single step. “I will be,” he says.
The Desert Spearman explodes forward, six grisly legs pumping in tandem to drive it like a battering ram toward Macille. It only takes a few seconds for the monster to close the distance, but in that time I see Macille activate another one of his abilities. A glowing set of ethereal armor appears around Macille’s body, wreathing him in a transparent skeleton of dream armor as he braces for the charge. I think that he is going to stop the charging monster like a bull driving into a tree all the way up until I hear the impact.
The sound of the Desert Spearman colliding with Macille’s shield rings like a gong throughout the entirety of the stone room so loud that white momentarily clouds my vision. By the time I recover my senses, Macille is colliding with the stone doors of the room, sending spider tendrils of cracks through the stone as he crumples to the floor. Some sense that I have never felt before is the only thing that saves me from having my head slapped off my shoulders as the Desert Spearman lashes out in my direction with one of its armored claws.
I fall backward on my ass as I do all I can to avoid the lethal strike from the creature. It swings again at me with its other arm, smashing a pit into the floor as I roll away from it. I spring to my feet, my body still not used to its new lightness, and hurl the orange fire that is still clinging to my hand at the monster’s face.
The scream of the monster--so close to me--as the orange fire splashes over its face makes me unconsciously bring my hands up to cover my ears. Through squinting eyes, I see the disaster the reflex has caused. With a swipe of its monstrous claws it wipes the small bits of fire still clinging to its face away, revealing a ruined eye dripping down the black-scorched chitin around its face. The other of its eyes bleed hatred at me. On the other side of the monster, I watch as Macille picks himself up off of the ground. In my wild scramble away from the armored monster, I somehow ended up on the complete opposite side of it.
Macille begins to gather some kind of energy along the blade of his sword, concentrating with all his might on building up the green light that flows over the blade. I track the slight twitch of the monster.
“Macille,” I shout, trying to warn him, but I’m too slow.
A trident of orange chitin explodes off the tail of the creature toward Macille as he concentrates on his blade. Harder than even the monster’s ramming head, the three-pronged spear of the creature’s shell lifts Macille from the ground, pinning him to the stone wall like an insect. One prong of the spear scores through Macille’s right arm, no doubt shattering it to pieces, while the center spear skewers him through the chest. Macille screams, loud and wet, as his feet kick air two feet above the ground. It is no less horrifying or quiet for the nail that has gone through his lung.
That’s when my legs give up on me. My knees collide with the solidness of the cold stone as I watch the beautiful elven man scream through his frothing spit as his shield arm beats on the spear that has run him through. I feel something cold, other than the floor under my legs, and realize it is hard to see through the tears spilling down my face.
The snapping of claws pull back to looking at the huge monster in front of me. I scream, throwing another fistful of fire at the beast, missing wildly in my panic. I try to fall away from the monster, but I am stopped suddenly. It has its pincers crushed tight, my morning-light hair caught in the spikes of its claw. I try kicking the monster as it drags me toward its face, but I might as well be kicking a building. It’s terrible mouth opens as it drags me by my hair to it, stretching like a spiny hand with three fingers around my head. When it flexes closed, I feel the crunching of my skull.
Like the world splitting pressure of the Desert Spearman’s jaws, I feel a distinct popping sensation as the impenetrable darkness splits into light. Blinding. Blurry white everywhere. No. My eyes are full of tears. I cannot see.
Something between a moan and a sobbing gasp leaves me as I rock forward, realizing that I am sitting in a chair. My forehead collides with a serving dish that was sitting atop the table back in the café. I cannot breathe through my nose for all the mucus my crying is bringing up in my. Burning acid splashes against the back of my throat, and I manage to hold down the contents of my empty stomach somehow. Someone is shaking my shoulder.
I slap the tears and drool off my face with the palms of my hands, and find Kendon kneeling at the side of my chair, gently rubbing my shoulder. Slowly, his face comes to me and I see that there is a bit of red at the corner of his lips, the mark of hastily wiped away blood. Sweat stands out on his skin, staining his nice clothes around the color, and his already pale skin is so pallid I can make out individual veins on his face around his temples. The man looks like someone just told him that his mother died.
Recollection returns. Arabella, after casting some kind of spell on Kendon, Jor’Mari, and Coriander, turning to Macille and I, unleashing a wash of purple energy over us as she had the others.
“Tha…Thank you,” I tell Kendon. I straighten myself in my seat, and try to give the man a reassuring smile, but judging from his reaction, I fail.
The entire encounter with the Desert Spearman was fake, a result of whatever magical spell Arabella had cast over me. I still feel the phantom monster. Hands shaking, I touch the side of my head where the mandibles crushed into me. My hand comes away clean, the skin unbroken.
Kendon gives me a smile, his actually sincere, and squeezes my shoulder before he stands and returns to his own chair. With his back turned away, despite my incredible embarrassment, I check to make sure that I didn’t wet myself out of terror. Luckily, I haven’t.
I am still in the café, the others still sitting around the same table that we had before. Slowly, the range of attention expands out from myself to encapsulate everyone else sitting at the table. Jor’Mari no longer leans back in his seat, instead he leans against the table with his elbows propped up on it, holding his head in his hands as he tries to calm his racing breathing. Sweat makes his dress robes stick to him awkwardly, and as he pants wide eyed into the tablecloth, his clothes look far too large on him.
Macille is slumped back in his own chair with his right hand scratching at his chest beneath his shirt. His eyes are wide as he pants, quiet as a mouse. I don’t think he sees any of us. Seeing his brother’s state, Kendon levers himself up from his own seat and approaches his brother.
Coriander Mel’Draven looks the worst for wear. Whatever cosmetics the elven woman had before have smeared and leave huge black streaks from her eyes. She stares down at her balled hands in her lap, unblinking, breaths so shallow it is hard to tell if she is even alive.
Arabella sits serene in her seat, buttering a slice of the house bread with a knife, not looking at a single one of us. Far behind her, the serving staff of the restaurant watch our table, horror on their faces. I realize that we are the only patrons left in the restaurant.
I try to speak, but my voice cracks as soon as I try. I grab a drink off the table. The sweet, stinging sensation of white wine mixed with something far stronger splashes against my cracked throat. I down the entire glass before setting it gingerly back on the table. Coriander reacts to that movement for some reason. There is nothing in her eyes as she looks at me other than shock and confusion. She seizes her own glass of wine and drinks it in two swigs.
“What was that?” I ask Arabella.
The woman looks up from her bread, setting it aside along with the knife, and kneads her fingers together. “That was an illusion,” she says.
“An illusion.” I find my fingers touching the side of my head again. I still remember it all so clearly, that last split instant of time is imprinted on the back of my eyeballs, total darkness and pain. I keep waiting to feel the wetness of my own blood on my fingers, but there is nothing. It takes an exertion of will to pull my fingers away from my head. “But I could feel it.”
“It was a very good illusion,” Arabella demurs.
“How could you do that to me!” Coriander shatters her drained glass against the wall, glaring at Arabella with ugly hatred. “This is not what I agreed to.”
“It is.” Arabella refuses to raise her voice above the level of polite conversation. “I inflicted upon you an illusion. A very convincing illusion, but ultimately, it was not real, and you were in no danger while inside of it. I pitted you against a single rank two monster. Surely, with three powerful rank one magicians, you should have been able to handily defeat such a creature.” She looks pointedly at Coriander, staring at her. “Were you successful?”
The anger in Coriander’s eyes shift from hate to shame. She looks back at her hands, though now they are shaking in her lap. Arabella turns her attention to the rest of the young magicians she has brought together, holding our gazes, daring us to say anything against her, until we each turn away. “You are still babes. That is my first lesson to you. I will place you into these scenarios again, over and over and over and over. I will continue to inflict you with these harmless horrors until you can conquer them on your own. If you cannot do that much, then I will disallow you from participating in what the Willian Guild has prepared once we reach our destination. If you cannot do that much, you would not survive.”
Without looking back to them, Arabella snaps to the serving staff that is still waiting at the back of the restaurant. A woman jumps like a snake bit her, and the staff hurry forward, delivering our lunch meals to the table before scurrying away.
I stare down at my plate decorated with a steamed lobster and assorted vegetables. I feel the sting of bile in the back of my throat and choke down another full glass of wine far too quickly.
“Well,” Arabella says as she snaps the tail off of her lobster, “eat up.”