Unlike Tercius’s comfortable rocking chair— padded with pillows even around the sides— Seliana’s was just plain hardwood, polished by years of use to an almost reflective smoothness.
He shifted in his seat, his glowing eyes never leaving the form of Mistress Kalina who sat in his comfy chair. The woman paid no attention to him, seemingly, as she focused on the giant red sphere in her hand, sending pulse after pulse of her mana into the external storage.
Vae Ar N’Terga, it was called in Magik. To converse in peace.
An ultimate expression of sincerity for mages. Tercius had read about it when he was searching about the consequences of the ‘Rite of Tfenn’. To do a ‘Vae Ar N’Terga’ meant to leave yourself almost powerless in the hands of another. Once the Well was empty, came the mana from the body and then anything that was regenerated. That meant that skills, spells, and enchantments were off the table for the mage who did it.
Mistress Kalina would essentially be a regular person for a while, at least mana-wise. Her head and stomach would punish her viciously for this action, but that was part of the deal from what he had read. The longer you are without mana, the more your body craves it and therefore it was in the interest of the mage who did it to be as honest as fast as he or she could be.
Mistress Kalina gagged and Tercius almost jumped from his uncomfortable seat.
With her free hand, she grabbed a bucket from beside her chair and placed it on her stomach, clearly prepared for the eventuality.
Tercius opened his mouth, about to say … something, when he thought better of it and remained silent. It was… strange looking at someone doing this to themselves. He knew how bad things got when mana ran out completely. He had done it to himself extensively when he was younger, as a way to test the limits. There was some minor pain in the lungs, some in the muscles of his legs and arms, and of course nausea and headache. The last two still lingered in him. But it was this momentary feeling of bodily weakness at that point where you had no mana at all, those few seconds where you were so free of mana that you felt too heavy, too tired and so … wretched. That lethargy. That was worse than the bodily pain, for him.
So while Tercius might have been out of mana, he had always avoided being completely and utterly out of mana for longer periods. He had certainly never been in such a state for longer than a few seconds.
Shivers ran up his body just from thinking about it.
Mistress Kalina gagged again, clutching the bucked to her chest with one arm, yet her external storage for mana still received the mana she had. The orb pulsed every second or possibly less and if he was right about it then every single flash was the result of one standard mana pulse being transferred. As he sat there, he observed and counted the flashes of the mesmerizing crystal. Mistress Kalina already had more mana than him by a factor of twenty. That meant over six hundred pulses of mana stored in a single woman at the absolute minimum when most regular adults had twenty to thirty. He knew that such things could happen, logically, but seeing it in person…
She could use even a level one skill for hours upon hours, maybe even days… I wonder if— Tercius thought then shook his head and chastised himself. Focus! It's not the time to go off on tangents.
"There," the woman sitting across from him said weakly. Immediately she gagged and spilled the contents of her stomach in the bucket she held to herself like a lifeboat. Again and again, she heaved and gagged and the liquids and solids squished, a few acidic drops flying out and new content fought against the old. The smell hit him hard and he stood up from his seat quickly. He didn't know what to say, or what to do. Actually, he knew what to do, but…
When he woke up this morning, he had never imagined that he would be thinking about helping his stalker. There was a part of him that wanted to say to this woman to stop doing this to herself and let her mana recover, and then go get her water or tea to sip or something. But another part took great comfort in her current state of powerlessness. Tercius stood there, like a statue, simply observing Mistress Kalina puke her guts out, paralyzed into indecision.
Mistress Kalina coughed and dry heaved a few times and lifted her teary-eyed gaze to his, her green eyes so similar to his own now surrounded by pink and red.
“Vae Ar N’Terga is—” Mistress Kalina said hoarsely.
“I… I know about it. You don’t have to explain that,” Tercius nodded slowly and swallowed deeply. His still queasy stomach rumbled. “I know what it rep—” He gagged and placed his hand on his mouth for a moment. He got it under control and with a deep nasal exhale he said, “—What it represents… but I don’t have anywhere to empty my mana,”
“In this case, I am enough. It’s meant to level the field between mages and I must say that I feel quite close. Well then,” the nauseated woman said, gripping the bucket with one hand and her stomach with the other, the orb storage still firmly in her grasp. “I think that you have… have some questions for me,”
"Questions…" Tercius murmured almost absentmindedly. How far should he go here?
Sometimes asking a question indicated that he knew something above what he should…
"I am interested in what The Rite of Tfenn entails for us two. Other than what you mentioned last time,"
“I think there should be a—” she gagged but calmed soon. “Excuse me. A Mistress should be in there somewhere, child,”
Tercius frowned but nodded. People had a right to choose how others called them, he supposed, even in situations like these. "Of course, Mistress. It won't happen again,"
She nodded. "Tfenn… well you know that I can pay on your account to teach you advanced material. As a student, your … body and mind are protected under the Laws of the Magi. Every single mage is obligated, under good conscience, to protect you. After you graduate, though, you have two options when someone assaults you,”
"Don't you mean 'if' someone assaults me, Mistress?" Tercius interjected abruptly.
The woman probably tried to scoff, but to Tercius it somehow sounded more like a hiccup. The storage unit in her hand pulsed and the woman gagged and paled. It took her a few moments to get her bearings. “Don’t be naive, child. Grand-Master Tergaron’s wish for a peaceful world is only that. A wish.
"We can strive towards it, but as long as there are two minds in existence, conflict is inevitable." She raised one shaking finger. "Let me amend that. Even one mind can create conflict—" Mistress Kalina dry heaved in the bucket a couple of times, as tears and snot started to leak. "'If' would be wishful thinking. Let's be realistic here, 'When' is simply far more appropriate,"
Tercius nodded. At least they shared that opinion.
Mistress Kalina coughed and his attention returned to her. “The two options. You can protect yourself, should you choose to do so. Some choose it, most don’t. Then, the Repository also offers various degrees of protection should you join any branch, be it Academy, the Guilds, or the Orders of the Repository.
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“Mentorship is much the same here. Until a Mentor proclaims a Disciple as a competent mage, usually when a mage becomes a Master or Mistress of a discipline, you are under my direct protection. If someone were to assault you while you’re still a barely competent Disciple in my Mentorship they would end up giving me a free pass to act in retaliation,” Even nauseated, the woman smiled sharply as she said those last words, and Tercius suddenly had in front of him an image of a fox whose eyes were glinting.
“Anything else, Mistress?” Tercius asked, then hesitated but ultimately just decided to ask it directly. “In regards to property and ownership, specifically?”
The woman looked down to her bucket for a moment, as the red sphere in her hand pulsed. The last regenerated mana was sucked into the crystal and for a moment it looked like she would puke, but it didn’t happen. “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours. The only way to transfer ownership of something is through trade or gifts and this applies to everyone, including parents and children and Mentors and Disciples. Of course, there are exceptions. All land belongs to the Repository and so does any knowledge sold to it, so these two can’t ever be traded or gifted. Repository Points can be traded for various services, while gifting is only possible within the confines of Mentorship and here there are limits as to how much can be gifted in a certain timeframe and for what uses these Points can be spent. For example, any points I hypothetically gave you can’t spend on the procedure that Helfira had undergone,”
“And there are no ways for you to… legally claim… me. My body, I mean. Or… that," Tercius asked and wetted his dry lips, his eyes boring holes into Mistress Kalina. To conflict with one person was entirely different from conflicting with an established system. Fighting against a system was only allowed when you had a real chance to win, in his book, otherwise, the recommended action was just to roll with the punches.
The woman gave him a weak smile. Why the Hells was she smiling at him?! "For me to claim you or that? No to both of those questions. You belong to yourself and that belongs to you.” she said.
Tercius exhaled a breath he had held for too long. It was a breath carried for a better part of the annual cycle and he finally relaxed. That was a stone that he was glad to be rid of. Finally—
“But…” The woman said slowly as she inclined her head downward, clearly hesitating.
Tercius jerked abruptly. An even bigger stone came crashing back on his just relaxed innards. “There’s a but?" he blurted, as he heard his heart pound in his ears. "But's the what? No that's not…" His thoughts untangled in a moment. "What's the but?" As he spoke, his face soured as Mistress Kalina's smile grew. "Mistress, why are you smiling at me? How is this a moment for amusement or laughter?" Even as he spoke the words, he criticized himself for saying them. He flashed Meditation a few times in a rush to calm himself from the momentary frustration and unnecessary words.
In her favor, Mistress Kalina looked properly apologetic. She bowed her head a bit and said, "Apologies, Neophyte. I was not amused by your questions or the situation, but rather the look of your face at the moment."
Tercius frowned. His body was a curse, in moments like these he was sure of it. Even his parents and grandparents sometimes just pinched his cheeks when he said things in complete seriousness. There were times when it was simply maddening to be dismissed based on his looks. Was there some magic out there that would accelerate aging?
Mistress Kalina continued, "I will answer… but…" She hesitated again and Tercius frowned deeply. Was she coming up with something on the spot? "The 'but', as you say, has to do with the only law that allows ownership of sentient beings. It states that anyone found guilty of forcing experimentation of any kind upon the unwilling is in turn sentenced to be experimented upon. These mages become the property of the Repository for a certain period, depending upon their crimes, but the minimum sentence is a decade long and during that period these mages are essentially… rented for Repository Points. The only kinds of experiments forbidden upon these people are the ones that would result in the death of the contract-bound prisoner. Everything else is permitted."
“I see…” he said and finally sat back on Seliana’s rocking chair. Well, he never planned on doing experiments on anyone unwilling anyway, and now he had a very good incentive to never do it. But… “Does giving medical help to someone unconscious count as unwilling experimentation?” he asked.
The woman's lips tightened a bit, but the fair nose flared with amusement. "No. Registered Healers regularly visit the Chamber of Truth to repeat their Oath." Mistress Kalina said as if that was all the answer he needed.
Tercius nodded. He would have to see and read this law for himself, word for word. “Mistress, I… there is something else I want to ask you about,”
“Go ahead,”
“Do you…” Tercius steeled himself. His eyes keenly observed the woman as he asked, “Did you attempt to learn anything about my family?”
The woman’s green eyes looked at him for a few moments, unblinkingly. She was debating something in her, he could tell, and if there was something to debate then that meant…
“You mean did I learn about the false information you gave on your admission papers, and that I know that you are not from Spheros, or any of the northern or central parts of Sogea for that matter,” Mistress Kalina said and Tercius couldn’t look her in the eyes anymore. “You hail from the southernmost Empire inhabited part of Sogea, a town called Nurium. Your parents are called Petra and Septimus, and you are the oldest of their four children.”
Even prepared, with an occasional flash of Meditation, his heart was beating deeply after each word of Mistress Kalina. She knew everything. Of course, she would know. Mages are as clumsy and frail as the Empire presents them. If anything they are a sleeping beast— Wait… four children? Tercius's thoughts came to a halt.
Was it a mistake on Mistress Kalina’s part? Or…
"No… she didn't… they…" Tercius shook his head in sheer disbelief.
"My mother was pregnant?" he asked through clenched teeth, a bit more harshly than he intended to.
His head fell, as his intricacies faded away and certain things from the past surged back. The pregnancy with Leo and especially the delivery had been one fraught with blood, pain, and tears, too much of each. By Rona's account, even Aurelia and he had been difficult babies to deliver and not to mention two miscarriages that Petra had before he was born…
Immediately following Leo's birth, over three years ago, Tercius had heard Darina, the local healer and a good friend of his grandfather, speak to Rona and Petra that further pregnancies should be either prevented or terminated. Petra had barely survived having Leo, even with Darina and a team of healers at her side. The next time, Darina had said to them that day, the chances for a fatal outcome of the mother and the baby would be higher.
Rona had a recipe for which Tercius himself had tended all the weeds, the roots, the flowers, and the fruits that Rona would later use to make the brew that would prevent pregnancy. Tercius always made sure that there were more fresh ingredients than what was needed. Now I leave and they forget about it? Where is grandmother?
The problem was that those fuck bunnies went at it daily, sometimes even multiple times a day, and that the brew that Rona while helping in one corner, only made things more difficult in the other. The completed brew was a light liqueur-like beverage, containing among other things traces of alcohol and something that most certainly raised their libido. The old recipe was a family heirloom, so to speak, passed to Rona from her own grandmother. If Tercius was right, Rona probably had it in her mind to pass it to Aurelia, because she never allowed Tercius near the making process.
The beverage was not entirely bullet-proof, Rona had said, and with the amount of sex those two had, Tercius had long ago figured that it was only a matter of time when they were bound to bypass the baby barrier. Why didn’t she terminate the pregnancy… Tercius thought as his fists clenched and mana from his body surged. Those two horny idiots! What if something happened to her? What would Aurelia and Leo do? To say nothing of Ciron and Rona… It would destroy them…
“And my… mother? Is she… well?” Tercius asked abruptly as a certain possibility occurred to him, his head jerking to Mistress Kalina.
The sphere in Mistress Kalina's hand flashed, taking the mana she regenerated and making her squirm and hold her breath for a few moments. Seeing the grimace on her face as he waited for his answer, Tercius jumped from his seat and said, "Enough with the draining, Mistress, please. I… just take your mana back," The woman was dry heaving and coughing into the bucket when he returned with warm water. He took the bucket from her, she hadn't puked anything for a while now anyway, and gave her the cup to sip.
“How is my mother, Mistress?” Tercius asked again, not caring one bit that the woman knew something private of his. “She’s … she’s alive. Right?”
Mistress Kalina nodded quickly, her orange hair swimming through the air to follow her head. "Yes, child, she is fine. I was told that she had a baby girl on the first day of Novexium and that both the mother and baby are alive,"
The baby was born just a few days before his day of birth during the ninth month. Petra had gotten pregnant around the same time as she had with him, probably around the celebrations for the start of a new cycle. They… his jaw clenched.
“When…” Tercius cleared his constricted throat. “Mistress, when did you hear this?”
“Thirty… seven days ago.”
"That much…" Tercius's gaze fell to the floor where Amber had returned to her winter sleep. A lot could have happened in that time… a lot of things… "Mistress… Can you ask for something a bit more fresh, please?"
The woman paused to consider his words, and as soon as he saw her start shaking her head in denial he jumped in. "I can pay. I… you know, Mistress, with Energy,” he said in haste, tilting his head a bit in suggestion.
The woman’s eyes narrowed at him with such speed and intensity that he stopped breathing. “It’s not a matter of payment. My contact there is a bit… let us say fresh and fickle. I can send a word out, but it would take days. Weeks, most likely.”
"Oh," Tercius nodded. The speed of global communication that he was used to was a bit faster than that… "I see. But still, even a few weeks is better than—"
The woman looked much better in moments of regaining some of her mana. “I do have a proposal, though, if you are interested,”
“Mistress?”
"I provide my knowledge of spatial magics," Mistress Kalina said with a slight smile pointing with an index finger at herself, and then she pointed at him. "And you help me find this place we are going to… and pay the price of the journey. What do you say?"