078 – Voice

***

I seethed over the state of my workshop. The three junior disciples labored to clear out the broken shelves and scattered supplies and debris. They could clean the place up but couldn’t replace my supplies or repair the equipment. I’d have to do all the real work myself. Had I owned a whip, it would have snapped into their backsides.

Skip used a mop for what must have been the first time in his life while Lump scraped tar and paint off the walls. Poor Chunk soaked up the puddles from the floor with an old rag, which he then squeezed into a bucket.

“Ah! What is this stuff?” he shouted.

“That’s oil of vitriol. Otherwise known as sulfuric acid.”

“It’s giving me blisters.”

“You should have considered that before splashing it all over the place.”

He frantically washed off the burning acid with water. Lump coughed weakly, and Chunk limped along from his cracked knee. Magi couldn’t heal instantly. It would take them several more days to recover from their injuries. I opened the window shutters to let out the fumes.

“That’s enough for now, juniors. Set down your mops and rags. We must return to the Hall of Discipline to meet with Fightmaster Putrizio. We can’t have you looking like chimney sweeps and nightmen.”

They bowed their heads. None of them dared to look me in the eye.

At the Hall of Discipline, Hwilla had taken care of the juniors’ pile of dirty laundry – not by washing it, but by throwing it all in the hearth. She burned their clothing to ashes.

“What have you done!” Skip gasped.

“Our senior has graciously helped you with your chores for the day. Minions have no need for frills and finery. Here are sets of black uniforms and skull masks. Strip out of your dirty clothes and consign them to the flames.”

The prisoners wanted to protest, but said nothing. They pulled off their filthy and acid bleached clothes. Wicked bruises and bloody cuts covered their flesh.

“Keep those masks on,” Hwilla commanded. “You have to earn your faces.”

The juniors shuffled into the bath to clean and dress themselves. We looked around the hall to make sure no signs of our conflict with the rebel disciples remained. Putrizio would notice anything out of place.

When our fightmaster made one of his rare appearances, we knelt and placed our left fists on the ground. Our new recruits didn’t make a great first impression as they were still visibly injured. Skin peeled off Chunk’s arms and hands.

“Disciples.”

We greeted him in unison. “Fightmaster.”

“Rise, seniors,” he said to Hwilla and I.

Putrizio examined the kneeling recruits. “I see the Hall of Discipline has new students. Name yourselves, disciples.”

The three nobleman proclaimed their overly long names from the ground. Putrizio did not give them permission to stand.

“And why exactly have you traveled to this lonely corner of the world?”

“We’ve come to study with my great-grandfather Grotrok the Reaver.”

“A worthy reason. General Grotrok has an unrivaled talent in augmentation. There is much to learn from him. However, the man has no patience for teaching. Over the centuries, he’s only taken on a handful of apprentices, and those were already notable swordsmen before studying under him. You’ll have to improve far beyond your current state before he can share his wisdom with you.

“Now, before we can begin training, I have to understand your foundations. What experience do you have with the blade?”

Skip answered, “We studied the Night Quiet Saber School of swordsmanship. All three of us attended the royal academy in Vrinellia for five years.”

“And who was your headmaster there? Sir Hwentz the Steady?”

This question surprised Skip. “Ye– yes. But he’s Baron Hwentz of Castle Geurl.”

“My mistake. I didn’t know he received a title. It’s been years since I’ve seen him.”

“You know the headmaster?”

“Professionally. Yes. He started his career as a pit fighter. I arranged many of his fights in the grand Arena of Skarve. Not much of swordsman – and even less of a showman. He was a man of little imagination,” Putrizzio said. “And had you boys not come here after enkindling, where would you have gone to train?”

“My father wanted me join my great-great-grandmother, Matron Chezida of the Black Shield. She dwells at a remote outpost in the Soporific Desert, hunting beetle larvae and Ox-wasp hives.” Skip’s voice had a hint of disgust when he mentioned the monsters.

“I see. And what about you two?” the fightmaster asked Chunk and Lump.

“We would have been sent to the Diamond Fortress Sect in Vrinellia.”

“Hmm. I can see why you wouldn’t desire to join a sect specializing in projection. Furthermore, Diamond Fortress is known for its austere, all-male temples. A discipleship there lasts about twenty years…”

That explained why these three decided to seek out the Void Phantoms. For pampered noblemen, life at an ultra-strict temple would be a prison sentence, and hunting bug monsters at a continental outpost was effectively exile. These rakes assumed that life in a heretical cult would be a better option and that our stronghold must have been a decadent and luxurious place. In a way that was true – true for officers, not disciples.

The spoiled children had run away from home to seek out Skip’s legendary ancestor.

“Before we decide on your initial training regime, I’ll have to see an example of your fighting styles in action. It’s the best way to judge your current level of skill.” Putrizio cast a disapproving look on Hwilla and I. “Although we can wait until next time for that. The three of you must still be tired from your long travels. Rest and prepare yourselves.”

The fightmaster didn’t call attention to the bloodied state of our juniors, but he clearly wasn’t pleased. They were too battered to demonstrate much of anything.

Putrizio also met with Hwilla and I to review our progress. He fought a short bout with Hwilla just to gauge the speed of her enhancement technique. She had increased her speed but still needed to reduce the technique’s prohibitive mana cost.

“And what of your enhancement, Strythe?”

“My trouble is the opposite of the senior disciple’s. Controlling my flame and mana is easy for me, but the speed is lacking. I’ve hit a block in my progress. It’s hard to this put this problem into words.”

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“Explain as you will.”

I breathed in and exhaled. “I would describe my inner thoughts as coming to me in a series of bursts, each one an instantaneous spark of comprehension or knowledge. A singular thought snaps into my mind, fully formed. After that, my inner voice puts the thought into words and sentences that are perceived by my inner ear. Likewise, my inner sight beholds a picture—be it an image of a scene, a rotating object, a diagram, or a page of flowing letters and numbers. The point is that the thought comes first, like a meteor, and that the inner perception follows, like the meteor’s tail streaking through the sky.

“As an example: when someone rings my doorbell, I perk up and look towards the entrance. The thought that someone’s come to visit is instant and fully realized. Only after that do the words ‘who could it be this time?’ come trailing after.”

“In a normal setting, my inner voice and inner visions take up all my attention. I barely perceive the initial thought-forms. This is no trouble and feels entirely natural. But the balance shifts with physical activity, such as in a fight or playing a sport. The thoughts come so rapidly that the voice can’t keep up with what’s happening. It becomes garbled. My Quick Thinking technique makes the problem worse. My inner speech distracts me. It takes up extra power and drags on my perceptions.

“In short: my brain won’t shut up and let me think.”

Putrizio nodded and grinned. “This problem was not unexpected. You dove into the deep pool of the human mind with your first technique. It’s bound to be overwhelming. Most students would attempt something simpler.”

The fightmaster could have mentioned that fact to me in the beginning, but he chose not to. He knew I’d run head first into this wall. His teaching style bordered on the sadistic.

“Your book of Observations says little on this topic.”

Putrizio laughed. “Ha ha. That’s because other people’s thoughts are very hard to observe! My book only records the outward appearances of fighting styles. The manifestations of magic. It’s meant to help recognize an opponent’s techniques, not to penetrate their secret inner workings.

“You may find this a thorny problem, Strythe, but it’s not bad to work through it early. Mental aspects of training are necessary for many high tier techniques. Discovering your personal aptitudes will help make clear your path forward. I suspect this won’t be your last mental power.

“It’s natural to assume that, since human bodies are so uniform, that human minds must be as well. But this is a mistake. The inner powers of the mind vary greatly in their quality and function. Could we humans perceive each others minds, they would look and sound as different as all the types wild birds. Many people, such as you, cannot muffle their inner voice. Others struggle to create complex visualizations. Some find the chaotic action of fights to overwhelm their senses. A few hear all songs and music as utterly discordant.

“With so much mental variety, magic has evolved into a wide range of techniques. Some sects give exotic tests to prospective students to ensure their minds are fit for those secret techniques. Disciples might need a talent for mathematics or visualizing sacred geometrical figures. One well known test is to create an illusory fire.

“Like this?” I asked. A wisp of ghostly fire floated off my hand.

“No. That’s real light visible to all. These magi create something that lives in their minds. They sense their fire, visualize it, and then overlay that image on their normal sight. A sort of personal illusion.” Putrizio used a tendril of his fire to yank one of the wooden practice swords out of the rack, implying that he could do this feat. His fire wasn’t just something he vaguely sensed; he could see it.

“Sounds difficult.”

“It is. More relevant for your experiments, it’s possible to split one’s conscious experience into separate threads. Each sub-mind takes a task. One thread might deal with battling a foe, a second observes and coordinates with allies, while a third plans for a possible escape. A normal person could do all those things at once, yes, but with much less precision.”

This sounded very strange to me. We had moved past the simple idea of turning off one part of the mind temporarily, quieting the voice. He spoke of acquiring whole new mental powers.

“Fightmaster, it’s one thing to change our bodies, but quite another to tinker with our minds. Doesn’t this risk damaging the psyche?”

“It does. Careless augmentation specialists sometimes drive themselves mad. And even those who benefit from mental techniques develop such alien perspectives that their words sound mad to others.”

“Here I had assumed augmentation specialists were all a bunch of meatheads.” I glanced to the three juniors.

“Not all of them. Augmentation specialists boast some of the most brilliant brains in history.”

The swordsmen in the Void Cult were a bunch of deranged weirdos. It could be that mental techniques made them that way. They acquired inner stigmas. I hadn’t known my first technique to be on such a perilous path.

“Because you’re using an enhancement technique, a temporary mode, there is less risk for you. It’s unlikely that a tier one enhancement will drive you mad, although it might give you some headaches. As expected, developing a mental technique is a very solitary endeavor, and overcoming a block will require deep meditation.”

Putrizio finished his consultation. As he left, he motioned to Hwilla and I to follow him out of the Hall of Discipline. He spoke with us privately on the promenade.

“I expect you two to maintain order among the juniors. You may even use corrective force when necessary. However, you are not cause them serious injuries. Magi at the early stages of their growth can’t recover from serious damage to their organs. It’s possible you might cripple them for life.”

“Yes, fightmaster,” Hwilla said. “I apologize for my mistake.”

He looked past her to me. “Disciple Strythe. I’m surprised by your lack of restraint.”

I don’t know how Putrizio knew it was me who savaged the three new recruits and not Hwilla. Maybe their wounds gave a clue. Or perhaps their unsteady fires betrayed their emotional states.

“I’m sorry, fightmaster. I will strive to be less violent in the future,” I said. “But couldn’t you have commanded them to obey us to avoid this?”

Hwilla and I were the same age as the juniors, and we came from lower rungs of the social ladder. Hwilla was born in a fishing village, and Strythe had been a random farm boy. We were rough around the edges. But that wasn’t the case for the fightmaster. Putrizio was a well bred nobleman from a civilized island in the east. He also served for many years as the master of an arena, a highly respected office. Because of his age, experience, and aristocratic bearing, the three juniors immediately deferred to him. Putrizio reminded the trio of their parents and teachers. He pacified them with just a few words.

“That would produce a form with no substance. No third party can create respect between seniors and juniors. And it was for your benefit as well. There are some lessons that can only truly be learned when you attempt to teach them to others” He spoke sharply but did not raise his voice. “Hwilla, this time I will forgive you for the disorder among your juniors. Strythe, I will postpone punishment for your violent outburst. Punishing you two right now would only undermine your authority and cause more conflict. But I expect restraint from now on.”

“Yes, fightmaster,” Hwilla said.

“I understand, fightmaster.” We bowed to our teacher as he departed.

I didn’t like the sound of that. He forgave Hwilla but only postponed my sentence. He left that hanging over my head like an executioner’s axe. I couldn’t help but wonder what the punishment for a triple murder would have been. Something much worse than sharp words. It wasn’t that the Void Cult valued human life—killing a minion or two wouldn’t matter much—but chopping up potential officers seriously weakened our forces. Even Iiyluzh the Viridescent Blade got in trouble for always poisoning his apprentices, and he was forbidden from dueling Malisent until after the war.

“On your feet, disciples.” Hwilla said. “You need a few days to heal so the fightmaster can judge you. That means no sparring or physical exercise. So instead, we’re going to do meditation training.”

The seemed as excited about meditation as I had been at first. I retrieved a metal box from the boys’ dorm.

“Hey. That’s our money!”

“Correction, Lump. It was your money.” I rattled the box of coins. “You agreed to pay for the damages, remember? This will be the first installment. Besides wrecking my equipment, you also destroyed the property of the citadel’s premiere dressmaker. These coins will go to replacing all her expensive silks and dyes.”

I could no longer see their faces but could sense their fires flare up in anger.

“What else is in here? Jewelry. Bits and bobs. Oh, you have some randomization cubes for gambling…”

“You mean dice?”

“Right. Dice. That’s what they’re called,” I shook the dice in my hand. “You three boys seem to enjoy games of chance, so I’ll let you indulge your vice a little. From now on, whenever one of you breaks the rules, I will roll one of these cubes to determine who receives the punishment. I’ll paint the facets three different colors.”

“That’s no fair.”

“You’re right, Chunk. It’s not fair. It’s random and arbitrary. But if you don’t want to play my game, I want force you to. Just follow the rules and don’t give our senior here anymore trouble. Got it?”

“Yes,” Chunk mumbled.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, senior,” they all said in unison.

“Good.”

The fightmaster told me to be less violent with the rebels, but showing weakness or regret now would ruin everything. I had three tigers by the tail and couldn’t let go.