When his turn came, Danaphrim threw caution to the winds and drew gasps from his audience by winding back and forcibly smashing his seeing-ball on the floor. Fifteen gold, lying in a hundred jagged pieces of hardened glass – then the ribbon of power it’d contained floated free of the shards, lifting gently up towards the roof, curling pink and blue on the air, a twist of pure time.
As it reached the space in front of his head, Dan completed the incantation and breathed it in.
Please, Yune – if there was ever a time for you to listen to me, this’d be it.
It was a simple spell, very easy to perform – but it had a high skill-ceiling. Mastery was the key here. He still had a chance, this last chance – to be somebody – to become a member of this elite society – to give his life a scrap of meaning.
When granted a dash of time-essence, a small shot of the stuff like his orb had possessed, an amateur might buy themselves thirty seconds of double-speed, or fifteen seconds of quadrupled-speed… or a second rivalling a lesser arch-diviner. With a spell like this, mastery was demonstrated via experience. The adept could spread that condensed thirty seconds, making it forty, fifty, sixty… The expert could spread the second of inestimable speed, making it a second-and-a-half, two seconds…
He would have to use the time wisely.
Dan didn’t think of himself as a seer – he was a mage, a true mage – but he’d always favoured divination. He’d spent more hours catching dandelion-seeds than any of his classmates back at the Maginox – it was a good environment for him to do his sorcery and wizardry homework, practice summoning elements and eldritches, or just sit under a tree reading. He’d existed for so long under the effect of haste-spells that he’d probably lived three solid weeks more than someone born the same day as him.
He hadn’t done it in months, even years, but the situation called for something extreme, and he was here to meet that challenge.
The moment of inhalation was blissful. The energy disappeared inside him, infusing him with its potential. Doubts melted like icicles in sunlight.
It all came back to him, and he blurred towards the apprentices first.
Tying shoelaces together was child’s play – and possibly insulting, depending too much on the apprentices’ collective sense of humour to reliably win him the coveted prize. No. The old tricks would be useless here.
Halfway to the back of the room, he skidded about and made for the exit instead.
Something else. Something better…
When time reasserted its normal flow, and the audience saw him properly for the first time in what to him had felt like two minutes, he was trying to mop his brow with his sleeve without spilling the drinks in his hands.
“Ah – Grandmaster, you still appear to be without a cup. Please do forgive me.” He smiled triumphantly as he saw the old, floating gnome cast about, staring at the drinks in everyone else’s hands. “Here – I wondered if you might want to offer a toast, to such an exciting day of interviews?” He reached Nelesto and passed him one of the cups. “I think it safe to say we’ve all learned something this afternoon, whatever the outcome.”
He’d come a long way from shutting his eyes in fear before the first spell, to directly addressing his prospective new mentor after his last. He’d captured everyone’s attention –
And he’d overstepped. The idea had seemed sound when he ran through the hypotheticals, but he realised now he’d gone too far. No one had hands free to applaud which, after the last round of constant clapping, left a void, an awful silence ringing in his ears. Doubtless, they looked impressed with his magic, but the Grandmaster glanced down sympathetically at number ten –
I make myself seem presumptuous, as if the next contestants don’t even matter, he realised. They don’t, but I look vain, and that’s all that matters.
I should’ve stuck with my plan, and just gone one better with performing the vision…
Nelesto said something conciliatory, and the audience murmured their false praise at his spell; they drank, set down their cups, and number ten stepped up.
To top it all off, the wine didn’t taste half as good as it had when paired with the peachy elf-girl for company.
* * *
The Grandmaster convened the apprentices at the front, and, mercifully, the quiet debate took no more than three minutes. Whatever device Nelesto was using to fly – the effect had lasted far longer now than a spell would permit, surely? – its power was becoming depleted. The gnome genius wobbled a bit on the air as he whipped around –
“Without further ado, we would like to announce that we have come to a consensus. Congratulations… number seven!”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Everyone clapped – the apprentices enthusiastically, the contenders less so.
That’s it. All over. He slapped one hand into the other, slowly, sarcastically. Not like you actually need his tutelage, though, is it? Dan stared at the grin behind the youngster’s beard, the eyes beneath the hat gleaming gloatingly. Planning on taking over? Planning on making a name for yourself, being somebody?
Where’s my name going to be written down for the centuries that come? Tax records, rent agreements, employment documents…
I’m no one.
“Well done, well done indeed! Well, young man, might I ask your name?”
“Ibbalat Uroot, but you can call me Ibb.”
“Ibbalat… of Miserdell?”
Dan’s jaw wasn’t the only one that dropped; an audible clunk rippled around the room.
Number seven just nodded modestly. “I know it’s a bit of a big deal, the whole Ord Ylon business, but I never completed my formal training – my master was killed, you know? – and I’d love to study under you. If that’s still okay?”
Dan had a thousand questions for the dragonslayer. Foremost:
Why are you even here?
“But…” Grandmaster Nelesto seemed at a loss for words. “But… surely you could found your own college? Your charter –”
“I need the credits.” Ibbalat of Miserdell spread his hands apologetically. “There was no other tutor I thought I could really learn from, you know? You’re the best.”
There wasn’t even a trace of fawning in the foreigner’s words – he sounded a hundred percent sincere, like he was just stating a fact.
Nelesto’s aged flesh flushed. “Well, of course, we’d be glad to welcome you into our ranks, young master! You would need to commit to a minimum term of a year if –”
“Two would be my preference,” Ibbalat cut him off. “Supposing we don’t all get Everseer’d before then.”
The moment Nelesto grinned tightly and nodded, the dwarf apprentice took it upon himself to loose a cheer, almost tripping over his beard as he rushed up to the new recruit, grabbing the youngster’s hand and shaking it vigorously.
Then all the apprentices descended on Ibbalat, laughing, congratulating him, already showering him in a dozen different dragon-themed enquiries.
When Danaphrim got outside, night had fallen. The elf-maiden didn’t meet his eyes, striding off towards Hill Road. He was going the same direction, so he had to walk artificially slowly. She went at a fair clip but his accustomed pace was somewhat faster. Fearing the awkwardness of a prolonged overtaking manoeuvre, he decided to hang back, nurse his ego, sort his convoluted thoughts.
Yet even when he reached his flat he couldn’t stop that fateful phrase from replaying itself, occupying centre-stage in the spotlight of his mind. He busied himself with all the chores he’d left aside while preparing for the test, washing pots, sorting his clothes, cleaning…
“Two would be my preference.”
Two.
Two years!
He punched the wall, ignoring the neighbours’ cries of protest, punched it and punched it until he lost a knuckle, until he had to waste five silver of reagents on a healing spell to fix his stupid hand.
Two years. I’d have given him twenty.
It wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever fair. He’d always thought as a child that once he grew up the world would somehow come into focus, its injustices put in perspective, the real lessons brought into relief. But he’d had it all backwards. The older he got the blurrier, the greyer, the clear-cut black-and-white world of a youth became. One injustice revealed ten more, and each of them another ten. And the lessons… The lessons were buried under the same seething swirl of emotions that had always blanketed his mind. He punched the drop out of his wall, broke his own bones on the solid yew-wood planks, because he was still that person. Still that lost kid. Still searching for the lesson, waiting for it to bubble up out of his misery – for everything to make sense.
He introduced a bottle of strong ice-spirit to his lips, and barely set it down till Sunday was dawning and he fell asleep in his chair.
When he woke up Sunday night, feeling like he’d grown eight extra heads each experiencing their own separate hangover, he went to the glassless window, threw open the shutters and stood there with his hands on either side of the frame, letting the cold winter wind cleanse him.
I’m not going, tomorrow. Can’t face Phimos, Deyra. Can’t face the work. The mundane. The monotony. If I keep working there, I’ll die of it. The… the failed potential.
Something else. There’s something else for me.
He looked up into the swift-moving storm-clouds conquering the sky.
Yune had never listened to him. The gods of light up there, beyond the clouds, couldn’t be seen, by day or night. But the darkness was wily; it had slipped around the stars, filling every corner, every cupboard and closet in the world with its malice.
To have my name recorded. To be somebody. I don’t care why. I just want to be remembered. I just want to be important. Ibbalat’s already someone, already important. Why, Yune? Why couldn’t it be me? I put in the practice. I tried my hardest. I took risks. Still, I’m back here, back in this same stinking mess. Illodin, can you hear me? Can you promise me my name will be said in reverence some day? Can you tell me if I’ll be given a line in the Annals of the High Mages?
Can I exist, for real, not as a dream of myself?
There was no answer. There was never any answer.
No.
Mekesta… Mother… You sent your son to me, to do my bidding, your many-bladed son… Aid me now! Help me as I wade in your darkness. Let me see the way through – show me the distant shoreline, the way to leave all this… this misery behind!
The darkness held no special answer either. He stood there awhile longer, basking in the icy breeze, then, when he could finally bear it no longer, he fastened the shutters and cast himself back down on the bed.
He reintroduced the ice-spirit to his lips, and they met back up like old friends. As he drank, clarity came back to the world. Eight extra heads became four, two, one… finally, he was himself again, and it’d only taken him a quarter of the bottle.
Clarity. Focus.
The meaninglessness of his existence – that was the shadow through which he crawled. And there was no escaping it.
Yes, I see it now. Don’t look for a way out of the dark – there isn’t one. Embrace the dark. Embrace the chaos…
Ibbalat’s smug face formed out of the black pit of Dan’s mind, its bushy beard, the ostentatious hat…
Two years…
I know, now. I know, Mother. I know what I have to do.
He looked down at his hand, his recently-healed knuckles. He clenched the fist again, but this time his target wasn’t going to be a pathetic piece of wood.
No. In the end, he’d show the ‘dragonslayer’ who held the real power in Mund. The outland scum needed putting in his place, and Danaphrim would be the one to do it.
By whatever means necessary.