Talia awoke from her dreamless sleep slowly, body sore from her injuries and mind drained by the prior night’s overload of emotion. She took a moment to lay still, just breathing and listening to the bustle of the Mid Quarter in the street below her window. Shouted conversations, low murmurs, and the sound of moving masses of sapients all mixed together into the sounds she knew simply as ‘life’. The hellish hours she had spent in the Maw only served to highlight the vicariousness of Karzgorad’s soundscape.
Even on the uppermost terrace of the tiered ravine, the unnaturally smooth pit had been wreathed in an oppressive silence punctuated by only occasional hisses of gas, the odd skip of stone down to the terrace below and the sound of her breath through her gas mask.
A glance at the large brass hourglass on her dresser showed that she had slept in quite late, as it was almost noon. Morning, midday, and night being, leftover terms from when legend—or history, depending on who you asked— claimed that the sapient races had lived above, on the Surface. The sun down here never dimmed, so night was an abstraction. The odd thought brought Talia’s mind back to the dream she had experienced while she recuperated.
If that was the Surface, I can see why the legends stuck. The colours! Bright green and soft blue, as far as the eye could see…
Talia growled, giving herself a metaphorical shake.
“Daydreaming again, Tals. You’re not a child,” she muttered to herself, “quit it and get up! Up, up, up. You’ve slept long enough!”
She wheeled out of bed, sloughing off the last dredges of sleep, and padded over to her dresser. She grabbed the first things that she laid hands on: a faded, loose green tunic and leather belt, and a pair of thick leather workpants that she wore during her shifts at the workshop.
I hope Orvall remembered to tell Reggie I was…sick, otherwise there’ll be hell to pay when—if I go back. Ugh too much thinking, too little information, and more importantly too little food.
Talia wasn’t quite as ravenous as when she’d gotten up the night before, but the empty void in her stomach was still more pressing than she’d ever felt before her injury. Before her Gift had awakened. She shrugged away uncomfortable ideas about what that new aspect of herself was doing to her body.
Sniff.
Her positively reeking body. She lifted an arm and took a whiff. And swiftly reprioritized food as being firmly below bath on the list of morning—or rather, afternoon—tasks. Her bandages would need changing as well. They had not been spared the stench of sweaty young adult. Although, the deep cut on her chest didn’t seem to have discharged during the night, neither blood nor pus, so perhaps she was safe to let it heal in open air. A quick pat at the gauze on her face revealed the dressing there to be similarly dry.
Talia grabbed her good, scented soap from its hiding place in the bottom drawer of her dresser. Orvall stole it whenever she left it in the bathing room, though he swore to have never even laid eyes on the lilac bars when questioned. Talia chuckled to herself.
I don’t know why he bothers, it’s not like anyone else uses our bath. Besides, does he think I can’t smell my soap on him when he steps out? Crazy old coot. If he wants some, he can get his own, the stuff’s expensive. The saleswoman said they got the lavender from up in High Quarter.
Her leg felt much better as she walked down the stairs, only occasionally jarring her with little spikes of pain and the occasional tingle. Orvall had been right when he’d called the speed of her recovery impossible. Healing this fast was nothing short of a miracle.
Talia carefully steered her thoughts around the giant flashing sign in her mind that was her Gift. That way led madness. She laughed humourlessly. Literally.
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Freshly clean and floral smelling, Talia stood before the most expensive item in the house—after Orvall’s apothecary set and his old armaments. The mirror nearly spanned from floor to ceiling, a lumbering three meters wide and two meters tall, and was extraordinarily rare, as the mercury used in its creation had run dry years before she’d been born. It hung on the left side of the bathing room, making the small basement seem larger, and allowed those who stepped out of the recessed granite tub in the floor to groom themselves. Or in her case, to examine the damage.
Talia wiped the mirror with her towel to clear off the condensation from her hot bath. Bandages lay in a crumpled pile by the bathtub, to be boiled for later reuse. She stood back, eyes poring over the myriad bruises that, at this stage, should be turning a lovely deep purple, but were instead the violent yellow-green shade of much older contusions. Shaking her head in amazement, the young woman turned her gaze to the long, jagged cuts on her face and chest. Her father had sewn them shut as best he could, and a thin layer of pink flesh peaked from below the stitches already, but even her untrained eye could tell that they would scar, unless her new healing abilities pulled through with another miracle.
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Crescian spider silk though… damn, Orvall, may as well have used gold thread while you were at it.
The wound on her chest was the worst, two centimeters wide and cut straight across her collarbone, down a solid eight centimeters through her pectoral, and tapered off across her ribs in a thin zigzag. Talia silently thanked the gods that she was flat chested, or whatever had cut her so deeply—a sharp rock during her fall, most likely— could have caught and torn open her torso.
She’d have bled out before ever waking.
Brrrr…That’s a sobering thought.
She shuddered, turning her head to focus on her face. The wound was milder by comparison, starting thin, right below her right eye—she decided not to think about how close she’d gotten to being partially blinded— and skipped over her cheekbone, before catching mid cheek and turning into a two-centimeter-wide gash at the bottom of her jaw.
Talia tucked her chin in, brushing back her wet, shoulder length, vermillion hair, idly noting that it had gotten longer than she liked. Turning to the side, she peered at the gruesome wound in her reflection out of the corner of her eye.
By Wyrr’s shriveled prick!
With her chin pressed down into her neck, the two cuts matched up perfectly into one snarled, haphazard line. As if she had been the victim of a novice torturer, or the plaything of a particularly vicious goblin. The hair on the back of Talia’s neck stood on end as she considered just how lucky she’d been. Death had missed her by a millimetre. Less. She owed her life to a lucky twist of fate just about any way you looked at it. Her citrine eyes flashed as she twisted, imagining all the possible ways—
She did a double take.
Are my eyes…glowing?
She leaned in closer to the mirror.
Yep, definitely glowing.
Her eyes, already an oddity for their colour, radiated a dim yellow light, barely visible unless she flicked them in just the right way. Almost like those of some of the mammalian critters that scurried about in the dark tunnels that surrounded Karzgorad and relied on sight to hunt. It dawned on her suddenly that she could see perfectly fine, almost as if she were outside. In fact, Talia realized then that in her absentmindedness, she hadn’t lit any of the candles that would normally illuminate the windowless basement.
First the magic blast…thing, then the healing, now perfect dark vision?
If the trend continued, she wouldn’t be surprised if she grew a tail or sprouted wings. A dark thought stubbornly rooted itself in her mind. By the time the mage-madness took her…
Will I even still be human?
Luckily, stomping footsteps and the sound of voices from upstairs gave Talia an excuse to avoid that particular train of thought. Temporarily at least.
She dressed quickly, grabbing the bundle of bandages, and heading up the stairs two at a time. Leaving the mirror and its scars in the dark basement.
From the sounds of it, her father was in the kitchen, exchanging quips with an older woman with a voice that rumbled like a cave in. Curiosity peaked, Talia dropped the wrappings in a basket by the treatment room and made her way towards the voices, which had dropped into low tones.
The woman sitting in stooped at their kitchen was tall, even bent with age as she was. If she were standing, she would tower over the redhead, though that wasn’t saying much. At one meter fifty, Talia was just barely taller than most dwarves. The wizened woman’s bone white hair was tucked behind long ears that tapered to a point.
An elf!
Talia took in the frail looking woman’s wrinkled complexion in a new light.
She must be almost five hundred years old, to look so…worn.
The last thing she noticed was a gnarled, ropy scar that wrapped around the elf’s throat. Her musings over the injury’s provenance interrupted as the whispering pair noticed her in the doorway.
“Ah poppet, there ye are,” her father called, frowning as he noticed her lack of bandages. Thankfully, their elven visitor spoke, with a voice like two rocks rubbing together, before Orvall had a chance to dress her down.
“You must be the mage Orvall has told me so much about. Though I don’t see why you’re surprised, boy. The eyes, the hair…” the elf looked Talia up and down before continuing. “Smile for me girl, would you?”
Talia complied hesitantly, flashing her sets of four canines. The elf harrumphed, unaffected.
Wish the kids at school had thought the same way…
The old elf turned to Orvall, unimpressed.
“No less than three wytch-marks on the girl. Tell me again why you’re surprised? I guess she is a little young…” she mused.
“Er—young? I’m nineteen,” Talia said, and then immediately winced.
Way to prove your maturity, Tals. You going to tell her you don’t play with dolls next?
The elf only nodded accommodatingly, however.
“You look young,” she cackled. “Oh no don’t worry, it’ll serve you well later, when you reach the age of wrinkles and spots.” She laughed to herself, a grating sound like sandpaper on polished steel.
Talia chuckled politely, hovering in the doorway. Shockingly, Orvall looked just as ill at ease as she did. Her father all cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“I had hoped—” he began.
“Hoped?! With hair like rubies and eyes like topazes? Come now Angrim, don’t be daft. Obviously both her parents have the Gift. That she would too was almost guaranteed. Who are they, would I know them?”
Tense silence fell across father and daughter.
“The Vestals,” Orvall answered thickly.
Understanding dawned on the ancient woman’s face. Contrition spread along her shoulders and sympathy bled into her green eyes.
“I’ve let my mouth get ahead of me again, it seems. You have my condolences, Talia, your parents were good people, they… they didn’t deserve what they got.”
She shifted on her stool with a sigh, turning to Orvall.
“Be a good man and make an old elf some tea to warm her old bones, would you?”
Talia’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, as if to punctuate the statement. She blushed. Their guest only laughed.
“And perhaps something to fill the young mage’s belly, while you’re at it.”
Orvall only grunted, already pulling out his step stool.
“Now come Talia, sit, and let me tell you what I know of magic. My name is Elidé and as you may have surmised, I knew your parents.”
Talia couldn’t decide if the pit in her stomach was hunger, fear, or anticipation. If she was being honest, it was probably a mix of all three.