“To master the art of the Elders is to take the midnight road. Tread carefully, reader, lest you stumble from the path and into the greater dark.”
-Yisendril Firstborn
***
The sound of Alvanue’s grumbling stomach broke the near complete silence of the moonday morning study hall. A couple of her fellow early birds turned to stare at her as she willed herself not to blush.
She’d skipped breakfast that morning to get to the library well before dawn, intent on practicing her channeling before she had to see Taizin again. The primer she’d reserved was opened to a page with an illustration of a seated man with little boxed descriptions arrayed above him. The book was basically a more in-depth version of what Thisby and Vivienne had been telling her to do the other day, but it helped Alvanue feel a little more official to follow Erasmus’ instructions.
“Okay, step one: settle into a comfortable seated position. Check,” she muttered under her breath.
“Step two: allow eyes to close naturally. Check.”
She let her eyelids slip closed before opening one a crack so she could continue to read.
“Step three: take deep, regular breaths in five second increments. Check. Step four: block out all external stimuli. Check. Step five: clear all thoughts from the mind...easier said than done. Ok, go away thoughts, shut up, brain, shut up, shut up, shut up.”
Aside from a few of her peers and the ever-vigilant librarians, the library was sparsely populated, which made it perfect for Alvanue’s purpose. She’d already completed her other assignments over the weekend: a short paper on the uses of vervain for Herbology, an essay on the foundation of Avalon for History and mastering Thandalene’s Light for Mana Manipulation. They were simple enough to complete for the most part, the only one she’d had any real trouble with was the assignment for history; she’d never had the best head for dates. All that was left was getting the hang of Professor Taizin’s irritating exercise. It was her last class of the day, but she’d be damned if she didn’t at least put in a few more hours to try and avoid being publicly humiliated by the cold-blooded woman again.
Just as she was settling into a meditative state, some commotion broke her concentration.
“Vegetables are not allowed in here, miss. You’ll have to take it outside.”
Swearing under her breath, Alvanue opened both eyes and looked around to find the source of the disruption. A librarian was standing several yards away, staring down at a human girl sitting at a table alone. The girl wore a pointed hat pulled low over her chubby cheeked face and a ratty old leather coat, with several ancient looking books piled up around her, though that was hardly unusual for a regular of the magical library. What was unusual, however, was the malformed turnip laid out in front of her, smearing dirt on the table’s otherwise glossy finish.
The girl blinked slowly up at the librarian.
“It’s not a vegetable, ma’am, or an ‘it’. She’s my familiar.”
The librarian pursed her lips.
“No animal or plant matter is permitted within the library, young missy, magical or otherwise. And that goes for familiars as well,” the old woman said tersely.
The girl looked down at the slightly dirty turnip-thing then back at the librarian, a slight frown wrinkling her brow.
“I told you. She’s not an animal, or a plant. She’s both.”
The librarian scoffed.
“Really. And how can a thing be both?” she asked with an unkind smile.
“Easy,” the girl said and picked up the dirty root vegetable by its long green leaves to show her. “She’s a mandrake.”
The elderly librarian’s smile went slack. Her wrinkled face rapidly cycled through colors, first going gray, then white and finally, red.
“You- you brought a- a- a mandrake-” the old woman stuttered, taking a step back.
“Technically she’s a Mandragora Occidentalis. See, look,” the girl corrected politely and reached the mandrake out as if to offer it to the old woman.
“-a mandrake, in the library! Saints preserve us, have you lost your mind, girl?” the librarian thundered and craned her neck back to stay as far away as the shelf behind her would allow. By that point what few students were in that part of the study hall had all turned to watch events unfold. Aside from the frustration of her practice being interrupted, Alvanue couldn’t say she was too upset, as entertaining as it all was.
The librarian spoke into a hideous broach in the shape of laughing dolphin on the breast of her uniform and took a common oak wand out from one of her sleeves.
“Alert, this is Proctor Widget, we have an emergency in E-Wing. Presence of a restricted and potentially dangerous magical creature of at least rank iron, possibly higher. Requesting immediate assistance. And bring the ear muffs, Agatha!”
Within seconds, the room was flooded with a squad of official looking wizened old ladies from a half dozen different races, all wearing the same pale robes as Proctor Widget and all brandishing wands, staves or other magical implements. One was even clutching a tea pot that spit puffs of violet smoke.
The human girl sat unfazed in the face of the geriatric response team, still holding up her familiar like a child at show-and-tell.
“Romina, would you handle the evacuation? I want this entire wing cleared,” commanded Proctor Widget, putting on what looked like a head-band with two fuzzy balls on either end that one of her colleagues had handed her. Now that Alvanue thought of it, they were all wearing the bizarre contraptions.
I don’t remember ear muffs being so...big.
Romina, a squat, grandmotherly type wielding a deadwood staff saluted and started marching in Alvanue’s direction.
“Alright, you heard the woman! Everyone up, get your things, let’s go,” she said.
Romina’d give Ms. Ragnell a run for her money. Maybe they’re related, Alvanue thought as she shoved her things back into her bookbag and let herself be herded out with the other students. She watched from the sidelines with the other students as the girl was marched out of the library after them and towards the Main Hall.
“Can you believe it? Who'd ever think to choose such a horrid thing for a familiar?” murmurred a girl standing next to Alvanue as they watched the unfortunate girl disappear around a corner with her chaperones.
Her companion, a boy who would've been handsome if not for the perpetual sneer that marred his face, inclined his head in her direction.
“Well, what can you expect of a commoner? Always so crude. Just be glad she didn’t bring a barn cat to school like that retched farm boy from last year,” the boy sneered. “The little beast ended up shredding the new doublet mama sent me for Saints’ Day.”
The girl tsked.
“Too many charity cases, that’s what Auntie Cressida says. The college has been much too generous with scholarships in recent years.”
The boy nodded in agreement and leaned closer to whisper in the girl’s ear.
“A good thing the librarians brought out those enchanted ear muffs. Should that thing have let out a wail with us all so close, I fear the infirmary would’ve been more crowded with old biddies than Varney House at high tea.”
The girl failed to hold in a snort and the two dissolved into a fit of giggling. They only fell silent when Proctor Romina turned a glare in their direction.
After the excitement died down, Alvanue and the rest were allowed back up to the study hall at the back of the library. She resumed her place in the same nook, an old goblin in ratty overalls swabbing the table the human girl had been sitting at with a rag. She tried not to stare; she'd never seen a goblin in person before and peaked over the top of her book to get a glimpse at his thorny green face.
“First ale, now potting soil,” the goblin grumbled just loud enough for Alvanue’s sharp ears to make out, shaking his head. “What’s the matter with kids these days.”
The tips of her ears went a bit red as she buried her nose in her book and went through the whole meditative process all over again.
She could manage all the way up to step five before hitting a wall.
This is so irritating. If Vivienne could do it before she hit puberty, I should too!
The next few hours were spent reading, attempting to meditate, failing, and starting the cycle all over again. She was so preoccupied with it all that she didn’t realize first bell was ringing until halfway through its chime.
***
The greenhouse Herbology took place in was a tricky thing.
From the outside, it appeared rather small, hardly big enough to grow more than a few tomatoes. On the inside, however, it was easily the size of a football field and full to the brim with plants.
Alvanue wasn’t unfamiliar with expansion enchantments; some of the maritime keeps and fortresses around Endrillond were perched on such small scraps of land that such enchantments were required to provide adequate living space for the inhabitants, Norendelith being a notable example. Alvanue was currently at the mercy of what set her herbology classroom apart from the demesnes of her sire’s vassals.
“Come on, not now. I’m going to be late at this rate,” she grumbled, standing at a fork in the path that cut through the greenhouse’s untamed flora.
Like Vivienne had warned her, there was a dim sort of intelligence to St. Gildrin’s College, and it liked to play pranks on staff and students alike.
Apparently, that also extended to the primeval forest barely contained within the confines of the greenhouse. Paths split and circled back and dead-ended in groves of evil looking brambles, all changing from day to day and never the same.
Over the past week, Alvanue had gotten into the habit of getting to Herbology half an hour early so she had enough time to pick her way through the leafy labyrinth, but she’d been so focused on Taizin’s assignment she’d lost track of time.
“Which way, which way- ow!” she snatched her hand back from where a vine bristling with thorns had swung low and cut her. She blew at the wound and winced.
That was another thing; take too long to make a decision, and the locals got antsy.
“Alright, I’m going! Stupid plants.”
Trying her luck, Alvanue chose to go left. Fortunately for her, it seemed she’d chosen wisely as after walking for a few more minutes, the dark canopy above her opened up to show the underside of the greenhouse’s central dome.
Exotic birds and brightly colored insects chirruped and swooped above her, filling the air with song. She stepped out of the maze and into a clearing filled with seated students arranged in a semicircle on mossy flagstones.
They all turned to stare at her, including the little dwarf with graying fur standing on a pedestal in front of a massive black board.
“Ah, Miss Silthondrim, good of you to join us,” Professor Thaas nodded in her direction. “Was it the twofold path or the stinging nettles today?”
“The, uh, twofold path, professor,” she said awkwardly, shuffling down an aisle towards her seat.
Professor Thaas snapped his fingers.
“What luck! Poor Mr. Tohcoa keeps getting the nettles.”
A boy with skin the color of bronze and a hawkish nose self-consciously scratched at the thick bandages covering his arms and gave Alvanue a tight-lipped smile. She felt for him, the now multiple cuts on the back of her hand twinging whenever she made a fist.
Reaching her seat, she quickly sat down and covertly pulled the book from the library out of her bag. None of the librarians had checked during the chaos of the evacuation and she wasn’t going to turn it in while she still had use of it.
I’ll bring it back by the end of the day, what’s the harm?
“Alright, class, now that we’re all here, I have a few announcements I’d like to make,” said Professor Thaas, hopping with surprising nimbleness from his pedestal to his own desk. He tucked his hands in his robes and cleared his throat before beginning to pace back and forth across the desk top.
“Number one,” he began. “I’ll not name who, but several students came to me before class to tell me that they had not completed last week’s homework. I’d remind you all that my late policy is this: there is no later policy. You don’t do an assignment, you don’t get credit. Do better.
“Number two, do not take any class materials out of this room unless otherwise instructed, not even a single blade of grass! Don’t test me, Miss Elswane, I’ve put wards on all the doors, so I’ll know if you steal anything more.”
A plump girl with vividly green eyes slowly pulled back from the flower she’d been about to pluck from a low-hanging tree branch as the professor leveled a dirty look at her. Alvanue, having looked to see who was in trouble, was starting to look back down at Erasmus’ primer, partially hidden behind her bag, when she did a quick double-take.
Wait, is that-?
It was the girl from earlier, the maniac who’d brought her dangerous familiar into the library. In fact, Alvanue thought could see a suspicious lump in the girl’s coat pocket with just the hint of a dingy green leaf poking over the top.
That reminds me, she mused, maybe I shouldn’t bring Snowball to the library anymore. Or at least I’ll make sure to hide her better in the future.
“And number three,” Pofessor Thaas finished. “Kindly leave the parrots alone! I cannot guarantee your safety otherwise.”
“Are they- are they dangerous, Professor Thaas?” the girl next to Alvanue asked nervously.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The entire class looked up, suddenly aware of the fact that there were hundreds of birds in the clearing with them, flying low overhead or staring down at them from tree branches with eerily intelligent eyes.
“Not at all,” assured the professor. “But they’ve recently developed a bit of a hivemind. You piss one of them off, you piss them all off. Do that, and you’ll be dodging bird crap for the rest of the quarter! Now! Everyone up, we’re discussing aconite today! I have a lovely little patch growing in the eastern corner by the mimic mushrooms.”
Alvanue and her classmates got up to follow.
The plants and garden paths didn’t seem to give the professor any trouble, as they were able to quickly make their way to a sunny little grove just off the clearing.
Professor Thaas climbed up onto a large rock and beckoned everyone closer.
“Gather round, everyone, gather round!” he said and launched into a quick paced lecture on the history of aconite and its more popular uses.
Fat bees and sleek hummingbirds buzzed around their heads as they all got out their notebooks and started scribbling down notes.
Alvanue tuned out most of the class, focusing more on Erasmus’s words than the professor’s.
When she’d regained most of her memories, she’d been fascinated with the reality of fantasy creatures and spent several years researching some childhood favorites from her time on Earth; werewolves, vampires, goblins, sea monsters, the list went on. The whole werewolf thing turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment, but her reading did teach her about many different tools used against them, chief amongst them being aconite.
She paid just enough attention to note the next day’s homework and then left to find somewhere quiet to read, reckoning she knew enough basic information on the herb to do Thaas’s assignment.
***
She was tucked away in one of the gardens flanking the greenhouse, her nose still tucked away in Erasmus’ primer. She still had an hour until her next class and she was dedicated to working her way through a decent portion of the book’s contents.
Just as she was settling in to attempt the step-by-step guide to meditation once more, she was interrupted for the second time that day.
Alvanue looked up from the book in her lap, frustrated, just in time to see the chubby cheeked girl she now knew to be called Elswane pull herself out of the bushes that grew up as a border along the greenhouse’s sides. The girl froze when she realized she was being watched.
“Hi,” Alvanue said.
“...Hi,” she replied, still on her hands and knees.
Alvanue closed her book and set it aside.
“You’re Elswane, aren’t you?”
With a grunt, the human stood up and dusted dirt from the front of her stained uniform.
“That’s right. Elswane of Hog’s Crossing. And who are you? Other than a snoop.”
“Alvanue. And since I’m such a snoop, maybe I should ask you what you were doing in the bushes just now?”
Elswane blinked slowly.
“Nothing.”
Alvanue raised an eyebrow.
“Really? So I’m supposed to believe you didn’t just come out of some super secret backdoor Professor Thaas probably doesn’t know about?”
A bead of sweat welled on Elswane’s forehead, bright in the late morning light.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Alvanue gave her a flat look and let her eyes drift down to the partially trampled bush behind her, the edge of a low doorway just visible. The girl sighed.
“Ok, fine. I’ll give you a third of what I got in there, but only if you promise not to tell the professor.”
Honestly, I just wanted to know what she was doing in there, but who am I to say no to free stuff.
Elswane plopped down next to Alvanue on the bench and rifled through her bag, her familiar peaking out of her large coat-pocket. Alvanue scooted discretely away from the creature, wary of it after what she'd overheard those two upperclassmen talking about.
Wait, do mandrakes petrify people or was that basilisks?
If Elswane noticed the movement, she made no comment on it. She came up with a handful of funny blue mushrooms with bulbous growths on them and showed them to Alvanue.
Alvanue leaned in close to inspect them.
“Are those...eyes?”
The growths were pale, with little black dots at their centers.
Elswane frowned in concentration as she started counting them out, placing a portion of the fungi in a little pile next to Alvanue and another back in her bag.
“They’re mimic mushrooms,” she said as if that were answer enough.
Alvanue waited for her to elaborate but realized after several beats of silence that the girl had no intention of doing so.
“What does that mean?”
The girl ignored her, so she poked her.
“Hey. What does that mean?”
The girl’s frown deepened, but it managed to provoke a response.
“Don’t do that. I lost track and now I have to start all over again.”
Elswane recombined the two piles and started the process over again. Alvanue thought she’d have to poke the girl again, but just as she went to do so, Elswane spoke.
“They don’t have eyes, not like yours or mine,” she explained. “They only ‘see’ mana. Those little bumps on their caps are sensory organs that can pick up and condense mana out in the wild.”
Alvanue picked one up.
“Huh. What do they use it for?”
Elswane shrugged.
“What does everyone use mana for? They use it as a tool: for protection, for food, to help their spores spread and grow more mushrooms.”
“Sooo...why did you steal them from Professor Thaas’s garden?”
“...10, 11. Okay, 11 for you, the rest for me,” Elswane said and looked back up at Alvanue. “I didn’t steal them, I just pruned them and kept the trimmings. For an herbalist, Professor Thaas really doesn’t take proper care of his fungi. I saw how overcrowded they were when we went to see the aconite and I couldn’t let them suffer like that. The whole colony would have shriveled up, all boxed up in a corner like they were. Too many mimic mushrooms in one area, not enough mana to go around.”
Alvanue cupped her portion in the palm of her hand.
“I see. So, what are you going to use them for?”
Elswane’s lips tugged up in a little smile and she popped one in her mouth.
“I use them recreationally, but they’ve got some practical applications too. Mage’s use them as portable mana batteries in emergency situations, some goblin clans use them in rituals, and the Master Channelers of Mu use them to enhance their abilities-”
Alvanue’s head snapped up.
“Hold up, what was that last part?”
“About the goblins? I think they dry them and smoke them in a-”
“No no no, about channeling! Tell me more about that.”
Elswane popped another in her mouth and tipped her chin thoughtfully.
“Oh. Yeah, I read somewhere that Muans use them to boost their natural ability to channel mana. It helps with concentration, mana sensitivity and-”
Alvanue had heard enough.
They couldn’t be poisonous if Elswane was eating them so casually and besides, she was desperate. She pressed her hand to her mouth and chewed quickly.
Please let this help, please please please, she prayed silently to the Elders, the Saints and any other divine entities that were inclined to listen. Hmm. Kinda nutty.
Elswane paused, another mushroom raised halfway to her mouth.
“...How many did you just eat?”
Alvanue looked down at the remainder of the mushrooms in her hand and did quick math.
“Um, I don’t know. Like half of what you gave me? Five or six?”
Elswane let out a low whistle.
“Oh, boy.”
“Was I not supposed to? Elswane, why are you looking at me like that? Am I going to die? Elswane?”
***
“Woah,” Alvanue said, staring up at the bright blue sky. Elswane was slumped next to her.
“Right?”
Alvanue looked down at her hands and gasped.
“Woah.”
“Right?”
It was like her mage sight had been set to five her entire life and the mushrooms had cranked it up to eleven. She could pick out individual strands of mana flowing through her body, the ground, the sky, everything.
“This is...I can see everything,” she said.
Elswane nodded authoritatively.
“I know. Probably shouldn’t have taken so many your first time, newbies always trip the hardest, but hey, just enjoy the ride.”
Alvanue’s head felt like it was full of clouds and her body felt light as a feather. She kept being distracted by whisps of power, of living mana, wafting like waves with the breeze around her.
“I was supposed to be doing something,” she said dumbly, staring at one of the mushrooms pinched between her forefinger and thumb. It glowed with mana.
Elswane’s head lolled in her direction.
“Hmm?”
“I said...huh. I can’t remember,” Alvanue laughed which set Elswane to laughing too.
Alvanue nudged the chuckling human girl.
“Hey. You have a mandrake familiar, right? Can I see it?”
“She’s not an it, she’s a she.”
“But...she’s a plant. Wait, do plants have genders?” Alvanue asked.
Elswane shrugged.
“Mandrakes aren’t really plants or animals, like I told that Proctor. They’re a magical fluke, So I can call her a she if I want to. Plus, look,” the girl said and scooped her familiar out of her pocket. “She’s totally got boobies.”
Alvanue stared at the mandrake as it blinked sleepily at her, her earlier apprehension forgotten, and burst out laughing. There, on the thing’s off-white chest, were to irregular growths that looked curiously similar to human breasts.
“She does!”
Clutching her stomach as the laughter gradually faded, her elbow bumped into something hard. She looked down and saw a dense book laying on the bench next to her. Curious, she hefted it up onto her lap and opened it to where a page marker stuck out.
“Oh,” she said, straightening. “Oh.”
Elswane set her familiar on her chest and hummed.
“What is it?”
Alvanue pored over the page.
“I remember. I have to try- shut up for a minute, I gotta try this.”
Step one: settle into a comfortable seated position.
Step two: allow eyes to close naturally.
Step three: take deep, regular breaths in five second increments.
Step four: block out all external stimuli.
Step five: clear all thoughts from the mind.
Step six: focus all attention of the body’s mana channels.
It’s so easy this way, she thought giddily.
It felt like the most natural thing in the world, to be an empty vessel filled with nothing but mana. Alvanue sat, perfectly relaxed, and reached out with her intent to touch the bright currents of light flowing through her. With a gentle nudge, she coaxed the mana out of its regular path and directed it towards her injured hand.
She could feel the stray energy wander a bit, looking for the guidance of a channel, and she supplied her own. She’d memorized the formation: a simple circle.
The mana twined itself into a single strand and the two ends met. For a moment, the back of her hand shone and she felt a gentle warmth rush up her arm.
She opened her eyes and held her hand up. All there was to see was perfect, unblemished skin. Not even a scar remained.
“Yes!” Alvanue whooped, pumping her healed fist in the air. “I did it!”
Elswane looked amused.
“Congrats on whatever just happened. You’ve got some blue stuff in your teeth, by the way.”
Alvanue started scrubbing at her teeth with a sleeve when the school bell began to ring. She blanched and hurriedly shoved her things back in her bag, hastily slipping the mushrooms into a skirt pocket.
“Crap, I need to get to my next class. Nice to meet you and your boobie plant.”
Elswane waved at her as she scurried away, the mandrake sitting up to watch her go.
“See you around, Allvahnwayyyy,” she giggled to herself. “And remember, don’t tell Professor Thaas!”
***
She ended up being late to History and Mana Manipulation, too.
She hid in the back of the lecture halls, certain her classmates could tell she was under the influence and tried to act normal. This was the first time she'd done anything harder than alcohol in...well, ever, and it was difficult to maintain the appearance of sobriety. Pulses of light and curlicues of mana pulled her eyes away from the front of the class while she concentrated on listening to the professors and taking notes, but she managed to keep up the act until Taizin’s class.
Unfortunately, her tactic was disrupted when she was forced to sit smack dab in the middle of the room. It made her feel a bit exposed, especially in such hostile territory; that is to say, Taizin’s territory. To make matters worse, Professor Taizin liked to slither up and down the aisles as she talked to the class, probably to keep her students on their tippy toes. Her reptilian eyes burned as she measured the young minds that had come to learn proper channeling from her and found them all wanting. At least, that's what Alvanue imagined she thought. She certainly thought Alvanue didn't have what it took.
While she'd been on the recieving end of plenty of curious stares and hushed whispers when her schoolmates realized there was an elf at St. Gildrin's College, they'd all been somewhat good natured. Professor Taizin, on the other hand, had made it abundantly clear she did not care for Alvanue in the slightest. Not in words, perhaps, but in actions. When Alvanue proved unable to master that stupid technique in the first few days after it was introduced, Taizin made a point of calling on her, just so she could undergo the public embarrassment of falling behind the others. Inadequacy was an emotion she wasn't used to in her new life and she resented being made to carry its weight once more.
A foot nudged the back of her chair and Alvanue realized she’d been staring into nothing for several minutes.
“Hey,” said a deep, smooth voice said from behind her. “Head's up, she’s coming this way.”
She looked up in time to see Taizin slithering straight towards her. Alvanue gulped and forced her shoulders back. When she first started going out on patrols with Edhalan, Githanduin had warned her not to show fear in the face of a predator. That's exactly what Taizin was; a predator. Alvanue went cross-eyed staring at the ophidian woman’s poisonously green scales. Beads of mana wicked off the woman’s scales like water.
“Miss Silthondrim,” Professor Duna Jri Taizin hissed as she came to a stop next to Alvanue. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate the exercise we covered last week. I trust you’ve practiced? Or are we in store for another shameful attempt?”
Alvanue’s cheeks colored but she nodded.
I'm not afraid of you, you fat python. Just you watch.
“Yes, Professor Taizin.”
The ophidian’s hood flared and her lips widened in a smile that revealed a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth.
“Excellent,” she said. "Ah, but I see your cut has already healed. Allow me."
Faster than Alvanue could react, the snake-woman extended a single clawed finger and cut a thin line down the elf’s arm. Alvanue sucked in a breath to stop herself from making any sounds of pain. They would only give the cold-blooded woman pleasure.
“Well then,” Taizin said, forked tongue flicking out the taste her blood on the air. “Proceed.”
Alvanue looked up into a sea of staring faces and felt overwhelmed. With a shaky breath, she leaned back and closed her eyes and prayed that she could repeat the process under pressure.
Despite her worries, it wasn’t difficult to slip back into that mindset of complete emptiness as she’d never really left it to begin with. What was difficult, however, was focusing on her own mana rather than the ambient energy in the room. Standing there beside her, Taizin blazed like a second sun, not to mention the thirty or so students sitting all around her.
She forced Taizin from her mind, letting the serenity provided by the mushrooms wash over her completely as she worked to complete the exercise. Much more slowly than she had the first time, she coaxed power down her arm and along the length of the cut.
The circuit closed and that same gentle warmth bloomed under the skin of her injured arm. The cut flashed brightly for a moment, turning the insides of her eyelids orange, just as before. This time, however, the reaction did not end. The circuit widened, slowly reaching up her arm and spreading across her body. The light flashed again, growing brighter.
Something deep within her stirred as the circuit kept extending, like an ice bear roused from its winter hibernation by the scent of prey. She was beyond the point of being able to worry, however. The thrum of power had extended all the way to her toes when she felt more than heard Taizin hiss questioningly to her left.
Alvanue opened her eyes to a world without shadows, a world cast in pure light, and lost herself within its radiant depths.
***
It was hours later, with Thisby, Vivienne and Edhalan gathered in her room when she came down from the full effects of the mushrooms sitting on her bed, Snowball curled up by her side. She couldn’t really remember how she got there, nor when Vivienne and Thisby had arrived, though it seemed they’d been there for a while. The sky was dark outside and books, papers and little chalkboards were spread out amongst them all.
“You okay?” Edhalan asked, looking her over with concern. “You’ve been spacey all afternoon and you haven’t said a word since I picked you up at the gates.”
She turned towards him, the floaty trance she’d been in for the better part of the day slowly fading. Her mage sight was still hyper sensitive, the mana being drawn in by the array around the Silverwood tree in the embassy’s atrium sparking and flashing like slow motion lightning through the air.
“Alvanue?” he prompted.
“Y-yeah,” she said, eyes flicking down from where they’d been tracing a forking bolt of mana to focus on him. “Yeah, I’m good. Just really tired.”
She feigned a yawn and found that she actually was exhausted.
Edhalan didn’t seem convinced and looked like he was going to say more but Alvanue was saved by Thisby, who was shoving a piece of paper in his face.
“Okay, okay, so this letter is written this way at the front of a word but this way in the middle one, so why doesn’t this letter change?”
Edhala groaned and snatched the paper out of the dwarf’s hand with a sour look at Alvanue.
“Elders spare me, you owe me for this Silthondrim. Look, it does change, but only after a primary letter, this is a secondary one.”
He pointed at a line of characters written out in chicken-scratch. Thisby scratched her head and took the paper back from him.
“Oh. But why?”
Edhalan ran his hands a hand over his face.
“For all I know, the Elders themselves declared it so. Maybe to discourage uppity mortals such as yourself from learning our sacred tongue.”
Thisby nudged him with a furry shoulder.
“Aw, you really think I’m uppity? That’s sweet of you to say. And Vivienne said you didn’t like us.”
Vivienne, sitting quietly in a chair by the window with an introductory work on elven language propped open, popped her head up.
“I said no such thing! I simply said that Sir Edhalan might not be too fond of us for...” she trailed off before biting her lip. “And anyway, I don’t think you understand what ‘uppity’ means, you little pipsqueak.”
Thisby balled up the paper in her hand and tossed it at Vivienne’s head with a sound of outrage, which the human girl easily dodged.
“Pipsqueak! I’m a perfectly respectable dwarvish height of two feet and five inches, unlike some freakishly tall people I know.”
With a muttered word and a flick of her finger, Vivienne made the pile of books Thisby was standing collapse, making the dwarf tumble to the floor. Letting out a battelcry, Thisby hopped to her feet and pulled a simple yew wand out of her pocket.
“Rosemerta’s biting gnats!”
Vivienne yelped and started batting away invisible bugs as little red dots rose up on the exposed skin of her face and hands. Ducking, she pulled her own wand out and leveled it at her friend.
“Edelstein’s porcine glamor!”
Thisby rocked back, sporting a pig snout and floppy ears.
Edhalan sat in the middle, a resigned look on his face as more relatively harmless curses and hexes whistled past him. Snowball left Alvanue’s side to jump and claw at them, trying in vain to catch the pretty colors flashing over her. Alvanue was oblivious to it all, however, her thoughts still working slowly through her mind. She reached into her pocket and pulled out several little blue mushrooms, slightly bruised after the events of the day but still whole.
Five remained.
She weighed them in her hand, considering, before discretely tucking them under her pillow after making sure Edhalan wasn’t watching.
I need to talk to Elswane tomorrow, she thought. I’m going to need more. A lot more.
Then, tragedy.
Oh, Elders. I have so much homework to do!