Late that evening Kori decided to finally head back to the brood chambers, slowly plodding along through the various tunnels and chambers on her way. Lines left by tears already scrubbed from her scales but her eyes still bleary and downcast as she ignores the looks from the various passers by.
Entering the main chamber of the hatchery she sees Korse pacing about, the minders giving him space, worried looks all around.
“There you are!” Korse yells as she enters, “Where have you been? Ylst said she sent you back hours ago, we’ve all been worried.” He runs over to her and grabs her by the shoulders, looking her up and down and focusing in on her face.
“I needed to be alone a bit… I went and watched the fishers haul in their catch… Not like I had anything else to do…” She sullenly responds, clearly still not in the mood to be personable.
“She told me what happened… I’m sorry Kori…”
“Why should you be sorry?” Her voice raising as she continues, “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I… I… Failed… I can’t do it. I’ve tried and tried… It doesn’t matter what I do, I just can’t learn that dumb Skill…” The only recently banished tears threaten to make a return in her eyes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now… Elder Ylst said I’d get a new apprenticeship, that she was going to try to help… but I don’t know…”
Korse releases her shoulders and beckons Kori over to sit with him. “Oh Kori… Some things just aren’t meant to be.” He looks to her ponderously, “Did the Elder say what she meant when she said she’d try to help?”
“She only said that she’d have to discuss it with someone first, not even who it was she needed to talk to…” Shaking her head. “And that if I was willing to try it, it might be the single most difficult option for any apprentice… But that if I did it, there might still be a way for me to learn how to use magic.” A note of desperation entering her voice as she reaches the end.
“She said that did she?” Korse scrubs his hand across his muzzle in thought, his brow crinkling and a deep frown forming. “I think I may need to go have a word with the Elder… If she means what I think she does… I would advise against taking that route dear, but it is up to you.”
“What is it? Why do you both talk like it’s going to be harder than giving up on ever using magic? I don’t want to give up, I won’t give up.”
“Why don’t you go rest. It’s been a hard day. I’ll know more in the morning; we can discuss this again when I know for certain and you’ve a clearer head.”
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The night passes fitfully in a blur of interrupted sleep, tossing and turning, recriminations, self criticism and intermittent tears, all while starring aimlessly at the ceiling of her den. At several points throughout the night she even tries to go through the [Mana Control] exercises once again, pooling a little of her mana, just a little this time, in her hands, releasing it slowly, quickly, even trying to hold it in her mouth, all without a change in the results of her efforts. She forces herself to stop as her mana dwindles once again, not willing to repeat the previous days mistake.
As morning arrives and she hears her siblings all getting ready for the day, Kori lays there and tries to shut out the noise.
It’s like before, they all have their apprenticeships to go to and I’m stuck back here…
When she doesn’t emerge from her den, used to walking with his sister each morning, Plk checks on her. Poking his head into her little cubby only to be rebuffed, Kori yelling at him. “Go Away… I’m not an apprentice anymore… They kicked me out cause I couldn’t learn the stupid Skill. Might as well go back to calling me a hatchling…”
“What? Oh. Oh no. I’m sorry Kori…”
“Why’s everyone keep saying that. It’s not your fault, I’m the one too dumb to learn a stupid skill! Even a brute like Ury could manage it… Go away, go learn magic and leave me alone.” Rolling over to turn her back on her brother, she doesn’t listen to his attempts to comfort her, to assuage her feelings. She doesn’t see the hurt look he gives her before eventually leaving to make his walk alone.
Korse’s arrival is met with an empty brood chamber, the minders not having even realized that Kori hadn’t left with her siblings, nor even emerged eaten a meal. She hears the faint echoes of their discussion in the main chamber, only making out enough to hear her own name and to gather that he was telling them what had happened. Soon after a shadow appears over the entry to her den, “I think it’s about time you got up Kori. It won’t do you any good hiding away in here all day and we’ve a discussion to pick back up from.”
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“What’s the use? I failed… I’m a failure… It doesn’t matter if I get another apprenticeship, they’ll know that I’m there because I failed, that I would rather be back at the training grounds trying, and failing, to learn magic…”
“Oh, that’s about enough of that youngling.” His tone harsher than Kori can ever recall it being, “You’ll get out here, eat your breakfast, and we will discuss what happens next. Elder Ylst had to argue long and hard to get this opportunity for you, an opportunity I argued against I might add, and I won’t have you put her efforts to waste over self pity.”
“Argued against?! Why wouldn’t you want me to have another chance to learn magic…” A bit of a fire returning to her voice, “I can’t believe you’d fight against that, why?”
“Well, you’ll have to come out here and eat something if you want to find out.” A mischievous tone entering his voice as he speaks. He knows full well that she can’t abide an unanswered question.
Without looking to see that she’s following, Korse walks away from her den and towards the little table of stone he frequently works at.
Kori, grudgingly and grumblingly, crawls out from her den and follows across the floor of the brood chamber, avoiding the pitying gazes cast her way from the other minders. She sees that food has been set out on Korse’s table, a portion of pale skinny fish like what she saw hauled in the day before sitting atop a bed of cave moss dressed with a bit of oil. Sitting down in front of the laid out breakfast that he points her to and opening her mouth to ask her question once again, she’s interrupted “Food first”, pushing the shale platter closer to her.
After a quick meal, eaten mechanically and that she barely tasted, she finally asks again, the question she’s asked more times in her short life than any other.
“Why?”
“There are many reasons, first that it is as Elder Ylst said, the single most difficult apprenticeship open to a youngling. The second that it breaks a tradition older than I am. And the last is that I do not believe it to be the right path for you.”
“What is it then? Neither You or Ylst have actually said what you want, or don’t want, me to do. Just that it’s going to be hard and that someone had to be convinced to allow it.” Kori raising her voice again, frustrated with the secrecy of what her future will be.
“Did Ylst tell you that she had been arguing, for weeks apparently, with Chief Ortik to try to keep you with the mages? Did she tell you why that wasn’t possible?” Korse returns her question with one of his own, still evading the topic but seeming to get a bit closer to what Kori desperately wanted answered at least.
“No, only that he wouldn’t budge…”
“If there is one thing to be said about Chieftain Ortik, it is that he is strict about the rules. ‘Traditions may bend, but rules exist for a reason. Unless you can convince me the whole rule is wrong, then there will be no exceptions to it.’ Was in the end his response to Ylst.” His imitation not particularly good, but clear enough. “And even still she kept arguing, but like she said, he wouldn’t budge.”
“It turned out that that one phrase, spoken repeatedly in various ways by the Chieftain, was both the end of your chance at becoming a mage and the opening that Elder Ylst needed to get the Chief to break a long standing tradition and agree to take you on as an apprentice shaman. Not just any apprentice shaman either, as the rules would not allow that, but to take you on as his personal apprentice.”
“A shaman? Wait, ‘personal apprentice’? As in directly taught by the chieftain of our entire clan?” Kori’s surprise showing in her wide eyes and open jaws, clearly this was not one of the many options she had considered. “I just thought Elder Ylst was trying to get one of the old, retired mages to take me on personally or something…” She mumbles out, still in shock.
“Oh, she tried that too, but again, rules are rules. The Circle, as the shamans call themselves choose apprentices rarely and always early before any of the other Elders get their say. Traditionally it is something about ‘The Spirit’s blessing’, which is to say the Circle gathers, communes with the spirits, and take on only those who the spirits choose. The important part of this is that it is a tradition, not a rule, and this is where Ylst struck, using his own words against him.” Korse pauses a look of incredulity and a bit of smug satisfaction on his face. “She had a lot of nerve to make that argument, you must have made an impression for her to go that far.”
“Now there is a rather important rule about apprentices when it comes to the shamans, the leader of the Circle, who happens to also be the chieftain, may take a personal apprentice of his choosing to teach and to be his aid. Traditionally this is one of the older apprentices already versed in their ways or even a fully classed shaman, but there is no rule saying it must be, or even that it be an apprentice to the Circle. Just that they may take any apprentice of their choosing” Shaking his head in disbelief, that the argument held.
“So Elder Ylst argued that because it’s not against the rules for him to take me, and he himself said that traditions can be bent if needed, that he should take me on personally?” Her jaw having opened wider and wider as Korse finally explained the situation, now simply hanging slack in disbelief and also a bit of awe for Ylst’s tactics.
“Just so, yes. It seems that while Spiritcaller Ortik has not taken an apprentice for many, many years, that will end today.”