Blood dripped down Cass’s cheek, the cut was just below her eye. If the fragment of the shattered crystal had been just a little higher, she would have lost it. The pain was terrible, not because of the explosion and the shattered fragments embedded in her arm, but because Cass had instinctively tried to pull away and go against Evan’s commands.

It was worse than the previous time, as if the phantom knives she had felt before had been heated.

“You may move.” Cas heard the command just as Evan’s slapped her hard across the face. She fell backward onto the floor, brought back to reality by the hit. Her throat hurt… She must have been screaming, but Cass had not even noticed. She had been released from the torture of the collar, but she did not get up off the ground, merely sat there panting.

This turned out to be a bad idea, as the mage Hall kicker her out of his way as he approached his teacher.

“Utterly ridiculous!” Hall was shouting angrily. “Even with the Glyph and her Inheritance, a dreg from the gutter could not possibly have that much power!”

“And yet,” Evan’s watched her as she lay clutching her stomach and bleeding on the floor. “We have the evidence right in front of us. Considering we had thought it impossible for a mage to survive the tattooing process at all, perhaps we overlooked something important.”

He walked over to Cass, and as she began to recover she noticed that despite being close to the exploding crystal as well, the old mage was completely unharmed.

“Child,” He was a tall man, and with her just sitting up on the ground he towered over her, projecting an intimidating air. “Tell me your name.”

“Cass.” She blurted out, the answer had come without her trying to, the collar could even make her answer questions!

“My lord,” she added belatedly, not wanting to be beaten for a lack of respect.

Hall was surprised, “Cass? But a name like that… Are you from a fallen family?”

The reason Cass avoided saying her name on the streets was because it was a name typically only used by the nobility. Their were worse results from having that kind of name than simply be beaten for arrogance.

Cass did not know much about it, but Noble society could apparently be as cutthroat as the streets. And very, very rarely, a noble family would end up homeless themselves. It almost never happens, and often would only be a small part of the family that ended up on the streets, but the treatment those people received was horrific. It was better not to think about it…

Cass noticed that she did not have to answer Hall’s question, the collar did not force her to speak. However, she had been thinking too long already and she could see his anger rising.

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“No my lord,” Cass hurriedly spoke. “My mother apparently was a washerwoman, but she died soon after I was born.”

“You are lying.” Hall’s eyes simmered with rage and Cass cowered as he loomed over her. “No orphan off the street could speak so well, your diction and pronunciation lack the taint of the gutter.”

Cass cringed and tried to back away, bumping into a counter. “No my lord! I swear I am not lying, a priestess at the Church was kind to me and helped me to speak properly!”

“Ridiculous.” Hall spat, his anger boiling over.

“Sarius…” The old mage spoke once, and Hall stopped. Cass watched as the mage struggled to rein in his anger, and stiffly move away.

Before she could relax Lord Evans turned to her, “Answer me, did you speak the truth?”

“Yes my lord.” Again the collar pulled her answer from her throat, but she had the wherewithal to remember to call him lord this time.

“Interesting,” Evans said, but he didn’t seem interested at all. “So it seems there are still members of the Church that take their duties seriously. Your father would die of shock, Sarius.”

Sarius Hall did not answer, but his scowl deepened. The old mage was silent for a while, seemingly pondering something.

Cass took a deep breath, and decided to take a risk.

“My lord,” She spoke timidly, not wanting to risk more anger, but needing to understand her situation. “May I ask what that crystal was?”

“A Measuring Crystal,” To Cass’s surprise, the old mage answered easily. “Though the how’s and why’s are more complicated than you would understand, the short answer is that it can give us a rough estimate of a magic user’s Mana pool.”

Cass had no idea what a “Mana pool” was, but there was a larger question she had to follow up with.

“But my lord, I can’t have magic. I am a commoner, an orphan and a dreg.”

“No, you are some lord’s bastard.” To her even greater astonishment, it was Hall who answered this time. “Magic resides purely in noble blood, you had magic before the glyph was applied, therefore you must be from a noble bloodline.”

Then Hall sneered, “but don’t go thinking you are nobility. The filth and garbage that ran through your mother’s blood likely could dilute even the blood of kings.”

Cass had no real emotional attachment to her mother. All she knew about the woman had been told to her second hand by the managers of the orphanage before it was closed down.

“Do you know who your father is?” Evans left his thoughts to ask.

“No my lord,” Cass replied truthfully. “The people who ran the orphanage said that my mother never talked about him.”

“Well, it is immaterial.” He waved it away with a gnarled hand. “More importantly, we need to begin teaching you magic.”

Again, his formerly empty eyes contained a gleam. “It seems through sheer luck, we have gained a weapon far beyond what we had hoped.”

Then he ordered Cass to obey Hall’s words as if it were his own and called over the guards to attend to Cass’s still bleeding arm. After that, he spoke quietly to his apprentice for a moment and left.

Hall sighed in frustration, and turned to Cass. “So it falls to me to teach you magic. Given what you are, a polluted mix blood, I cannot hope for talent. Regardless, if you make any trouble for me I will show you precisely what magic can do.”

He didn’t really ask a question, or seem to be expecting an answer, but Cass nodded just in case. She felt lightheaded, and not from blood loss. On top of the chaos of the past two days the idea that they would teach her magic was unbelievable. She had heard that magic users ate souls, and that they did so because they lost their own as the price to learn magic. Remembering the empty eyes of the mage, Lord Evans, Cass wondered if those rumors she had dismissed were actually true.

She could not fathom that she would learn magic, Cass did not even really know what magic was. But what she did know was that Hall’s threat was undoubtedly real, and with the orders Evans gave her to obey him, she had to do what he said or suffer.

She looked at her freshly bandaged arm and wondered if she would survive this, and even if she did, what would happen after they were done with her.