Mage Hark maintained a sour face throughout the journey, seated in the carriage as it bobbed and bounced around on the road. Each time the carriage bumped into a particularly large stone or hole, his expression fouled up even more.
“You’re going to constipate yourself.” Mage Lakan said, making Mage Lara chuckle.
“This isn’t as fast as a hovercoach, we will probably spend a couple of days on the journey.” She remarked.
“Yeah that’s correct. We’re going to stop over at a few villages as well.” Lakan said, smiling at Hark. “So Hark here will have ample opportunity to rest his sore body.”
“On our way back I’m speeding.” Hark said. Lakan Shrugged as the wheeled caravan made its way towards the Aku’anda/Pirun Border…
--
The Lord Mage meetings had resumed their regular monotony and Lord Daron couldn’t be happier. Yes boring meetings weren’t the best, but they were better than the past few weeks of palpitation and suspense.
A Lord mage meeting had just been completed, however, Lord Daron was talking with Lord Fugap and a few others about the price of leather that was being imported from Skipia, a country to the far north. The skipians had a painfully primitive understanding of magic but they were good hunters.
As the conversation progressed, they headed out towards the street, where they would soon disperse. Mage Mullam happened to them. He bowed slightly to greet the Lord mages.
“Mullam,” Lord Daron greeted warmly, the other Lord Mages greeted too. There were so few Elite mages that almost everyone with interest in Aku’andan politics knew every single one of them by name.
Addressing him by his last name, Mullam said, “My Lord Fulba, I was on my way to the main school to delve into how Ganz might have manipulated the system.”
“That sounds intriguing,” Looking at his fellow Lord mages and grinning. They all loved it when warfare mages came to scholars for help. There was a long standing rivalry between the two mage classes.
“Certainly, Mage Mullam, feel free to seek their guidance. They're eager to assist” Lord Kardo teased and the other Lords laughed. Mage mullam smiled. He wasn’t personally bothered by the rivalry, caring more about knowledge and ideas more than petty politics, though he occasionally indulged in the jest.
After a brief exchange, he left.
He walked towards the large common area that housed the great Bolak hall, noting the office just attached to it, where their previous meetings had taken place, to the left, there were various administrative buildings and classrooms, More classrooms to the right, as well as a large library. Far off into the distance, there were yet more academic buildings. Mage Mullam went left, walking on the pathways designed for foot travel, lined with magically trimmed hedges and nasturtiums of red and yellow. After walking down that road a while he took another left and walked into one of the buildings.
Inside, there was a magically cooled room where there were various tables arranged in a grid pattern. Each table was a massive U shaped furniture with a single chair in the gap. Scholar mages were excessive, Mullam thought. Various tables were occupied by mages who were writing, thinking and occasionally asking each other questions.
“Hello Everyone!” Mage mullam greeted. They greeted him in return. He then went to a particular table, it was close to a window and had a woman in her late twenties seated there. He sat opposite her and grinned.
“Hello my love.” he said. She shushed him and smiled back.
“If you’re gonna keep calling me that, just formally ask me out.” she chuckled.
“Is that a romantic invitation?” he asked coyly. She shrugged, smiling.
“We will see, however today, I’m here for a different reason.” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Well, Ms Roska, I want to figure out how to break a spell dampener,” he said.
She kept staring at him, waiting for the punchline. When he told her that was it, she burst out laughing.
“What? Why would you want to do that?” she asked, laughing. “You can’t even do that.”
“Well Ganz forced our hand.” Mullam said.
“Ganz? Who?” She asked. Mullam raised an eyebrow.
“Ganz? The guy who conquered Pirun?” he asked rhetorically.
There was a short silence in which she was completely confused…
“Do you mean historically?” she asked in a confused voice.
“Well I’ll be damned, Roska, where have you been these past weeks?” Mullam gasped. “Well actually don’t answer that. I’m sure you’ve had your head buried in books for months.”
Scholars, ugh.
“Well yes, I HAVE had my head buried in books.” she said indignantly. “I have a difficult problem I’m solving now thank you very much.”
“Well I’m sure you know there’s a place called Pirun.” Mullam said.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Of course.” She said,
“Their capital city, Pirun City, was attacked by a person we now know as Ganz Lara a few weeks ago.” Mullam began. “He took over and he’s the king now.”
The confusion on Roska’s face was off the charts. Mullam spent the next 20 minutes explaining everything he knew to her in detail.
“Wow,” she said at last. “I had no idea.”
“Yes, so we need to figure out how to break a spell dampener.” Mullam said. “Are you with me?”
--
The Ricketies finally came into view of Pirun’s large capital city. Three days after they had left Aku’anda.
Lakan had glanced out of the carriage and informed the group.
“Finally,” Hark said. Shortly after, the carriages stopped for a short break and Hark decided to tap into the waves to see what was happening in Aku’anda.
Brought out his spell arsenal to check if he had any communication spells left, he did, about 5, he decided to use one of them. Invoking the spell, he closed his eyes and focused, listening in. He began to hear his own heart beat… after about 30 seconds, a second heartbeat joined the sound of his own. He smiled as the spell had connected. The sound of the heartbeats faded off and segi’s voice boomed into his ears as if he was surrounded by her vocal chords.
“Well hello there, Hark.” The voice said “How nice of you to wave at me.”
“Hello Segi, We’re currently in view of Pirun.” Hark said. “Any update from the rest of us?”
“Well I’m not in Aku’anda at the moment, I’m in Hiyagara.” Segi said. Hiyagara was a small border town between Aku'anda and Navon.
“But I was recently waved at by Binko and a couple of other mages.” Segi said.
“Mullam’s team involved the scholars, one girl named Roska and a man named Fillon, '' Segi continued. “Shuma and Deyion have also assembled teams, although they’re not very serious about it since they’re busy with keeping the peace. Criminal activity seems to be increasing in outer towns recently.”
Hark hoped that didn’t have anything to do with Ganz.
“Does Mullam report any advances towards solving the problem?” Hark asked.
“Mullam tells me they don’t even know where to begin.” Segi’s voice boomed as she laughed.”Roska was working on a tri-link wave spell that’s actually usable when they yanked her out of her study. She says not even scholars have examined the magic behind spell dampeners for decades.”
“Damn they probably should have left her alone,” Hark laughed. “The current Tri-link spells are abysmal. 15 runic paragraphs to bind one connection? That’s absurd.”
“She got it down to 9 paragraphs already.” Segi said. “Still unusable but that’s pretty impressive. Anyway I have to go, I’m on the tail of a cannibal at the moment.”
“A what??” Hark exclaimed.
“Yeah, I know.” Segi sighed. “I’ll tell you all about it later. Bye bye”
“Her heartbeat suddenly increased in volume. A few seconds later he began to hear his own heartbeat too. Then her heartbeat stopped followed by his own. He turned around to see Lakan looking at him.
“Wave spell with who?” Lakan asked.
“Segi.” Hark said. “She’s currently in Hiyagara, chasing a man-eating person.”
Lakan chuckled.
“There’s also now a 9 paragraph tri-link wave spell.” Hark continued.
“Still useless,” Lara interjected, entering the conversation. “Any update on the spell dampener?”
“No, Hark said.” The Caravan roused and got ready to leave, they were invited back into their coach, once sitted, the movement continued towards the Capital city of Pirun.
--
Nyubi stared at the paper in front of her, and glanced around to see the others that were sitted, also glancing at their own papers. In front, Mage Saulmon was writing on the board, a start time and an end time.
“You have two hours for this exam. And it’s graded on a curve. Ensure you land in that top 15% if you truly want to qualify for the warfare mage program.” he said. “It is a hard and intellectually demanding exercise, Much harder now than ever before because of the decision to fast track training. So only the most talented and hardworking people will make the cut.”
He glanced around, his gaze landing briefly on Nyubi and Dodi. Everyone knew they would make the cut, they were both much, much far ahead of anyone else in their peer group.
“Your time starts now.”
Everyone opened the page. Nyubi did too, she read through the problems, they were easy. She looked around and saw other students straining, one even clasped his head in shock and confusion. She was surprised, these were easy peasy questions.
“The exam was two hours, Dodi finished in 15 minutes.” Nyubi rolled her eyes, knowing he rushed through just to show off how smart he was. Then she went back to work.
45 minutes in, when she had cross-checked all her answers multiple times, she submitted and walked out.
The results came in the very next day, and she was top, scoring a perfect score. Dodi came third. Much to his chagrin.
“Who the hell is this? Zoyi Kana?” he complained to Nyubi, holding up a copy of the result sheet.
“Well someone who bested you by literally sitting for an exam for more than 15 minutes.” Nyubi retorted. “You never check your work!”
“I was so sure I didn’t get anything wrong.” he whined, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.
“Just be thankful you made the cut.” Nyubi said. Dodi laughed.
“Of course I made the cut.” he declared confidently. Nyubi rolled her eyes at his arrogance.
“Yeah you’re almost as smart as I am.” Nyubi said.
“Oh hell no!” Dodi exclaimed and grabbed her, she laughed and faked an escape as they tumbled around on the grass.
The following day, they were up early and headed down to the warfare training center where mage Saulmon and Mage Segi Arabambi were there to meet them. There were only 10 students, Dodi finally got to see who bested him, she was a relatively unknown and quiet student who had been third best for the entirety of Dodi’s schooling. He never even paid attention to her because he was always focused on beating Nyubi. He walked up to her and shook her hand. She initially seemd surprised that he approached her, stammered a little, then shook his hand while smiling awkwardly at him.
“Does she like me…?” Dodi began to wonder when Nyubi came out of nowhere and jumped on his back. The last thing he saw was Zoyi becoming tight-lipped as Nyubi drew his attention away with her theatrics.