So, for the next few days, Clara did as Holden told her. She spent most of her hours in the practice chamber, trying to get a grasp on this new method of casting spells. The warlock had been correct - she found it much slower to dredge up the proper emotions to fuel her magic, and then find the focus to shape it into an actual effect, compared to simply speaking an incantation. It was more flexible, though. She worked mostly with fire, and while it was easier to produce a consistent projectile made of fire with the predetermined spell, that was all it could accomplish. With her imagination shaping the magic, she was able to twist the fire into different shapes, or split it off into several smaller bolts.
She did get better as the days passed. After a few days spent in the basement chamber, and a fair number of new scorch marks on the wall, she felt that she was able to conjure up flames with enough reliability. But… there was that thing that Holden had done to defend against her. He had formed shadows - or, more accurately, some sort of dark energy - into a solid barrier, which was not something any of the spells she knew were capable of. It had to be of a similar principle to the curses she used, though; they caused a sort of darkness to settle around their victims.
She spent the next day trying to figure it out. If the magic was shaped purely by her mental image, all she needed to do was imagine darkness taking a physical form.
It turned out to be more difficult than she thought. Fire was easy to imagine; it was something that existed without magic, and conjuring up an idea of how it should act presented little difficulty. But turning the stuff of shadows into something more tangible was in direct contention with natural laws. By the end of the day, all she had managed was some wispy tendrils of smokelike energy that had little substance.
“Remarkable, I must say again,” she heard from the behind her, just after she’d made that bit of progress. Whirling towards the door, she saw Holden standing there, observing. “To be capable of even that small display, after only seeing it once… I was right to recruit you to our cause, Miss Elwin.”
“It’s nothing useful, yet,” Clara responded.
“No need to be hard on yourself. Manipulating the shadows can be one of the most difficult parts of our discipline to get a grasp on. In truth, it should beyond your current expertise; I was going to provide some instruction on it when I felt you prepared, but it seems you have made that unnecessary. Tell me, have you spent a single free moment outside this chamber since you arrived?”
“I… No. Not really.”
“Your diligence does you well, but it would do none of us any good if you burned yourself out. I bid you rest for the remainder of the night. You have clearly made great strides in a mere week, and I have something of a test prepared for you in the morning.”
Clara opened her mouth to argue, but… she had no idea what sort of test might be awaiting her, how harsh of a teacher Holden might prove to be. “Fine,” she said instead. “I was about finished for the night, anyway,” she lied. Holden gave her a nod and exited the room. Clara followed a few moments later, suppressing the urge to disobey and simply continue practicing.
As she made her way back through the halls of the manor, she noticed that it was nearly empty of servants, and there was no sunlight streaming through the windows. Surely it wasn’t that late already. Had she really spent so long in the basement chamber? And it had already been a week since she arrived? Perhaps she had been unduly focused on practicing.
That thought was reinforced by hunger clawing at her stomach, making her realize that she hadn’t eaten since waking up; during her time practicing, she maintained such focus that mortal concerns like sustenance tended to slip her mind. She took a detour to the manor’s kitchen on her way back to her quarters. The cook had already retired for the evening, and scant leftovers were all that remained, but food was food - in fact, it was something of a challenge to fill a plate to take with her rather than wolf it down then and there.
Once she was in her room and fed, her thoughts turned towards sleep. There was little reason not to end the day, but something rankled her about following Holden’s commands. It was irrational, of course - she had traveled to the capital at his behest to learn from him, after all - yet that didn’t stop her from feeling some… discontent at the situation. Where had all her optimism from just a week ago fled to? She sighed to herself as she slipped into bed and grabbed for the tome that had led her here. Useless to her, now, according to Holden, but studying it felt like disobeying Holden, in some small way. Despite that, she found herself drifting off to sleep only minutes after opening the grimoire.
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Early the following morning, a servant was sent to Clara’s room to inform her that Holden was waiting for her in the basement chamber. As she made the short walk through the manor, her mind burned with curiosity at what might be in store for today’s test. Would he merely observe her spellcasting and give her advice again? The way he posed the test made it sound like it would be more involved than that. Perhaps Holden would summon a demon for her to practice against - there were several sorts of subspecies of them that grimoire mentioned in passing, though imps were the only ones with much detail or instructions for summoning. Holden’s imp had mentioned that they were in possession of more advanced tomes; perhaps she would receive one today, though now that spell formulae were somewhat obsolete she’d no idea what any further tomes might teach her.
When she arrived in the training room, Holden was present and accompanied by someone else - a thin boy who couldn’t be far from Clara in age. With his brown hair and eyes, homespun garments, and the sturdy but plain quarterstaff resting on his shoulder, he was the spitting image of what Clara envisioned the average commoner to look like.
“Good evening, Miss Elwin,” Holden said as she entered the room. “I trust you took my advice to heart and rested well for today’s exercise. Allow me to introduce you to Jak of Garen’s Well. Jak, this is Clara Elwin of Almerra, another promising student.”
“Uh, well met, milady,” Jak directed at Clara with an awkward, uncertain bow.
Clara opened her mouth to respond, but Holden cut in first. “No need for that, Jak. Miss Elwin has been well and thoroughly disinherited; titling her so is sure to bring only pain.” Clara couldn’t stop herself from glaring at the warlock, though he continued on without noticing. “You are both possessed of similar skill, so I think this a good opportunity to see just how well-matched you are. Today, the both of you will duel.”
“Y’want us to fight, Master Holden?” Jak questioned. “Ain’t that a bit dangerous?”
“I shouldn’t think so, unless you deliberately attempt to cause undue harm. A few burns will not be life-threatening. Take up your positions, here and here,” Holden said, motioning to two spots at either end of the chamber. Clara stepped over to one of them, facing Jak at the far end of the room. “On my signal, you will attempt to incapacitate your opponent in whatever manner seems appropriate. Please try not to kill each other. Start,” he commanded, raising one hand up and then scything it down.
Despite his lack of enthusiasm, Jak was quick to follow Holden’s order, giving Clara little time to formulate a battle plan. As soon as Holden’s hand reached the end of its arc, Jak extended his hand and shot a volley of flaming projectiles at Clara - without an incantation, so it seemed Jak was privy to that bit of information.
Clara darted to the side, avoiding the fireballs as they blazed past her. She hadn’t had any luck in controlling their course once they were in the air, and correctly guessed that Jak had encountered the same, as they streaked by in straight lines. A fire was already starting to build in her hand as she dodged, and she hurled it at Jak.
The boy wasn’t as quick with his spells as Clara was, after her week of practice. He was slow to produce a new flame that shot out to intercept Clara’s, the two projectiles meeting in the air and terminating in a large conflagration, dangerously close to Jak. He leapt through the flames as they guttered out, his quarterstaff whirling down towards Clara’s head.
Clara shifted, trying to bring her own staff up to defend. She wasn’t quick enough, but the motion caused Jak’s swing to hit her shoulder instead of the top of her skull. The strike drew a gasp of pain out of Clara, her grip on her weapon weakening. In the split second it took for Jak to bring his staff around for another swing, Clara lashed out with a wide but short-ranged spray of fire that forced her opponent to dance back, away from her.
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That had been smart of the boy. It was clear, even from their brief exchange, that she was the more skilled spellcaster - but Jak was more skilled with a weapon, and it was hard to focus on spells when someone was beating on you with a large stick. Now that she knew to expect it, however, she could defend against his attempts to close the distance. Jak seemed to realize that, as well, as he prowled a short distance away, measuring her.
If she tried to cast a spell first, he could use that as an opportunity to close in again. If he tried to close in first, she could repel him. What was the correct action?
As Clara mulled over her options, Jak acted in a way she did not expect. He spoke an incantation, and wisps of shadow streamed from him to wrap around Clara. A stupid thing for her to overlook; just because she hadn’t figured out how to use shadow magic without incantations didn’t mean it had left her - or Jak’s - repertoire.
At the shadows’ touch, rational thought ceased. Wherever the shadows contacted her they brought terrible, searing pain, as if a thousand burning needles were jabbing into her flesh. She howled in agony, wanted to slump to the ground and let it drag her into sweet unconsciousness. A small, distant part of her acknowledged that was probably her best recourse - this duel ultimately meant nothing whether she won or lost, and she only prolonged being in pain by continuing to fight.
That small part of her was drowned out by the tremendous pain, and more importantly, by the raging inferno inside of her. Where her anger at Holden had built a serviceable fire, the unnatural torment that wracked her body kindled it into something greater, more powerful. Everything around her, even the pain, seemed to fade away in comparison to that hellish inferno.
She grabbed hold of it, forced it to obey her will. It was eager to respond to her, though not with the intensity she would have expected from how brightly it burned. As she started to shape that raw energy into a spell she felt that, despite how fierce it was, a relatively small reservoir of power dwelled within her.
Regardless, it would be enough for what she intended. The caress of the burning tendrils on her skin gave her some idea of how to shape the magic, but she worked mostly by instinct. Shadows exploded from her in the brief moment it took for Jak to follow up his curse with a lunge towards her. They were more solid than the ones that afflicted her, and they curled around Jak like limbs, holding him in place mid-swing. Their painful properties were undiminished, and Jak let out a cry as he dangled in the air.
“I said I would rather you not kill each other,” Holden’s voice called from the edge of the room, pulling Clara out of her trance with a start. Another tendril had formed around her before she realized what she was doing - its edges were sharp like a blade, and she had been directing it towards Jak’s throat. She let it melt away with a shudder, and had the others set Jak down. Once they were formed, moving them required no more thought than moving a limb.
“That will be Miss Elwin’s victory,” the warlock declared with an approving nod in her direction. “I am quite satisfied with how this turned out. I would like for you two to continue sparring while you stay here. Perhaps not every day, nor with as much vigour,” he said with a glance towards Jak. The boy was breathing raggedly, leaning on his staff for support. Clara realized that she wasn’t doing much better, with her breathing heavy, her arm numb, and nausea burning in her stomach. She staggered towards the wall without responding to Holden and let herself collapse against it, sliding into a seated position. “For now,” Holden continued on, despite the lack of response, “I believe you should both get some rest.”
Holden turned to leave the basement, and Jak staggered towards the door a few moments later. Clara stayed where she was seated, thinking. The magic had taken control of her once more, almost driving her to commit a cold-blooded murder. She shuddered, wondering how bad it might get in the future. Would she be unable to stop herself, next time? Neither Holden or Jak had commented on it, so it must not be uncommon among their shared discipline. She had to speak with them about it, see if there was some way to curtail the influence it had on her mind.
Problems for a later time, though. She pulled herself to her feet with some difficulty and returned to her room.
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After about an hour of laying in her bed, recovering, Clara found that she could remain at rest no longer. The siren song of the training chambers called to her; during the duel she had used shadow magic without an incantation, and she wanted to see if she could replicate it in a more stable mental state. Though her shoulder still throbbed, the pain that had wracked her had fled with the spell, and an hour of rest had dispelled the nausea and shortness of breath that had come with it.
On her way down to the basement, she caught sight of Jak headed in the same direction. Quickening her stride to catch up to him, she fell in beside her fellow student.
“I see that I am not the only one incapable of staying idle,” she said. Jak halted in surprise for a moment when she spoke up, then bobbed a small bow to her.
“Guess not, mil- uh, Miss Elwin. Figured I should practice some more, since you beat me an’ all.”
“Ah, yes. I should apologize for that incident; the magic… got a touch out of my control.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to say sorry about. Had it happen to m’self, a couple times. Holden tells me it’s common in new students, since it’s all based on how you’re feelin’ an’ stuff an’ we ain’t used to that, yet. Should settle over time, or so he says, an’ he knows more about it than either of us. Anyway, you didn’t kill me, so don’t worry about it.”
“That’s… reassuring, I suppose. How did you find yourself under Holden’s tutelage?”
“Tute.. Oh, him teachin’ me? Well, Garen’s Well is a pretty small village out in the march t’the east,” Jak said, motioning in a direction that Clara wasn’t sure was actually east. “Goblins and that type’f thing like to raid us fer livestock, an’ last winter was pretty bad. Big ol’ brute of a goblin started leadin’ ‘em, makin’ more coordinated attacks. But Holden shows up, talkin’ about how he’s gonna deal with them. Priest said he was an infernalist; that turned out true, I guess, but he helped. Church didn’t. No lord showed up to help. Rest of the village was okay with lettin’ him do whatever he was gonna do, but didn’t want much to do with him outside of that. Me, I figured any man who’d show up an’ help us without askin’ anythin’ in return was worth followin’, so I asked him t’ teach me, an’ now here I am.”
Clara almost laughed at how strikingly similar Jak’s story was to how Gideon joined the Order. “How altruistic of him,” she said instead.
“Aye, that it was. How’d you end up here, anyway?”
She drummed her fingers against her thigh for a moment before answering. “He sold me a book that he claimed would help me learn magic. That turned out true, I suppose, though a different sort of magic than I expected.”
“Huh. Sounds almost like he tricked you.”
“In a way, he did, though it was at least equally my fault for not inquiring further before the purchase. Considering how infernalism is treated and the fact that I learned from his book even knowing that, I cannot assign him much blame,” Clara said, and almost meant it. Being deceived by Holden still irked her, but she had a feeling that she shouldn’t badmouth her mentor while she was staying at his manor, free of charge, all the while benefiting from his tutelage.
Jak nodded sagely. “He’s just lookin’ to help, he is. The goblin thing might’ve been unfortunate, but full glad am I that it ended up bringin’ Holden to my village. Glad you’re here, too; you’re better’n me, I gotta admit - for now,” he finished with a grin. By now they had reached the door to the basement, and Jak motioned towards it. “You mind givin’ me a few pointers?”
“I know little more than you, I’m afraid,” Clara said as she pushed open the door and stepped down the stairs into the training hall. “All I have really done since arriving here is spend my waking hours throwing fire at the wall.”
“So it’s jus’ down to repetition, huh… Th’ shadows, though? You managed ‘em without any words during our duel.”
“That was barely any of my doing,” Clara admitted. “The magic merely acted through me - or so it felt. With the pain from your curse, I cannot really say that I was thinking straight.”
“Hm. Could y’summon ‘em again right now, y’think?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps? I can try, at least.”
She turned to face the wall that had already suffered so much punishment and closed her eyes. “I am not sure if it is the same for you, but I sort of… visualize the magic as a fire burning within me. I imagine feeding my feelings into it as fuel, and channel that into spells.”
“Aye, that sounds about like how Holden taught me do things.”
“Wonderful. Fire is easy to channel, isn’t it? We know how a fire should work. Darkness - at least as infernalism uses it - I find a bit trickier to envision, as the stuff that we evoke with our spells is too dissimilar to any natural phenomena. It almost feels a misnomer to call them spells, now that I think about it; the effects that we conjure are much more loosely defined than what I know of arcane magic,” she mused as she held on to the mental image of the flame she had kindled. Jak provided no response to her meandering aside, so she continued on. “I tapped into something that allowed me to give form to darkness during our duel, so… ah, was it that simple?”
The conceptualization of fire dominated Clara’s mind, and around it was nothing, a pure black void. But perhaps it wasn’t nothing? The flame was merely a representation of the infernal energies that had come to rest within her soul… and perhaps the darkness surrounding it was part of that same representation. She couldn’t quite explain how she did it, even to herself, but she took hold of that void of light and imagined it taking form in the material world. The flame dwindled, the darkness gained ground, and when she opened her eyes a small tendril of deepest night had extended from her hand to brush the wall.
“It seems that I can replicate it,” she said, turning to Jak with a smile. “Darkness surrounds the flame, and I thought it merely a void - but it is not. It is the other half of the infernal energies we have taken upon ourselves. I hope that makes some amount of sense?”
Jak shrugged and turned towards the wall himself, closing his eyes. His face scrunched up in concentration for a solid minute, but nothing else happened. “No luck,” he said as he finally opened his eyes.
“I see. Well, I do have an extra week’s worth of training on you, on top of - I assume - a slightly more robust magical education. I am sure you will figure it out, soon. For now, perhaps you should start with the same exercises I did when I arrived?”
“Throwin’ fire at the wall, wasn’t it? Easy enough,” Jak replied, and then started doing exactly that.