26th of Taka, 1000, late afternoon

Desert outside Fort Kitapüru,

Mandy yawned. It was really too early. Well not early in general but early for her. She’d had a another shift on the pookkalam which was, in a word, boring. Who knew that being a mage was so much sitting around waiting for your nguvu to accumulate.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. In the stories, the magenta mage stories, she was always racing around in a rush, arriving just in time to drop her signature cast, magenta rays. Of course now that she shout about it there was only so many reasons to kill someone and if she was going to grow up she knew that killing people for steeling prised necklaces was a bit over the top.

She was less certain she wanted to be a mage now. Mické or Michie, she hadn’t decided which she preferred using, was trying to persuade her to become a spy. Why he thought he could persuade her father to allow that was beyond her comprehension. Dad was a captain, a perfectly respectable occupation, boring but respectable. It wasn’t as boring as mage.

Actually it wasn’t too bad being a mage if you were dong what the professor did. He seemed to spend most of his time buried in his journal but it had been really interesting fixing the pookkalam with him. Well sort of fixing it. It had been super scary when he was thrown off the top of the mage tower. Kind of cool too.

Seriously, she had heard about backlashes from Claudia, Miss Khumalo if she was in company. Nothing that Miss Khumalo said had prepared her for the shock of seeing two people flung more than a hundred meters horizontally in the blink of an eye by what she had latter decided was a poor formation of one sigils in a pile of powder.

Yeah and then there was that issue with the blood. A couple of random drops in the wrong place and that night they had almost melted the top floor of the mage tower. That was scary too. Who knew that blood did bad things to casting circles. Well, her dad but who… hang on. Her dad knew that blood did bad things to cast circles. He wasn’t a mage how did he know that. “What’s going on?”

“Shhh” a voice hissed at her.

She looked at the girl leading her through the desert ravines. There was so much to ask her but she was right. Couldn’t talk just yet.

Her mind went back to her dad. He was a confusing one. On one hand he seemed to read people well, was good a chess and games of strategy. On the other he didn’t seem to have a clue about the defence of the fort. He didn’t attack or try and whittle down the enemy he just sat in the fort and waited. He was a boring captain h=she decided.

What wasn’t boring was that pookkalam. She sniggered, almost out loud. Dad called it a pooky thingy. So silly. But The more she looked at what the professor was trying to do the more she realised that there was so much more that could be done and how powerful it was.

Like that blood problem. They hadn’t cleaned the circle properly and it had started to cause resonance within the circles drawing within it. Not the good kind of resonance you supposedly got when you amplified the strength of a cast by bouncing the nguvu off an aligned object. No this was like an whine that set you teeth on edge.

At first they hadn’t known what was happening and then when they had tried to fireball some advancing infantry fireball hadn’t expressed normally. Rather it had vibrated with the resonance distorting the containment bindings so that they failed, not on contact with an object, but as the molten magma, that gave them splash damage, was called forth to fill the bindings. The nguvu normally consumed in the bindings feedback into the summoning superheating the magma.

The whole thing had burst forth just outside the portion of Erica’s shield that was semi-formed to block eves droppers. They all would have been cooked in a instance but Erica had sensed an miscast early pushing an extra nu into the shield just in time to bounce the lot outside the fort.

The closest wall was off to the side of the enemies advance but it was as far as Erica could push it. She wouldn’t have got it that far except for the boost provided by the pookkalam itself and the elevated finesse score provided by Cindy who had been recalled to her spot for the fireball cast.

The upshot being that the nguvu drain had run the pool dangerously low so Silvia had halted further intervention. The enemy lost about ten percent of the attacking force. They realised that there had been a miscast and pushed harder for the walls. They had used calling ladders, wall hooks and other things to climb the walls.

The defenders had shot most of them of the walls as a group of archers managed to find a good vantage point. Still there had been some fighting on the walls and in the most bloody attack yet the defenders lost a significant portion of the experienced defenders. Her dad had been exhausted that night. He had fought on the walls and then been forced to talk to the wife, children and other dependants who remained.

Consequently when the professor suggested that we could experiment with some blood tastefully applied to the pookkalam, dad had almost killed him on the spot. It was only through gritted teeth that he was able to restrain himself long enough to remind the foolish man that blood sorcery was forbidden in the kingdom.

It was forbidden for good reason. She had learned that some time earlier but was reminded starkly then. Dad had to remind the professor that blood magic relied on the power inherent in a living being.

Mages chose to give their nguvu to power a cast. It was something accumulated in the body when the body was in the presence of the mage’s source. Everyone understood that a mage’s recoup value was an averaged value. If the mage was a sun source mage then as the sone rose in the sky their nguvu pool refiled more quickly. At night it did not stop, it was just slower. The opposite was true for night source mages.

Star source mages were typically more even and also less so. There was less difference between their peaks and troughs but there was no predictability for their swings. If there was a prominent star in the heavens then their recoup accelerated. Day or night had limited effect so they were a peculiar type of accumulator.

The strangest by far however might be those aligned with dust. There hadn’t been a human dust source castor as far as Mandy knew. It wasn’t even until about two years that HMCC had acknowledged there was a dust option.

But from observing the odd creature that had dust affinities they assumed some things. The pores of such a creature secreted some compound which when dried turned into some form of glittery dust. When this was thrown upon the air it dissolved into motes of light and the thrower was endued with nguvu.

However blood magic, sorcery, blood sorcery. She really had to get into the habit of using the HMCC approved terminology. Anyway blood sorcery relied on the letting of fresh blood onto the target magical receptacle. Then a truth, known by all, took over. The power of a thing resides in it’s blood. Not just nguvu but the power to live as well.

She hadn’t realised what that meant until her dad had dragged Clara out of bed and back to the pookkalam before the professor and made her show the foolish man her wound. Prior to the cast there were tears in the poor girls skin where a sharp edge to the rock that hit her had sliced a cut. Mandy knew that that wound had looked like. She had spied on her in the sanatorium when the medic had been tending her.

The cut had been bloody, messy and red. Overwhelmingly red, which stood out prominently against Clara’s white, almost porcelain white skin. When her farther had forced Clara to show everyone her wound a foul black puss oozed from the wound. The skin had turned brittle and black. She was deathly cold.

Dad had reprimanded Clara for not paying attention to her wound in the aftermath of the miscast. He had been immediately sent back her, not back to bed but off to the Sanatorium. Cindy was reduced to fresh tears and another round of gilt. But dad, anger wasn’t directed at her. It had been directed at Fitzhugh, Silvia and the professor for not maintaining the pookkalam correctly.

The professor had almost committed ritual suicide by incensed captain when he chose to speak up at that point. Mandy was stunned when the professor said the wound was bad but surely the increase in power made it justifiable. He further said that it wasn’t his responsibility to clean, only to draw and contribute to the pookkalam recoup.

Mandy had been surviving her fathers volcanic temper for years. He never struck anyone but he knew how to use common to it’s fullest extent. He had been brought up by a tutor who had taught him that swearing displayed a lack of intellect, poor understanding of his own language and, worst of all, the creativity of floor sweeper. She always marvelled at his rages as a result.

This one was no exception. He had proceeded to belittle, insult and thoroughly chastise the professor for over eight minutes. In that time he did not repeat himself once, he didn’t raise his voice nor he didn’t resort to physical action. But everyone on the rooftop understood exactly how little the captain through of the professor. She sniggered, earning a glare from her desert guide, Fitzhugh had made notes he thought it was so inspiring.

She had herd some of the insults before. Not all of them granted. Her dad was a man of contradictions. Infuriatingly old fashioned and conservative one moment. Inspiring, original and full of trust the next. He left nobody uncertain as to the non existent level of trust he placed in the professor.

He reminded the professor that he was supposed to control the pookkalam’s output by manipulating its physical expression. That he was supposed to make sure that people didn’t alter it, add to it or change it without his express knowledge. That not only had the professor failed to do that, he had failed twice. The first time could be put down to carelessness. The second indicated the professor was either traitorous or incompetent. He reminded everyone previous kings of both Miylan and Fujiama had executed people for less. That if he heard another comment about not being a cleaner the captain would make ensure it was all the professor would have time to do. If there was a third such failure… Well he had left the suggestion hanging.

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He had then remarked in an off the cuff nonchalant kind of way that if the professor really wanted to experiment with blood sorcery the captain would be willing to facilitate it. The professor stupidly misread her father, thinking him serious. Consequently he asked gleefully if there were prisoners to be made available for this. The captain had bluntly said that the only soul that would be drained in a blood ritual would be the castor’s. As such the professor better give everyone clear instructions as to what was to happen after his own soul, nguvu and very essence was sucked into the cast. The professor turned slightly green as he realised that dad was willing to do precisely what he promised.

Yes, dad was every bit the enigma. He wouldn’t trust her to pick a proper class. Trained her in a very limited selection of things so that she would have the option of poor choices when she reached level seven. He limited her time with males, any age it didn’t matter, forced her to learn magic, instructed her in the family’s personal martial art. Refused to let her join the army and then handed her of to the nearest guard to find traitors. Before sending her off into the desert with nothing more violent than a tooth pick to spy on the enemy’s mages. Trust, not trust. It was confusing.

Her thoughts might have continued in such a manner but she was yanked to the side, painfully crashing into the nearby canyon wall. She opened her mouth to protest when her guide clapped a hand over her mouth whilst pushing her firmly into a shadowy cleft in the rock. A moment later three armed Fujikan military men walked passed their location. For a minute they both remained motionless in the cleft. Before the guide slowly moved out eyes darting, ears pricked for any other patrols.

Finally satisfied there was nobody close, the guide approached Mandy, leaning in so closely that she could whisper right into Mandy’s ear. It was a deeply uncomfortable experience for Mandy. She liked her space and didn’t like anyone being that close but she appreciated it was required.

The guide whispered. “From here on we are very close to the mages discovered last night. There are frequent patrols around here. I have found a spot where we can watch them. No talking between here and that place. No sound at all.”

The guide started to pull back before changing her mind. “I know that your mind’s been on other things. Focus, now, here, or you will get us both killed.”

Mandy realised the guide was taller than she was and had bent slightly to talk. As she straightened Mandy couldn’t help herself. “What’s your name?” She hissed back.

With a look on her face somewhere between distracted and surprised the guide replied. “You can call me Helen.”

Mandy lost track of time as she and Helen dodged, wove and slunk through the rocky terrain avoiding patrols and the surprisingly viscous, territorial and large wildlife of the region. Eventually she found herself sprawled out on her belly peaking over a shear cliff at a camp below.

It wasn’t what she expected. Which wasn’t saying much. She didn’t know what she had expected. Slaves certainly not. Fujiama had outlawed slavery almost the same time as Miylan.

Looking in to the ravine before her she shaw a massive opulent tent set up at the head of the ravine. Before it, at the top of a gentle rise three robed individuals gazed back towards her fort, chatting amiably to each other.

As she watched three enslaved individuals wound their way through the more common tents occupying a lower level within the ravine. The two in front struggled with a large brass or bronze dish. The third trailing slave seemed quite at easy as he carried three large bronze rods. Reaching the elevated portion they turned, heading towards a stiffly guarded area. There the last slave set up the rods quickly so that they formed a solid stand. The other two heaving the bronze braised into place atop the legs.

Mandy watched curiously. The empty brazier joined the other four already lit ones. Job complete, the slaves headed back down deeper into the ravine. Other individuals started to move amongst the different braziers. The one alight they treated with care and concern. Every now and then one of the people wearing a gold choker would approach a lit brazier and toss something over the flames. Mandy couldn’t see what it was and it didn’t seem to have any effect that she could discern.

Helen nudged her. Pointing at the three mages she whispered at the very edge of Mandy’s hearing. “Watch they are moving. Watch because they do some trick and the braziers cast fireballs from the other end of the valley.”

Mandy watched.

The three mages approached the braziers, walking directly up to the empty brazier. One of them took a small pouch out of his, her, Mandy wasn’t sure, their, cloak. Then with exaggerated slowness measured a very small amount of, whatever the substance was, into the empty brazier. The exaggerated slowness the mage then proceeded to flick more of the contents towards the lit braziers.

Mandy had no idea what was going on. Belatedly she remembered that she should be reaching out with all her senses. Claudia, Miss Khumalo, had told her that great mages could sense the movement of nguvu.

A different mage stepped forward. Not touching the brazier the mage started to cast. Mandy recognised the hand movements even if she couldn’t hear the words being spoken. It was Max did casting a fireball. Sure enough a moment later a fireball appeared between the outstretched hands of the mage. At the size of a cart wheel it wasn’t a small one. The first mage paced his hands carefully on the shoulder of the castor. Then with a heaving motion they tossed the fireball into the brazier.

In surprise Mandy gasped. Not in surprise at the braziers. Yes, that was shocking. She had never heard of anyone being able to put an active cast of any description into a receptacle of any kind. She wanted to steel a brazier and stand. That was going to take some kind of planning. Three very large individuals had carried them here. Stealing a set? That was going to be a thing. Oh and she would also have to get some of whatever the other mage was sprinkling.

No the shocking then was that she felt nguvu bounce between the two mages as they tossed the fireball into the brazier. She didn’t know what it meant but there now seemed to be a tie of some description between the braziers and the two mages. It was with a measure of relief she now realised what one of the mages was doing with that extra nguvu.

They had underestimated Fujika. So concerned with their own advantages with the pookkalam they hadn’t realised that Fujiama had their own solution. Those braziers were obviously special in some way. She had initially thought they contained normal fire. But you couldn’t make a fireball with a lit flame. Natural fire and the contents of a fireball were fundamentally different. Oh how she wanted a brazier set.

Such was her desire she almost missed the almost imperceptible sucking feeling that permeated the atmosphere. It wasn’t felt with the five senses rather is was a suck of nguvu. Like sitting too close to the drain hole in the bath. A rush to fill a void. Others might have misunderstood what she was feeling but Mandy was being groomed by a father who wanted her to be something. She was always taught to be attentive.

A second gasp in as many seconds as she realised what she was looking at. “He’s a source mage.”

“A what?” Helen whispered her question.

“Super rare that’s what,” she whispered back. “To be a mage of any description you need an AGP of more than one. For most mages the highest grade is in one of the elements. Or as those in south call it, the expressions. They call it that because you have to be able to drop or express a cast. You can’t without a half grade, or better, in one of the elements. The other part is that you need to recoup nguvu. If you don’t have a zero grade in at least one source you recoup is so poor you fail mage bar.”

“Technically with two zero grades you could make mage but usually other requirements are too low so that doesn’t happen. Most mages have a full elemental grade and a half in a source. Occasionally you get, what we call a split mage. One with three half grades. More rare than they are rich mages. The ones who have a full grade in a source. They are called this because their recoup can be high enough to give them a cycle time of eighteen hours or less.”

“What’s a half grade?” Helen asked genuinely curious.

Mandy looked at the prone figure. “Your SKAT will display none for a genuinely none existent affinity. It displays a zero if you have affinity but not enough to be an actual grade. Why this matters, nobody can say definitively.”

“And a source mage?” Helen asked.

“A source mage, now there’s a different beast. Usually they have no elemental affinity so they cannot cast. That said they have a single cast that they alone can do. Nguvu transfer. They can feed almost half a nu to another castor. They can only do it once per castor in any recoup cycle. But here’s the thing to be a mage you normally have two affinities.”

Mandy paused for a few minutes as a patrol passed underneath them. “A sun or day source mage gets accelerated recoup during the day and reduced during the night. With the recoup value in your SKAT being the median value for the cycle. For a night or moon source it’s the opposite. But if you were to have both then you go from one boosted value to another. Source mages can’t cast except to transfer nu, with is great or we would be stuffed. That mage probably recovers a nu every ten or eleven hours. He would be able to palm off four half charges a day to other mages.”

She paused an inaudible sigh passed her lips. “We’ve been conned. We thought that we had discouraged their wind mages who are still casting in vein. That they were still using six mages a day on offence. One fire, one earth and one wind casting every twenty-four hours with another shift doing the same a half day offset. Instead they are using a source mage to super charge single earth mage and a single fire made have made all their attacks. Worse than that, their fire mage is stockpiling fireballs.”

“We’ve been foolish, They’ve shown us what we expected we have fallen into their trap. We need to work out where the other four mages are. We are so overmatched it is ridiculous. They must have been prepared for us. Why? Actually more to the point how?”

Mandy’s voice had been creeping up. Suddenly Helen clapped a hand over her mouth and rolled them back into the shadows behind their ledge. “We have to go their coming.” Helen whispered.

“Fine but take me to where the fireballs come out.” Mandy replied at the same volume.

Some time later they emerged from the maze of rock above the ravine but almost at the other end. There a crazy contraption hid behind a large rocky outcrop. The looked like a low slung cart that held a big tripod. From the tripod hung a collection of brass fittings of the same general appearance as a navigational sextant attached to a large arrow. From the arrow a number of finely crafted golden chains hung down dragging on the ground.

From the moment she saw it Mandy understood what it did. Not how, certainly not that. But as her dad said ‘the form follows the function’.

The large arrow is where the fireballs came out. It was pointed at Fort Kitapüru. The chains somehow transferred the cast from the ground and the braziers at the other end of the ravine to the arrow. The sextant was obviously the aiming apparatus as there was no castor to finesse the cast to the target. Which left the cart arrangement which ensured that the whole thing was hidden between casts.

“Ingenious,” was the only comment Mandy made as she signed to Helen they could return to the fort. She might not be a fan of the professor after the affair with Clara's blood but she had to talk to him, Fitzhugh and Silvia. They would have to change their plans.

She was also going to have to talk to her dad. Something was seriously going on here. The fort Kitapüru mages were hopelessly out of their depth. The enemy obviously knew that Miylan had a new magical defence but they had their own. Something was going on they were being played. She wasn't sure how but she knew it. Like she knew that dad wasn't a real captain. No evidence but something in her very being screamed, lie. This whole attack was a lie. Somebody somewhere was being very sneaky. Like a trickster with cards. Miylan was seeng one hand at Fort Kitapüru. The hand with the joker. Where was that hand and what did the joker look like."