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Unixian Alliance Mystic Recruitment Poster, Sponsored by the Xion Faction, Location: Udrebam.
Circa 1,195 I.E.
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"This is it." Ethi said, stupid observation matched only by the prosaic emptiness of her tone.
Unity let her idiocy pass. The door drank his attention greedily, and even he found a struggle in discerning whether it was of an arcane nature or a mere mundanity.
"Are you all ready for… well, whatever we might find on the other side?" Crow asked. Unity paid the question only as much attention as he needed to answer it, waving a hand and muttering as he turned back to the metal.
Mundane, undeniably. Though he found no greater insight was to be gleaned from the knowledge.
“You should go first.” Blurted out Ethi.
Unity turned to see, in the sorely lacking light, that she was looking at Crow. Slanted eyes had been given curvature as if her words were reluctant, yet the set of her jaw betrayed the girl’s readiness to argue.
“I know.” The boy answered, touching his magic as he moved to the door.
Unity’s skin itched at the feeling of such power flowing so near to him, like a thousand ants scrambling across his skin.
“Alright, I’m going to open the door.” Came the blonde’s voice, hastened and clipped as his mind and speech were accelerated by the touch of magic.
Studying the boy as he approached it, Unity realised the Sieve had been unkind to him.
Hair, previously blonde and lustrous as spun gold, had grown dull and dark from drinking his sweat. Tanned, youthful skin was darker and bluer where bruises swelled against it, a reminder that he’d weathered more from the suits of armour than any other. He was no shorter, still nearly of a height with unity, yet even with the magical vigour that must have been filling him he slumped like a weather-beaten tree.
A single glance showed the worry plastered across Ethi’s face, betraying that the boy looked no better to her eye than Unity’s, Yet still she said nothing. Naturally.
With the caution of a hunter, Crow neared the slab of iron before him. Eying the metal, seeming to make study just as Unity had.
Predictably discerning nothing of significance, he toed forward.
Palm met metal, and a grunt escaped the boy as he leaned against it. For a moment Crow remained still, torso crooked and legs straight as his teeth grit with a silent assiduity. Then a great screech filled the air.
Stone was scraped smooth as blocks of iron ground over it. Dyspeptic sparks jumped around the base of the doors, giving visible form to frictive protests even as they assailed Unity’s ears.
Inch by inch, hand by hand, the way ahead parted.
Shadows retreated back into the corridor, and at first Unity thought the door’s grinding was the cause, yet he quickly saw that the light was greater by far than any whits of fire could cast. Clearly pouring in from beyond the iron, slipping through the growing gap like water between fingers.
It was a lighter shade than the torch and far brighter, but only in studying the steadiness of its shadows, the absence of any flickering, did Unity see the truth.
Sunlight. He realised, feeling a surprising stab of emotion. Not joy or relief. No. Never those. Not from the dark.
Soon all he could see was the silhouetted form of Crow, still ignoring the door’s protests as he forced it open.
When, at last, the boy stepped back, Unity made himself meet the sun’s challenge until his vision adjusted. Once the world was clear to him, he stepped out.
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The grey stone of the corridor gave way not to the pale marble or dark onyx he’d expected, but a grainy carpet of sand- bleached near white. Unity absently paced around the desert, feeling grains shift and grind underfoot. It was a strangely wonderful feeling to be outside again, the air already fresher, tightness already disappearing from his chest. Only a breeze could have made it better, though he wasn’t enough of a brat to complain there was none.
His focus was on the distance, where great walls broke dunes and climbed up into the sky, yet the pedestal a few fathoms ahead didn’t escape notice.
Walls, that size? His eyes followed them upward, awe growing by the moment as they refused to end with height. A furlong in the air, then half a mile. Then so high that Unity had no basis by which to estimate.
Crunching and sliding announced his teammates falling in from behind, but Unity barely noticed them as his gaze continued upward.
To the ceiling.
“By the Goddess.” Ethi gasped, awe leaving her voice a whisper. For once Unity agreed with the girl’s sentiment. They were still indoors. It was almost enough to drive him mad.
“This can’t be a room.” Crow said, an edge to his words. He seemed to be demanding, rather than asserting. The universe appeared unwilling to acquiesce, and the chamber remained.
“How could something like this even be made?” Came Ethi’s strangled voice. It tempted mockery from Unity, though amazement left his bladed tongue numb and slack.
He knew all too well the power of Alliance mystics. Their ability to melt stone and metal, molding them by the pondful and doing in minutes what entire workforces of the magically inept would fumble for days to achieve.
It made sense, he supposed, that they could do so much with enough time. But that made it no easier for his eyes to behold in person.
“We should hurry.” He said, shattering the silence along with his own stupor.
Yet he faltered on the second step, noticing that the podium before them cast a long shadow. A glance revealed the source of light Unity had so quickly identified as the sun.
An arclight crystal; paler blue than any ice, spherically carved and dwarfing most buildings with its bulk. Brimming with magic even as the energies radiated out as light. It hung from the ceiling by chains that looked thick enough to bind a butcher, and Unity knew instantly that the size of its support was from necessity.
Strangely, he felt no more diminished by the sight of the smoothed, marble-like orb of glaring light. Perhaps his capacity for amazement had been reached.
Unity's basking in the mountainous world around him was interrupted by distant movement bringing his head about in a hastened jolt.
He recognised the cause instantly. People. Shuffling around uncertainly; nervous fidgeting barely clear in his eye from the distance, yet telling him everything he needed to know.
The sight galvanised him. He turned his eye to the top of the dais, finding himself surprised by the sight of a small key of gold hovering lazily a hand’s breadth above the stone surface. Had that been there before?
The angry buzzing about his wrist came before Unity could form more than that single question, snapping his attention down to the grey scrying slate. The stone's surface lit up, flecks of photonic energy rippling and rolling along the smooth rock like embers billowing in the black smoke of a fire.
In moments it had transformed, the image of parchment and writing appearing on the slate as if revealed behind diffusing mist.
First stage, final task. He read, noticing Ethi and Crow's faces dip towards their own wrists from the corner of his eye. Exit the stage through the gate, keys will allow only one person passage.
Crow, ever decisive, stepped forward as Unity ran through the words once more, seizing the key and holding it up to the light for study.
Ethi moved slowly, and it was her glacial motion that drew Unity's gaze. For it was not one that came naturally to a person. Far too mechanical. Careful, measured and, above all, silent.
A dozen changes seemed highlighted by fire in Unity's sight, impossible to miss through the lens of his suspicion.
Fingers paled, the blood squeezed from them as they tightened about the spear’s haft. Her breathing grew deep and steady, rhytmhic like clockwork, and the enzymatic trembles leftover from their near escape faded, leaving flesh as still as stone.
Predators, he knew, revealed themselves in the moment before they struck. Be it the howl of a wolf or the steady unwinding of a coiled viper. A mystic’s tell was of an entirely different sort, yet more obvious by far.
Needles left ten thousand pricks across his flesh as the girl touched her magic, and this time Unity didn't fight the reflex to grip his own.
He’d spent his life being introduced to prodigies and rulers, yet he'd met only half a dozen who could wrangle magic to an ability in less than the three seconds it took him. The girl had touched her magic first, but both flared to action at once.
Her power congealed, thick like smoke and red like blood, and she was lunging long before Unity had moved.
The wind beat in his ears as he hurried to the limits of his pitiful body, catching the spearblade as it thrust. It looked to be edged with arclight.
The girl's eyes were on Crow, who still stared ahead- so oblivious Unity thought for a moment his ignorance might shield him. He hissed, urging himself to greater swiftness as hungry steel pounced for his teammate's back.
Metal bit flesh, parting muscle and sinew with astonishing ease and burrowing in deeply to kiss the bone beneath. Blood spurted, then the spray turned to a drizzle as it soaked cloth and fell to sate the sand's thirst.
Shit. Unity thought.