Calagrophy was unhappy. Or maybe it would be more correct to say she was uneasy. She wasn’t really sure. Ever since they arrived back on Earth she felt… useless. All the issues they ran into didn’t really fall into her area of expertise. She was a warrior, a general, and she wasn’t the most socially apt. That was Tizanta’s playground.

Which was why she felt like the fifth wheel. She couldn’t really contribute much, outside of keeping the camp, it might as well be called a village at this point, organised.

Even the job Vuthe gave her, training the apprentices, was more like a distraction than anything else. She wanted to help more, especially with her best friend's issues, but she also realised that Tizanta was the better person to deal with those. And it nagged at her.

She looked over at the apprentice in front of her double, desperately trying to survive. Neither of them, outside of the Arachnid siblings, had any combat skills, which wasn’t surprising. But that didn’t change the fact that the best way of getting a grasp of one’s aura was either deep meditation and focus or life threatening situations, since it automatically made you focus.

To her surprise one of the apprentices had already figured out the basics, realising the fact that he was fighting a double. Even the arachnid siblings hadn’t been able to parse that one out yet.

She wasn’t too happy about it, however. Well, she was happy that he managed, she wasn’t happy about him. He tried to hide it, but it was very obvious that he was part of the church, and from all she could figure out, and from what Vixus had told her the few times they were in the camp, the church wasn’t exactly positively aligned with them.

It would actually be more honest to say they hated every non-human and even the fact that demi-humans lived in normal society, more or less, was just short of blasphemy in their eyes. Which was ironic since their worship was the reason magic increased in the world. Well, not directly, but it had an amplifying effect. At least that was what Vuthe had speculated. Calagrophy wasn’t really knowledgeable about those things, nor was she interested either.

Suddenly the alarms went off. It had happened a few times since their return, whenever some of those weird monsters attacked them. Well, calling them monsters was a human notion, for Calagrophy and co it was more like rabid animals. Another consequence of the rising magic.

With a sigh Calagrophy interrupted the training and walked over the guards captain.

“Ma’am!”, he saluted, fist over his chest, “We have encountered another pack of wolves. Nothing noteworthy.”

She nodded, “Good work, Severan. Check for wounds and give the guys a break. Inform the next rotation about the details and make sure everyone is in good health.”

He nodded and saluted again, “Yes, ma’am!”

And with that everything returned to its routine.

The monster attacks have been increasingly slightly in number, but nothing too noteworthy. She was wondering how the humans handled them, but then again, Vixus had found some pretty sophisticated traps around the major cities and highways to keep the monsters out. And it did seem that the monster attacks in general only happened in specific hotspots. And that they were seasonal.

Honestly, it made sense. Monsters didn’t come from nothing, they were born like any other animal, just that they had more than the average amount of mana infused into their bodies, while not having bodies developed to hold that mana. Which in turn led to them being in nearly constant pain, so it wasn’t too surprising that they were so aggressive.

Now and again one of their scouts found a monster which was more acclimated to the mana, leaving them more passive and less suicidally aggressive. Mostly they left them alone, hoping for the natural evolution process to do its thing. Only when the monsters in question could be directly dangerous to normal humans, like a bear or something on a similar scale, did they do something about it.

All in all the monster attacks were not much more than a nuisance for them. For the humans, however, things weren’t as easy. She had overheard a conversation between Castaphiel and Blake that the monsters became more and more of a problem, mostly because the threat of them finding their way into a major city increased as they increased in numbers.

Not that she cared much. She had a difficult past with people, and she wasn’t exactly as attached as Vuthe was.

Returning to the training area she found her “apprentices” laying on the ground, desperately gasping for air. She looked down on them without any mercy in her eyes. If there was one thing she was good at, it was being a drill instructor.

She was just about to open her mouth when one of the Loltharim Siblings spoke. “I know your trick.”

It was the man who had spoken, looking at her with scrutinising details. A moment later his sister spoke, “I do too. Quite a fascinating little thing.”

She motioned them to the side and walked off, the two of them trailing her. To the rest of the recruits it would look like they all still stood there with Calagrophy making some comment about dedication or some such.

“Tell me”, Calagrophy asked and turned to them, arms crossed.

The two looked at each other, then the sister spoke first, “It’s quite ingenious. Lady Vuthe had said that the aura is a manifestation of the soul and capable of influencing the world around us. At first I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but now it’s quite obvious. You use your aura to impart your will onto the world around you, just as a mage would use their will to impart their intention into a spell, just in a different manner.”

“The giveaway is quite simple, now that I know it”, her brother jumped in, “Why would we need to fight you? What’s the goal there? Especially considering that we are just flies compared to your strength. If you wanted to, you would wipe us out without even trying, so why do we even survive unless you let us? Which then beckons the question: Why would you want us unharmed, yet in a deadly situation when we were here for aura training? The answer is simple: The fight itself doesn’t matter, it could also be just another task, but a fight keeps us on our toes.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Once more the sister spoke, “So what does that mean for the training? Simple, you used your aura to influence us, making us see you where you weren’t, fighting something that doesn’t exist. I would assume that to be a very first test, most likely designed to either test our mental faculties or our perception, although I would bet on the latter.”

There was a moment of silence while they looked at Calagrophy, who just looked at each of them in turn with a neutral expression. Then she grinned, “Right on nearly all accounts. There is a second reason for you to fight. You came here to be trained to Vuthe’s standards, that means, while you are only here for aura training, that she will have you able to escape nearly any situation you could find yourself in. So all of you will learn the basics of combat either way.”

The two siblings looked at each other, then spoke in a language Calagrophy only half understood. It took her a moment to even place it, since she hadn’t heard it in nearly a millennia.

“Where in the name of the gods did you learn the arcane rune tongue?”, she asked, baffled, interrupting their conversation without even really meaning too.

They blinked at her for a moment, before the brother spoke, “In the pre colonisation days in america. Where did you come across it?”

Calagrophy looked at them for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face. She was uneasy at providing any information to them. She knew too little of the political situation to reveal something like that for the time being, especially without input from Tizanta.

“That’s a long story I won’t be going into detail about. Just know that I know it, for the moment”, she said, then waved it off, not wanting to further talk about it.

There was a long moment of silence as the Siblings looked first at each other, then at Calagrophy. It was clear that they didn’t want to continue if there was a chance that she understood. Eventually Calagrophy sighed and waved them to follow, “Let’s get back to it. The first day of training is nearly done, then we need to find you a place to stay for a while. And I’m sure once the others get back I have an execution to deal with.”

Again the Siblings shared a look, before the Brother spoke. “It’s the noble, isn’t it? While I don’t agree with your methods, I had honestly expected him to be dead already. Lady Vuthe doesn’t strike me as someone who plays games.”

Calagrophy had to laugh, “Oh no, she doesn’t. But there is a method to everything and she has to deal with the execution in an official capacity. She is, after all, still the Dragon Queen of Thelvadore, and intent is important in life. Sure, we could kill him just on the side, but she is a Queen, and in some ways even more important than that. She has a role to fulfil, that goes beyond just playing Queen. The gods know she would stop if she could, but there is a certain power to be had in her position. Power and responsibility, not only because she feels responsible personally, but also because she is responsible. I don’t want to go into too much detail, you are after all still not exactly our allies, but I can tell you that there is much more to magic than the obvious. In a way magic is a whole lot more complicated. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t even have walked out of the room when we first met.”

She looked at the two of them, her eyes growing a little colder while her expression remained bemused, “She is an assassin after all. If she wanted he’d be dead in his cell.”

With that she turned around and continued walking towards the other trainees.

Perspective: Tika Loltharim

Tika sat in their tent and was lost in thought. The last conversation with Lady Calagrophy de Thal replaying in her mind over and over again. While the woman didn’t strike her as a political person, she was quite smart and there was a reason why she had so readily revealed the last little titbit.

It had plagued her the entire rest of the day and the meal that they had spent in the dining tent, which had been quite a curious experience. The cultural difference was astounding and the people in the camp were much more readily open in physical displays, both combat and intimate.

But even that hadn’t really ripped her out of her contemplations. It nagged at her. The entire statement seemed so unnecessary to make. Sure, at first glance it could be seen as a threat, yet it was followed after a rather enlightening lecture on magic. And maybe it was just her mind so used to double meanings and mind games, but it seemed to be of import.

The entire conversation with Lady Calagrophy had been weird, if enlightening. No matter what exactly her goal was, however, one thing was for certain. Despite living for hundreds of years and being intimately familiar with the current state of magical research, even they were only scratching the surface of what magic truly was. And it was an enticing thought.

If she understood Lady Calagrophy’s words correctly, the title of “Dragon Queen” that Lady Vuthe held was much more than just a title. It was both a shackle and a boost. If Tika were so inclined she could probably find a way to abuse that, however, both she and her brother agreed that being in the good graces of such a powerful and knowledgeable being far outweighed any potential gains they could have by working against them.

And it made her want to learn even more. If these roles, as Lady Calagrophy had put it, were more than meets the eye, she and her brother may be able to gain substantially from this. They were, after all, quite important figures in both their roles as Overseers of the Paranormal Council, and their position in the magical society. Since, as far as they knew, they were the oldest being born on Earth.

If they could figure out how to use those roles for themselves they could cement themselves in the magical society. Although it had to be said that they weren’t looking for power for its own sake. They were planning for the inevitability of magic going public. Since neither of them had any delusions of it remaining secret forever. It will still take a while, but the monster incursions had increased a lot as of late, and it was only a question of time until everything went badly.

She just hoped that they would be ready for it. But maybe, with the help of Lady Vuthe and her friends, they might be able to manage. That was, of course, unless the Church did something seriously stupid. Yet another headache that had plagued them for centuries.

Extremist groups were nothing new, of course, they had existed ever since the dawn of humanity, but it had gotten a whole lot worse in the past century or so. And they had to plan for the possibility of full on crusades, just with modern weapons, and possibly magic that they didn’t know about. The church, for all their faults, was a crafty bunch, and she didn’t think for a second they didn’t have some kind of trick up their sleeve. The only question was what that trick was.

She sighed as her brother entered the tent.

“You doing okay?”, he asked, looking at her in concern. It wasn’t atypical for her to be lost in thought, but today was bad. And both of them knew it.

“I guess. I’m still smarting over the conversation we had earlier with Lady Calagrophy. And all that entails. And all the other issues we have. Actually, it sounds a lot like a normal Tuesday to me”, she joked with a half-smile.

He chuckled dutifully, “Yeah. Maybe we should speak more with her, or the others. Try to get them to spill some more juicy details.”

Tika just shrugged, “Maybe. Just thinking about it doesn’t help, even if I can’t stop myself. Anyways, I think it’s time to get some rest. From her tone I guess it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

He just laughed heartily while he started getting ready for bed.