More than two years later
"I’ll wear the red one with the gold trimming with the rose top tomorrow tonight, please set that aside,” Taurin said from her place on the settee, staying still as Nilda brushed her hair. The other servants bustled around in her room and arranged the clothes as Taurin wanted. “But for today I’ll have the plain black dress with the maroon top.”
Nilda never really understood why Taurin had three whole servants to pick out her clothes. She preferred doing her mistress’s hair over sorting through the mountain of dresses or giving suggestions over what color goes with what buckle, even if it was a one woman job. She did loose braids on the side of Taurin’s head, then drew her thick, shiny hair together with a clasp.
“Are you finally going to wear that buckle I gave you last year?” Taurin asked Nilda, looking at her through the reflection in the mirror. Said buckle was sitting in a drawer in Nilda’s room, not once adorning the tunic under her right shoulder. It was finely handcrafted brass with embedded pale-yellow gemstones in it - something appropriate for handmaids to wear but certainly more elaborate than practical.
Nilda knew she wasn’t a handmaid. Not really. Nilda simply settled on a serene smile at her mistress, one that was non-committal, polite, and revealed nothing about what she was thinking. Over two years of working for Taurin had taught her that that smile was often the appropriate answer. Strange to think she rarely smiled before.
When Taurin was finally ready, they took a carriage to the women’s college along with an entourage of six guards. Just a year ago, there were only two. It actually didn’t make much difference since the male guards weren’t allowed in the lecture halls while Taurin took her classes - Nilda had always been the one to be with her at all times. Increasing the security detail around Taurin simply made the noblewoman more anxious.
“Does Dad really think I need these men?” she had once asked Nilda in the carriage, eyeing the new guards on horseback around them. Nilda really had no idea; Lord Leton’s efforts in becoming a Senator would certainly earn him enemies, but to expect someone to go after his daughter while she went to school? Perhaps the world of politics wasn’t so different from that of underground fighting rings, a place where wins were bought, sold and coerced.
True to her upbringing, Taurin didn’t complain. Nilda followed her inside the college where several other noblewomen greeted Taurin and they all filtered into the lecture hall together. The large group of nobles and their handmaids and guards created a loud rumble of activity in the large stone halls of the college, the sound echoing off the tall painted ceilings and fine round columns that stood like trees along the length of the main hall.
When they finally made it inside, Nilda sat back in her wooden seat at the back of the lecture hall alongside the row of other handmaids. In the beginning she thought she would be uncomfortable in the women’s college - it was a place where only those with money and powerful fathers read books and listened to each other talk. However Nilda found that she found the quiet concentration of the lecture halls comforting.
“…existence of Solvent is greatly debated and perhaps more contentious than why people exist,” the professor, an elderly woman with pale blond hair fading to white said at the front of the room in front of nearly a hundred people. She was wearing the normal black academic robes that draped loosely over her rail-thin frame but her voice was loud and confident such that Nilda could hear her clearly in the back. “We do understand it as almost a body of water like the ocean, we understand the movement of it and interactions of it with Solute, or our personal essence, is what creates supernatural things to occur. But questions of where it comes from and if we will ever run out of it remain unanswered.
“We do know that, like the ocean, Solvent is deep and endless in some places, sparse and thin in others. We do know, through population studies, that the amount of Solvent in an area correlates to the number and complexity of Solvent manipulators in the immediate area. We do know that the use of runes can directly affect one’s effect on the Solvent. Of course this naturally begs the question - can we somehow coerce the Solvent into a certain area? Can we have powerful manipulators in an area thin of Solvent through the use of runes? After all, what country, kingdom or empire wouldn’t want powerful citizens?”
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Nilda shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“For decades, the focus in advanced runeology, especially that in the geological rune specialization, was research on the transfer of Solvent. How do we transfer Solvent where it is deep and plentiful to areas that are sparse? Of course, it seems as difficult as pumping actual ocean water into the middle of the continent but I would remind you that the Solvent isn’t actually water, we just visualize it as such since we cannot see it. I would like you to turn to page 157 please.”
The quiet lecture hall suddenly erupted with the sound of turning pages. Nilda cast a glance at the open book of a nearby noblewoman near the back row and spotted a detailed sketch of what looked like a circle of stones and two long poles crossing at the center. However the poles were planted into the ground and rose at an angle so if a cloth was thrown over the assembly, the sticks would tent the cloth.
[https://i.imgur.com/hUu5weI.png]
“Academics named these stone assemblies ‘Gates’… such is the extent of our naming ability,” the professor said dryly. There was a scattering of laughter. “Our brightest minds worked on these Gates and succeeded in having them open and allow Solvent to flow through. The assembly looks rudimentary but as you all know, even simple shapes combined with the right runes will serve its purpose. As you can see, the runes used to operate this Gate are not depicted here due to the immediate and devastating effects of these Gates.”
The subsequent story was one everyone in the empire has heard of at least once. The Gates opened and let in horrible monsters that slaughtered and ate people. Some people called them Gate Demons, others called the Unseeing due to their lack of eyes. Nilda never really believed these stories since adults usually told them to scare children.
Don’t you want to be stronger? The answer is always ‘yes.’ The outcome is never what people want it to be. After a few years of people purposely opening them, Gates started opening on their own all over the empire like an uncontrollable reaction. The consequences are akin to natural disasters with villages laid waste and hundreds dead with every uncontrolled Gate opening. Nobody understands why it started happening. Focus quickly went from opening Gates to research to closing them. Actions were made to prevent any more from opening, including suppressing the knowledge of the opening spell.
“I am not here just to recall these horrible stories of murderous monsters,” the professor said after recounting several incidents of the Unseeing overwhelming towns. “Nor am I here to speculate what went wrong as runeology and Solvent behavior is not my specialty. I am here to beseech you to remember the lessons these incidents have taught us if you go into research or runeology. We must not make the same mistakes again at the cost of innocent lives.”
A murmur rippled through the lecture hall. A young woman sitting near the front raised her hand. “But what if the research and use of these Gates lead to useful, groundbreaking discoveries?” she asked when the professor nodded at her. “We are limiting ourselves and our children the path to a better world by disallowing the research to something so obviously powerful.”
“Do you believe the cost of innocent lives is a necessary cost?” the professor asked lightly.
The young woman lifted her chin with an air of confidence Nilda only ever saw in those born into wealth and privilege. “Yes, I do,” the young woman replied. “I believe sacrifices must be made for greatness.”
Nilda regarded the young woman coolly. Those were strong words for someone who had probably never seen a dead body before. The next few moments were spent in as heated a debate as all academic ‘arguments’ went. The student went as far as to bring up a popular theory that these ‘uncontrolled’ Gate openings were fabricated to prevent further research on them. As an academic, the professor was unable to call a noblewoman an idiot to her face. As an idiot, the noblewoman tried to sound more intelligent than a veteran scholar that had more than five decades of experience.
Nilda sat back in her seat, tuning out the pointless debate. The only person capable of dictating lives to be sacrificed must be someone responsible for the fate of the world. Would someone fit for that responsibility ever willingly sacrifice lives? This was the sort of ‘big ideas’ the nobles in their colleges frequently asked one another. It was pointless drivel. Although Nilda would have liked wearing fine clothing and having first choice in fancy dishes, she would rather die than have to debate morality on things she had no control over. Taurin could keep that.
Her life was simple despite having gone from street urchin to handmaid. There was only one thing Lord Leton hired her to do, only one thing Vartu trains her to do: keep Taurin safe. As far as she was concerned, that was all she had to focus on.