Chapter Twelve - Tammy
The claws were as black as the leaves in the Archive, and razor sharp.
“Seriously, girl. Mom should have gone over this. Or my aunts. Someone really dropped the ball if they didn’t warn you. The older ones can control themselves, but even asking us things is dangerous for someone like you. I’m mostly safe, but if you asked one of the younger kids something it would be bad. If you get screwed with in a way that your guardian-spirit notices…well I wouldn’t want to be at ground zero. It might be safe once we teach you or Mom helps you dig some protections out of your vault, but even then it’s just rude.”
I swallowed hard and fell into step behind her as she turned away. It was a long, low room lined with benches and tables covered in board games. Nobody was in here, but it looked well used.
“First floor’s the common area. Mom cleared everyone out for the visit, but usually the girls that can’t leave the compound relax here when the sun’s down. Basement’s for the younger kids – don’t go there. Upstairs are for my cousins that don’t live outside and me. Mom’s got her study and labs up top with all the other off-limits stuff. There’re stairs, but since not everyone can shift most people use the elevator.”
Once we were there, she flicked her eyes at the gold trim and cloudy mural around the lights.
“Blegh, I know. Mom insists on the color scheme – says it helps us remember our roots. I think it’s just that she likes making things match her coat.”
I cleared my throat and tried to meet her eyes. They were still green, and with all the red it was out of place. “I guess everyone in town knows me already. You’re not what I expected though.”
“I know! Don’t worry though – I’m not a stalker or anything. Like, you were the Flowering Death’s grandkid, so I knew about you. But Mom gave me a heads up earlier since she wants me to tutor you. She’ll handle those curses, but I’ll be doing the hands-on work.”
Did. Did she just wink at me?
“I’m not cursed though.”
She pointed at my hands. “Looks close enough to me. I made one of my aunts mad once and ended up with an itchy bald spot right between my wings. For a year! These might be different, but man oh man do they just look like they’re unpleasant if you poke them wrong. Anyway uh, don’t let my mom know I complained, please. And let her know I introduced myself properly, if it comes up. Can’t piss her off or she might stick you with an aunt instead, and they’re no fun. Half of them can’t even work a computer!”
She smiled a little every time I opened my mouth and closed it, since I realized I was about to ask a question. The smile turned forced as the elevator dinged to a stop.
“Just follow me and you’ll be fine. Mom’s gonna give you the Talk and then we’ll test your affinities.”
That, at least, I knew from the call earlier. I would get teaching, her or her designated representative would get access to the Archive for three hours after each session and permission to check out one book or tome a week for the duration. Scully seemed to think that was fair – apparently the public access was heavily restricted in what you could see – and it was my job to give permission. To do a bunch of other things too, but dragging those out of Scully was like pulling teeth.
If it was urgent – she’d tell me. Until then? This.
The study turned out to be a tall room in the corner – taller than it should’ve been. My stomach twisted as I cross the threshold, vision swimming as the window-lined walls snapped into view and the air turned heavy and humid. The ceiling was a crystalline dome, bright sun streaming down through it onto the blooming vines and plants that twined across the shelves and tables to fill the room. Green and red and pink – it looked like the height of spring, not late summer. And most of these plants didn’t look local.
The matriarch was reclining in her leonine form, leaned against a desk and staring out one of the windows.
“Welcome, Tamara. This place – I do believe your grandfather found joy in its creation. A passion we once shared, as I rose within the Prides. No matter what concerns you will bear, I hope you shall find a pastime to ground yourself when the rigors of the world come to bear.” Her head swung around, eyes dark and contemplative. “Daughter. Sit.”
Alyssa had begun to edge backwards as I sat down, but now she swung stiffly into the second chair facing her mother.
“Olaf failed you and your sister, deeply. Your education is woefully lacking, so we begin with what magic is. Throughout the ages, mankind has sought to paint it as something other. Those who cannot feel it, cannot understand it, claim it to be a poison. A pox upon the skin of the world, in which mages and their zealously labeled ‘monsters’ are symptoms of an illness, and they the victims.”
A wave of her hand, and the light dimmed. Around the room, her plants began to glow. Soft blues and greens and splashes of purples and reds. Beneath the physical lights, though, were currents of magic that were brighter still, where the colors cycled and blended together as if they’d been planted for that alone.
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“Magic exists in everything, from every leaf to every speck of dust. It is intrinsic, and yet fluid. As water cycles and the seas churn, it follows channels and currents through places beyond the reach of mortal kind. Where it grows heavy, life may arise. By degrees, gods, sphinxes, and humans arose. Each of us, every one, will die bereft of magic. Even a mortal, untouched and unaided by any degree of the gift, cannot survive for a full and proper life without it.”
“If you wish, we may delve deeper into philosophy in the future. I have my doubts, however, that you would wish me to wax poetic on the divergence between the old ways and the new. No, Tamara, you are here to learn. Wielding your inheritance as of now will bring naught but strife, and to barter with the eldest folk you must know your own worth.”
She reached out. I resisted the urge to jolt back or lean forward as she lightly tapped a claw on the back of my hand. It tickled as my own mana started to well up, a dark glow that the flows around the plants shied away from. Scarlet welled up around Alyssa, while her mother’s was a multi-hued tapestry of greens and whites and browns. Only hers mingled with the plants.
“You could be the kind to call down the sky upon your enemies, I feel. Perhaps you would bring the wrath of the Earth upon them for breaking laws forgotten outside the halls of your Archive. Drown them with contracted mages eager for a scrap of your power. Where your path leads, only you can decide; yet the base of it all rests on what fate saw fit to bless you with.”
Slowly, she opened a drawer. She placed a golden lattice onto the desk, wrought wires laying out cradles that she began to fill with egg-shaped, dull, stones. The magic retreated from her hands as she handled them with just her claws. There were etchings on each, so fine that I could barely see. A diamond of eight took form, set around a larger stone in the center that every cradle sprang from. Trailing gold linked to two smaller diamonds of four, off to the side, each with their own central stone.
“Proper elemental theory is something I will expect you to study in your own time. For now…”
I raised a hand as the numbers clicked. She made a ‘go on’ gesture.
“You’re talking about the Sixteen and the Three, right?” I tensed as I realized I’d just asked a question, but aside from a laconic flick of her eyes to her daughter nothing happened. “I recognize the pattern here.”
She nodded. “Very good. If you would be so kind, demonstrate.”
I ticked them off, trying to remember the pattern and how they’d gone around.
“The book said terminology changed often, so it might be outdated. But uh…” I started pointing, not quite wanting to touch the stones if she hadn’t told me to yet. “Light, or Life, or Spirit with the uh, radiant quartet around it. Wood, Scourge, Lightning, Flesh.”
Another nod, and a wave of her hand. I moved to the four points of the main diamond, the same arrangement as the ritual in the Roads had been. I froze for a second as tears threatened to well up at the reminder. I grit my teeth and took a deep breath, ignoring the laconic pulse of heat in my branded palm that Alara seemed to watch with lidded eyes. Then I pushed through.
“The prime quartet: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. Between them the para quartet. Magma, Desiccation, Ice, and Ooze.”
She waved a hand. “Passable. Continue.”
My fingers curled as I remembered the feel of a knife digging into my palm. I skipped the central crystal and moved to the last.
“Darkness, Death, Body…the book didn’t settle on what it was, just that it was a counterpart to the other and the center of the umbral quartet. Bone, Ash, Shadow, Decay.”
Alara smiled. All lips, no teeth. “I see you have been using your time as well as you could. As you said – language changes. Perhaps you will find other words for them, schools of thought where different aspects are emphasized foremost. Yet so long as you retain the knowledge that magic is not so cut and dried as to fully exclude anything, that through mediation and effort even the very nature of mana can shift, the system is a useful touchstone.”
“I will assume you have at least a base knowledge of each individual nature. So, you should understand that you will likely possess a primary affinity that calls strongly to your being, and smaller resonances that nuance it. As an Aufrey, I expect significant gifts.”
Her smile grew thin and pained as she tapped each stone in turn with a manicured nail. They lit up in a rainbow of shades and impossible glows, save for the centermost. There, her hand lingered above what I remembered reading about. The one ‘Element’ in total balance, that no living thing fully rejected, yet that few would ever lean towards or exploit. The domain of the soul and the self. I already knew what color it would be, even when she pulled her hand back and left it unlit.
“Remember, Tamara. There is no inherent wrong or right to one’s being. Those born of Shadow and Ash might excel at bringing ruin, yet the nature of their gifts should not condemn them. Assigning such things beyond control to good and evil has ever led to disaster and heartbreak, and yet the world insists upon doing so.”
She sighed, and it came out as a hissing, reverberating sound that did not match up with the image of a mostly-normal woman. “Touch each stone, please. The more intense the glow, the stronger it resonates. I hope, for your own sake, that you are not quite as…gifted as your grandfather and my lost children once were.”
That wasn’t ominous at all. I couldn’t help but notice that Alyssa stiffened at that last part, and I made a mental note to never bring it up.
Just like with the giant gemstone when Scully was teleporting me around, I let the light inside me float up to the surface. It was already so close, from whatever the sphinx had done, but it took that last bit of effort to bring it into my fingers. The first stone I touched went dark, or close enough that it might as well have been. Ironic – since it was Light’s.
Wood was next. The glow in it flickered for a moment, then flared into a stable green. That meant… nature, and things that grew.
Flesh was next, that same strange flicker, and if anything a brighter glow. Peachy pink, twinkling like an LED was inside the smooth stone. That was the other half of living things. The meat and the motion.
Fire. Dimmer, a flickering, mesmerizing orange that never seemed to settle down.
Bone. Just like the clawing pillar in the black room. It even had the same not-quite-light as the things there, a different kind of glowing black than what was under my skin. It was ‘brighter’ than the one for Fire, but not as much as Flesh. Animation, imbuement, things that used to live, or never had.
One by one, the rest returned to the inscribed grey ovoids. There was just one left, there in the center.
I hadn’t even touched it when the room turned red.