Flinging Rocks at Bureaucrats in a Magical Academy

The cathedral smelled like wax.

Fabrisse Kestovar slid through the side passage of the sanctum with the pace of someone who had been very late. The Sanctum of Emberrest, a towering crescent-shaped chamber big enough to house three lecture halls stacked on top of each other, served both as a cathedral and a ceremonial hall for one of the oldest mage orders, the Twelvefold Flames. Today, however, it was under the administration of the South Westeros Branch of Unified Synod of Thaumaturgic Study, the academic arm of the Order.

The Grand Gathering had already started, which meant Fabrisse had arrived just in time for the pageantry. He’d only meant to measure the stupenstone’s angular veins for five minutes . . . but apparently he’d been doing it for fifty-seven.

The event would always start with a row of archmagi in ceremonial robes taking turns demonstrating the true breadth of their talent: saying absolutely nothing with as much flourish as possible. Each speech was an elegant spiral of metaphors, historical references, and words like ontological or apotheosis, all ultimately leading to the same conclusion—magic was important, and so were they.

The latter part of the Gathering would come soon, simple rituals to test the student’s ‘resonance to the aether’. Last year, the upperclassmen (which were actually Fabrisse’s last class, as he had to repeat the units again) got to perform ritualistic invocations to try and awaken an inert box. Fabrisse wasn’t sure if this year would feature more of the same.

“Curses,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m going to miss the breakhour crumblecake again . . .” They only served the mingleberry glaze during Grand Gatherings, one of the few perks of studying in a holy-academic institution. Now some might ask, ‘what is a holy-academic institution?’, and they would be rightfully puzzled because Fabrisse had pondered the same question. In the case of the South Westeros branch of the Synod, it was a sanctified sprawl that functioned somewhere between a monastery, a university, and a lifelong magical probation. 

Most initiates entered the Synod at age ten, robed and reverent. Their early training lasted five years and focused on core disciplines, emotional resonance calibration, and basic elemental theory. Upon completion, they were inducted into formal spellwork as First-Circle Novitiates—though most students just called them ‘First-Years.’ The gifted ones graduated by eighteen, and became an official member of the Order of the Twelvefold Flame. The rest—those less aligned with flame or fate—might linger until twenty-one, still hoping the spark would catch.

Fabrisse would turn nineteen in a month. His spark had not so much caught as wandered off and filed for retirement.

He tugged his robes into something he deemed sufficiently respectable and slipped into a column’s shadow just as Archmagus Murelien Draeth raised his arms in oration.

“. . . For it is not through force that the Reliquary shall yield, but through alignment; of thought, of spirit; of sacrifice. That is the teaching of the teaching of Thaumarch Muradius, luminous shepherd of our era.” The Archmagus’ voice resonated with the authority that would’ve impressed Fabrisse if not for the fact he’d never once updated his speech. “Whose insight guides the Twelvefold Path, whose will shields the weak from false flame, whose wisdom brought forth the Era of Unified Doctrine.”

The young man kept his head low and angled his body behind a broad scry-pillar, half-obscured by incense haze and ceremonial banners, all cut into those impractical triangle shapes he’d never quite understood. From here, he could just make out the front row—all high-ranking magi in brocaded robes, each one still as a warded statue, apart from Archmagus Rolen, who was solemnly scratching his behind.

And there, of course, was Mentor Lorvan.

Stern as ever, back ramrod straight, jaw set in the way it always was whenever Fabrisse did something predictable and mildly embarrassing. Which, judging by the tick in Lorvan’s left eyebrow, was approximately now.

Their eyes met across the sanctum. Fabrisse tried a tiny, apologetic smile. Lorvan did not return it.

“And so it is decreed by the Will of the Flamus Arcane,” came the booming voice from the dais, “that only the Worthy may draw forth the knowledge sealed within the Astral Reliquary! Only the Devoted shall behold the glyphs of awakening!”

Fabrisse mouthed the words in perfect sync, not from piety but from sheer repetition. He’d heard variations of the same ceremonial drivel chanted since he was ten. He could probably recite the baby version—the one apprentices had the misfortune of memorizing—backwards while drunk. And, in fact, he once had. Word for word, with such precision it could have summoned Archmagus Rolen himself. Unfortunately, it happened to be during his confession to the girl of his dreams.

She did not accept.

Fabrisse inched along the column with the care of someone trying not to leave any colorful sparks (emotional imprints left from emotional resonance with the aether bleeding into the space). Not that he was particularly worried about leaving a mark. He hadn’t failed, exactly. But the examiners kept insisting he’d missed the point. He disagreed. Unfortunately, the fact stood that he had missed the point so many times that his generous grant for supposed ‘potential apprentices’ had already run out, and his family would need to shell out actual money starting next semester.

But if there was one thing Fabrisse Kestovar had never failed, not once. It was Stealth. His self-taught brand of magic.

Fabrisse started executing the ‘Side-Slink of Moderate Dignity’ as he wiggled behind the crowd. He fully intended to slip into one of the outer rows before anyone—

A hand grabbed his sleeve.

“Where are you off to this time?” Lorvan hissed, just quiet enough not to draw the dais’ attention. “Bumbling around collecting Stupenstone again?”

Fabrisse winced. “It’s called Silico-Dormant Obscura—”

“I read your notes, Kestovar. You call them Stupenstones.”

“That was a working title.”

Lorvan’s eyes narrowed into pale slits. “If you’re caught smuggling rock samples into the sanctum again, I will personally transmute your lunch rations into beet paste for the next Span of the Sundering.” A Span equated to roughly twenty years, because apparently Mage Orders couldn’t afford to count the days like the inept civilians.

It wasn’t like he wanted to ‘bumble’ around. At least not when he first joined the Synod. But years of academic stagnation had led to him no longer caring about his academic performance. It wasn’t like he would’ve learned much more had he paid attention in class.

Fabrisse tried to come up with something clever to say, but all he could come up with was, “Yes, Mentor. No stone, totally empty-handed today.” He said, with both hands conspicuously behind his back. The satchel pressed against his side like it knew it was about to betray him.

“You’re telling me that lump is not a stone.” Lorvan’s glare intensified as he stared at the bulging satchel underneath his robe.

“Yes, Mentor.”

Stupenstone—formally classified by the Collegium of Geomantic Rarities as Silico-Dormant Obscura, Grade Theta—was a mineral so profoundly useless it had been removed from no fewer than three official textbooks by frustrated archivists who couldn’t find a single practical application for it.

It didn’t resonate with aether.

It didn’t store energy.

It didn’t glow, chime, float, scry, shimmer, burst, or even hold a decent enchantment longer than a soup spell.

It was also hideous—a lumpen, mauve-flecked stone that looked like someone had attempted to sculpt a toad from chewing gum and then abandoned the effort halfway through.

And yet.

Fabrisse Kestovar had a collection of no fewer than twenty-eight catalogued pieces and another six he refused to name until they ‘revealed their purpose.’

Most magi assumed he was simply lazy or mad, but the truth was far more benign—Fabrisse was, in a theoretical sense, a petramancer.

Unfortunately, Fabrisse couldn’t actually do petramancy. The order didn’t teach traditional magic, his resonance was so poor he couldn’t levitate a pebble, and his only published paper—“Stupenstone: A Case for Intentional Obscurity in Aether-Inert Geologies”—had been withdrawn from review after the editors realized he’d included a stanza in place of his methodology section (also because he had not yet been of age at the time of publish, which he found utterly ridiculous).

Fabrisse offered a hopeful smile and pressed the satchel further inside his robe. “I’ve only brought a stoneless stone satchel today,” he whispered. It sounded ridiculous now that he’d said it out loud.

“Kestovar, you’re better than this. You know that, right?” Lorvan said, voice lower now. “If you keep skipping practice sessions to collect stones, you’re essentially limiting your potential.”

With a grin that could only be described as proudly unrepentant, Fabrisse replied, “Limiting? No, no, I’m specializing. There’s less competition in the Quiet Foundation of Stone. Also, you can’t collect different shades of fire, no?” It was a line he’d used before. People laughed when you made jokes about specialization—it kept them from asking why you were alone.

“There’s less competition because stone is rubbish,” Lorvan said.

Even among the magically inclined, Stone was considered a dead-end element—resistant to manipulation, sluggish to respond to emotional stimuli, and prone to resonance decay faster than any other stable base. The only thing Stone was good for was as a stepping stone (no pun intended) to Crystal Thaumaturgy or Metal Thaumaturgy, both of which were hybrid elements that had easier ways to attain.

Most working Stone Thaumaturges barely registered past a Rank III Resonant Threshold—the magical equivalent of being able to warm a cobblestone with great effort and a headache. The legendary high watermark of the field, Professor Margenholt of the Quiet Foundation, had once reached Rank VI. She was given an award, two grants, and promptly died of boredom while trying to commune with an uncut feldspar. For reaching a Rank VI! A star student of the Ninth Tier within the university system could be immediately handed a Rank IV upon graduation.

He was halfway to fidgeting with the satchel again when the Archmagus’s voice changed.

“This gathering, however,” Murelien Draeth said. His voice was suddenly devoid of pomp. “was not called simply to reaffirm our commitment to the Reliquary.”

The crowd stilled. Rolen stopped scratching.

That wasn’t part of the script.

Draeth continued, “For the first time in forty-seven years, the Eidralith has responded.”