(Resumed) Solstice

[Emmett]

"Hey, sleepycheeks!"

The voice of my guardian cut into my stillborn dream. A ghoulish gurgle selected itself as my reply.

I slowly started stirring, drawing forth every inch of might I could muster, ever so slowly, but as fast as I could.

"Ugh," was all I heard before the air started getting boiling... blistering- burning hot!!

I threw by body up and out of the bed, observing the thin sheet of flame my guardian, Jacqueline, had lit right under me. Staggering to my feet, I snarled at her. "What the fuck was that about?!"

"You weren't up fast enough, dumbass," replied the deeply-tanned woman wearing naught but thick, black smallclothes around the two most powerful regions of a woman's body. "Lots of work to do in the morning, then the CVAC dignitaries are coming to matriculate Patrick."

Ugh. Patrick. "Are... you sure I have to be present for that?"

I got a hard slap to my cheek as my reply.

"Of course you do! Look I know you hate him ever since you pulled that lying-about-Aegis'-magic shit, but you fucked up!" Jacqueline snatched my arm and yanked me from whence I stood in my quaint little unfinished sleeping quarters toward the door. "Now go make sure none of the crops died overnight! Tools are in the usual place."

I groaned and stretched, my feet marching of their own accord out the doorway.

The Can Vahs Arcane Colleges, or CVAC, remain to this day the finest (and only) professionally-maintained academe for magickal artes in the entirety of Sollun. They are maintained in the province of the same name, west and considerably south of our relatively tiny state-let of New Bezoun. Yes, they're the only actual professional school for this sort of thing; they're still absolutely amazing. From what I remember from Jacqueline, any magus who got accepted into CVAC would be strongly pushed to attend by their master, with some going so far as to disband the apprenticeship right then and there.

And of course Patrick was going to be accepted. I... I liked him, once upon a time. He was my closest friend, before our village of Charade Gin was burnt to the ground five years ago, by the Emissaries of Total Salvation.

Kicking open the door to the haphazard tool shed, I breathed out a grunt. "Fucking lie that name is," I muttered, my complaint drowned by the clinking and clattering of tools falling to the ground in my hunt for a rake, wheelbarrow, scythe, and waterspout. The Emissaries claim to be saving all of life from false gods or whatever by killing sinners, but all they're doing is systematically selecting and exterminating every dreamer in the continent. Dreamer, that is to say, those not lucky enough to be able to cast magick. Or... "lucky", I should put it.

I remembered all too well the disaster they wrought upon our fucking tiny home. Patrick, his older brother Bryce, and I were frolicking at the fountain in the village square, talking about future plans, getting excited that Patrick finally discovered he could use Fire Magick, and predicting which of the four elements I would awaken into when I finally figured out how to do more than just funnel Æther into my eyes and see the flow of magick in the air.

Then the dead bodies of our northern guards, Pierce and Jamal, glided into our sight, and the sickly smell of decay overtook the skies. That was when Aegis and his band of killers arrived.

I struck my rake down against the soil next to some grain stalks hard, and raked some of it loose in a burst of fury, pouring some water into the area to hydrade the crop a little more. The awfulness of the scene was getting to me, and the reminder that Patrick was going to go become a legendary magick-wielding hero while I was.... stuck... here... trying to pick up the pieces.

It was a bloodbath. two of the four minions in black cloaks set fire to house and garden alike, one was flying in the air, sniping villagers dead from afar, and the fourth...

I had heard that she drowned my parents in a bubble of conjured water, with the most sickening cackle. It wasn't exactly the best thing in the world for a thirteen-year-old orphan to hear.

The worst of it all, however, was Aegis himself. White robes, kite shield for a helmet, absolutely untouchable. He was a magus, like the rest of his coven, but unlike the rest, his magick was nigh-invisible, transparent. And it eroded any other magick that came into contact with it. His spell circles were similarly camouflaged, but what he did... he had summoned long razor-sharp talons from the ground to skewer entire groups at once. He would throw sharp boomerangs into the air to decapitate and bifurcate all the ones who fled. I was transfixed, unable to move. Then my best friend tried to sacrifice himself to save us. I had warned him of the magick...

I kicked the wall of the shed hard at the memory of Bryce tackling me down, calling me a liar, raising his fist up, coating it in stone.... He was going to kill me. Crush my throat in right there....

I dropped my tools and let loose a pained howl. Why the shit did I owe fucking AEGIS my life?!

"Knock it off and get back to work! We don't exactly have enough people or infrastructure for your lying ass to slack around!" I heard Jacqueline shout. She had a point; since we lost pretty much everyone except five or so people, we've had to rebuild everything from scratch. We got a few more people in to help out, but really very few people bothered, which left us pretty strapped for manpower.

"Yes Ma'am," I droned back, slowly dragging myself from a shivering curled mess on the ground to a standing mess, that's also shivering. But that's how Patrick and I became enemies in a nutshell, and how I started to question my own ability to perform magick. I was told in no uncertain terms that Aegis' magic is invisible and not transparent, and that my lie was what provoked Aegis to kill Bryce. Who was Patrick's brother. While Patrick would go on to study magic with Jacqueline as a mentor while I tended the fields and helped do repairs around the house, Patrick was expanding his abilities in Fire Magick, even developing some rudimentary spells.

Jacqueline tried to teach me more after the three years it took for me to become able to speak again, but it didn't really go so well. First, apparently I was supposed to seize the Æther from the environs and forge it into a desired pattern, instead of... whatever I was doing. I tried, I really did try, I assured myself as I was harvesting a ripe fraction of the grain and vegetables to prepare meals and bargain with later. But I just couldn't get the trick, and after a couple months, she gave up on actually trying to teach me, and tasked me as a laborer.

I had gathered up about two crates in total across about half a dozen trips with the wheelbarrow, and taken them inside, planting them onto the dining table, and wandering to the kitchen.

Today I was feeling like a lettuce and tomato sandwich; this was just a quick snack to get me through carrying today's yield to Barbara, our butcher. I set three tomatoes and a large leaf of lettuce on a wooden counter and hold out my left hand. I took in a soft breath. Tensing my fingers like claws for a moment, I slowly exhaled, and a soft, light-blue flame of magick enveloped my hand. This was a trick I had figured out last year. For some reason if I only try to take a little Æther at once, I can actually get some semblance of a spell going. Not that I could do anything with this, of course; the moment i tried to perform an actual effect rather than soft glowy light, the Æther flickered out. I decided to flicker it out early this time, and slice the bread open for my meal. I didn't want to anger Jacqueline even more.

After my snack, I put aside about half of one crate for our own food store, and stacked the now-half-crate atop the full one to carry out of the house.

"Heading to Barb?" Jacqueline asked.

"Yeah, I'll be back with some fresh cuts!"

"Good kid." I smiled against my own resentment at the praise from my guardian. Really, she was mostly sour she had to drop her previous job as a performer to raise the entire village from the ground after it was razed to the ground. And she did try to teach me how to develop my latent talent; I wasn't lying about that. I just was a terrible student, who couldn't even grasp the basics of the basics. I nodded and took a step forward.

"Wait," she commanded, and I stayed put. Jacqueline walked up to me with a small pouch, and planted it in my pocket. It had a few coins in it. "Ask her for however much that'll get ya, and name-drop me. Get some booze, too, I want to celebrate!"

"Ah, okay!" I nodded and stepped on my way onto the street. Jacqueline even closed the door behind me.

Charade Gin looked like a ghost town. Sure, we had buildings, after a few years of effort, but only a couple of them, and only about half of those were fully furnished. Some places, you could still look and find ashes from the raid.

March, two, three, four... march, two, three, four...

The fountain in the village square was recently spruced back up and cleaned like-new. We had our resident butcher and brewer, Barbara, to thank for that. She was from Indis Rey, a much more industrial province to our north. She brought a few tricks from there as well, including metallic chests that contained frozen water that she would place meat in to preserve them without salt. How she sourced her ice was a complete mystery; my hypothesis of course was that she's also a magus, but magick was more of a southern thing.

About a good twenty minutes or so of walking, and about five minutes of resting my arms from carrying the crates, I arrived at a metal-reinforced wooden shack, to the greeting oink of a pig, and a dark-skinned, bright-haired woman with a cleaver and a smile.

"Long time no see Em!" Barbara called out, "Jackie treating you good?"

"Better than she normally does," I replied. I walked up and dropped the crates on the counter.

"I have your chest all ready and lined up," she said, dragging the crates behind the counter.

"Oh!" I chimed in, interrupting her train of thought, withdrawing the pouch. "Jacqueline said to get as much as this would get me, and to get both meat and spirits."

"Ho-ho~ the slave-driver parts with coin~" Barbara takes the pouch and spills out a golden coin flanked by half a dozen silver coins followed by about a dozen, maybe twenty copper pieces. "This is pretty ambitious of her, what with a village that still hasn't risen above the barter system since its destruction. Right, I'm going to have to get you a trolley. You wait right here."

And wait I did, and I looked up to the sky. Really big place, Sollun is. And here I was, stuck in Charade Gin, probably for the rest of my day, helping with crops, building, and overall labor.

At least I was helping rebuild my homeland. Else, I might have gone insane. I looked around to verify no one was around before flicking out my hand again, the soft blue Ætheric flame wrapping around it again.

"Oh? You're a magus too?" Barbara chimed in, pushing a large metal cage by a handlebar along its four wheels, metallic in the centre but with sleek, black, grooved, rims. The basket-cage was filled with a pair of the hardened metal chests, and a wide variety of bottles, finished with a few exquisite fabric bags.

"Ah- n-no, I'm not," I said, hiding my hands behind my back, and a soft redness flushing to my cheeks.

"Don't lie hon," Barbara said, "Jackie and Patrick both keep waxing poetic about how self-centered and dishonest you are, but you were always fair with me."

"I, uh, um-"

"I saw the spell in your hand. Might I ask what you were casting?"

"It's, uh, not really anything," I said, lowering my head. "I'm really a failure. Yes, I have the supposed ability to cast magick, but all I can do is coat my eyes and hand with the stuff."

"Damn, that explains that." Barbara pushed the trolley next to me, and patted my head. "Why didn't Jackie teach ya?"

"She tried, I'm just that piss-poor a student."

"Aw fuck, that explains why you're an errand boy." Barbara shook her head. "You're a real damn good one though. Always so pleasant and nice. Honestly you deserve to be picked to go study at CVAC too."

"You flatter me." Why did my cheeks start burning up again? Cheeks, calm ye the fuck down.

"Just have Jackie return the trolley and crates as usual, hon!" Barbara returned to her stall in front of her residence, and ranch. "And I wanna see you at the sendoff, kay?"

"Alright, alright." I sighed and gripped the trolley, pushing it... smoothly? on the dirt road. "Huh?"

"Trick from my old home at Cinder Roil," Barbara said, "Visit me and I'll tell you how it's done!"

"Um, okay! Ah, um, thank you! Bye!" I started pushing the cart back.

"It's 'See you soon,' silly," Barbara corrected with a chuckle.

I gave her a waved and pushed the trolley back the way I came.

I pushed the cart around to the back of the house, and knocked on the back door before opening it, and coming in with a crate.

"Why are you coming in through the back door like some sort of thief?" Jacqueline asked.

"Trolley, very fancy, not sure if it'll fit in the house, you got quite a bit from Barbara," I replied. "So I'm bringing in our stuff to the kitchen."

"A trolley?" Jacqueline asked.

"Yeah, but the trolley isn't ours."

Jacqueline stepped into the dining room, peering out. "Oh this is glorious. I need to get us one of these things!"

"Work it out with her, Jacqueline," I said, setting the first chest down. before turning around to pick up more.

"Actually, leave the remainder, I'll bring in what I want, and we can use this for a cookout during the sendoff."

"Ha?" I blinked. "How are we going to manage the cooking without any equipment?"

"Uh, hello, we have two fire magi in Charade Gin?" Jacqueline waited for me to look at her, slapping her forehead when I did. "Jeez, get with the program, Emmett."

"Ah... okay..." 

She brought in about two thirds of the bottles, and all of the fancy-wrapped packages, which she sequestered for herself. "Start firing up the stove! We have some breakfast and more work remaining!" She called.

I moved some logs to beneath the cooking grill, and set them alight with some tinder, flint and steel, the stone inlay shielding the wooden wall from bursting aflame itself. I gathered some more water and some pans and prepared a simple steak meal, accompanied by an smattering of the vegetables I picked up earlier. I separated our portions into three plates, before noticing that Patrick hadn't once visited today.

"Hey Jacqueline am I making three portions or two?"

"Just two; Patrick's celebrating and preparing with Justin and Alex," Jacqueline called back. I re-divided no-longer-Patrick's portion between myself and Jacqueline, and placed the plate in a basin for washing later.

"Alright, I'm starting in!" Typically one would wait for all members to be seated, but today was a busy day, so Jacqueline would let me eat quickly and finish up my tasks in the field that was our back yard. I had only harvested for us and Barbara; I still needed to plant the new seeds, till soil, prune the weeds, and help with a nearby rebuilding effort.

I wolfed down my meal in about five minutes flat, then rushed outside to finish up my tasks in the farm.