Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Sixteen

Tali

Kaltoren, Drasken

21st of Satimus

Tali settled into a routine at Ren Câdern over the past week and almost started to feel comfortable. The day always began early, with a lecture in one of the many lecture halls down in the lower storeys. From what she gathered, most of the first-years, all several hundred of them, attended these lectures, which involved a tutor talking them through the various aspects of aasiurmancy, sometimes with demonstrations. Tali spent most of her time scribbling down notes, determined to learn everything there was to know about a subject she'd never properly encountered before. Often, the discussed concepts stumped her, and she had to lean in to Renna, who always sat with her, for clarification.

After the lectures came the classes, wherein the year was split down into groups of twenty or less and distributed amongst the smaller, more private classrooms. Most of these classes handled theory, and involved the reading of some of the driest, most ancient texts Tali had ever had the displeasure of consuming. Discussions and debates were had, but Tali kept quiet at the back of the classroom, ducking her eyes beneath the tutor's scrutiny in the hopes of remaining invisible. Already she was on the receiving end of questioning glances from the other students, and she'd seen several youths raise pointed fingers to their heads in crude mockery of her stunted horns.

Lunch and an hour of free study time broke up the day, and Tali usually found herself with Renna, using the girl's brusque, aggressive nature as a shield against the other students. Sometimes, if Renna wasn't around, she'd drift towards Benji, who also lunched alone. She'd expected someone of his calibre—the Keizerin and Jalin's son—to be more popular, but instead he was an outsider, and though he tried to look unbothered, Tali saw the envious way he sometimes glanced at the louder friendship groups.

When Tali stumbled from her room a few hours after dawn, too tired to be apprehensive about the morning's lecture, she found Renna leaning on the opposite wall with her characteristic smile in place. Whether by design or accident, Renna's dorm neighboured hers and, on top of declaring herself Tali's friend, Renna had also decided to adopt the role of guide, snatching it from Benji.

"Like cutting things fine, don't you?" Renna asked as Tali shut the door behind her. "We're going to be late."

Tali pulled at the fur-lined collar of her robe, still unused to its cut. It draped down to her knees like a Fensidium greatcoat but, because the College's Surrekan engine kept the entire structure pleasantly warm, was thinner and lighter. "Why did you wait for me? Don't get into trouble on my account."

The other girl scoffed. "Don't worry about me. As long as my father serves the Jalin, my place here is secured."

"That sounds like blackmail."

"Maybe it is," Renna replied with a shrug. "Hardly matters, does it?"

Again, Tali found herself trying to match the Jalin she'd been mentored by with the cruel man others' descriptions painted him as. A man who could hold another man's adopted daughter to ransom against his cooperation. A man who could ruin that same individual's family and reputation in the first place. A man who could look at Tali and see not a girl hounded by her enemies and bound to the whims of her protectors, but a blade to be wielded.

The hall Renna led her to was smaller than she'd expected of so grand a building as the College, but its row upon row of attending youths made it seem cramped and stifling. They were arranged in a three-quarter circle, the seating stacked in concentric rings, with the tutor and their desk located below. A few minutes late as they were, Tali and Renna were the last to find their seats, and she nodded a quick greeting to Benji as she eased her way into the row below him.

The tutor, a middle-aged woman called Master Emer, said nothing of their lateness, and Renna made a point of aggressively ignoring any nearby students who threw them dirty looks. Tali dragged her pack onto her lap and pulled free the book, pen, and ink pot that'd been left in her room for her when she'd first arrived. She was grateful Shira had taken the time over their four years in Alzikanem to teach her to read and write, because the College took its students' literacy as a given.

The tutor rounded her desk, then clasped her hands before her. "What can anybody tell me about the Gnostic Planes?"

A battalion of hands rose, and Master Emer eventually called on Benji. "They are everything and nothing, one aspect and all aspects, concrete and abstract, independent and dependent, separate and joined." Tali could tell from his flat tone that the answer was memorised from an earlier lesson.

"Correct, if a little vague," Emer replied. "How, then, would you describe the Planes to someone who has never heard of them?"

A student in the first row answered. "They are the source of all magic, the place from where a mage draws the aasiur they then manifest in the physical world."

"Better," Emer said. She paced around the small space in the centre of the seating. "How many Planes are there?"

"They can't be counted," came an anonymous reply.

"But can they be defined?"

"Only in the way mages interact with them." This last, delivered by Renna with a self-satisfied smile. "There's a Plane each for all nine branches of aasiurmancy, but there are many more we can never reach, and will never comprehend."

Tali scribbled everything she heard onto her parchment, her hand aching with the speed of her writing. This information was as new to her now as her awakening to aasiurmancy had been all those months ago, and she endeavoured to understand it all. It didn't matter that she didn't seem to need a Plane to access her magic; she'd need the background knowledge to pretend at being as mundanely magical as the rest of them.

Master Emer spent the next hour of the lecture pontificating about the Gnostic Planes and calling on students to describe their awakening. Tali listened with interest and became increasingly aware of the gaps in her knowledge. When a mage awoke, usually by the age of sixteen, they catapulted themselves to their anchored Plane, the Gnostic Plane they could most easily draw from. Until they honed their skill, not until at least the third year, they could only perform one branch of aasiurmancy. Hearing her fellows talk made her feel stupid and served to highlight her differences. After all, she'd displayed four distinct forms of aasiurmancy in a short span of time, starting with worldstriding, which she'd since discovered was the most difficult form, and therefore the last most mages learned, if they ever learned it at all.

The hall fell deathly silent and Tali snapped her head up, realising with a jolt that Master Emer was glaring at her. In her concentration she'd missed the question.

"Sorry?"

The tutor rolled her eyes, perhaps seeing in Tali another belligerent student like Renna. "I asked what your first experience with aasiurmancy is."

"Um…" She fumbled for a reply. The truth wouldn't work, but she didn't know enough to intelligently lie. "I saw a big fire," she said lamely. It apparently being the easiest magical branch, and the one she found simplest to emulate, she'd already pledged herself as a pyromancer. "I felt hot, like my skin was going to burn. Then I lit a candle in my father's office."

"And that was it?" Emer pressed.

Tali nodded, hunched into her shoulders. When compared to other students' stories of firestorms and eruptions of lightning, a lit candle was pathetic. She'd chosen the image to portray herself as weak and therefore unremarkable. The students around her turned to gawk. A few of them murmured what she suspected were insults at her perceived weakness, and Renna deflected them with grumbles of her own. In truth, she hadn't needed to prove herself so inept, because her fellow mages-in-training already regarded her with disdain. Whether through her friendship with Renna, her half-breed nature, or the fact she was an Imperial commander's bastard, she was lesser. At least to these noble Drasken scions.

"Very well," Master Emer said, then turned her gaze away and sought out new prey among her audience.

Tali spent the rest of the lesson huddled in her seat, a firepit of unearned shame roiling in her gut.

―

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The last lesson of the day always proved the worst. The first-years were separated into their specialities, to experiment with the practical applications of their magic, and Tali found herself in the pyromancer class. Thankfully, Benji was with her, and she always sat beside him in the cramped classroom. She'd found him a less-than-talkative companion in her brief time at the College, but he'd always help her with her classwork or nudge her when she answered questions incorrectly. He also displayed skill at ignoring his fellow students' insults and nasty looks, and Tali found herself trying to mimic his indifference.

Master Kennet, supposedly one of Kaltoren's most accomplished pyromancers, oversaw their lessons. He started as he always did: he swept a hand over the monstrous firepit built in the middle of the room and displayed a fraction of his true power by igniting and then smothering it. "One day, you will be as powerful as me. Maybe more so, if you have the willpower." He possessed the hard-eyed stare of a veteran soldier, and he deployed this at the youths arrayed around him. "Pyromancy is often looked down upon as the most brutish of the branches, but it is equal parts intimidating and useful. Just as we conjure infernos and fireballs against our enemies in the field, we also use our skills to heat our estates, and power our forges, and light our city's streets."

His speech always finished with a puffed chest and what Tali took for a military salute; unlike the fist-to-chest strike of the Imperium, Kennet flattened his palm against his breastbone, then touched his forehead with his forefinger.

"I want to see what some of you can offer," Kennet said after a significant pause. "This firepit is yours to do with as you please. Controlled spectacle only, though. I don't suppose any of us would like to explain to the Jalin why one of his classrooms was accidentally set on fire."

Tali shrank back into her seat as Kennet wheeled his gaze around and settled on Benji. "Master Drakaaren, if you would like to kick things off?"

Benji sighed and dodged around their table, placing himself in front of the still smoking firepit. He stood, silent and unmoving, for a few prolonged moments before jabbing his hands towards the pit. A thin stream of fire pulsed from his open palms, snatching at the singed firewood and igniting it. He snapped his hands into fists, smothering the fire, and watched for a moment as the firepit smouldered weakly.

"Not bad," Kennet mused but, judging by the snickers of their classmates, Benji's display had been unimpressive. Tali supposed being the son of two of Drasken's most powerful mages would come with certain expectations, and he'd yet to fulfil them. It hardly helped that, where he now failed in the College, his two elder brothers had apparently excelled decades before.

He slumped into his seat, downcast, pointedly ignoring everyone. Tali nudged his shoulder with her own and offered him a small smile he was slow to return.

Kennet selected his next victims at random, and most of the next hour they spent watching each other show off to their friends. Several times, Kennet had to suffocate particularly boisterous flames with a handful of sand kept in a small pouch at his hip. When Tali's turn finally arrived, her hands shook with nervousness.

Previous lessons had already covered the basics of conjuring, and she knew she had to fake a meditative state. She closed her eyes and calmed her breathing, though the true trance she knew she should've experienced never manifested. Instead, she sought inwards for the spark of her power. She tried to imagine a tendril of flame like Benji's and opened her eyes to release her hold when her gaze snagged on Kennet, who stood opposite her.

His face had slimmed and hardened, his grizzled countenance becoming planes of pristine androgynous beauty. A sharp, cutting face, enlivened by deep, ancient eyes, framed by glossy hair of a perfect, abyssal black. Erun's features.

"Why do you not seek your freedom?" Erun's voice flowed smooth and soothing. "You can be unchained from this place and its obligations if you choose."

She glanced around the room, wondering if anyone else saw Erun where Kennet should be, but her classmates were frozen in place.

"How are you here?" she demanded. "I'm not asleep, am I?"

Erun swatted her question away. "Did you not consider I would eventually find my way to your waking moments?" it said. "That is beside the point. You did not answer me: why not seek your freedom?"

"I'm free here."

"As free as any weapon that enjoys its time stowed in the armoury."

Tali spun away, but all at once Erun stood in front of her again. "Unleash your power. Drown this room in a firestorm we both know you are capable of calling. Kill anyone who wishes to anchor you to this life."

"And then seek you out, presumably?"

Erun nodded.

"I don't want what you promise," she snapped. She called to mind her father's madness and the image of herself Erun had shown her, if she succumbed to its influence. That was not a fate she wished to pursue.

"We shall see about that." The monster inclined its head, then vanished. With a jolt, she found herself still facing the firepit, and Kennet's features had melted back into place. Her heart hammered at Erun's sudden appearance, at its invasion of her conscious hours, and she lost her grip on her power. She let her hands hang to her sides, and Kennet cocked a disapproving eyebrow at her.

"I can't," she said. "I'm sorry."

The rest of the class snickered, and Kennet was slow to silence them. She returned to her seat, head angled down, and tried to dispel the embarrassment. It helped conceal her true abilities if her fellows didn't think she could perform even the simplest conjuring, but her failure hadn't been deliberate. She'd wanted to conjure, to show them she could, but Erun's presence had genuinely unsettled her, knocked her grip on her power loose and left her flailing.

How the monster had even managed to appear beyond her nightmares was a worrying question she didn't have the answer to.

―

Tali sequestered herself in her rooms after the lesson ended. As much as she'd inadvertently succeeded in underselling her strength, she knew she'd suffer the same derision aimed at Benji and Renna. She wasn't sure if she could face that.

She considered climbing into bed and hiding from the world when someone knocked at her door, the whipcrack sound of the rapping loud and urgent in the quiet. Tali sprang for it without thinking, finding Renna hovering in the hallway beyond, hand raised for another knock.

"Ah, there you are," the girl said. "You didn't come down for dinner."

Tali shrugged. "Wasn't hungry."

Renna nodded into Tali's room. "Can I come in?" She dodged past without waiting for an answer, then planted herself at the desk pushed up against the far wall. "Your room's kind of bare."

"I haven't got much," Tali admitted. Even with all the clothes and school equipment the Jalin had provided, her chambers were more a monastic cell than a student's lodgings.

Renna toyed with a thin stack of papers on Tali's desk; her attempt to recreate her father's maps from memory. "My father keeps buying me stuff for my room. I think he feels guilty that he's never around." She looked up at Tali. "It's gotten worse now he knows my mother's in the city. He doesn't even want to look at me, seems like. Do I look like her, or something?"

Renna resembled her mother in the same way a stonehound resembled a wolf; outwardly they were similar, but one was calm and restrained where the other was feral and vicious. Rather than say this, Tali replied, "Not really."

The other girl shook her head, as if rousing from a stupor, and gestured to the chair beside her. "I didn't come here to be all 'woe is me', scrabbling for sympathy." When Tali had sat down, she continued. "I heard about what happened in Kennet's class. Anyone who gives you grief is a hypocrite; everyone struggles at first. Got to remember you're more than a term behind everyone else."

"I didn't mean to fail. I…" She clamped her mouth before she could reveal the truth. Renna would likely think her mad. "I just panicked."

Renna chuckled. "You should've seen me the first time I conjured." She raised one hand as if to demonstrate. "Shittiest little spark of lightning, and I couldn't even do it again for weeks after."

She set her hand on Tali's in a consoling gesture. Tali jolted away, as if struck by a spark of the other girl's thundermancy. "I'm sorry," Renna said, shifting in her seat.

"No, it's okay," Tali fumbled. "I…" Why had she flinched? Because she hadn't expected the move, and recent experience taught her to see threats everywhere? No, that didn't seem right. Was it because Renna was still a relative stranger, and she didn't want her sympathy? That wasn't accurate either.

No, she hadn't been prepared for the friendship Renna so easily offered. In truth, this girl was the first person her own age she'd ever encountered, the first person to offer a peer's kindness rather than a mentor's wisdom or a father's indifference. She liked Renna, but she feared inadvertently chasing the girl away with her social awkwardness. It occurred to her that she'd seen the harmless gesture of having her hand held as something more, and the implications of it, of a true friendship that went beyond shared familial issues, frightened her.

Renna stumbled into the awkward silence. "Being shit at thundermancy isn't too bad for me, though, because everyone thinks I'm just some illiterate merc bastard. I feel sorry for Benji, barely able to light a candle." She snorted with forced amusement.

"Hopefully, I'll steal some of the attention from him," Tali replied. "He'd appreciate that."

After a pause, Renna mumbled, "I promised myself I wouldn't ask you about my mother, but…" She trailed off.

Tali leapt upon the conversational diversion. "Why don't you go and talk to her? See if your father will take you?"

The other girl scoffed, a coarse sound Tali found herself smiling at. "Nah," Renna said. "My father wants nothing to do with her. Besides, far as I know, the Jalin won't let anyone else near her."

That might've been because the mercenary captain possessed sensitive information about Lord Indro and his plans, but surely Fell would permit Katja's daughter to see her?

"It's just weird, you know?" Renna continued. As if to distract herself, she reached onto the desk and toyed with one of Tali's maps. "I didn't give a single shit about her until I heard she was in the city. Wouldn't have ever thought about her again, had she not been brought here." She set the paper aside and sighed. "I'm so bloody ungrateful. I'm happy with my father, and he's given me the best life by escaping here with me, so why do I even entertain the idea of knowing my mother?"

For the same reason Tali had often pictured a content life serving alongside Uncle Heller or her father. "Because family matters, in the end," she said.

Renna rolled her eyes. "But it bloody shouldn't. I mean, my father's not even my father. Sure, he's still related to me, but I never think about it that way." Her hands screwed into fists, and Tali stifled the urge to reach out and hold her, as Renna had tried to do to her.

She understood the other girl's dilemma. The familial link between Renna and Katja was irresistible, despite their decade or more apart and the bad blood that surrounded her and Maze Westervelt's escape from their mercenary life. As much as she might wish otherwise, Renna would always want to know about her mother, even if she didn't care about the woman herself. In the same vein, Tali would always unconsciously desire her father's attention, even though she was more than old enough now to know she'd never obtain it.

Family was a difficult concept, a double-edged sword of love and hate conspiring against each other.

Renna's expression twisted as she seemed to battle with her own inner turmoil, and Tali swallowed her rising nervousness to reach over and take one of the girl's hands in her own. Renna didn't flinch away as Tali had, instead accepting the gesture with a small, soft smile that made Tali feel warm and comforted.