The Time: Present day, 720 A.E. (Age of Empires)
The Place: Kachai Fortress, on the outskirts of the city of Vaomeze, in the province of Shenevi
The girl cannot be more than five or six. She's a cute little thing despite the angry red burns spewing across her chest, up her throat, all the way over her delicate jaw. Her blue eyes are big and anxious; her tiny underfed body clings desperately to her father's leg despite the cheerful spread of sweet snacks and tea laid out on the table before her.
"Nila," her father murmurs encouragingly, patting the grimy little paw clutching his trousers, "Come sit and eat something, hm? Look, look. Hazelnut turnovers. Your favorite!"
"Ah," the woman seated across from him says. Her chin rests in her upturned palm, and the smile curling above it is warm and flanked by two charming dimples. Eyes the color of the whirling depths of the Charska Sea twinkle beneath a long curtain of dark lashes; hair the color of a copper coin curls mischievously free from the thick, shining plait falling halfway down her back. Tucked beneath her chair with the tip of its nose resting against her knee is a big, rather pitiful looking black dog with a long skinny snout and long skinny legs.
Nila isn't sure if she likes this dog or not. Some of the stray dogs back home are nice, but the huge fluffy herding dogs usually bark and growl at her if she gets too close. She can't tell which sort of dog this one will be. It hasn't paid her any mind, too focused on snoozing in a beam of sunlight and snoring into its master's trousers.
With her free hand, the woman selects the little plate of hazelnut turnovers and slides them closer to the opposite edge of the table. Nila eyes them suspiciously and then glowers at the woman herself. The woman doesn't return her gaze, though. She doesn't seem to notice Nila at all. Instead, she picks up her pretty porcelain cup and idly swirls the steaming tea inside. It's funny to see such a small cup in such a large hand, Nila thinks. After all, the woman is quite tall, especially to a little girl's eyes. She's even taller than Nila's atu! She looks strong, too. Not hungry. Nila's atu had looked like that once, before they had to leave home. He's the strongest man in the world, as far as Nila is concerned, strong enough to scoop her up on his shoulders or toss her into the air and catch her with ease. Strong enough to split a log with a single swing of his axe. Strong enough to protect her from all the mean people who call her awful names and throw things at her when they see her burns. But since they left home, he's gotten skinnier, his beard growing more unkempt and his cheeks drawing taut.
And here, in this strange place, Atu looks even more ill at ease than he was on the open road. It's not that it's a scary sort of place—the opposite, really. The area they're in is some sort of massive pavilion. They had to follow their escort down a number of walkways and cross a very high bridge to reach it. The pavilion is wide and open and covered by an intimidatingly tall roof, but it still feels quite cozy. There are plants everywhere, stuffed in ceramic pots painted all sorts of colors or hanging from the exposed beams of the ceiling or winding around looming trellises. Some sections of woody, flowering vines even serve as natural barriers against the wind and sun. There are comfortable wicker chairs and overstuffed cushions and small tables strategically placed in pleasant locations; a handful of sturdy shelves enclosing them hold all manner of books and scrolls and trinkets and magical doodads. Tapestries and banners in dark blue and bronze billow in the breeze.
Occasionally, people in handsome robes (also dyed dark blue and bronze) wander by, heedless of Nila and her atu. Some of them wear masks crafted in different shapes and from various materials; others are bare-faced. All of them feel… strange. Familiar, in a way, but not quite like the other people in Nila's village. She can't explain how or why, but she knows it to be true.
So it's a nice place. Nicer than anything Nila has ever seen. It makes her feel small and grubby, like a bug someone has dragged out from under a rock and placed onto a silver platter for further examination.
The tall, strange woman (who does not wear a mask of any sort) finally sips her tea and sighs in satisfaction, leaning back in her high-backed chair to regard Nila's atu. The black dog groans, put-upon, and opens its watery dark eyes to stare reproachfully up at her. The woman scratches its chin. She still doesn't look at Nila, even when Nila's hand slowly, carefully inches towards the plate of hazelnut pastries.
"You must have traveled a long way," the woman says instead. "I hope you didn't run into any trouble on the road?"
"No, no," Atu insists. "It was fine. The weather's stayed nice, thanking the Queen for Her mercy. It wasn't so bad."
A queer expression crosses the tall woman's face for a flicker of a second, there and gone before Nila can even really register it (not that she's looking too hard. The closest pastry is nearly in her reach).
"May She reign eternal," is all she says.
Atu coughs nervously. "I–I apologize again for bothering you, Miss, um. Miss Preceptor. Ma'am."
"You can call me Ari," the tall woman says.
Atu swallows. "Preceptor… Ari. Ah, I tried bringing Nila to the coven outpost in Ghurma, but they said—said that there was nothing they could do for her, and they told me to bring her here. To you. I really hope it isn't a bother. I… don't have much, but you're welcome to all of it if you can just… if you can help her." At the end, his voice cracks with the effort of remaining steady and polite.
Nila's fist closes around the warm, flaky pastry hanging off the edge of the plate. In a flash, she yanks it beneath the table and stuffs as much of it in her mouth as will fit in one bite. Her cheeks bulge with the effort, but the feeling of rich, buttery sweetness melting on her tongue is well worth the discomfort. It's the first thing she's eaten in weeks that isn't dried trail rations.
The woman–Preceptor Ari?—waves a hand. "Nah," she replies cheerfully. "I was bored anyway. It's been so slow since winter's end, you know? I should thank you for giving me something to do besides teaching the novitiates not to eat their own boogers."
Nila, who only recently learned not to eat boogers, sniffs in disdain.
Preceptor Ari yawns and stretches her arms out with a satisfying crack. "Eat all you want. I don't really like sweet stuff. When you're done, why don't you take a walk with me for a bit?" She smiles. "Don't worry about the little one. She can't run off, and Baza here can keep her company." The woman pats the scraggly dog's slender snout. It huffs.
Nila bristles at this. She has a name, first of all, and she's not little, she's six! And it's not proper for a lady to walk around unsupervised with an unmarried man! The old aunties back home used to cluck about that all the time! And she doesn't want to hang out with some… mangy dog anyway!
Fine! Go on! See if she doesn't figure out how to run off! She's not stupid!
Atu hesitates for a long moment, but when the tall woman stands and begins fussing with the nearby plants, pulling dead growth from their stems without a single care for the fate of her pastries, he finally reaches out and snags a plate of his own.
***
Some time later, the man and the tall woman depart the pavilion, meandering slowly down a long flight of wooden stairs until they reach a sprawling, slightly overgrown, but nevertheless charming garden. There is neither a little girl nor a lanky black dog following them.
A cobbled pathway winds between rotund bushes and little stone statues carved in the amateurish likenesses of the Eight Archons and clumps of colorful flowers. This is the path they follow as they stroll, one figure far more relaxed than the other. There doesn't seem to be anyone else in this particular garden at the moment.
The man has been silent for much of this walk, but suddenly he finds the words brewing in his throat can be held back no longer. "Will you be able to help her?" he finally asks. His words are raw with a fear he has until now been unable to reveal to anyone.
Preceptor Ari glances down at him with a small smile. Since the man's wife died giving birth to little Nila, he has had no particular interest in looking at other women, but he has to admit this one is certainly handsome. She's no blushing village maiden, soft and buxom, but there is an appealing sort of confidence in her smooth gait. Her skin is unblemished and gilded by the sun; the lines of her nose and jaw are straight and even. When she smiles, there is an air of carefree mischief in the dips of her dimples, the crinkling at the corners of those fox-like eyes.
She folds her arms casually behind her back. "Of course," she says.
She doesn't explain further. She doesn't hasten to ease his worries. She speaks with the easy, thoughtless certainty of someone who does not have to wonder whether or not she speaks the truth; if she says it, it will be done.
It is far more reassuring than the man would have expected. All at once, the frenetic strength that's been driving him through these sleepless weeks sloshes out of him like water from an overfilled cup. He finds himself swaying, finds his throat closing up with a choking sob. Preceptor Ari doesn't coddle him, doesn't ask him what's wrong. She merely holds him up courteously by the elbow and half-guides, half-drags him to a nearby wooden bench. He collapses upon it in a daze, staring unseeingly at the clusters of flowers before him dancing in the spring breeze. Fat tears leak soundlessly down his cheek. Thankfully, the Preceptor doesn't look, instead turning to regard the flowerbeds.
"Ah…" Preceptor Ari says morosely, "Look at my poor calendulas. They're gonna get swallowed."
The man doesn't reply, and the Preceptor doesn't seem to expect one. As the man buries his face in his hands, she marches towards the line of flowerbeds and reaches for the short leather sheath at her side—only for her fingers to swipe nothing but air, as whatever the sheath ordinarily holds is entirely absent. Preceptor Ari glances down in faint surprise, then curses under her breath and begins rolling up her sleeves. Heedless of what horrors might await her fine brown boots and crisp woolen uniform, the woman crouches down and starts rummaging through the tangle of weeds choking her neglected flowers.
This is how the next twenty minutes pass: the man watches the Preceptor in teary silence, and the Preceptor idly hums a tune he doesn't recognize as she rips out clump after clump of crabgrass and thistle by the roots.
"Does your daughter like flowers?" she calls over her shoulder some time later. The man startles, shaken from his reverie.
"She–she does."
"Does she have a favorite flower?"
"I don't… know. I don't think so?"
"Okay. A favorite color, then?"
"Uh… blue."
"Blue," the Preceptor muses. "Blue, blue." She stands up and dusts off her filthy hands, surveying the garden for a moment before muttering an "Aha!" and setting off in an apparently random direction. Only a few moments later, she returns with a bouquet of dainty summer gentians nestled in the crook of her arm.
"Do you want me to tell you what happens now?" she asks the man. "Some people, it makes them feel better to know. Some people just want to get it over with. Whatever makes you comfortable."
The man opens his cracked lips, thinks, and then nods. "I'd like to know."
The Preceptor doesn't answer immediately. Instead, she adjusts her delicate bundle of blooms and offers the man a hand up—a hand that, despite her modest efforts, is still quite dirty. She either doesn't notice it or doesn't mind it, and the man himself is filthy from weeks on the road. He clasps it gratefully and only staggers a little bit when the woman hauls him easily to his feet with a strength even her athletic frame doesn't entirely explain.
Once they set off along the cobbled path again, Preceptor Ari begins to speak. "Do you have any mages in your family, by chance? Any friends who are mages, even?"
The man only grimaces and shakes his head. Preceptor Ari had expected this answer and hums noncommittally. "Alright. Well–we're in a garden, so I'll explain it this way." She glances around until she spots a nearby shrub, its belly festering with weeds, and stops. The man looks at it too when she indicates it with a jerk of her chin. "So right now, your daughter's soul looks a little bit like that bush."
The man stares at the bush, at the innocuous-looking but parasitic growths taking refuge in its soil.
"Every witch's power is born from what we call a sunseed," she continues. "It's a teeny-tiny little sliver of the True Sun—our highest divine. It's a spark of potential. But until the seed finds a host, it's dormant. Once it latches on properly, it'll set down roots fast and start to grow, but it's like any seed: it can't feed itself. For the first stage of its life, it can only draw on the energy of the soul it's buried in. If you're a strong mage with a robust spiritual foundation, that's not such a big deal. But if you're a little girl whose soul is still unstable, who doesn't have any control over her own life force…"
The man's expression crumples a bit.
"As the seed grows, it will try to meld itself to the soul it inhabits. Even under ideal conditions, it's not an easy process; human bodies weren't really made with this kind of power in mind. And the younger you are, the weaker you are, the hungrier you are, the sicklier you are… the more difficult that process is. It takes time and energy, and it comes with a price."
The Preceptor taps her chest. "Those burns your daughter has? We call them stigmata. They're the first visible sign that a sunseed has been planted, and they'll continue to appear until the seed blooms. The more her body fights that bloom, the more it will hurt her."
"Nila," the man whispers brokenly. He can say nothing else. There is a war taking place in his daughter's body, and he can do nothing, nothing at all, to stop it.
"If everything goes perfectly, by the time the seed is ready to complete its coalescence the soul will have been tempered to accept it. We call that a harmonious bloom. But if the soul has been weakened too much, or if it rejects the seed, then… it'll keep eating at the soul until there's nothing left. We call that a calamitous bloom."
"Would it… kill her?" the man asks softly.
The Preceptor turns to him and smiles again, a beam of sunlight breaking through a bank of storm clouds. "While I'm here? No shot. But if she were on her own—maybe. You did a good thing, coming here so quickly."
Really, there's no maybe about it. A child of Nila's age and ability, left to her own devices, has almost no chance of survival. And it truly is a good thing the man and his daughter had arrived at Kachai Fortress now, because in another week or two, it would have been far too late.
But the Preceptor says none of this. "A calamitous bloom can kill, or it can maim–the mind, the body, and the soul. Either way, once it's done, it's done. There's no fixing it. Even I can't reverse that kind of damage."
Prior to this, Preceptor Ari had not yet told the man a lie. This is the first.
Seeing the poor man's face reddening with the threat of tears again, she pats his shoulder. "Anyway, there's no need to get worked up. You wanted to know what happens after she blooms, right?"
Frankly, the man hadn't stopped long enough to consider what might happen after. His heartsick mind had only enough room to fear the present; what good was it to fret about a future not yet assured? And so the two of them continued down a long stretch of that cobbled path before he finally answered with a simple nod.
The Preceptor does not launch into her explanations immediately. Instead, she gradually draws to a halt beneath a pair of drooping willows. Nearby, a gurgling dragonhead fountain serves as a bath-house for a gaggle of red rosefinches. The air is sweet and temperate, the sky above crisp and blue and cloudless.
"God-Queen Velnyr planted a lot of this garden herself, you know," she says suddenly. "Years ago. Back when Kachai Fortress was the Dawn's only stronghold."
The man jolts, utterly unprepared for this change of topic. "Wh—really?" he stammers.
"Yup." The Preceptor watches a fat honeybee hover precariously above the soft yellow bowl of a golden peony. "Apparently she's into horticulture. Who knew."
"I… see," the man replies, a bit lost. He looks helplessly at the weeds, the dirty water in the fountain, the mud and moss fuzzing over the cobblestone path.
The Preceptor follows his gaze and smiles, though it lacks any real warmth. "It's just a pleasure garden now. It doesn't grow anything useful. I tidy it up when I can, but…" she shrugs half-heartedly. "No one really comes here anymore. It's not like the Queen has ever been back to check on it."
The man does not respond, but something about this glib excuse rings untrue. A garden planted by a divine hand—surely the members of such a devoted creed wouldn't allow it to fall into this state for no reason?
(There are three disciples in particular who would dare to authoritatively disagree with this proclamation regarding the garden's abandonment: their master has punished them with gardening duty so often they could navigate this winding cobblestone path blindfolded! To hear her claim that she alone is responsible for the welfare of this place?! Their very hearts would shrivel! Shameless!!!)
Preceptor Ari turns to the man, and her expression is for once entirely serious. "I'm sure you know you won't be able to bring your daughter home once this is done."
When the man offers no reply except a bowed head, her tone gentles. "It's a royal edict, I'm afraid. Anyone blessed by the True Sun must be taught and supervised by a coven until a master deems them fully in control of their abilities. Even if she decides to live elsewhere after she passes her Crucible and pursues some other trade, she'll remain under Kachai Coven's oversight. But—" her hand sweeps out towards the overgrown yet serene beauty around them, "—it isn't a prison sentence, joining the covens. Our people live well. She won't go hungry, she won't be persecuted, and she'll earn a cut of the profits from every assignment she completes. And you won't be separated from her forever, either: commonfolk are welcome to visit friends and relatives still in training with the permission of the Head Preceptor, or during certain holidays and ceremonies."
Times certainly had changed, the Preceptor thinks, not unkindly.
It was no surprise, really, that a queen so intimately familiar with the workings of the storied mage sects of Imtheria would model her own pet cults after them. Few people on this side of the Worldrift knew how the sects of Imtheria and Saimr's own Red Citadel differed, but the Preceptor was one of those people.
Before the war, the Red Citadel at the peak of its power and influence had served as Saimr's sole institution of higher arcane learning—and the governing body that ruled the kingdom's officially-ordained mages. The Citadel's archmages answered only to the old king, and only the Citadel could confer the right to practice magic within Saimr's borders to those outside of the priesthood. Unlawful practice of the arcane arts was a crime punishable by death, but mages recognized by the Citadel were immune to these laws (and many others). To wear the ruby ring of a Citadel mage was a privilege envied by nobles, merchants, and commonfolk alike. Some mages were granted positions of esteem inside the royal court; others became members of prestigious guilds or served as bodyguards for the rich and powerful. Many noble families were willing to pay handsomely for the Citadel to train their scions, and for the right price the Citadel was willing to grant its ruby rings to anyone with a lick of magical talent.
Theoretically, even peasants could improve their fortune if they were admitted to the Red Citadel, and there were a great many tales about folk heroes who had done just that—but in reality, how often did such a thing occur? The answer: very rarely. The truth was that the laws prohibiting the unregulated practice of arcane arts were largely used by the nobility to suppress the masses (and by the old king to curb the rise of any potential unexpected rivals—he'd learned that lesson during the so-called Phoenix King's Rebellion). With no resources available to teach them and so many barriers in place to prevent them from honing their skills, how could any lowborn laborer hope to pass the Citadel's entrance exams? Not to mention the difficulty and expense of crossing the kingdom to reach the Citadel in the first place! Even those very lucky few who managed to enter the Citadel's gates would soon discover that without a family name or any coin behind them, they would likely be relegated to the positions that nobody else wanted.
And so most of the Citadel's mages came from well-to-do families who could afford to hire tutors in secret or bribe officials to look the other way. And of course many of those mages returned to those same families to safeguard their wealth and power. A few set out on their own to join the mage guilds, but these guilds only provided services at a premium to those nobles and merchants without the good fortune to have a mage in the family to call upon. If the common people faced the threat of monsters or arcane anomalies or restless spirits? Oh well. Unless they scrounged up a hefty enough collection to tempt a mage guild to deal with the problem, or the issue interrupted their tithes, they were left to deal with things on their own. The priesthood was capable of handling some of these issues, but the price of the blood tithe often increased in turn.
But in Imtheria, things were very different. For one, arcane talent was far more prevalent. Because the Amnion—the veil dividing the material plane from the raw creative energies of the Aether—was thin there, both mages and magical threats were quite commonplace. With so many dangers facing every settlement, nurturing arcane talent to defend them was paramount. No divine monarch in Imtheria spared any expense in establishing infrastructure to support this. Each Imtherian city-state boasted at least one mage sect and usually a corps of elite royal mages under the direct command of the divine monarch. These mage sects accepted and trained all souls who displayed even a spark of arcane talent.
Even though many of these initiates would not ultimately pass their exams, the sect's education extended beyond arcane theory; they also taught reading and arithmetic, history and rhetoric, fine arts and mundane sciences. Those who passed their exams and became full-fledged mages could serve the sect in a variety of roles, and while not all of them were equally prestigious, they were all comfortably-compensated. Those who did not might become meritorious civil servants. The sects handled problems of all sorts for people of all types, and while they charged a nominal fee for their services, their costs were offset by contributions from the royal treasury and by donations from the city-state's noble houses. This system provided each city-state with both an educated middle class and a body of experienced arcanists who could provide martial and civil support alike.
(The downside of this system was that every divine monarch also had to contend with the headache of a dozen or more elite mage houses bickering with each other and the crown, and occasionally producing legitimate threats to their rule.)
In Leviathan, the subterranean city-state where God-Queen Velnyr was born and had lived the first century of her life, even more focus was placed on engineering stronger and stronger generations of mages. The queen herself was a result of such efforts, and no one could argue that however cut-throat these measures were, they certainly yielded results.
Immediately following her ascension to the throne, God-Queen Velnyr had restructured the Red Citadel entirely (and faced almost no opposition in the process, as so many of its prominent faces had already died during the war–to say nothing of the fact that every noble family in the kingdom was thoroughly under her thumb on threat of death or worse). Now she had founded the covens as well, each one a combination of mage sect and monastery. It was a tidy way to handily wrangle the continuing threat of rogue witches, put what little remained of the Dawn to good use, and of course to further cement the queen's own cult of divine personality.
Who would expect anything less from the legendary Black Blade of Leviathan?
Preceptor Ari isn't entirely aware that she's slipped into a reverie until the man next to her stirs, an enormous sigh heaving from his sunken chest.
"Alright," he says slowly. "When can we start?"