by Simon Archer
“Here is your test. His name is Ben,” Selena said insensitively, when the two of them reached the table where we stood.
“Hey, Ben,” I said, offering to shake his hand. Gale reached across and pushed my arm down, shaking her head at me.
“I’ll explain later,” she whispered to me.
“Hello,” Ben replied, obviously confused as to what he was doing there and why I could not shake his hand.
“Ben, what are you good at?” I asked. I wanted to make his discomfort pass as quickly as possible.
“I am decent with tanning leather and charming it for durability,” he replied confidently.
“Good,” I said. “I’m going to have a little contest with you.” I glanced at Gale. She snapped her fingers at the cabinet, then reached in and pulled out two raw pieces of leather. Handing them to me, I passed one to Ben. “I want you to spell this to be completely waterproof before I can. If you do this, you will level up.” He looked at me and raised his brow.
“I’ll do what?” he asked.
“Oh, that’s just something we say where I’m from. Now, let’s get started!” I said cheerily. Ben hesitated for a moment but then shrugged his shoulders and sat down in the chair Gale pulled out for him. I sat across from him.
“When do we start?” Ben looked up at me.
“Now!” I said. He instantly started hovering his hands over his piece of leather and chanting. I pretended to do the same thing. Of course, I had no idea how to waterproof leather, especially how to do it magically. That didn’t matter, however. I simply needed him to do it first. That moment came quickly, within a minute in fact.
“Done!” Ben called out, excitement in his voice.
“Awe, man!” I pretended to be disappointed. “Good match, my man!”
“That was the easiest match I’ve ever been asked to!” he said, chuckling. He stopped and looked down at his right wrist. “What is that? My wrist feels hot. There’s something on it!” His good-humored nature was rapidly turning into panic. He held his wrist out, and sure enough, a circle had developed. Inside the circle was a symbol for magic, and a symbol for a plant. I looked at Gale.
“Ben here has a natural talent for agriculture, and as you just saw, has developed a bit of skill in the magic department,” she told me. Looking at him, I took him by the shoulders.
“If you had a choice, which would you rather be better at?” I asked him.
“Better than what?” His confusion showed on his face.
“Better than you are right now,” I explained. He took a moment to consider my question.
“I’d be better at agriculture,” he stated, offering no further explanation.
“Touch the plant shape inside the circle on your wrist,” I commanded. He did as he was told immediately. The two figures faded away as the circle darkened until it was completely filled with black. Ben’s eyes glazed over for a few seconds, and then he blinked several times.
“What just happened? I suddenly know a lot about agriculture that I did not know just a moment ago!” He looked scared but sounded excited. I shot Gale a pleading look. It didn’t seem fair to take this man’s abilities away, if that was even possible for me to do. She didn’t waver, however. So, I held my hand out once again for Ben to shake, making certain to glance at Gale, so she didn’t stop me.
“Oh, Ben, it was just a gag! You have no new knowledge or ability to gain any outside of learning through your studies,” I said clearly, making sure my index finger was touching the circle on his wrist while we shook hands. In an instant, his eyes glazed over again. When he blinked himself back to his surroundings once again, he shook his head as if confused.
“That was weird,” he said, looking at Gale. “Is this some sort of new magic we will be learning? It was like I knew a whole bunch of stuff I shouldn’t, and then it was just gone.”
“We are considering teaching this type of thing,” she lied to Ben. I turned his hand slightly before letting go of it and saw that the circle had completely disappeared. I nodded to Gale to let her know that Ben was clear to go. “You can return to your class now, Ben. Thank you for your time today.” He looked at Gale, me, then Selena.
“Okay, you’re welcome,” he replied. It was as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He took the entire experience to be a favor to a teacher, or something similar. Selena took him by the arm and began walking him back out of the room.
“Hey, Ben,” I said, loudly. “You’ll be getting that knowledge back real soon. I think your cooperation here today has ensured we’ll be teaching that! Thank you!”
Gale glared at me momentarily, but then shrugged as if she agreed which surprised me.
“Thank you!” Ben called back and went back to letting Selena lead him away.
“Selena,” Gale called to her. “That will be all.” Selena nodded her head in acknowledgment of Gale’s dismissal and continued out of the room with Ben. When the two of them left, Gale sat down, looked across the table at me, and started giggling.
“If ever I thought my life would bore me, I most certainly don’t have to worry about that now!” Her giggle turns into a laugh that spread to me.
“So, I can change all sorts of shit, move things around sometimes, and to give other people the ability to be great, and then take it away… what else could a guy ask for?” I joked. I still wasn’t sure what all I was capable of, but I agreed with Gale about one thing, I didn’t get the feeling that either one of us would be bored for a very long time.
11
After having a good laugh and taking a few minutes to whisk away the cabinet, table, and chairs magically, Gale looped her arm through mine, and we walked out of the testing room.
“Is that all for today?” I had no idea what time it was, but I was certain it wasn’t evening yet.
“Not by a long shot,” Gale smiled up at me. “I want to show you something. I believe it will answer some more of your questions.”
“Lead the way!” It excited me to learn more about myself, and about Blenwise.
After we exited the training room, Gale made the room disappear with a wave of her hand. Then she released my arm and led me across the foyer to the door between staircases that she had come out of when I’d first met her yesterday.
The moment the door opened, my eyes grew wide at the gorgeous vision before me. It was much smaller than the training room, as I’d come to refer to the large room we’d been in before and rather dark in comparison.
Instead of torches lighting the place up, there were groupings of candles in amazingly elaborate sconces throughout the room. It was constructed in the shape of an octagon, and floor to ceiling bookshelves lined the walls. It had to be the largest collection of books I had ever seen in a single room.
The books themselves were things of beauty. While I could pick out a few that looked more like a standard paperback, the majority of them bound in materials like canvas, leather, or burlap. With the low light from the candles, and the antique ‘feel’ of the books, a certainty that I’d just walked into a treasure trove of ancient knowledge spread through me.
Eight long library tables, decoratively carved and polished to shine like mirrors, furnished the room. Sixteen matching chairs surrounded each table, each chair having a ribbon woven through the carvings on the back. Those ribbons were the only thing that discerned one table from the next, as each table had a different color ribbon on its chairs.
At the far end of the room stood a podium on a raised platform, overlooking the entire place. A flash ran through my mind with an image of myself standing behind the podium, speaking to a packed room of Warriors and Witnesses. The fleeting image brought with it a strange exhilaration. Gale must’ve noticed my amazement at the place because she started chuckling softly as she turned and saw my face.
“Sometimes I forget how impressive this place is until I see it on somebody else’s face, which I don’t often do,” she whispered. Even with her voice lowered, her words echoed throughout the room,
amplifying their volume.
“How do you not come in here and never want to leave?” I asked, also whispering. The longer I stood in the room, the more comfort pressed in on me like a heavy, warm blanket. Gale gazed around and smiled.
“This is where I spend most of my time for just that reason. I love the way it feels here,” she said, fondness in her voice.
“Do you just sit and read all day, or what?” I asked. The room did seem to have a very specific purpose, and there were enough books to spend multiple lifetimes reading.
“No, I do not only read here,” she replied. “I learn, and I practice, and I preserve.”
“Preserve?” I pulled my eyes away from examining the room to look at her.
“This room, our Reflection room, contains knowledge dating back thousands of years. Ancient magic is tucked between a lot of these book covers that nobody has gotten around to revisiting in nearly as long. Unknown magic, spells, incantations, and tinctures like that we must test and practice before we can pass the knowledge on to the current generation. And, of course, we must maintain the physical health of the books.” She had so much love in her eyes as she spoke. The sense that the room loved her back was evident in the surrounding air.
“What will I be doing here today? And will I be able to come back regularly?” I asked. Although I had only been in the room for mere moments, I felt as though I would be happy spending all of my time there and could not imagine it only being part of the tour of the Academy.
“There is a particular book you need to see you today, and yes, you can come back regularly. In fact, you will be spending a decent amount of time here.” She turned and slowly walked down a center aisle between the tables, waving for me to follow.
I ran my fingers across the shining wood as I passed each one. There was a sort of energy, a force, held within those tables as though they had absorbed some of the magic surrounding them.
We went directly to the platform, climbed the three steps to get onto it, and stopped next to the podium. The podium was larger than I’d initially thought, standing nearly five feet tall. The top was a three-foot square slab of marble secured to a wooden base that was even more intricately carved than the tables and chairs in the room.
Gale slowly moved an arm over the top of the podium and took a step back. I backed up as well and stared at the marble top. A few seconds passed, and nothing happened.
I glanced at Gale. She had an intent focus that told me I just needed to wait longer. Sure enough, just then, a very faint chiming sounded out from the podium. It spread through the room softly until the air seemed to vibrate with it. It wasn’t too loud and added to the comfort I felt. A dark purple glow began to emit from the top of the podium. The glow swirled into a kind of smoke, staying within the confines of the podium top but moving faster and faster.
The purple smoke parted down the middle suddenly, and a huge book rose vertically up through the split. When the entire book was visible, it gracefully opened and slowly lowered onto the podium. As soon as it settled in place, the purple smoke curled around its edges and disappeared as though it had vanished between the pages.
I’d almost felt silly thinking to myself that I’d never seen anything like it because I seemed to have had that feeling every five minutes since I arrived in Blenwise.
Nevertheless, what I was looking at enamored me. The book covered the entire top of the podium and was at least six inches deep on either side of the open pages. The binding that showed under the pages was hard and leather-bound, but almost black. The pages themselves were yellowed and very clearly extremely old.
That was when I noticed something curious. The book was open almost exactly to the middle of the pages, but the exposed pages were blank. I wanted nothing more than to flip the page to see if there was writing on the next one, but at the same time, it scared me to touch such a relic. Gale shifted beside me, and I realized she was watching me.
“What is it?” I whispered. My voice bounced around the room, seemingly too loud.
“This is our Living History Journal,” she answered, managing to keep her voice several levels quieter than I had. “It writes itself, edits what it writes to correct for how events actually occur, and indicates what may come next, on a major-event basis.”
“Is that why it is blank? It hasn’t written itself on these pages?” I leave to get closer to the book, still afraid to touch it.
“Yes, no one has used these pages yet, although I have a feeling they will be very soon now that you are here,” Gale replied. “You see, the book has been acting strange the past several years. It will flip its pages back and forth as though looking for something within itself.”
“Weird,” I said. I could barely believe I was staring at a book with such abilities. It had a presence to it, like another person in the room, only one who was wise and sparked a sort of reverence in its reader.
“Yes, it is very strange,” Gale agreed.
“Can I touch it?” I finally grew the courage to ask.
“Yes, of course.” Gale took a small step to the side and nodded towards the book.
Anticipation flashed in her eyes, making me wonder if I was being put through some new sort of test all of a sudden. I didn’t care. I wanted to connect with the journal, and that was all I could think about.
I stepped up to the podium and gazed down at the marvel in front of me. Slowly, I lowered my hands to lay flat on each side of the book. The instant I touched it, a coolness spread through my palms and fingers, followed by a heaviness, and I wasn’t certain I could lift my hands again. I didn’t want to, though. I slid one hand to the top of the book and gently separated the page from the ones under it.
Without ever removing my hands from the book, I slowly turned the page, falling in love with the crackling sound that really old, stiff paper made when it moved. The following pages were blank as well, so I turned back and decided to check out the content in the opposite direction. Flipping gently, back-and-forth, I could not seem to find a page that was written on in that section of the book. I looked back to Gale, who was watching me intently.
“Should I start at the beginning?” I asked, not certain what to do next. I slid my hand to rest fully on the exposed page. Gale’s mouth opened to respond just as a bolt of energy shot through my hand, up my arm, and engulfed my entire body. I couldn’t hear what Gale was saying as my vision went blurry and faded to black. When my vision cleared, I was no longer in the Reflection Room.
I was standing near the edge of a cliff, tucked away behind a large boulder, like I was hiding from something. I peered around the side of the rock and had a clear view of a massive cave entrance. My heart pounded furiously. Anger and worry flooded my veins.
Before me was a mass of men, grungy and violent, attacking the largest, most beautiful dragon I’d seen yet. The scales on her body were a light blue that shone like sunlight off of silver at the bottom of the ocean. There was a purplish-blue tint to her wings that changed intensity as she moved them about in her struggle.
There was a snow-white stripe up the middle of her face and head that ended in a long, flowing mane of white hair that draped down over her neck. Splitting off the white stripe were two baby blue ones that veered off and led to black horns sloping back from either side of her head. The beast’s fluorescent-yellow eyes looked into my eyes, and her panic spread to me. I could just tell she was also resolved to both staying alive, and protecting a secret, although I didn’t know what the secret was.
The men seemed to be trying to capture her more than kill her, and they were making progress. She stood fifty feet taller than they did, and initially, I wasn’t able to figure out how they could have a hold on her with just the chains and ropes they were tying her with. Then she lifted a wing to throw off the miscreants trying to climb onto her, and I saw it. She had a gaping slice through her side that was ten feet in length. Her blood was pouring out, creating a red-black river down her side, running to her belly and flowing onto the ground u
nder her.
I tried to run to her, but I was frozen in place, adrenaline zapping through me like electricity frantically looking for a ground. My anger surged at my inability to go to her aid. As the men were able to catapult a restraint up over her neck, pulling her head to the ground, she stared into my eyes. There was knowledge in her gaze that I did not understand. What I did know was that this creature and I were connected somehow. Not connected like sharing a common goal to flee, no. The connection was so much deeper than that. It was like my heart was tethered to hers, and it pumped blood into both our veins.
As she succumbed to the weight around her neck and was forced to the ground, I strained with everything in me against my paralysis. I needed to save her. For the first time in my life, I felt a murderous rage. I wanted nothing more than to attack the men who were harming her and rip their spines from their flailing bodies, and somehow, I knew I would have the strength to do it.
My muscles burned as I pulled against the force holding me back, unable to break free. The dragon simply watched me as I was watching her. Using one of their catapults, the men launched a boulder into the air that came down on the left side of her head, leaving a large gash. As if time slowed, I watched helplessly as blood flowed slowly down the side of her face. When it reached her eyelid, she finally began to close her eyes. Before she completely blocked out that beautiful yellow light from them, those eyes told me she would survive somehow. What she may have to endure scared her, but it was as if she made me a promise that she would stay alive, regardless of the inevitable pain she headed for.
The moment her eyes shut completely, the invisible restraints around my body evaporated, and I launched forward, reaching for her. I found darkness instead and felt myself falling to the ground. As my body made impact, a dim light began to filter through my eyelids, and I blinked them open. I scrambled to my feet, looking all around me, trying to find the beautiful, suffering creature, but all I could see were books.