by Dante King
The gates swung open as we approached. I wondered if they were powered by magic, as the flame on the plateau obviously was, but once inside, I was disappointed to see a group of guards shut the gates and bar them behind us.
Faryn led me across a courtyard bustling with activity—trainees practicing swordplay and Augmentations, servants carrying boxes and bags, and men and women in ornate robes overseeing them all. It made for a lively contrast with the quiet of Tolin’s deserted temple, with only the old man and his cat.
At the far side of the courtyard, we entered the ground floor of one of the towers. This whole floor of the building was a single, high-ceilinged hall. Groups of masters and students stood in clusters while they shared quiet conversations. At the far end was a raised dais holding half a dozen wooden stools, their simplicity offset by the grandeur of the dragon banner behind them.
Only one of the stools was occupied. On it sat a man in simple black robes with a gold and crimson dragon embroidered on his right breast. His long, black hair, tinged with white at the temples, was tied tightly back. He sat with perfect posture, shoulders square and back stiff as he watched.
“Greetings, Disciple Faryn,” he said as we approached. His voice was quiet yet clear, and as he spoke, the rest of the room fell silent.
“Master Xilarion.” Faryn sank to her knees at the base of the podium. I did the same and then, mimicked Faryn when she folded her hands in her lap
I had heard a lot about Xilarion from Faryn. This was the man who had taken her in when she was young, protected and nurtured her through the most difficult period of her life. The way she talked about him, it seemed that they were as close as father and daughter, yet I saw none of that here.
“Who is this?” Xilarion asked.
“This is Ethan Murphy lo Pashat,” Faryn said. “His clan asks that we take him in as an initiate of the Radiant Dragon.”
“Ethan Murphy.” He turned a steely gaze upon me. “I recognized the robes of Clan Pashat the moment you entered this chamber, but I don’t recognize you or your name. I thought that your clan had all but died out.”
“It has.” I tried to match my voice to his solemn tone. “I have been adopted into the clan by its last surviving elder.”
“How do I know that you are not some thief who stole those robes or a trickster who copied them?”
I hadn’t expected such a challenging reception. I sensed every eye in the room on me and tensed, ready to leap into action if I needed to defend myself.
“I do not only wear the robes of Clan Pashat,” I said. “I also know their augmentation forms, as taught to me by Tolin lo Pashat. And I have this.”
I pulled a scroll from inside my robes and laid it on the floor in front of me, unsure whether I should stand to hand it over. Fortunately, I was saved from that decision. A servant scurried forward, picked up the scroll, and handed it to the master.
Xilarion unrolled the scroll, written by Tolin and affixed at the end with his clan seal in gray wax. After reading for a moment, the master rolled it back up and set it down on the stool beside him.
“Very well,” Xilarion said. “If you can forge a fire pathway within you, then you may join the initiates of the Radiant Dragon.”
“This is outrageous!” A young man strode over. He wore green robes embroidered with a red eagle, his delicate features framed by black bangs. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t work out where from.
“Hamon,” Master Xilarion said sternly. “The status of your father and the power of Clan Wysaro do not give you the right to speak like this before a guild master.”
Now, I knew where I recognized the guy from. He was one of those I had seen training as I made my way through the city, after first arriving in the Seven Realms. The moody-looking son of the head of Clan Wysaro.
“I apologize, Master Xilarion.” Hamon bowed at the waist. “But my clan does not acknowledge the ties of adoption, only those of blood. To claim entry into the guild on these grounds is to dishonor those of us who have earned our place here.”
“Wysaro’s views on this are known to me,” Xilarion said. “But adoption is an ancient practice, one which has allowed clans to survive when they might otherwise have fallen.”
“Weak clans, which should have been allowed to die.”
“Curb your tongue, Hamon, or a master will curb it for you.”
Xilarion didn’t move, and his voice didn’t rise, yet his anger was impossible to mistake. The two men stared at each other, the air tense between them, yet I found myself smirking, enjoying watching arrogant young Hamon get brought down a peg or two.
“I apologize again, master.” Hamon bowed lower than before. “I will remember my place in the future.”
He stepped away from us. As he did so, he shot me a look of pure venom.
Unable to resist, I winked, and saw his fury grow.
“Ethan Murphy lo Pashat,” Xilarion said, drawing my attention back to him. “We recognize the practice of adoption. You may test to enter the Radiant Dragon Guild. In the interests of keeping the peace among my people, you will take that test immediately.”
He stood, jumped down to the floor of the chamber, and strode past us toward the doors, stiff-backed and formal the whole way. Faryn caught eyes with me, and I suspected she was waiting for me to act. I wasn’t certain of her intention, but as I straightened and followed Xilarion, I saw a small smile touch her lips and she trailed behind me. Amid a hubbub of anticipatory whispers, the rest of the room’s occupants followed.
We hurried across the courtyard, an excited crowd growing around us. The guards swung the gates open just in time to let Master Xilarion through, and we went after him, straight toward the pillar of flame, while the guild members spilt out across the plateau.
Xilarion stopped at the very edge of the fire and stood beside it.
“Kneel,” he commanded.
I obeyed, sinking to my knees beside him. The flame pillar bathed me in its head, and I could smell the slight odor of burnt hair. I leaned back a little so that the fire wouldn’t burn me, but its heat remained intense.
“To enter this guild, an initiate must open the pathway of fire.” Xilarion raised his voice for all to hear. “Ethan Murphy lo Pashat will face that challenge.” He lowered his voice. “Do you understand what this involves, Ethan Murphy?”
I nodded, remembering how I had opened the pathway of wood. This would be like my encounter with the dryad, a trial for my spirit self. I focused on my breathing and drew my consciousness toward the world within.
Master Xilarion stretched one arm into the fire, and it did not burn him, though I could feel the heat radiating from it. He placed his other hand on my head.
“Begin.”
I closed my eyes and followed the paths that Tolin had helped me to make, deeper into myself. The world faded away, and I found myself in a place of fire and embers. I stood alone on a plateau, like that in front of the guild house, but the ground was coal, and the sky blazed like the heart of the sun.
The heat wasn’t just around me. It was in me as well. I felt it spreading from the place where Xilarion touched my head. Not just heat but fury swept through my mind, burning away all calm. I leapt to my feet, fists raised, ready to fight.
A figure appeared in front of me. Human-like but made of flames, its body twisted like the heart of a tornado.
All rational thought gone, I leapt straight at it, not fearing the heat. The fire spirit stepped, but I caught it with a glancing blow. My fist hit where the ribs would have been, and the flaming entity staggered back from the strike. The spirit’s fiery body had felt hot, but my skin hadn’t burned.
At least now, I knew that I wouldn’t be risking third-degree burns just by touching it.
Emboldened by this fact, I flung myself wildly at it, the fiery rage inside me taking control. With fists and feet, I pummeled while it did the same to me. We darted and lunged, leapt around each other, whirled and thrashed in a storm of blows.
Withi
n minutes, I felt myself tiring as the fury burned through my energy and left little in reserve. As I stepped back and stood panting, fists raised, I saw that the spirit was still going strong.
I couldn’t win like this. Neither could I resist the urge to attack, to throw all my anger at the spirit, to beat it until there was nothing left. Just holding myself back while I caught my breath took an effort of will.
Through the red heat burning in my brain, an idea came to me. If I could become burned out, surely this creature could too. After all, it was just fire.
I took a step forward and jabbed with my fist. The spirit blocked and then responded with a fresh flurry of blows. I raised my arms to block them while ducking and weaving a little but trying not to move from my spot. I was forcing my opponent to make all the effort and hoped the tactic would pay off before I was beaten into oblivion. I continued dodging and soon realized that my bout with the wood spirit had prepared me for a much faster foe. While the fire spirit was incredibly strong and ferocious, his speed was no match for the wood dryad.
As the blows flashed in, I saw the fire spirit starting to shrink. It was burning through itself to fuel the fight. It was becoming weaker.
The spirit gave up any pretense of fighting tactically and leapt straight at me, all patience exhausted. I ducked, grabbed its arm as it swung over my head, and seized its body with my other hand. I roared and channeled all of my fury into a single movement. My muscles filled with strength as I heaved the spirit off its feet. It went flying over my head, through the air, and off the edge of the plateau.
The fury inside me ebbed away. The landscape of fire faded, and I found myself back on the earthly plateau, Xilarion’s hand resting on my head.
I opened my eyes. The fire he had sent into me was gone, but now, my own fire burned brightly. I felt it in my guts, on my tongue, in the pulsing of blood in my veins.
I had forged the fire path.
Xilarion took his hand back and gestured for me to stand. A pair of servants ran forward. As I rose, they draped a long cloth around my neck so that it fell across the front of my body like a bishop’s stole, black silk embroidered with a red and gold dragon.
“Welcome to the Radiant Dragon Guild, Ethan Murphy lo Pashat,” Master Xilarion said. “May you do your guild proud.”
Chapter Seven
I felt like I was adjusting to a new world all over again. Instead of sleeping in my own chamber, as I had at the temple, I was given a bed in a barracks hall, with a chest at the end in which to store my possessions. There were 10 beds in total, and as the days of testing passed, they filled up with other initiates. They were all a little younger than me, in their late teens and early 20s, fresh-faced and eager to please. Though they had grown up with magic and monsters in the world, it was clear that the guild was as unfamiliar to them as it was to me. If anything, they looked more nervous than I did. For many, this was their first time living away from home, whereas I’d been taking care of myself for most of a decade. Fitting into a new place took a little effort, and learning the layout and the routines was somewhat tiresome, but it wasn’t going to throw me off my game.
The ranking system was something I discovered the hard way, since speaking out of turn or disrespecting a higher ranking member would lead to serious punishments. After polishing the floors for three nights in a row, I etched the five ranks into my mind: initiate, outer disciple, center disciple, inner disciple, and master. Radiant Dragon had few members beyond the initiate rank, and even fewer masters. We were told that most were out on field missions, but even then the total number of guild members wasn’t beyond a hundred. I got the feeling that Radiant Dragon was a guild that was past its prime, desperately holding onto its existence.
Every day started before dawn when an outer disciple, a guild member ranked just above initiate, woke us with the ringing of a loud gong. We had only a minute to get out of bed, pull on our robes, and get seated on the floor for the first of the day’s long meditations.
The first time it happened, that seemed absurd to me. How were we meant to find our calm and channel the energy within us when we’d just been rudely awakened after a night of each other’s snoring? But within a few days, I started to appreciate the challenge. Fresh out of bed, unwashed and unfed, shivering in the draught from an open window, it took every ounce of will to set aside physical discomfort and focus on the channels of Vigor.If we could tap into our inner energy under those conditions, we could do it any time, including in the heat of battle.
There was no breakfast to follow the morning meditation, only lectures and physical training. Fasting through the morning was meant to build up our mental stamina. Maybe it worked and maybe it didn’t, but either way, I was always famished by the time we stopped for lunch. Afterward, it was on to more lectures, more exercise, and finally, two hours of chores, the masters using us to keep the guild clean, tidy, and in some semblance of good repair. Only after our evening meal were we given time to relax, socialize, and get to know each other—except for those so exhausted by the day’s labors that they fell straight asleep.
Not all of our classes were about the arcane arts and martial techniques. Master Xilarion believed that a rounded understanding of the world was vital to the success of the guild, and this was reflected in its curriculum. Lessons in magic were interspersed with others on philosophy, politics, etiquette, nature, and history. I paid particularly close attention, trying to learn the things that would seem obvious to my fellow pupils, to fill the gaps in my knowledge that came from an upbringing on another world. I didn’t want to interrupt the lectures, so I held back my questions until all the initiates left the room, then ambushed my teachers with a string of enquiries. Some, like Faryn and Xilarion, were happy to answer. Others, like Rutmonlir the beast hunter, rolled their eyes as I approached. But no one in the guild said no to helping me learn.
Kyu was the resident historian, a mature woman only about four feet tall with a single ocular lens about an inch thick. She reminded me a little of a gnome, her plump cheeks and button nose only adding to the image. Her long lectures might have bored me like they did the rest of the class, but I was new to the Seven Realms. Every date, war, and cultural tidbit was a delectable taste of a veritable banquet. I soaked in her knowledge and grew more accustomed to the world.
History class was where I finally learned about something that had been bothering me.
Kyu made a brief remark about the Immortals, Augmentors of great power who practically ruled the heavens. She said that they were capable of riding the winds, penetrating the depths of the seas, and standing inside the very heart of a volcano. I’d experienced only a little power through Augmentation, but if the Immortals could become what amounted to gods, then it was a goal I wanted to achieve.
There was another interesting nugget of information in history class. Ever since the confrontation between Xilarion and Hamon, I had wanted to know more about how the clans and guilds worked. There was a tension at play there, two different sources of authority, and it seemed like something that could bring trouble.
“…following the Treaty of Blades that relations between the clans and the guilds settled into their current form,” said old Master Kyu, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The guilds ceased to seek political domination, as they had done under the leadership of Valdar Iceheart, recognizing that the clans would always resist the yolk of an external agent. This left them in a precarious position, the threat they had once shown making them natural targets for the acquisitive policies of powerful familial clusters. And so, following the example of the Rising Elk Guild, they became training establishments acting in the service of others, each one allowing entry from members of any clan in order to avoid being absorbed into their political framework.”
A petite young woman at the back of the class raised her hand.
“Yes, Vesma?” Kyu acknowledged.
“If the guilds are just here to train the clans, why do clan leaders let people stay so lo
ng?” the young woman asked.
“An excellent question,” Kyu replied. “Their concerted Augmentative might can be useful in tackling particularly troublesome hazards to the public good. Allowing clan members to remain in guild service can bring stability to a region, benefiting all of the clans there. Some choose to put their own interests first, as seen in the current policies of Jiven Wysaro, who withdraws most Augmenters following training in the fundamentals. This is, of course, entirely legitimate, one aspect in the delicate balance between competing powers.”
So, that was it. The guilds needed the clans for manpower, and the clans needed the guilds for training. Who held the power there could easily become a source of conflict.
A gong sounded, announcing that the day’s lessons were over. We rose from the cushions on which we sat and headed off for our chores.
Since arriving at the guild, I hadn’t found an opportunity to talk with Faryn outside of occasional lessons on gathering herbs, their various properties, and the diverse locations where they could be found. In every class, I noticed that she couldn’t help smiling at me, and I made my interest known. Soon, she avoided looking at me entirely, but her hidden grins were unmistakable. I was slowly wearing down her walls, and I wondered how long it would be until she finally gave in. Back on Earth, teachers and students weren’t exactly allowed to fraternize, but this wasn’t Earth, and Faryn was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I took it as a personal quest to wear her down completely.
My efforts were somewhat rewarded when I found her waiting just outside the great hall after the evening’s meal.
“Come with me,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes.
She led me away from the bustle of the great hall and main courtyard, around the teaching rooms and dojo, toward a small arena at the rear of the guild compound. Just outside was a row of storage sheds.