by S. G. Night
Racath had begun to understand what Oron had meant about gaining understanding of a person through fighting. In the last eight days, he had started to see glints of Nelle’s personality flickering in her motions and expressions as they sparred. He had observed that whenever she had the upper hand, Nelle would toy with him playfully, like a cat with a mouse, until she became bored. And whenever he had the advantage, she would defend herself ferociously by attempting to drown him in a tirade of suppressive attacks.
This knowledge cut both ways, of course. By the fourth day, Nelle knew his mannerisms well enough to predict her movements in time to counter them. But by the end of the seventh day, Racath could do the same.
And, every day, after they had finished their bouts, Racath and Nelle would bathe in the pool beneath the waterfall. It had become a familiar routine by the time Oron returned. They would spend half an hour or so swimming and slashing at each other as the deep blue water washed the sand and sweat from their skin. Then, after they grew tired of treading water, they would lay out on their backs beside each other on the warm boulders that lined the shore. In the time it took for the artificial sunlight to dry them off, they would joke and tease each other some more.
Nelle’s natural ease about the whole thing quickly became infectious, and eventually Racath grew completely comfortable with being naked in front of her. While he would never intentionally look directly at her nude figure, he was no longer shockingly embarrassed when he glanced at her accidentally. He had, however, caught himself inadvertently staring at her. Twice. Thankfully, she hadn’t notice that. If she had, she would have pestered him about it all week long.
He had grown to enjoy it by the fourth day. It was nice, refreshing even, to have someone to act naturally around. Someone who he could drop all his boundaries for, forget pretence and social niceties. Someone just to be himself with. He had never felt this comfortable around anyone, not even Alexis. And it was clear that Nelle enjoyed that fact as well.
Her gloves remained on, however. Always on. One small boundary that she left up. But Racath was still hesitant to ask.
——
“Corobna dosdom,” Oron began — it was their first lecture since he had returned. “Do you know what it means?”
Racath was quick to answer, still eager to demonstrate the commitment he had promised Oron the week before. “Soul energy,” he said.
Oron favored him with a pleased smile. “You’re getting faster at answering those questions. Your Rotenic is better,” he observed.
Racath nodded enthusiastically. “Nelle and I already started working on it in the evenings.”
“Impressive,” Oron praised. “I admire your initiative.”
“And,” Racath said, a smug smile tugging at his lips. “I can tell you that it should be dosdom o’taj corobna. Grammatically speaking. So, I’m guessing that it’s a technical term for something that needed a pretty-sounding name, bastardized by mixing Rotenic vocabulary and Skuran grammar.”
Oron rolled his eyes. “Now you’re just showing off.”
“I told you, I like linguistics.”
“Indeed.” Oron leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “So. Corobna dosdom. In simplest terms, it is the rare, inherent trait that differentiates a run-of-the-mill magician, and a High-Mage. Have you ever met a High-Mage, Racath?”
Frowning, Racath shook his head. “Never even heard of one.”
“Not surprising,” Oron shrugged. “Like I said, it’s rare. Only about one galdur-born person in a hundred has a dosdom.”
“What exactly is it?” Racath asked.
“No one was ever really certain,” Oron told him. “Even during the Third Age, the High Scholars only ever came up with rough guesses. But the prevailing theory is that corobna dosdom is caused by a miniscule rift in the fabric of the Mortal Plane — a rift that exists within a galdur-born person’s anda. On the other side of that rift is a pocket of the Nether, brimming with a nearly infinite amount of mundane energy. Depending on the person, it could be any form of energy: thermal, electrical, kinetic, anything. At the beginning, that rift is so small that only a tiny amount of the energy can travel through it, and so its existence can go entirely unnoticed. But they will always be drawn to that energy. Have an affinity for it.
“A galdurist becomes a High-Mage after they discover the presence of such a rift, force it to open wider, and open up their body and their getu to the cache of energy. Their body undergoes a transition, and they become bonded to that form of energy. They can draw power from the other side of the rift, allowing them to use their specific form of energy limitlessly, without draining their getu. If they come into external contact with that form of energy, it will not harm them, but rather be absorbed through their body and into the other side of the rift. And they can do things, impossible things, with their field of affinity. Things that would kill anyone else.”
Something Oron said struck a chord in Racath’s memory. “Wait,” he interjected. “Like the wizard in that book by Simiel, Dracustata? The one who lived on the mountain?”
“Yes, actually,” Oron nodded. “That book was written long before the Third Age, during a time when High-Mages were feared and ostracized from society. Back then, they were called elementalists, and the character of Jarek the Stormborn in Dracustata is one. Today, he would be called a High-Mage. An Electromancer, specifically — a galdurist with a rift that holds a nearly infinite supply raw electricity on the other side. Electricity that can be called upon endlessly.”
Glad to be back on familiar ground, Racath asked: “How exactly do those rifts form? What causes them?”
Oron shrugged again. “That’s the mystery. No one knows what cause it, and no one can explain the effects it has on a High-Mage.”
“What do you mean by effects?”
“As I said before, when a galdurist opens their rift wide enough, their body undergoes a transition,” Oron responded. “The changes depend on the type of energy involved, but several curious phenomena occur consistently in those changes. There is almost always a change in eye color, usually to an unnatural shade. Often skin and hair will become darker or lighter, depending on the energy.
“But most strangely,” he said, tapping the back of his right hand. “Right here — on the back of the dominant hand between the knuckles of the thumb and the index finger — the Rotenic rune that represents their kind of energy will brand itself into their skin.”
Racath whistled softly. “Wow…but…why is this important to me?”
“Traditionally,” Oron said. “Every Scorpion has a dosdom. It is one of the prerequisites that Mrak would look for when he select you, and Rachel Vaveran before you. Rachel herself is a Kinetomancer, a force-mage. The Elf, Notak, is an Electromancer.”
Racath blinked in surprise. “Wait…I have one?”
Oron nodded calmly.
“But…” Racath fumbled. “But how is that possible? I’m terrible with magic.”
“Only because you haven’t been properly trained,” Oron said. “You may find in time that you actually excel at it. And recall what I said: a dosdom will not manifest itself until the rift is opened.”
Racath’s frown deepened. “But…” he said again. “If I never knew about it, how could Mrak possibly know?”
Instead of answering, Oron reached into his pocket and produced a small metal object.
“This,” Oron said, handing the object to Racath, “is called a dousing needle.”
It looked like an iron knife, only the handle was barely two inches long, the blade looked too dull to cut butter, and a peculiar hole was punched through the base of the blade. Instead of a pommel, the dousing needle had an open ring attached to the handle. Racath noticed a series of rotendrial runes etched into the side of the blade.
Taking the dousing needle back from Racath, Oron continued. “Long ago, people would use dousing needles like this one to test their children for corobna dosdom. A small amount of protean energy is stored within t
he device’s rotendry, and when activated…” Oron placed dousing needle on the table, held his hand over it for a moment, and released a pulse of magic into it. A pale blue light, like a flickering spark, came to life within the ring at the base of the pommel.
“…the runes will be attracted to the greatest source of potential energy in the vicinity.”
The needle began to spin like a broken compass. Slowly, it levitated off the tabletop. And the ring holding the spark of blue light pointed right at Racath’s forehead. After a moment, it wavered in the air, the light vanished, and it clattered back onto the table. Oron looked pleased.
“So…” Racath said slowly. “What exactly did that prove?”
“It proves that your skull contains the largest quantity of energy in this room,” Oron told him. “Mrak did this same test on you once, without your knowledge. Same answer.”
“So I definitely have one,” Racath said. “What do I do about it? How do I open the rift?”
“Ahh…” Oron said quietly. “That’s the tricky part. See, I told you before that a High-Mage can absorb their form of energy into their rift. Well, to an extent, all galdurists have the ability to absorb energy through their markara — or crain if you’re an Elf. The difference is that while our cells can store protean energy, they can’t hold mundane energies for very long — it has to be projected back out. Like poison: you can swallow as much as you want, but if you don’t vomit back out, you die. You can’t just walk around with a thousand grains-worth of mage-fire in your body. It can be absorbed, held for a brief moment, and then expelled. And if your getu becomes saturated with the energy you absorb…you overflow. And die.”
“Charming,” Racath remarked.
“That overflow happens because the energy has nowhere to go. However, if you start to absorb the same form of energy as your unopened dosdom rift, the energy will try to push itself through the gap once you reach saturation. You do that enough, get enough energy trying to squeeze its way through the rift, and it will burst open.”
“Uh huh….” Racath swallowed hard. “And…uh…how am I supposed to know what form of energy my dosdom is before I start sucking down magic?”
“You can’t,” Oron said simply. “You can only have faith. Faith that you understand yourself enough to know what your dosdom is.”
“And then try to kill myself with it?” Racath guessed.
Oron shrugged. “That’s one way to think of it, yes.”
“How did Rachel and Notak do it?”
“Notak went to the mountaintop during a storm and filled himself with negative charges until he was hit by lighting.”
“Hit by lightning?” Racath repeated incredulously.
“Four times.” Oron was toying absentmindedly with the dousing compass between his fingers. “And Rachel found a cliff outside and threw herself off of it. The kinetic force of the impact broke her rift open so fast that it saved her from being crushed.”
“God…” Racath whispered. “How far was the fall?”
Oron chuckled once, as though at a private joke. “I wasn’t there. And she still won’t tell me. But I’ve seen the crater she left behind.”
“And I’m gonna have to do something like that?” Racath asked reluctantly.
Another nod. “You will have to look into yourself, spend time in introspection, meditation, and exploration of your magical abilities — which you will begin doing, starting this week, as part of your free time. And once you think you know what your dosdom is, you will have to drown yourself in that energy until you’ve saturated your getu, and manage to force the rift open.”
“And if I’m wrong about the kind of dosdom I have?”
Oron pocketed the dousing needle. “Overflow.”
“And if I die…Io is pretty much doomed, right?”
“Correct.”
“Great….” Racath stared darkly down at his hands. “Better not faul that up, then.”
TWENTY-SIX
Progress
The days shot by in a blur as Racath’s training accelerated. Life in the domus settled into a comfortable routine. Each morning over breakfast, Oron would tutor him on the theories of magic, as well as the methods and philosophies of the Scorpion assassins. Afterward, they would head down into the pit, where Oron would school him on the practical application of the principles they had earlier discussed.
After Oron was satisfied with Racath’s performance, he would turn him over to Nelle for their daily bouts of sparring. They would train with the sword for the first hour, Nelle constantly working to improve his shoddy technique, then move to hand-fighting and miscellaneous weapons for the second hour. Stingers then followed in the third.
Once they finished, Nelle and Racath would tend to their usual chores around Oron’s cottage and gardens before walking to the bathing pool to relax for an hour or so. All the while, they would chat and banter, growing to know each other. Their friendship blossomed quickly, like a well-nurtured flower under the summer sun.
Oron would usually have lunch ready for them by the time they returned. He never made any comment about their little post-sparring ritual, but Racath caught the older Majiski grinning smugly to himself once or twice.
During the meal, Oron would tutor him on more academic topics: the geography of the world of Talkrilia; the histories of the ancient Roten civilization, and the civilizations that splintered off from it; the timelines of a dozen wars and empires. Mathematics. Chemistry. Biology, and mundane physics. And the complex science of galdury, magic — things like the equations for telekinetic force and maximum arcane expenditure. Oron read it all to Racath out of old textbooks, bestiaries, and treatises from the vast library.
If Racath ever asked after the relevance of a topic — for example, what does the exponential growth rate of a bacterial population have to do with becoming a Scorpion — Oron would always give him the same response: “An educated assassin is a wise assassin,” he would recite. “An uneducated assassin is a stupid assassin. And a stupid assassin is usually a dead assassin.”
After everything was cleaned up and put away, Racath and Nelle would spend some of their free time perusing Oron’s library, hunting for new books to read together in the living room. They read everything: epics, poems, dramas, mythologies, and more. Whenever they finished a volume, they would amuse themselves by comparing thoughts and opinions.
Later, Racath would then head out into the domus to wander and explore for a few hours. Nelle would accompany him sometimes, but usually Oron encouraged him to spend the time alone. To find a quiet place to sit and meditate on his corobna dosdom.
Racath did the best he could, but he wasn’t sure where to start. And no matter how much time he spent sitting cross-legged by one of the waterfalls, laying on his back admiring the sky-ceiling, or experimenting with various forms of minor magic, he didn’t feel like he was making any headway.
By the time he would return, it would be time for dinner, after which Racath and Nelle returned to the library to work on Rotenic. They were quickly becoming fluent. The grammar and diction fell into place like neat little puzzle-blocks in Racath’s mind. He loved the language — it was complex, intricate and challenging. And yet at the same time, it was gracefully plain. There aren’t as many irregularities and exceptions as there are in Skuran. It was simple, but elegant. Just the way he liked it.
Finally, after the long day was over, came bedtime. The three of them would congregate in the living room, where Oron would lead them in an evening prayer. Racath felt uncomfortable at first, conscious of his ignorance of the traditions of his Jedan heritage, but any time he tripped up, Nelle would offer kind, quiet correction. Afterward, they would each retire to their rooms and fall unconscious, exhausted from the day’s endless efforts. And then the sun would rise, and they would start again.
As I said before, Oron would lecture Racath on the principles of magic over their morning meal. Specifically, on the morning after their lesson on corobna dosdom, Oron introduced him t
o the topic of Magicks.
Magicks — Oron emphasized the plural. Ages ago, they had been called spells by more ignorant, superstitious folk. The older Majiski explained that while magic had nearly limitless flexibility, certain techniques have developed over time. These techniques had been practiced, refined, and carefully named and classified over the centuries.
The orb of light that Oron had produced during their first lecture on the nine forms of energy was an example of such a Magick. The creation of magical flame — what Oron had called mage-fire — was another.
In the pit, Oron started by coaching Racath on “High-Magicks” — spells that would fit into the field of galdury that Elves were supposedly adept with, and that Majiski used to be forbidden from using. Magic that would have gotten them all arrested in the days of the old Commonwealth of Io. But, as Oron had said before, desperate times….
Oron brought dozens of different High-Magicks to the breakfast table, where Racath would have to memorize their nomenclature, origin, form of energy, purpose, function, and — in some cases — the steps required to cast them. The list seemed endless. He learned them all.
There was “the Eye”, a cognitive Magick that would allow the user to see energy. Through the Eye, the world appeared as a sea of sparks and bright flares, each different form of energy represented by a unique color of light. With it, Racath could see through walls and other barriers, detect pockets of magic like runes or wards, or see bursts of raw mundane power.