Chapter: 1 – New Beginnings

Frost licked over Tala’s already sensitive skin, accompanied by the static tension of power rippling through her from an outside source.

With a pulse of darkness, she left her old life, her adolescence of learning and exploration, behind.

She crouched low in the center of a large, white-speckled, granite room. It was the shape of a half-sphere, each block sculpted and placed so precisely that had she not known better, she’d have believed it was carved from a single piece.

Though, I suppose a Material Creator could have summoned the room into being, fully formed. That was unlikely. If her schooling had taught her anything, it was that magic was expensive; why would anyone do something with it, which could be done by hand?

Beneath her were the empty grooves of a spell-form, an anchor used to draw a target in and recombine them.

Everyone said teleportation was tricky, and that was true, in part. Disintegration and expulsion of a person was incredibly simple. Calling that person, and all their requisite pieces, back from the ether and putting them all back where they belonged, now that was tricky business.

She shivered, as much from the fading cold as from the existentially terrifying thoughts. A person’s soul does most of the work, Tala. It’s not like the scripts could get your insides wrong.

She glanced down at her hands and saw fading red traces where her spell-lines should have been. She let out a short groan. Well, that didn’t work…

Blessedly, she saw her own dark hair, roughly shoulder length, swaying in her peripheral vision. The inscribers at the academy shaved all the students’ heads to allow for the easier adding of spell-lines, but in her soul—how she viewed herself—Tala had hair. Thus, somehow, her recombination had returned it to her. Now, I just have to find an inscriber capable of leaving it be.

Huh… my skin is still raw. Shouldn’t it be as healed and complete as my hair? She supposed that some things just didn’t make sense.

Tala heard several of the guards gasp as one voice stuttered out, “She’s… She’s naked!”

A commanding voice cracked out. “Go check her! If the teleportation acolytes at the academy managed to leave her clothes behind, who knows what else was forgotten.”

Take charge of your life, Tala. She sighed, standing fully upright, back straight.

An uninscribed guard, a tall, broad-shouldered and grizzled man, stepped back in surprise at the sudden movement.

Tala looked around the room, ignoring the man. A waist-high stone wall stood in a circle halfway between her and the smooth granite of the outer walls. It was broken only in one place, allowing access to the inner circle.

Everyone—six guards and two Mages—was staring at her.

One of the Mages, heavens bless him, was coloring so that the red was easily visible, even under his spell-lines. He was sparsely clad, as befit an on-duty Mage, and he was, somehow, blushing nearly down to his navel.

Tala cleared her throat, speaking softly but letting her voice carry. “Nothing’s for sale, gents, so please stop window shopping.”

Three of the guards turned away, blushing in turn. The two others grinned but averted their eyes. The one already in the circle with her huffed something near a laugh but turned slightly away, keeping his eyes to himself.

That poor mageling flushed even redder and turned, putting his face against the outer wall. The female Mage, likely his sponsor, rolled her eyes and walked forward with a blanket taken from a pile that rested on a shelf laden with supplies.

She was practically naked herself, cloth covering as little as possible, while maintaining the semblance of modesty. Her lines were proudly on display, their magic unhindered by covering. She was not young, but wrinkles had yet to render her inscriptions faulty. Both Mages were fit, if not well-muscled—as most Mages had to be. Changing size or shape would almost universally ruin your spell-lines, as well as force your inscriber to rebuild your spell-work from scratch. That was assuming the distortions didn’t make such work impossible.

Make no mistake, Mages, one and all, were vain creatures, but it wasn’t their vanity that inspired scrupulous attention to their own bodies, so much as devotion to their art.

The older Mage moved with practiced grace and fluidity, obviously aware of her every gesture, careful not to brush any of her lines against others. Such contact would usually be safe, but so would juggling knives; it was the unexpected that killed, and when spell-lines were involved, there was far more than a cut hand on the line.

The older guard walked beside her as Tala strode to meet the Mage. If she had to guess, he had strategically placed himself between her and some of the other guards, blocking their view of her. Thoughtful of him.

A furnace blazed on the opposite side of the room, and its heat was slowly taking the teleportation chill from her. Quickly, now. Don’t let them see how embarrassed you are. She found herself blessing the chill, which had kept the flush from the surface.

As the Mage drew close, she lowered her tone to keep it from carrying. “The chill does many things, dear, but it doesn’t hide every sign of your embarrassment, at least not from those who know to look.” She draped the blanket over Tala’s shoulders. “Now, how did you arrive in such a state?” She frowned. “Why does it look like someone put you through a sandblaster? You’ve raw, new skin across your whole body.”

Tala gave a formal half-bow, clutching the blanket close, while trying to affect a nonchalance that she did not feel. Though it was soft, the blanket still chafed lightly on her skin. The rawness had little to do with the unclad teleport, though it was still her own doing. “I’m Tala, Mistress, newly graduated from the academy.”

“Yes, dear. You may call me Phoen. You have not answered my questions.”

Tala cleared her throat, glancing away. “Well, you see, Mistress Phoen. Our current teleportation spells strip away spell-lines and won’t take any gear, save the clothes on your back.”

“Hmmm?”

“In studying the formula, it looked like it might be some factor of mass, beyond the organic being teleported, that is why at least a modicum of clothing always comes. Metal only comes if the person was wearing armor, and then not very much of it.”

Phoen sighed. “So, you thought to, what? Modify the spell somehow? Child, you are lucky you didn’t scatter yourself across half of inner-solar space!”

Tala’s eyes widened. “Oh, no! Absolutely not!”

Phoen narrowed her eyes. “Then, what?”

“I guessed that, without clothes to teleport, other material would be brought along.” She held up her hands. The red marks were already faded into bare visibility. “But I missed something.”

“…Wait…”

“Hmmm?”

“Do you mean to tell me that you went into the teleportation circle… naked?”

Tala cleared her throat and looked away. As she did so, she was able to see two guards using heavy metal tongs to move a crucible from the furnace to the short wall. They then poured the contents, liquid silver, down a funnel set into that stone.

She knew the formulas needed for this spell-form well. Precisely two pounds of silver.

The metal flowed out of a spout low in the wall and washed through the grooved lines of the spell form, which was set into the floor.

She didn’t know what preparations had been laid into the stone to ensure the silver would always distribute evenly and cleanly. She hadn’t studied the Builder Arts, after all. Nonetheless, the Mages’ work was flawless, and the spell-form was filled once more, allowing the silver to cool evenly, creating strong, solid spell-lines.

Tala had found variations of this catching spell that used a combination of metals, thus making them much more efficient from the perspective of materials, but the difficulty in casting interlacing liquids quickly meant that the uniform version was vastly easier to use, and thus the most pervasive.

Phoen sighed. “Mact!”

The young mageling jumped, turning around. “Mistress?”

“The spell-lines are reset. Take your place.”

“Yes, Mistress!” He scurried around the women and went to sit in the center of the spell-lines, a hand resting within hand-sized outlines to either side of him. He sat straight, his core tight, his limbs carefully aligned. He took a deep breath and exhaled.

Tala felt the power ripple out from the boy, activating and resetting this teleportation receiver.

Without delay, Mact stood and returned to his master.

“Well done, Mact.”

“Thank you.” He smiled happily, almost to himself.

“Now, girl. You are beginning to tire me.”

Tala sighed. “Yes, I went into the circle naked. Yes, I was lectured by the Mages on the other end about the folly of it. Yes, I know that teleportation magic isn’t intended to work on naked subjects.” She pulled the blanket closer together in front, and the top billowed out slightly, causing it to fall from her shoulders, exposing her back.

The grizzled guard let out a little startled exhalation, then started to laugh.

Tala spun on him. “What’s so funny?”

Phoen let out a similar sound and barked a laugh of her own.

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Tala turned back. “Mistress Phoen?”

“You seem to be cleverer than I’d thought.” After a moment’s pause, she amended, “Or, your cleverness bore more fruit than we’d guessed.”

Tala frowned. Then, her eyes widened in realization. “My keystone?”

“Yes, your keystone looks intact. Come, I’ll examine it.”

Tala thanked the guard and followed Phoen from the room.

Mact tried to follow, but Phoen sent him back with several stern words.

Less than two minutes later, Tala was sitting in a small side room, a blanket covering herself strategically while leaving her back exposed. She was naturally straight-backed, her feet flat on the floor, knees bent at as close to right angles as the seat allowed—as she’d been trained.

Phoen took nearly five minutes examining the spell-lines in excruciating detail. “Child, what type of Mage are you?”

“Immaterial Guide, Mistress.”

She grunted. “That explains it. I’m a Material Creator. None of these mean a thing to me. Though, they do look intact. You’ll need an inscriber to look these over.” She sighed. “Fresh from the academy, right?”

“Yes.”

“If you’re here, I assume you’ve signed a contract with the Caravanners, or maybe the Constructionists or Wainwrights? Though, I didn’t think the latter two took on magelings, here…”

Tala grinned. “Not yet.”

Phoen blinked at her, cocked her head to one side, and then sighed. “Oh, child.”

“What? It’s the law.”