57 – Fly

Several arcane workings activated at once.

First and foremost, a teleportation spell reached out and tried to grab Saffra—no doubt Osmian’s attempt to send her away. Vivi was near certain the spell would have bounced impotently off the defensive spells she had placed on her apprentice, but, on principle, she squashed the magic herself.

Secondly, she appeared on the flat top of an unfamiliar mountain range, gazing out across flowing green plains. For a moment, she was startled: unwanted magic had affected her? How else could she have appeared in a different location if not through a teleportation spell? But then she identified a shimmering quality to the landscape, and she understood.

Clever—and carefully constructed. Osmian had primed her to expect teleportation when he’d said he ‘would not be taking Saffra with them’. But he hadn’t taken them anywhere. Rather, Vivi had shot down his attempted dismissal of Saffra, and so neither of them had moved an inch. Everything around them had changed.

“Did you [Dispel] that?” Osmian asked, shocked. “Where was the incantation?”

Vivi summoned her staff, stepped up to the ghost, and smacked him on the head. It wasn’t the gentle, admonishing tap she sometimes gave to Saffra. Wood cracked against ghostly flesh, and the man reeled back, clutching at the spot.

“Don’t use magic on my apprentice without asking,” Vivi admonished flatly.

She could have taken far more offense at something that could easily be construed as magical assault. Especially when she didn’t know where Osmian had been trying to send her. The only reason she wasn’t genuinely mad was because she knew there was no malice behind his actions.

“You struck me!” Osmian gaped at her, rubbing at the top of his head.

“As far as I’m concerned, that was a moderated response.”

“No. You struck me. How? This form is incorporeal! What is that staff made of?”

Vivi frowned at him. That was what he was focusing on?

He seemed to realize the same thing, straightening and clearing his throat. “I was merely sending her back to the library,” he said, looking down his nose at her. “As I said, a child has no place in these trials. She’ll only be a distraction.”

“That’s for me to decide.” She almost left it at that, but chose to give the more practical explanation. “She was expelled from the Institute, so I won’t leave her on her own. Something might happen while I’m occupied.”

Osmian blinked in surprise. “She was expelled?”

Saffra’s cheeks colored, but rather than shriveling in on herself, she stuck her chin up and demanded, “Yeah, what about it?”

“What for?” Osmian asked. There was surprisingly no condemnation in his tone, just curiosity.

“That’s none of your business, is it?” Saffra shot back. She was not, apparently, intimidated by legendary figures of history…or at least not when they had annoyed her.

Osmian frowned. “Mind your tone, girl.” His annoyance turned to Vivi. “Are all the youth so disrespectful, or is this a failure of your own? What have you been teaching her?”

Vivi suppressed a sigh. Crotchety old men would be the same everywhere, it seemed. She had great respect for Osmian simply from what she knew about him through the game’s lore, but he wasn’t especially endearing in person.

She brought the topic back to what mattered. “Don’t cast spells on someone’s apprentice without permission. What are they teaching elders, if they think that’s acceptable?”

Osmian, at least, seemed somewhat embarrassed by her accusation, but indignation was the more prominent emotion. “I hardly assaulted her. I was merely sending her away.”

“Would you have cared, if someone cast foreign magic on someone under your protection?”

He opened his mouth, about to happily contradict her point, then grimaced and closed it. “Fine, yes, I understand. But there was no ill intent in my actions.”

She gave him a pointed look. “If there were, I wouldn’t have just smacked you with my staff.”

He rubbed the spot at the reminder. Strangely, he still didn’t seem upset by the physical assault. Instead, he rolled his jaw side to side before guessing, “Wraithbone.”

“What?”

“The material of your staff. The appearance doesn’t match, but only so many substances can interact naturally with the incorporeal. Am I correct?”

It was revealing of his character, Vivi thought with amusement, that he’d immediately dismissed the prior conversation and returned to the curiosity of how he’d been hit, rather than caring about the fact he had been, or why. To this old archmage, academic interest superseded social missteps, whether his or another’s, several times over.

Unfortunately, the origin of her staff was a thorny topic, seeing how she’d gotten it from raiding the Burial Room of the Ashen Hierophant. She inventoried the item and said, “I’ll give you answers when you give me mine. When we have our conversation after these trials.”

“Presuming you pass. Arrogant creature…though I have yet to find one of considerable skill who is not. However they may hide it for the sake of their public image.” He snorted at the concept. “Very well. If you insist she remains,” he waved dismissively at Saffra, “she is your responsibility. And she will remain silent.”

Vivi’s eyes narrowed, but the request wasn’t actually unreasonable. These were Osmian’s trials, and his door she had walked through. His words again bordered on rude, though, so she found herself annoyed. She chose congeniality, since he obviously wouldn’t.

“It was cleverly done,” she said, nodding in the direction of the mountainside sloping thousands of feet to the plains below. “You didn’t teleport us; I almost thought you did. You teleported the office away, a realistic stage around us”—she twisted a foot into the soft dirt beneath her to indicate the ‘stage’ she was talking about, since the dirt, shrubbery, and other immediately local scenery were most definitely real—”and erected a subtle illusion to serve as the backdrop. I bet it would impress most people, being ‘warped’ with no spell circle, spatial sensations, or other indicators. How are you casting without casting, anyway? Preset enchantments? How do you fuel them? A soul fragment generates no mana; you’re drawing power from elsewhere. An ongoing ritual?”

Osmian leveled an appraising gaze at her. “You truly are a cut above that last boy who made it here.”

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“Lysander?”

“Was that his name?” He shrugged. “A disappointment, as they all were.”

All? Saffra had said only Lysander had ever made it through Osmian’s door. Clearly that wasn’t the case.

“Yes,” he said. “You surmise the basics—and he was baffled by what, ultimately, was little more than a parlor trick. I dismissed him before so much as administering the first trial. Talented, undoubtedly, but I seek more than run-of-the-mill, once-in-a-century talent. But enough of these distractions.”

He strode calmly over to the cusp of the mountain, raised a hand, and began to cast. Or…sort of cast. As before, Vivi felt the magic, but couldn’t quite tell where the mana came from. Certainly not Osmian’s ghost.

She wondered if he could cast. More likely, the original Osmian had given this pseudo-construct the ability to interact with premade mechanisms; this whole ‘room of Trials’ was probably a shockingly complex arrangement of enchantments and rituals to fuel them. Osmian had been more famed for such than his raw spell casting. He’d been an academic, not a combat-mage like Vivi herself, and thus less concerned with the primary benefits of pure spell casting: that spells could be used anywhere, quickly, and were supplied from one’s own core. If one didn’t care for that, enchantments and rituals were more often useful forms of magic.

“Behold,” Osmian said. “An unfinished design of my own creation.” An illusory spell circle appeared in front of him, and he gestured at it. “Your task is simple. Complete it, and use it to cross the range.”

He pointed to a distant mountaintop to indicate the finish line.

Vivi looked at the design…

…and was confused.

Her brow furrowed.

Was she missing something?