Chapter 118: Examination

Afternoon sunlight reflected on Viv’s shield and its latest addition, a letter from an unknown alphabet hammered on by a Hallurian smith.

 

What had started as a light shield was now considerably heavier, its surface lined with symbols, a veritable roadmap of Viv’s progress and the friends she had made along the way. The Yries-made enchantments were still intact and fully functional under added plates grafted on like barnacles on a warship’s hull. The tree of Kazar, the shield of Neriad, the veterans’ mark, the sigil of the mountain folks, even the layers of fur left at the back by the Merls. She had made an impact over the last year and a half. A good one, for some.

 

The rest could go fuck themselves.

 

Even the description of the shield had changed. Viv wondered if it was due to her familiarity with the item.

 

[Yries enchanted shield: made with care for a friend, this shield has since collected marks of respect and gratitude from very diverse people. The innate protections remain intact under an increasingly heavy layer of armor. Has stopped several blows despite the current wielder’s lack of expertise. Extremely resilient.]

 

Hey, at least I hold it in a way that the edge doesn’t smash me in the nose anymore, Viv told herself with some annoyance. This had not led to any skill for her. It took more than a few hours of effort for the magic of the world to decide to help.

 

It was true, the shield had blocked several blows. An arrow in the cannibal compound and a downward dagger stab when she had gone after a captured Arthur. It was indeed solid. The description had it right, though, the main aspect was emotional. A reminder of what she had achieved in protective form.

 

“Admiring your own reflection, dear?” Sidjin asked in a teasing voice.

 

Viv frowned at her fallen prince boytoy.

 

“It’s not even flat. On a related ‘not flat’ note, why are you naked?”

 

“Why are you not naked?” the prince replied, extending his arms to the secluded clearing they were on and the tent they had set up.

 

Viv considered his words and admitted that they made a lot of sense.

 

The pair spent an hour relaxing comfortably, then the time came to work. They dressed and meditated for five minutes, centering themselves for the task to come. Viv checked the circle one last time out of habit, then centered on the teleportation gate destination array.

 

The last hurdle towards making a stable teleportation for Viv was not seeing space as a fabric, which seemed to be hard to grasp for the local humans, but the calculations associated with origin and destination. Sidjin was a mage who used rigid, codified coordinates for distance and direction to link one portal with another. Viv realized her magic didn’t work that way. Mana buckled at those strict guidelines, not least because Viv realized they were, in fact, incorrect. Too approximate to link two points hundreds of miles away from each other. It should not work, but because mages made magic work through a more rational approach, it did for them. It was good enough to function, really. That would not fly with her instinctive method, so rather than using coordinates, she used a code. A portal had a set of glyphs that marked it and its surroundings. For example Helock would be ‘city, magic, flying, stone’ and a few others while the wilderness they were in for testing had ‘clearing, peace,’ and ‘naked’ in it. So long as it made sense to Viv, that was fine.

 

One of the issues was that a witch portal would be too peculiar to be activated by someone else. On the plus side, it appeared to be more stable than a mage portal, requiring less material and less mana to activate. That was what the preliminary tests had shown. Now the time had come for the real deal.

 

“Whenever you’re ready darling.”

 

“Thanks Sidjin. What if we break the fabric of space and time itself?”

 

“Then we can travel back and do it again! We will not, however. We are merely connecting to points in a temporary fashion. Legerit of Baran proved that Nyil would smother harmful effects to itself, if not the creatures that inhabit it as the Harrakan disaster shows, by conducting an experiment in two-sixty eight on the premise that —”

 

“Yes, yes, thank you dear. The joke would have sufficed.”

 

“You know better than to get me started on colorless mana studies. In any case, enough delay! Proceed! I believe in you and your weird witchy ways.”

 

“Hmph.”

 

Viv walked to the circle and took a step in, careful not to damage the lines. They had not used metal but traced divots into a flat stone disk Sidjin had casually raised from the ground. As soon as she did, a strange current raised the small hair from her arms. The spell was not even fully charged yet.

 

She poured power from her core into it, feeling mana swell to answer her will. All of it made sense to her. Space was a fabric, only flat to her limited human senses. Gravity made it malleable. Nyil, the world, would let her touch it for a little bit, pinch it, as it were. There would be no breaking, no, merely small ripples. A small aperture so tiny only humans would use it. It would go from this isolated clearing, a peaceful place still bearing the memory of a couple making love, back to the city of sorcery, its place of learning, the enchanted walls, flying rocks hanging above like divine jokes or swords of Damocles. A passage would open. Two would become one, then two again, allowing passage for a fragment of an instant in the grand scheme of things. So easy. No need to force, not like those mages do. Just… go with the flow to create something unique and daring but ultimately harmless. Space could not be broken by the likes of her anyway. This was merely brushing a carpet with some strands standing at different angles.

 

Massive power, stored over an hour by a powerful caster, swirled in front of Viv. The powerful energies could level the forest if she lost control, but she would not. Colorless magic had no real will of its own, only the caster did. It would not rebel. Not against her, at least. Slowly, carefully, she coaxed the ball to go deeper towards the inside in a direction humans may not tread. there was upward, forward, and to the side, but there was inward as well. It was so logical, so obvious. When the sun hit the place right, it created a shadow in three dimensions. Viv could just feel it work.

 

“Gate,” she whispered.

 

Simple and clear, no need for frills, for theatrics. Two places would be one, then two again, because she wanted it.

 

The circle dove inward until it was so thin a quark could not have crossed it, but that was fine. It connected and now she could enlarge it a bit, just enough to let a mounted rider through. Practically nothing. There it was. The same sun but at a slightly different angle through the windows of Sidjin’s new lab, the one Sterek had to abandon.

 

Sidjin floated the tent through, then led their horses as well. The beast snorted a bit in panic but did not resist any more than that. Viv had a last look around to check if they had not forgotten anything, then she was through.

 

The spell faded behind her, its purpose fulfilled.

 

Viv blinked.

 

“Wow.”

It made so much sense. Everything did on a fundamental level. Reality was plastic when suffused with so much mana. It permeated everything she could see. There was a code, no, there were codes of which one was eminently suited to her. She could see it, feel it, wield it, she could tire less and recover faster. This world was… wonderful.

 

“It seems like you had a breakthrough. A big one.”

 

“Yes. Magic is so smooth. I gained Mana mastery at intermediate level two. I did not realize the difference would be so pronounced.”

 

Sidjin nodded slowly, suddenly solemn.

 

“A momentous achievement. And sometimes, skill level is not everything. A fortuitous epiphany in the middle of a tier will have more impact than numbers can reflect. Thank you for trusting me with this news. I remember when I broke through to intermediate myself, back on Glastia’s walls. I felt I could hold the world in my palm. I wish I had someone to share that moment with me.”

 

He smiled ruefully.

“It only took me twenty years to achieve that result and you managed it in less than two but I am very secure in my own talent. This is nothing.”

 

“Hey, hey, watch this!” Viv said, beyond excited.

 

She took a step forward and dropped in her own shadow before reappearing by the door, a burst of darkness-infused mana left behind.

 

“That, however, is utter horseshit.”

***

 

It was not the government that stopped the lower city carnage, nor time, nor even a cool breeze coming from the south carrying with it dust and the promise of rain. It was Helock’s worst enemy.

 

Halluria, it was said, had stirred. Roving bands had breached the Baranese borders and conducted raids on frontier villages. Garrisons had repelled the worst of them in mutual bloodbaths, as had been the case this past century with Baran at the apex of its power. Nevertheless, Halluria was vast and its reserves of bloodthirsty, ambitious marauders virtually endless. The tide would come sooner or later. Whispers traveled from city to city, speaking of a great host raised in defense of civilization. There would be levies and taxes and dead sons but for now, the sky was still blue and the fields were ripe. Food shipments crossed the gates from many directions. Thousands of mouths would not need them because they were frozen rictuses smiling at the moon from atop corpse carts and funerary pyres. All would be well. The people licked their wounds and returned to work. A month of retaliatory murders followed but, all in all, people were sated. Life returned to normal.

***

Viv stared at the face of General Jar Jaratalassi, the weirdly named, dogmatic professor of magic military doctrine. The scarred man sustained her polite glare with his usual stoney demeanor, the two of them dancing a strange dance that had kept the other students betting, guessing. He, who disregarded instinctive casters and their unreliability from the bottom of his soul. She, who thought Nyil would fuck Harrak over unless she innovated. He, whose honor prevented him from flunking her. She, who religiously gave him the answer she knew he wanted. He, who could tell she was full of it and would try bullshitting her way through any military encounter with outlander knowledge. She, who knew he knew and asked tangential questions on which specific unusual tactics had worked, where, and when. He, whose unyielding principles forced him to answer in detail. They had never stopped testing each other’s limits and now the man was handing her a sheaf of densely written papers with complex diagrams showing troop movements. It was her magnum opus of asslicking orthodoxy. It was a monument to traditional Paramese warfare. It was an analysis of a Baranese defeat against a powerful Hallurian incursion, offering an alternative strategy that could have avoided the disaster.

 

Said strategy was shamelessly based on Jaratalassi’s own performance at the exact same spot twenty years later.

 

It was the most dishonest academic work Viv had ever submitted, however, it was also the most researched. Nothing had been left to chance. Every option had been explored. Viv’s work was so absolutely fucking airtight she could defend it in front of a jury and was already considering how to include it in the Harrakan doctrine which, as of now, didn’t exist outside of her mind.

 

On the first page, a red, shiny stamp had been applied. It said ‘approved’. There was a cute little star added, a sober expression of the man’s regard for the presented work.

 

Viv grabbed the sheaf but the general didn’t let go. They stayed like that, frozen for a moment. When General Jaratalassi finally spoke, his voice was unusually kind

 

“Congratulations on being the first witch to ever graduate from my class, Miss ‘Saint-Lys’. I applaud your performance and hope I will be seeing you next semester.”

 

Viv felt touched that the man had taken the time to learn more about her profile, or at least, the official one.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

 

The truth was that Saint-Lys should never have been her name. It had been selected by one of her paternal ancestors because it was rare and sounded posh, a good asset for a family of scammers, liars, and conmen. Her real one had been lost to history. By paying his respects, Jaratalassi had unwittingly stabbed the bitter blade of guilt deep into her breast. She was a bullshitter with a veneer of respectability, a ruthless shiv goon hidden behind a pearly mask.

 

But that was fine.

 

Fake it till you make it.

 

“It will be my pleasure, sir, looking forward to the practicals,” she replied, truthfully.

 

“Out of curiosity, are there strategies that resemble the one I followed at the battle of Kariss’ pass in your world?”

 

Viv hesitated, but only for a moment.

 

“There is. We call it ‘deep defense’ or ‘elastic defense’ and it has worked very well in a few decisive battles.”

 

“So you already had a basic knowledge of tactics. Hmm. I admit to being curious. Do not disappoint me now.”

 

“Oh, I promise I will do my best.”

 

The two exchanged a last pleasant smile. Viv gave it a chance in three they would end up at the opposite ends of a battlefield at some point in the distant future.

***

 

“Your essay was interesting,” Viv’s etiquette teacher said. “Your idea to maximize general happiness certainly has potential, although the basis that something may be intrinsically good or bad is… disputable.”

 

Viv shrugged. Utilitarianism was an old theory, one with its limits, yet one she had studied in school. It at least considered the greater good as desirable. Compared to the average Paramese, she was downright progressive. The teacher seemed to appreciate that. The Academy valued the spread of knowledge and trained capable mages regardless of their origins. Deep inside, they wanted to make the world a better place for mankind. They were just not brazen enough to say it.

 

“However,” the teacher continued, and there was always a but, “I have a problem with your applied etiquette methods.”

 

She sat back into her chair, interlacing her fingers. Viv remained seated on her side of the desk, waiting. The exam was over. She was certain she had passed, although she was well below average. It didn’t matter much to her.

 

“Etiquette,” the prim woman said, “etiquette is codified respect. I have already mentioned it at the start of the class. The purpose of standardized curtises, bows, handshakes, baisemains, and all that pomp is to show respect. Only through etiquette can people of vastly different origin and social background mix without anyone taking offense. Wars have started over a misunderstanding, a perceived slight so great it could not be ignored. It has happened. It will happen again without etiquette. And the core of etiquette is respect. If you do not convey respect, if you do not mean that respect, no amount of perfectly angled head tilts will matter. Viviane, you ooze defiance.”

 

The witch shrugged. That wasn’t news to her.

 

“And here it is again. Deep inside, you don’t feel the need to express respect. I will give you a passing grade because our strict, Academy-defined rating criteria say I should but you will get a fail in the practical part and I will bar you from taking any diplomatic classes unless you fix that attitude. We work towards harmony here. My faculty has no room for hellions.”

 

Viv nodded and waited. The teacher smoldered in her seat like an old ember, which probably meant she expected an answer. Viv licked her lips and considered her words before leaning forward.

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way but… do you know who I am?”

 

That got her a raised brow and a bit more than a smoldering, but Viv didn’t let the woman ignite her temper with righteous fury quite yet. She had a point to make.

 

“I am currently the elected and permanent head of a freshly independent city, plus a few villages now, huddling at the edge of the deadlands. I represent those people to those who know about our situation. For all intents and purposes, I am the leader of a sovereign nation.”

 

“There are military bases in Baran that are larger than your entire domain.”

 

“And there are cities in my world with more people than the entire continent of Param. It changes nothing. I lead a group of people. Those people united against foreign aggression. We have fought, bled, and died so we would be free, and I carry those wishes and the burden of all this sacrifice even today. As their representative, any act of submission I perform is one Harrak performs. That is why, dear professor, I have played along with classes, I have learned the motions, but in real life, I bow to no one. I am Harrak, and Harrak has no masters.”

 

The teacher gave her a considering look.

 

“Will you bow to Elunath?”

 

“He and I have a contractual obligation. I will not sell out my adopted people to save my life. I will remove myself from the throne for the duration of my service if he saves me. In the meanwhile, I stand by what I said.”

 

The older woman conceded.

 

“I believe you. Nevertheless, I cannot accept you in my diplomatic classes if you cannot act as an envoy. For your own personal development, I would consider getting a private tutor on sovereign to sovereign rites. It might be useful if you do intend to keep your small city-state thriving and independent.”

 

“Oh, don’t worry. I know someone who is an expert at contact with other cultures. He is quite experienced.”

***

//I am not sure the timing is wise, Your Grace.

//I am currently searching for agents capable of participating in the expedition.

//However, I have yet to find a free agent capable of facing a necrarch.

 

“We already have one,” Viv said, grabbing a pin and leaning over the massive map in the Five Fishes basement. She shoved a few of them over the river Shal heading west, then south from the Enorian northern capital of Losserec-on-the-Lake. It stopped short of the deadlands.

 

“Sidjin has taken over Sterek’s contract. He will establish a network of teleportation gates two thirds of the way to Harrak and according to his contract, he can let anyone he chooses activate them so long as they are individuals. We will use the semester break to travel back to Harrak and get the one man capable of downing a full-fledged necrarch.

 

//Solar.

 

“Exactly.”

 

//Brilliant, Your Grace.

//However, are you sure he will accept?

 

“Yes, because I will offer him what he wants the most: his freedom from ruling Harrak. We both know he hates it.”