Perriander Lafey watched from above as the fire raged. He knew he was asleep, but he knew that didn’t matter—he could see where he lay incapacitated in the street.
The fire brigade had come first, extinguishing the burning building before it spread to the rest of the Illusionist’s Round. Miracle-workers followed, treating wounded on the grounds. Constables arrived last, working to calm the irate crowd and escorts those unharmed back into secured sectors of the Citadel.
Haslow had disappeared, at least to Perriander’s eyes. He’d failed in apprehending the bastard, failed make him answer for his crimes, instead opening the door for him to inflict yet more pain upon an unsuspecting populace.
That stung worse than any betrayal, than any burn.
The dark angel appeared next to him. Perhaps she had been there all along, holding his perspective suspended over the surrounding chaos. Her presence was warm, forgiving—but also stern, holding Perriander accountable.
“It lives within you,” the angel said, her voice shuddering through the air like a crack of thunder. “You must embrace it.”
Perriander looked down, as if to look at his chest, and saw only the gentle glow of a candle. Only it was no candle, but an avaricious spark, starving, and slavering, waiting to be unleashed unto the world—and Perriander was its only inhibition.
I woke to the sight of Bastilion’s red, flabby face hovering me. He was hunched over me, slapping my face repeated and yelling my name as a crowd watched on. When my eyes opened, he leaned back on his haunches and sighed with relief. His mouth moved but I didn’t hear what he said. My mind was still working to catch up with my senses.
Someone pulled me so that I sat up and offered me a waterskin. I drained it, savoring the cool liquid trailing down my throat. Ever since I was burned, I constantly feel parched and overheated, as if I were sunbathing in the high noon every minute of every day.
“Thank the gods, you’re alright.” Bastilion said, grasping my shoulders. “On your feet, son. We’ve a meeting with the Headmaster.”
I blinked. “The Headmaster? How?”
A pall fell over my instructor’s face. “For one, he’s bloody furious with you. You didn’t call us!”
“I—I…” I looked away, ashamed. “I didn’t have the pendant.”
“You didn’t have—”
“Tell me no one was hurt. Please.”
Bastilion shook his head. “I can’t say that, Perry.”
My heart sank in my chest. I had gotten people hurt, maybe killed, there was no way to know in that moment. But my actions, my negligence had—Oh Gods, Marta! I looked around, thoughts racing, heart pounding…. As if the gods answered my prayers, our eyes met, a purple lynx watching from the masked crowd.
A selfish first thought, perhaps. Depending whom you ask. I’d be haunted forever by lives lost on my account, but I don’t think I’d live through losing her. Not now, not after our brief conversation in each other’s arms, dancing by moonlight.
Bastilion offered a hand, lifting me to my feet. “Come now, Perry. We’ve work to do.”
I nodded. I’d do anything to make up to the harm I’d wrought this night. The anguish painting my instructor’s face told me he that to be true. An unfortunate, consensual exploitation. I’d be indentured going forward, owned by the Citadel, my credential—my claim to the Gift held hostage until I paid them back.
Was that why they me, of all people? Surely, there were those more qualified to bring Haslow to justice. Why not just exile me and be done with it? I hadn’t asked these questions before now. I was too hurt—emotionally and physically—too much had changed too fast, too many tasks piled before me. I’d never questioned the Citadel’s motivations.
Perhaps… I ventured, afraid to even think what was broiling at the back of my mind. This is all a charade. I’m a pawn in a game so far above my station. They don’t need me….
Then again, there’s the rebellion. How many mages can be trusted, how many of those are already out in the field, prepping Valencia for an attack from the Wystran rebels? How many, like Haslow, have defected to the other side. It’s all above my head. I have no fucking clue what I’m wrapped up in.
Bastilion lead me away from the scene nudging through the crowd.
“I’m coming, too!” Marta cried from behind, intercepting our path. “Perry goes nowhere without me.”
The instructor sighed, wiping sweat from his brow with a red handkerchief. “Señorita de la Rosa, you are an excellent student, but you are overstepping by leagues. I suggest you—”
“I’ll drop out.” She said, resolute. “I’ll leave tomorrow, and never return, if you take him away without bringing me.”
“Marta…” I knew she was serious. Marta was the kind of woman who did what said, said what she meant. My life is ruined, I wanted to say, don’t burn yours down to join me in the ashes…
Bastilion barked a curse, kicking air. Just as the blue vein in his forehead began to bulge, he took several deep breaths and said: “Damn you, girl. You know how much we’ve invested in your talent… Come along, then—I hope seeing an elder dragon frothing at the mouth is on your bucket list.”
Marta fell in step with me behind Bastilion, an adorable little smirk spreading across her face. I shook my head at her, but couldn’t escape those round, sincere eyes. I mouthed my thanks, and we brushed our fingers together.
All the misfortune that plagues me is a small price to pay for the one boon granted.
I smiled. She did, too.
I’d never seen the Citadel on lockdown before. The night was young, and usually the streets would be filled with students changing evening classes or hustling to their preferred study rooms and pubs and restaurants. Constables stood on every street corner, enforcing an emergency curfew. Every so often I saw black-robed mages on the rooftops, armored with gleaming full-face helms, breastplates, and pauldrons.
Bastilion said nothing when I asked about the black-robes. One of the unspoken rules, I suppose—though it wasn’t a stretch to assume what they were for. More black-robes stood by the entrance to the Inner Citadel, wherein stood the administrative offices and the courthouse.
We were swallowed by swooping arches, intricate designs carved in the dark stone. It was silent in the courtyard, as if no one dared step foot between the looming spires enclosing the whole space. We came to an old-styled banded iron door. Bastilion whispered arcane words and snapped his fingers. Something inside the door clicked, and it swung open revealing only pure black.
“Go on,” Bastilion said, gesturing that I go on ahead.
“Why me?” I said, staring into the doorway, sick to my stomach.
“Because,” Bastilion said at length, “it’s you he wants, Lafey. Not I. Do I need explain further?”
“Alright,” I swallowed ash and stepped through the doorway into the void.
Obviously I’ve heard of such openings. Sometimes they’re called rents, or rifts, or portals, or gates—what you call them doesn’t matter. What does matter is the feeling of losing your entire sense of self as you travel the In Between.
Many people believe portals function like a hole piercing a fold in the fabric of reality. Imagine you are a pixie, standing on one side of a piece of paper and you need to get to the other side. Getting there naturally would take ages, so you instead cast a spell to fold the paper and punch a hole through it. Stepping through the hole, you would emerge on the other edge of the paper instantaneously.
This is not how modern transposition magic works. Just as the paper is damaged in the folding and the puncturing, so too is the fabric of reality. The fallen sorcerous utopia of antiquity—a civilization so ancient, like only the extant elder dragons properly remember it—used such a folding technique, and succeeded in rewarding high-class sorcerers with instantaneous travel. Consequently, they also caused uncountable damage to our reality that Phrygian Sorcerers still, to this day, work to correct.
Proper transposition methods are much better for our ethereal environment, but much worse for one’s health. As I crossed the threshold, my spirit appeared in a dark, short tunnel, designed to bring the traveler from various Point A’s (the doorway I stepped through, plus any others hidden around the world) to a singular Point B (being Pascal Doon’s office, in this instance). Meanwhile my body and everything I am carrying was deconstructed at the molecular level and strung along like a pull cart tethered to my very soul.
The Sorcerer’s Gift offers quite a bit of resistance to the ill effects of transposition, but people who have not received the Sorcerer’s Gift—like me and Marta—often come out the other end irreversibly changed or suffering some random side-effect.
Emerging from the metaphysical door into Pascal Doon’s office, I collapsed to floor soaked head to toe with seawater, as if I’d plunged into the sea. Bastilion appeared beside me none worse for wear and Marta next to him, also drenched, but still on her feet. It was my first time. Chances were, Marta being the subject of the Citadel’s special interest, that it was not hers.
Tired and wet, it could have gone worse, all in all. I’ve met a chap who had lost a toe his first transposition, and gained two more on his other foot the second time.
Pascal Doon the Lavender did not look up from his reading as I struggled to my feet. He looked much like Goldenscale, except his jaws were bigger and more savage, his horns were shorter, pointed back, and his scales were a smooth shade of satin lavender. He sat in a simple reading chair with his feet propped on a simple ottoman, enjoying the heat of a fire in a simple red-brick fireplace. The room was plainly decorated with white walls and scant few frames, which held only documents and certificates. His reading corner was lined with filled ceiling high-bookshelves, and every book was oriented so you could seen only the pages, not the spine.
“You’re early,” said Pascal Doon in a surprisingly meek and eloquent, human voice. Even Goldenscale had sounded like a reptile with his deep, rumbly timbre. “Sit while I finish skimming this report.”
Three chairs appeared around the hearth. The headmaster didn’t even move nor spare a breath for the spell. Marta and I exchanged childish glances—we were in the presence of a hero. There to be lambasted or no, you cannot deny the giddiness that comes with encountering such greatness wrapped in living tissue.
The headmaster read in silence for a few minutes. I couldn’t resist fiddling with a hangnail on my thumb, the anticipation was killing me.
Finally, folding the papers he held, he said: “You’ve acted rashly, young man. I must say, I am disappointed in the results of your failure. Four people severely burned, another trampled in the panic. Another half-dozen fainted from Haslow Sparrow-Clan’s use of narrow siphoning and a ruined building in our most luxurious student district, displacing two-hundred students into temporary lodgings. Thousands in damages…”
I felt a pulse. Sweat streamed down my forehead. I am responsible for that.
“Those burned…” I said, completely out of turn. Pascal Doon looked up and raised a brow. “Are they,” my voice quavered as I mustered the words, “like I am?”
The headmaster’s piercing yellow eyes were thoughtful. “No, Mister Lafey. Haslow had no true engine to fuel his clumsy Worldfire. The initial burst of his attacks towards you were surely living flame, but quickly extinguished. The blaze that took the Illusionist’s Round were akin to an unattended hearth,” he gestured towards his crackling fireplace. “And thank the gods for that.”
I clenched my fists until my knuckles bloomed white. Marta put a hand on my thigh.
“Instructor Bastilion,” Pascal Doon said. “Why have you brought Señorita de la Rosa? My meeting with her is not scheduled for another six semesters.”
Marta’s face became bright red.
“She insisted, Headmaster,” Bastilion said. “Please forgive the intrusion. There was no time to argue.”
“Very well,” Pascal Doon rose and offered a clawed hand to Marta. She took it and rose to meet him, and he pressed his reptilian lips to the back of her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Marta de la Rosa. Your affinity for siege magic is of most interest to myself and the council. I apologize that circumstances have interrupted our coveted formalities. I know the young value such things.”
A glimmer danced across the headmaster’s expression. Was that a joke?
“This is just as well, headmaster. Thank you for welcoming me in your private study.”
“The pleasure’s mine, dear. You and I will talk in more detail soon,” Pascal Doon turned to me. “For now, Mister Lafey and I have business. First—what in the nine hells were you thinking?” He did not shout nor raise his voice, but there was an edge—that of a stern father. In retrospect, I’d have preferred if he had yelled.
“I didn’t think,” I admitted. “I saw him and I went after him… it was like I thrust into a dark tunnel, I was just so—”
“Angry?” the headmaster said. “Vengeful? Enraged? And these uncontrollable emotions felt like they stemmed from an external source and you hadn’t the will to resist?”
“Yes… exactly. How did you know?”
“That’s Worldfire, my boy,” Bastilion huffed beside me. “That’s what it does to a person.”
“When one survives an encounter with the Living Flames,” Pascal Doon continued, “the magic seeps into your being. Worldfire has a will of its own, an agenda. It can drive one mad, if they’re not prepared. The same thing goes for someone who ignorantly calls upon such power. It is not a difficult technique by any means, and that’s because it does not originate from the sorcerer, but from somewhere else.”
“So Haslow’s sudden shift…” I said, a bit of childish hope in my tone. “None of this was his own desire, but that of Worldfire?”
“Don’t be naive, Lafey!” Bastilion said. “It was your will that had you charging headfirst in that building, wasn’t it?”
I thought back. Seeing Haslow on the balcony—masked as he was, he could have been anyone—had driven me wild. I’d just acted, sprinting without abandon to attain I wanted most: Revenge. I’d have gone after him regardless. That was the duty placed on my shoulders.
“I think so,” I said. “But I’d have done it differently, in retrospect.”
“Exactly.” Pascal Doon said. “That’s the danger. Worldfire removes one’s inhibitions, fragments their self-control, swelling their need for instant gratification. Perhaps Haslow wouldn’t have attacked the Citadel from the inside, had he not encountered Worldfire, but surely he’d been planning to leave so he could help the Wystrans.”
“If he’d dropped out and left peacefully,” Bastilion said. “He would have been well within his rights to assist the Wystran Rebellion, utilizing everything he had learned here,” the instructor smacked his lips, “but now he’s a fugitive. He has no rights.”
“It would have been the same had he waited, too,” Marta said, her face alight with determination. She sat with stalwart poise, and I was convinced she would run the whole Citadel before long. “Accepting the Sorcerer’s Gift comes with a cost.”
“Phrygian Black was obsessed with irony,” Pascal Doon said, staring at a framed document on the wall. “A gift purchased with one’s devout loyalty is no gift at all—not for one caught between his Art and his people.”
“Why are we opposed to the Wystran Rebellion?” I asked. “The Citadel does not involve itself in petty matters of state—its the very first tenant. We did nothing when the Kaza’dur invaded four hundred years ago and I don’t think we’ve ever directly contributed to a war at any point in history!”
“You are right,” the headmaster said, relaxing in his chair. “But this is no petty matter of state.”
“Gods—what is it, then?”
A pall fell over the room and we were immersed in silence.
The headmaster cleared his throat, a bit of smoke puffing from his nostrils. “Our reasoning has nothing to do with Wystra and their desire for sovereignty. Does that satisfy your conscience, Perriander Lafey?”
No… not even a little. I didn’t dare say it. I knew this was all above my head—I seated before a bloody elder dragon older than every civilization on the planet. Who was I to argue?
I nodded.
“Good.” Pascal Doon yawned and stretched his neck, resulting in a series of resounding pops and cracks. “There is much to be done and little time to do it. Worse, it’s well past my bedtime.”
Bastilion snickered. The headmaster glared at him.
“Slumbering dragons,” Bastilion murmured, “you understand.” I am always baffled at a grandmaster’s sense of humor. Wizards that have surpassed their centennial exist between two extremes—ludicrously serious and seriously ludicrous.
“As I was saying,” Pascal Doon sighed. “Haslow Sparrow-Clan will abscond from the city first thing Friday morning. We can expect his departure on one of the outgoing trading vessels. That gives us tomorrow to find him. Mister Lafey, it’s my understanding that Venati Goldenscale is involved?”
“To an extent, though I am unsure to what degree,” I admitted. “Haslow was meeting with Goldenscale when I attempted to apprehend him. I didn’t hear much—I was too distracted by…” the images of Haslow’s brains on the floor flashed before my eyes, “the side-effects of my condition. Haslow said something about his plan to kill the King of Valencia… Goldenscale just seemed amused by it all.”
“Bastard…” Bastilion huffed. “It’s not like him to directly aide a fugitive, though from what I understand, Haslow Sparrow-Clan needed an out. Who better than his former overseer, famous for his less-than-ethical dealing?”
“I know for certain that Goldenscale has not broken any laws—though meeting with the lad is certainly straddling a fine line.”
“Harboring a fugitive is a bloody crime!”
“The apartment was rented for the night—not his property.” Pascal Doon said. “Besides, Goldenscale claims the boy arrived uninvited and that he felt threatened. That’s why he claimed to have let him in to talk.”
Bastilion guffawed, slapping his knees. “Hogwash! If Goldenscale wanted him off the board, the beast could have bit off his head in before he had a chance to blink.”
“Careful, Torloon,” Pascal Doon growled, losing his patience. “You freely speak ill of dragons. Remember whose company you keep.”
The instructor shrank into his seat. “Apologies, headmaster.”
“I’ve arranged a meeting between you and my uncouth counterpart,” Pascal Doon continued, looking at me. “I don’t see it likely he’ll impart any useful information to you, and he’ll certainly ensure you leave more confused than when you arrived. But you might have a chance to see something that could locate Haslow Sparrow-Clan before he flees the city. I’m confident he’ll be one of Goldenscale’s chartered ships—however, of those there are dozens and there’s no guarantee he’ll actually stowaway on a Goldenscale vessel.”
Pascal Doon rose, walked over to this desk where he shuffled about some documents. He returned and handed me an envelope sealed with his wax sigil. “Our best chance at containing this threat has passed. You’ll need to travel to Valencia, Perriander Lafey. Assuming you don’t stumble upon the boy in your investigations tomorrow, you will meet me at the portal hub here in the Inner Citadel tomorrow evening. A Guide will escort you through the In Between and you will work to intercept Haslow Sparrow-Clan as soon as possible.”
“I understand, headmaster. I will do my best.”
Marta stood, fists clenched at her side. “I’m going with him.”
Bastilion was suddenly on his feet. “Like hell—”
“If Senorita de la Rosa wishes to assist Mister Lafey, that is her will.” Pascal Doon said. “Her skills may be indispensable should the worst occur. You must deliver this letter to Valencia’s Court Wizard. The Wystran army marches on the Golden City as we speak. They will arrive by this month’s end.”
The headmaster level his topaz eyes on mine. “You must stop Haslow Sparrow-Clan before the Wystrans arrive—you must stop them from taking Valencia.”
“I understand, headmaster…” I said, conflicting emotions roiling inside me. Part of me understood why Haslow had done what he’d been doing. If he’s struggling with the same corruption… In another reality, if he hadn’t tried to incinerate me, I might have left with him to help Wystrans. It might have all gone different, if not for the poison Worldfire has injected into the course of our lives.
Pascal Doon sensed my reluctance. He put a hand on my shoulder and said: “I promise you, Perriander—what we are doing is to support Valencia’s suppression of the Wystran culture. This is but one drop in a treacherous ocean that we have been treading for a long time. The Wystrans don’t realize that what they are doing is interrupted plans that have existed longer than they’ve lived on this continent. Do you understand the gravity of this situation?”
“I do, headmaster.”
“And you swear allegiance to the Citadel?”
I hesitated at that. “I have not received the Gift, headmaster. Custom dictates that my allegiance is purchased then.”
Pascal Doon sighed. “I am relying on you, Mister Lafey. Succeed in your mission, promise your loyalty—and your expulsion will be revoked and your entitlement to the Gift will be available to you upon successful completion of your capstone—as you agreed.”
And there it was. Confirmation that I was but a pawn in a game bigger than I’ll ever be. It shouldn’t have burned, but it did.
“I will see this through, headmaster.” I said. “I swear by the Dusk and Dawn, and the High Noon.”
What other choice did I have?