Timestamp: 44th Day of Autumn, 513 A.V.
Location: The Dusk Tower
Tempestuous and dark, even for a waning autumn, Lhavit languished in the grip of a wailing storm. Dawn had come and gone a while ago, completely obscured by the louring clouds that seemed intent on obscuring the splendour of the heavens and wiping the skyglass crown of the city from its granite moorings.
Multicoloured lightning flashed and danced through the buttressed battlements of the clouds, a clear signal and warning of the wild djed that had been churned up into the skies by the unsettled weather, fuelling the ferocity of the storm that had blown in during the night, sucking up moisture-rich air from the sea just beyond Lhavit and warmer, djed-rich air from the Unforgiving sprawling all around the city, combining the two in a coruscating crucible and dumping the resultant fury on the serene city.
Just the backdrop for examinations, therefore – although this time, Alses was on the other side of the table. Even so, she was just as full of nerves as she had been when she faced panels of po-faced instructors in her own tests, decidedly new to the whole world of setting questions and assessing people, judging character and aptitude against pre-set criteria.
She could see its usefulness, but that didn’t stop her from worrying about it, almost as much as the examinees would be worrying about their tests scheduled for today.
All across the city, Alses knew, and especially here, in the Towers Respite, where Dusk Tower students clustered thick and heavy, worried pupils, aurists-in-training all, would be waking up, blanching at the obscured dawn and the foul conditions outside, bellies filled with gleeful, malicious butterflies and heads with numinous, foggy knowledge, swirling and swirling and never quite settling until their hearts filled with lead-heavy dread.
The baths that morning had been sour with the scent of fear, even in the private section. Alses had gotten thoroughly fed up, over the preceding few weeks, of having a continual stream of doe-eyed students coming up to her at all hours asking for help with this aspect or that of their studies. Mostly webwork integration, come to think of it, her own specialty, the most finicky method of harvesting auristic impressions, but also the most elegant and precise.
She’d made a mental note to devote more teaching time, next year, to that particular method. If the waves of students coming up to her, caps metaphorically in hand, asking for help and advice was any clue, then people found the material difficult and the Tower – including her - had not spent enough time making sure every apprentice was confident with its usage.
Still, for now, her focus had to be on the upcoming examinations, the panels on which she sat, her questions and tasks that had been devised and painstakingly prepared over the preceding weeks, all narrowing down to this point.
Alses would have been lying to herself – something she rarely did, at least when it was just her and the silver thread of her thoughts in the dark – if she’d tried to convince herself she was confident or happy about this latest addition to her responsibilities, but it had been borne in on her in no uncertain terms that, since she was the most powerful aurist in the Tower and an instructor to boot, it was part of her job to help test those less skilled.
This whole ‘instructing’ lark was turning out to be much more involved than she’d first suspected.
Ah well; no use complaining. She had a job to do, and in a few bells it would all be over anyway.
At least they’d not asked her to do invigilation – keeping an eye on hundreds of students writing theory in one of the more cavernous halls of the Tower. She could think of very few things more boring than that.
A
Tyrian silk quickly darkened to near-blackness under the onslaught of the rain as Alses took the plunge and crossed the threshold of the Towers Respite, emerging onto one of the grander boulevards that led away from the palatial structure and towards her destination. Tahala’s soft ‘good luck’, murmured to every student as they left, echoed in her ears – the woman knew, Alses was sure of it, just how nervous she was.
The Dusk Tower towered in front of her in short order, a pillar of shifting and glowing mother-of-pearl that shone and shimmered with its own secretive light, reflecting and multiplying the soft calias phosphorescence of the vegetation all around until it blazed a cool purple-blue, lighting up the clouds as its pinnacles pierced the louring layer of thick water vapour. Water cascaded down its shining sides, swelling the ornamental waterfalls and ponds that danced across the grandly formal gardens to near-bursting and the House Guard looked wet and miserable in their skyglass plate.
Their thoughts sang sweetly to her as she passed between them, longing memories and anticipations of the bright-burning braziers in the guardhouse and the baths cut into the living rock beneath the Dusk Tower, where sulphurous steam warmed chilled bodies before the plunge into mineral-rich water brought up by the artifices of Lucis & Lucis brought instant and total bliss, soothing sore muscles and easing the chafe of hard skyglass on yielding flesh.
Alses had to hide a smile as she hurried between them and into the over-warm atrium of the Dusk Tower, making a beeline for the largest of the fireplaces, most of a downed tree being greedily eaten up by the flames.
She moved as close as she dared to the inferno, noting with a wry smile that the lacquer varnish on several of the armchairs was melting from the force of the heat, and delighted in the warmth boiling off the flames, turning and turning in the flamethrower-glare, steam rising in wisps from her robes and her hair, lightening with every passing tick and chime.
“Instructor Alses,” came a quiet, cultured voice, one that surprised her and nearly sent her pitching into the fireplace itself, her muscles bunching in reflex to the tide of adrenaline unleashed by her once-idling brain. She managed to recover herself without incident, though, after a moment of undignified windmilling, steadying herself on the marble mantel even as she turned to look at the interloper.
A monocle flashed and flared, blinding white, reflecting and concentrating the light of the fire, before her sudden companion tilted his head and the glare subsided, revealing a twinkling blue eye.
Eye singular – the other was covered by a fine leather eyepatch. Alses started, stared, and then tried not to look like she was staring, before giving up and having a good ogle.
“Had your look?” came the voice again, not hostile, not…anything, really. Apart from expectant, perhaps.
A slender finger tapped the eyepatch. “Overgiving accident,” came the laconic explanation. “I was lucky just to lose the one eye, really. The name’s Lionel. Lionel Oshkosh, originally of Syliras, at your service.” A faint smile. “Looking forward to the exams?” he asked, and the tone of his voice told her that he knew jolly well she wasn’t.
“Always terrifying the first time,” he confided, after a brief pause, and to her surprise she felt a warm hand on one shoulder, a contact that quickly vanished as she stiffened. “Trust me, it’s not nearly so bad as you think, and even if you do end up freezing, the others will rally round. Tower looks after its own.”
Location: The Dusk Tower
Tempestuous and dark, even for a waning autumn, Lhavit languished in the grip of a wailing storm. Dawn had come and gone a while ago, completely obscured by the louring clouds that seemed intent on obscuring the splendour of the heavens and wiping the skyglass crown of the city from its granite moorings.
Multicoloured lightning flashed and danced through the buttressed battlements of the clouds, a clear signal and warning of the wild djed that had been churned up into the skies by the unsettled weather, fuelling the ferocity of the storm that had blown in during the night, sucking up moisture-rich air from the sea just beyond Lhavit and warmer, djed-rich air from the Unforgiving sprawling all around the city, combining the two in a coruscating crucible and dumping the resultant fury on the serene city.
Just the backdrop for examinations, therefore – although this time, Alses was on the other side of the table. Even so, she was just as full of nerves as she had been when she faced panels of po-faced instructors in her own tests, decidedly new to the whole world of setting questions and assessing people, judging character and aptitude against pre-set criteria.
She could see its usefulness, but that didn’t stop her from worrying about it, almost as much as the examinees would be worrying about their tests scheduled for today.
All across the city, Alses knew, and especially here, in the Towers Respite, where Dusk Tower students clustered thick and heavy, worried pupils, aurists-in-training all, would be waking up, blanching at the obscured dawn and the foul conditions outside, bellies filled with gleeful, malicious butterflies and heads with numinous, foggy knowledge, swirling and swirling and never quite settling until their hearts filled with lead-heavy dread.
The baths that morning had been sour with the scent of fear, even in the private section. Alses had gotten thoroughly fed up, over the preceding few weeks, of having a continual stream of doe-eyed students coming up to her at all hours asking for help with this aspect or that of their studies. Mostly webwork integration, come to think of it, her own specialty, the most finicky method of harvesting auristic impressions, but also the most elegant and precise.
She’d made a mental note to devote more teaching time, next year, to that particular method. If the waves of students coming up to her, caps metaphorically in hand, asking for help and advice was any clue, then people found the material difficult and the Tower – including her - had not spent enough time making sure every apprentice was confident with its usage.
Still, for now, her focus had to be on the upcoming examinations, the panels on which she sat, her questions and tasks that had been devised and painstakingly prepared over the preceding weeks, all narrowing down to this point.
Alses would have been lying to herself – something she rarely did, at least when it was just her and the silver thread of her thoughts in the dark – if she’d tried to convince herself she was confident or happy about this latest addition to her responsibilities, but it had been borne in on her in no uncertain terms that, since she was the most powerful aurist in the Tower and an instructor to boot, it was part of her job to help test those less skilled.
This whole ‘instructing’ lark was turning out to be much more involved than she’d first suspected.
Ah well; no use complaining. She had a job to do, and in a few bells it would all be over anyway.
At least they’d not asked her to do invigilation – keeping an eye on hundreds of students writing theory in one of the more cavernous halls of the Tower. She could think of very few things more boring than that.
A
Tyrian silk quickly darkened to near-blackness under the onslaught of the rain as Alses took the plunge and crossed the threshold of the Towers Respite, emerging onto one of the grander boulevards that led away from the palatial structure and towards her destination. Tahala’s soft ‘good luck’, murmured to every student as they left, echoed in her ears – the woman knew, Alses was sure of it, just how nervous she was.
The Dusk Tower towered in front of her in short order, a pillar of shifting and glowing mother-of-pearl that shone and shimmered with its own secretive light, reflecting and multiplying the soft calias phosphorescence of the vegetation all around until it blazed a cool purple-blue, lighting up the clouds as its pinnacles pierced the louring layer of thick water vapour. Water cascaded down its shining sides, swelling the ornamental waterfalls and ponds that danced across the grandly formal gardens to near-bursting and the House Guard looked wet and miserable in their skyglass plate.
Their thoughts sang sweetly to her as she passed between them, longing memories and anticipations of the bright-burning braziers in the guardhouse and the baths cut into the living rock beneath the Dusk Tower, where sulphurous steam warmed chilled bodies before the plunge into mineral-rich water brought up by the artifices of Lucis & Lucis brought instant and total bliss, soothing sore muscles and easing the chafe of hard skyglass on yielding flesh.
Alses had to hide a smile as she hurried between them and into the over-warm atrium of the Dusk Tower, making a beeline for the largest of the fireplaces, most of a downed tree being greedily eaten up by the flames.
She moved as close as she dared to the inferno, noting with a wry smile that the lacquer varnish on several of the armchairs was melting from the force of the heat, and delighted in the warmth boiling off the flames, turning and turning in the flamethrower-glare, steam rising in wisps from her robes and her hair, lightening with every passing tick and chime.
“Instructor Alses,” came a quiet, cultured voice, one that surprised her and nearly sent her pitching into the fireplace itself, her muscles bunching in reflex to the tide of adrenaline unleashed by her once-idling brain. She managed to recover herself without incident, though, after a moment of undignified windmilling, steadying herself on the marble mantel even as she turned to look at the interloper.
A monocle flashed and flared, blinding white, reflecting and concentrating the light of the fire, before her sudden companion tilted his head and the glare subsided, revealing a twinkling blue eye.
Eye singular – the other was covered by a fine leather eyepatch. Alses started, stared, and then tried not to look like she was staring, before giving up and having a good ogle.
“Had your look?” came the voice again, not hostile, not…anything, really. Apart from expectant, perhaps.
A slender finger tapped the eyepatch. “Overgiving accident,” came the laconic explanation. “I was lucky just to lose the one eye, really. The name’s Lionel. Lionel Oshkosh, originally of Syliras, at your service.” A faint smile. “Looking forward to the exams?” he asked, and the tone of his voice told her that he knew jolly well she wasn’t.
“Always terrifying the first time,” he confided, after a brief pause, and to her surprise she felt a warm hand on one shoulder, a contact that quickly vanished as she stiffened. “Trust me, it’s not nearly so bad as you think, and even if you do end up freezing, the others will rally round. Tower looks after its own.”