Solo A Minor Inquisition

[Alses]

Timestamp: 90th Day of Winter Alses' footsteps boomed on the skyglass of the Dusk Tower, sending echoes rolling down the hallways before they were deadened, absorbed and muffled into nothingness by heavy tapestries and plush, thick rugs that were scattered strategically throughout the Tower's labyrinth of corridors. Today, most unusually, she was not on any errand for dapper Mr. Secretary, he of the marble desk and infinite message-boxes close to the entryway. No: today, she paced dutifully behind the silk-swathed, ramrod-straight figure of her current instructor in the arts of auristics, a half-step behind and suitably humble – at least, outwardly. Nothing, however, could make Alses a humble and dutiful figure in the privacy of her mind, for there, at least, she reigned supreme. She took care, though, not to dwell too much on her less-flattering opinions, lest they poison her aura in a manner which her instructor could pick up on. Being subject to another lecture on the relationship between student and teacher, a diatribe on the pitfalls of pride and a brief homily on the subject of hubris – or worse – was something to be avoided at almost any cost. They were ascending to the higher floors of the Tower now, up the endless snaking flights of shallow stairs, with Alses' instructor showing no signs of stopping or slowing from her steady, gliding shimmer, twinkling feet obscured by the long, formal robes she affected. If this trek had been done several months ago, Alses would have made very heavy weather indeed of the wide spirals, but seasons of couriering work in all weathers at the behest of Mr. Secretary had strengthened her sinews and expanded her lungs; she had the stamina to keep up, something which Alses was prepared to wager at least a few kina was providing some petty annoyance to her teacher, still effortlessly gliding upwards. It would have been just her style to put a novice in their place by having them run after her all over the Dusk Tower, fetching up sweaty and trembling and jelly-legged from all the climbing at the end. 'Well, madam won't get the better of this Ethaefal,' Alses thought grimly as she slogged on up, always keeping the intricate Tower crest embroidered onto the back of her superior's robes in sight and – crucially – not complaining. Never complaining, not to her cold china doll of a teacher. Alses might rant and rail after the fact, of course, either safe in her own room at the Towers Respite or with a few choice, hissed epithets to Mr. Secretary later, but not to madam's face. That would be letting her win, letting her see that her high-handed, autocratic ways got to Alses, that there was some weakness, some crack in the armour that she could pry open with the stiletto of conversation and find a new way to flay her student. From another angle, of course, the woman was only doing her – generally unenviable – job, keeping the novice under her care under control and not going insane with overgiving left, right and centre the only way she knew how – strict discipline and rigid control over every aspect of magic, proceeding at a set rate in a predictable, orderly fashion. That possibly worked quite well for the standard fare, the normal apprentices who washed through the Tower doors – but Alses was anything but normal. Radiant Ethaefal, for one, with a thousand lives in her head, most of them with a magical bent at that. Theory was often more a case similar to reminding her of something that had momentarily slipped her mind, even if translating that into practice was often orders of magnitude more difficult, and that just didn't sit well with madam. A sardonic half-smile at a silk-robed back as they rounded a landing and started on yet another flight. No, it didn't sit well at all. Every scrap of magic Alses' instructor ever performed was fussy and precise, as though there was a drill sergeant-major after every erg of djed expended, shouting it into submission. Her control, yes, that was breathtaking – Alses had never seen anyone direct djed with such economy before – but there was no heart behind her magic, she never allowed it to flower beyond the confines of her rote-learned forms, and so she surely never saw some of the more unusual synergies of the craft, and seemed rather blind to the deeper beauty of the world. Then, too, there was the fact that they both naturally favoured opposing sides of the perennial Debate over the nature and usage of magic's disciplines which forever murmured through the halls and holes of the Tower, an issue that put them gently at odds with one another and had done so for quite some time. There was no time for further uncharitable reflection, however, as they had evidently arrived; Alses' instructor had stepped to one side of the corridor and was gesturing, slightly impatiently, at a set of double doors straight ahead. As Alses drew level with the doll-like woman, she spoke, voice clear as a bell. “You are to be evaluated, Apprentice.” They were the first words spoken – beyond the meaningless 'Good morning'; there was such a thing as courtesy, after all – and they held as much emotion as an inert golem. “You have progressed rapidly-” Too rapidly was the unspoken reproach, hanging in the air like a noose. “[i]-and so you are to be evaluated rather sooner than is usual.” There was a pause, and to Alses' great shock there was, just for a second, the hint of a crack in madam's doll-like façade, showing a real person beneath the powder and paint and the hauteur she wore like a mantle. She looked as though she was going to offer some word of encouragement and advice, but the momentary weakness was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, and all she did was gesture once more at the doors, with a cuttingly dry: “In your own time, Apprentice.” A The doors swung shut with a forebodingly heavy thump, one louder and more sonorous than might perhaps have been expected from wood – no matter how dense – alone. 'Reinforced?' came the butterfly thought, spiked with anxiety, but there was no time for that, not now. The room Alses found herself in was quite large, and almost completely bereft of – well, anything, really. The bare bones, the skeletal skyglass structure of the Tower was all that was evident here, from the vaulting roof to the deep-scalloped alcoves which ranged in regular rank down the left and right walls, all of it glowing a clear, crisp blue that banished shadows and made it impossible to get an accurate assessment of the size of the place; there was no point of reference. Or rather, almost none. In what Alses called, for convenience, the centre of the room, there was a long and dark table, with well-padded chairs spaced at regular intervals along one side and one single, solitary seat facing all of them. Each of the chairs arrayed against that lonely one was occupied, Alses realised with a jolt as she came closer. To the left, a corpulent lady reclining magisterially in purple silk a shade lighter than midnight, the deep colour and clever cut disguising her sheer bulk. Next to her, a gentleman in a million shades of cream, with a pointed pepper-gray beard and hawkish eyes, dark and intelligent. Then, a person of the type Alses had heard described as a 'jolly uncle' – rotund and merry, with a florid, perspiring face and long sideburns which sat uneasily on the swells of fat breaking out from his cheeks. His fingers were doubtless podgy, but he wore several appropriately-chunky rings with no sign of discomfort and his clothes neither strained or pulled. 'Statuesque' was the immediate impression Alses had of the next, although once she got beyond the height and the rail-thin figure – draped in expensive velvets – the lady was actually fairly plain, her face pleasantly anonymous and her hair, although done up in elaborate ringlets, a mousy brown. There was no paint on her fingers, either, and only a thin band of gold on one finger. 'So,' Alses thought quietly. 'Either she's less well-off than the others – unlikely – or she just doesn't care so much about appearances.' Alses' eyes danced over to the last – another gentleman, beringed fingers steepled in front of him and brown eyes direct. He gave her a minute nod in passing, and she recollected herself, speeding up to reach the chair. “Stop there and let us have a look at you, Apprentice.” That, surprisingly, was the rotund man, chins resting on other chins as he contemplated her. The silence stretched, but not for long. “So, to our crucible you come at last. One of the more promising of the current – sadly depleted – crop. Well? What have you to say for yourself?”

[Alses]

Acutely aware – even though the particulars were, as usual, unknown to her - of what doubtless rested on this, Alses swallowed convulsively and then bent her head into a respectful half-bow. Even this appeared to be of interest; her peripheral vision saw one lean over to another and murmur something, before writing on a sheaf of papers in front of them. With an effort, she kept her eyes looking forwards. “A pleasure to meet you all, we're sure, but may I ask: 'Who are you?'” This caused a gentle ripple of – to call it laughter would have been too strong a word; amusement, that was appropriately muted – to run around the table. Jolly Uncle leaned forward, the jewelled pin at his collar nearly vanishing under rolls of fat. “Our names are irrelevant. We are assessors-” “Adjudicators-” “Examiners-” “Inquisitors-” “Aurists.” That last came from the purple colossus, in the manner of one laying down an ace at cards; it quieted the others who'd all piped up with their own definitions. “We are all experienced Aurists, and by the nature of the discipline we all have our own personal take on it, as do you. You understand we are assessing your progress in the Dusk Tower, nothing more? We are...examiners, possibly, adjudicators...there is no real controversy here, so that term is flawed, and Inquisitors always brings to mind the rack and the Iron Maiden and the flaming brand, none of which we have any experience with or the desire to start gaining any.” “Now, having appropriately terrified the good Apprentice, shall we begin?” Through the nerves – although it probably helped she didn't know exactly what an Iron Maiden was - Alses revised her estimate of who was actually in charge; throughout Purple's speech the others had readily listened; perhaps Jolly Uncle wasn't the one in control. It had been a natural assumption to make; he'd spoken first, his was the centre chair, but they all seemed to defer to Purple on the far left. “Yes, yes.” Jolly – or possibly Purple herself, there was no apparent way to tell - must have sent some sort of signal, for the doors behind them opened with a soft click and in padded a parade of Tower servants, all of them bearing covered bowls which they laid down in front of each examiner and then padded out again, just as quietly, not looking at anything but the floor directly in front of them. Jolly broke the silence again. “Apprentice, you are to progress from the leftmost bowl to the right, identifying, through the use of your talents, whatever is contained within and to the best of your ability. Is that understood?” “Yes, sir,” Alses gulped, rising and moving to stand under Purple's steady gaze. Silence reigned in the chamber for long chimes, and for that she was grateful. There was no murmuring or whispering to catch at her ears and distract her from the task at hand, no rustle of cloth or chime of metal; the assessors simply sat comfortably across the table from her, watching and waiting, patient and serene. For a certain cast of mind, magic was just another point of view, a way of looking at the world that let you bend it to your will, with all the benefits and – inevitably – costs that brought. Auristics was one of the lighter arts, dealing in synergy and sight rather than harsh chaos and abrupt change. Aurists slipped themselves into the djed of the world, rather than commanding it as reimancers did, forcing it to twist and jink from its intended paths – which was probably why the elemental magics of Mizahar were so dangerous to learn and master. Best to stick to auristics – for now, at least. There was something terribly attractive at the prospect of hurling fireballs, though, something which kept inserting itself into her brain in unguarded moments. Eventually she'd do something about that – she had forever to look forward to, after all. Concentrate, now...the thin arches of Alses' eyebrows kinked as she frowned lightly. And there it was, the particular trick of mental acrobatics – easier and easier as her skills and proficiency grew – that spun a sparkling lacework filigree of her own personal reserves up through her body, letting it glimmer up to the surface of her shining skin. That shifting webwork of personal djed glimmered in her mind's eye, and with a mental breath she began to integrate, as only a formally-trained aurist could, the sleeting magic of the world; teasing out a swirling skein of djed and mantling it on her form, perfusing her personal filigree fantasia with it and so driving the synchrony at the very heart of auristics. At the speed of thought, the intertwined magics – the djed of the world commingled with her own personal reserves – filled her, streaming through her consciousness and altering her senses – strengthening the passive conduits which streamed through her eyes until they burst with colour, drawing down the veined tracery glimmering on her skin, tying it in with her senses until sight, sound, touch, taste, smell – all of them – resonated with the djed of the world, the perfect vibration. The world, always mantled in vague impressions of colour and light these days, flashed into sparkling technicolour, a panoply of light and sound and taste and touch. 'Focus, Alse,' she admonished herself quickly, before she could get distracted, even in such a barren room as this – there was always plenty of interest. 'Focus on the task at hand for us.' So...covered bowl, skyglass, of course, with a heavy cloth obscuring any view of the interior. Inversion, that would be key, to obliterate the serene, gentle aura of the divine material. A fiddly technique, but one that she at least knew to work; she had the knowing and trick of it now, thanks to experimentation and practice. 'Technique and finesse, technique and finesse,' she repeated obediently in her head, a mantra that fitted about seventy-five percent of auristic endeavours, no matter their intent. Now...it was a pretty balancing act, as her sense of sight gorged itself on commingling djed, the artist unseen forever refining his picture with ever-new and stranger washes of shade and hue, of pallor and rich darkness impossibly next to burning light. A remembered image of the aura of skyglass came into her head, sedate and serene, unchanging – the nature of the celestial material was such that seeing one piece of it meant that – a few minor idiosyncrasies notwithstanding – you had seen them all. The central mystery how to exclude, rather than include an aura in her vision, how to invert the techniques she had painstakingly become familiar with over bells and days and seasons of practice. Once, it had been heavy going; the djed at her command unsure of what she was trying to do and so attempting everything – and failing miserably, but now...now she knew how to better direct her personal djed, the mental lenses and baffles she could string it through, the finer control to make it dance to her tune rather than to reveal what it willed. Alses mentally pulled back, throttling the flow of djed as her sight twisted and complained, then snapped to realisation in an instant, leaping shadows dancing that sent her vision reeling like a devilish diorama, growing and growing, swallowing the silvered auras of the skyglass and leaving everything else glowing brilliantly, unfettered and unobscured. With that done, the task was almost laughably easy, once she extended even the merest flicker of focus; indeed, she almost laughed aloud, before remembering at the last instant the solemn nature of her tasks. “Pears,” she settled for instead; that phantom taste on her tongue was familiar, but there was something else, just on the edge of her senses and feathering the aura of the fruits...a sort of pale, sharp flower of bitter spines, winding through the mellow flesh-notion of the pears...where had she seen that before? It took a chime, at least, but then it came to her. “Pears, poached in what I suspect is probably red wine.” That was a bit of a gamble, since all she'd actually been able to deduce was that alcohol was intimately involved with the pears, but it was a reasonable guess, and one that paid off when Purple whipped off the cover and fell on the dish therein with considerable glee, producing, magician-like, a large silver spoon and delicately carving hunks of meltingly tender fruit-flesh from the richly red peeled pears. Alses had to cover a smile.

[Alses]

It was rather amusing to watch the faces of the others as Purple elegantly snaffled down the wine-poached pears, but there was little enough time to dwell on the momentary caricatures, because Jolly called languidly: “In your own time, Apprentice,” making it clear she was to continue with her analyses. The second, when she brought her powers to bear, teased her with an almost-tangible spray of cold water to her face and a crunch that was the quintessential crispness of an apple. That was easy, at least, thanks to all her gorging, but...there was an indescribable thinness to the sensations, a fraying of the impressions and some darker voids and shadows that stippled the outer reaches of what she could see, uneasy shimmers trying – and failing – to overcome them, a creeping and sticky foulness that was forever beating at the shining walls. Here, Alses was for a moment stumped; she pressed more djed into the bright-burning conduits of her eyes, drawing from her still-plentiful reserves, saw manifold filigrees peel away and fracture into still-more-intricate shapes that drew at the eye and entrapped the senses, drowning them in phantom sensations. Distractions. Alses gritted her teeth and pressed on, the hard lash of purpose – and that at least was something she could thank her instructor for - driving her magic onward. Was that sweetness, in those hard silver walls? Sugar, maybe? “Apples,” she said at last. “Older ones, and perhaps preserved with sugar?” There was no reply, aye or nay, to that, but Beige whipped the cover off in one fluid, ergonomic movement, revealing – as her Sight had shown – slightly spoiled candied apples, the sugar frosting just catching the light for a moment. Jolly presented a different challenge; he'd made her turn away from the panel, so she couldn't see whatever it was in his bowl. Even so, it was immediately evident through even the faintest touch of her sight, the passive ability which every aurist possessed, that wavering tides of heat and fighting air duelled over the bowl, red spires raying out from a harsh white blaze, her skin tightening with the phantom transference and gooseflesh prickling out on her back in response the instant she brought her auristic talents to bear in earnest. There were glyphs, too, those she could sense by the sharp kinks and conduits they imposed on the ambient djed sleeting through the world. Logic dictated that they were heating and preservation glyphs of one flavour or another, and in an ideal world Alses would have studied every curve and whorl and angle in the minutest of detail, wringing every possible scrap of arcane information from their construction to satisfy her own rapacious desire for knowledge and power. Alas, Mizahar was very far from a perfect world and all she would have to reflect upon were the glittering curves and razor-lit angles her auristic skills exposed; she doubted very much that the panel would take kindly to a request to stop and study the glyphs mid-examination. Worse, they were confusing her augmented senses, and every extra dram of djed she used in perfecting her synchrony only made them blaze brighter, an obscuring wash of spangled light and cacophonous phantom sound – the gentle thrum of skyglass magnified tenfold – that made it ever-more difficult to actually sense anything. Regretfully – and striking up for the shallow mundanity of the world most knew was always a regretful experience, swimming through the hidden beauties of the world and forsaking them for simpler, shallower things – Alses took a stranglehold on her personal djed, twisting and ravelling the intricate strands of magic, turning them back on themselves so that they fed straight back into her reserves rather than painting the world before her eyes, the feedback loops slowly collapsing in on themselves, leaving only the principal silvery threads to comfortably maintain her auristic vision, a steady and predictable drain. Who knew, after all, how long this would go on for? Running out of magic would be embarrassing, to say the least. Without the hard blaze of the active glyphs obscuring her sight quite so much, their shimmer dimmed down to just limning their djed structure – the actual contents of the bowl were slowly, slowly beginning to make themselves visible, through the shimmering veils of heat and the coruscating spikes of thermal energy, a complex flower to her augmented sight that was reflected and re-reflected by the trapping glyphs, making it difficult to see...but, then again, that was the Dusk Tower's way. Power, after all, meant nothing without control. Technique and finesse, technique and finesse – a fully Tower-trained mage, those few who managed to make it through the full course - had absolute mastery over their skills, and there really was no comparison with a self-taught hedgewitch or wizard. A fresh-trained Tower mage was slightly more limited in power, perhaps, since the focus of their apprenticeship wasn't on personal djed, on expanding their own reserves, but oh, what power as existed they had at a very, very fine point – and so often, that was all that was needed, the lancing rapier to cut through to the heart of the matter. A complex glyphic interaction overlaid onto the object of a test was very Dusk Tower, and the trick was to pick apart the puzzle, to weasel through the layered defences to the truth at the obscured heart, rather than trying to blast through with sheer power. So...heat, that much she knew already, but what could be under the reflecting phantoms of the glyphs? Telling what was true from what was not, ah...that was the challenge. One of the benefits of glyphery – and drawbacks, too – was that any sorceress or mage could understand them, and thus Alses knew that the ones wrapping Jolly's bowl were the sigils of heat and reflection, and with some expertise in the glyphic arts herself, she knew, too, that they were recursive, mirroring back onto themselves in elegant loops and jagged curves. Knowing what they were, and enough of the glyphic art to hazard a guess at how they functioned gave her an advantage in fine-tuning her auristics with a feather-light touch. Not djed-heavy, true, but mentally demanding, requiring agility of thought over 'Power!' . The Tower never missed an opportunity to hammer in its lessons, it seemed. What was that, a phantom touch just on the underside of her fingers? Rough, grainy, as though she were rolling ghostly sand between her palms. She squinted, more out of habit than anything - it didn't improve her auristic vision in any way – but the elusive aura she was trying to analyse was being coy, skipping and dancing away from her comprehension, and every time she burned djed to bring it all back into focus, the intricate glyph-puzzle she'd bypassed by arcane stealth and a bit of personal obfuscation, the inversion and removal of auras from her senses, blazed too brightly, wiping out the delicate nuances that would tell her more about the object – or objects, come to think of it – in the bowl. “Heat, and a sense of stone,” she said, finally – it was the best she was able to do, even though her inadequacy rankled. “Probably coal. Or possibly some sort of sand. We're sorry, the glyphs are confusing our sight too much to be certain.” Behind her, she could hear the shifting and slipping of fabric against skyglass and wood; the assessors turning to one another, she guessed, and then, on-cue, her sensitive hearing caught the sound of quill pens on paper, a distinctive scritch-scritch-scritch that grated, in a low-grade sort of way, on the ear. “Turn around, Apprentice.” She obediently did so, immediately looking into the bowl – red-hot ashes glowed sullenly there. “Coal ash from the furnaces, but you were close enough.” Unprompted, Alses made a move to continue on, but was stopped by an upraised hand. “No need, Apprentice. Few enough penetrate the active glyphs; there's little point in continuing with this particular exercise now you've done that. One moment, if you please.” It wasn't a request; Alses folded herself onto the solitary chair and waited.

[Alses]

In short order, the next test had been assembled; long silver trays covered in...well, all sorts of things, really. This was evidently going to be another 'say what you see' sort of test. Well, Alses knew what was expected of her this time; that wouldn't be too difficult, at least. “Apprentice, before you there are four trays of various objects. Please identify the magically-enhanced items as quickly as possible.” That was Beige, leaning forwards, eyes intent. Alses ran her eyes over the objects – tools, mostly; hammers and compasses of both varieties, forks and other, far more esoteric items that she had absolutely no idea about; their purpose and function as obscured to her as the dark side of the moon. This would be difficult, surely; they weren't laid out nicely, just jumbled together all one on top of another, just to add an extra layer of puzzling to it that Alses observed with no small dismay. To sort out the confusing welter of oh-so-subtly different auras of metal and skyglass and wood from one another...that was surely, surely either beyond her current skill or would take so much djed and so much time it might as well have been unattainable. She stared at the intricately-machined jumble for perhaps a chime or so, whilst thoughts scrambled for the emergency exit in her brain. 'Think logically, Alse,' she admonished herself, closing her eyes to block out the dispiriting sight. 'What do we have to do? What were our instructions?' At the speed of thought, she answered herself: 'Identify the magically-enhanced items as quickly as possible.' A grin spread across her features, smoothing away the frowning creases of thought, at a certain realisation: no-one had ever said she couldn't touch the materials, couldn't change what she was looking at to make it more comprehensible to her auristic sight. She moved quickly, hands dancing across the piles, expecting at any moment a barked rebuke. Jolly did indeed sit forward in his chair, and Alses' sharp eyes saw a flickering gesture from Beige press him back into his seat with a whuff of disgruntled air. She didn't pause, though, conscious of the time, laying out the tools in a close grid-pattern that would be easy to examine, each item spaced far enough from its neighbours not to interfere. In short order, she was done, the manifold objects laid out in a neat grid pattern, the trays themselves pushed to one side. The fewer confusing auras, especially given the level of synchrony she was aiming to achieve, the better. Preparations made, once more Alses took a deep, steadying breath, heard the thundering drum of her eternal heartbeat sounding loud in the vaults of her mind, and began to drown herself in auristic magic and the deeper beauty of the world, forever sleeting just below the surface. She still had plentiful reserves, and for that she was thankful; no telling how long this would go on for, nor how taxing it would become. Synchrony was quicker this time, the magic just resting below her skin, letting the auristic garden explode into spectacular bloom all around her, scents and sights and sounds and touches flooding in from all angles – and that had taken a lot of getting used to, three hundred and sixty degrees of impressions pouring over her senses. The first time it had happened – truly happened, rather than fuzzy half-there shivers of meaning only sporadically caught and turned into something halfway-meaningful – she'd almost been overwhelmed, almost lost herself in the tide of unexpected auras, flashing and flaring and scraping across her skin, dinning in her ears and dancing a joyous fandango inside her head until she could barely hang on against the tide. Now, though, she had practice with it, control, she understood what was happening, could prepare and filter her perceptions rather than being laid raw and bare before the world. Properly prepared, Alses looked at her careful grid, and blinked in momentary confusion before smothering a jewel-toned laugh with one hand. It still skipped through her aura, though – although she hoped the wave of amusement would be lost in the complex splendour of a thousand fading lives all around her. Unerring, her hand dipped into her pattern, tapping several in quick succession. “That one, that one and this one are all magesmith's hammers from the laboratory on the seventh floor. This is an auristic lens, for granting the Sight beyond sight to the untutored-” her mouth twisted with momentary amusement “-or simply the unskilled.” She picked them up, holding them lovingly for a moment – she'd worked with them every day for a month, after all, and the feel of their hafts in her palm, the weight of them against her, was a familiar, friendly sensation – before transferring them out of her pattern; four complex auras removed from the overall picture, making identification of more of the Dusk Tower's stash of magical items that little bit easier. Three more tools – reflecting prisms she hadn't even known the Tower possessed, which would have made her work on Saving Grace a good deal easier – an ancient-tasting sword enchanted to blaze with some sort of fire (the heat of it was overpoweringly strong on the blade, and it had hit her with an almost physical force) and a whole host of others with more minor Glyphed cantrips on them – globes that would glow with gentle light, self-moving tape measures and the like, even a set of linked quills that would be quite useful if ever Alses felt the need to make copies of something. The rest of the detritus was, as far as she could determine, magically-inactive, their auras mundane and plebian, not sparkling and coruscating with the more elaborate curls and whorls and spires of something that had been subject to djed enhancement, of whatever flavour, whether by dint of glyphs or far superior magecraft. “Done, Apprentice?” She nodded, not trusting to anything else just yet, still pulling herself back to mundanity, swimming up through shimmering skeins of colour, a melting melange of shade and hue that brought a myriad of emotions, feelings and sensations to her brain, hijacking her physical senses and expanding them exponentially all around. Very seductive, and the longer one spent drowned in auristic splendour, the harder it was to come back. For the first time, the rail-thin aurist spoke, calm and direct. “Perhaps the Apprentice should enlighten us on how she was able to be so specific in so short a time with some of the items?” Alses winced; perhaps she'd been too confident there. “I am a magesmith,” she replied, levelly enough. “We executed a commission for the Patriarch in the Autumn with those very tools. We held them, worked with them, every day for a month; we know them intimately, their auras and peculiarities are as familiar to me as anything.” Outwardly, her voice was calm, measured; inside, she was asking: 'Did they really not know? Do they not adapt at all? I think everyone in this Tower knows we are the magesmith apprentice; how did they not come to take this into account?' One of the enduring mysteries of House Dusk, evidently. There wasn't time, however, to ponder the imponderable further, for more tasks came; servants taking up station around the room, some holding things, others not. As they progressed from exercise to exercise, Alses felt herself having to dig deeper and deeper, getting dangerously near the slippery slope that led all the way to the merry demons of overgiving and all the curses they could bestow, but still the tasks came thick and fast. What is this? How has this been changed? What can you sense in this room that's new? What emotion is the rightmost panel member expressing most strongly? The central member? The rightmost again? What emotions are all the panel expressing? Analyse the object presented to you to the fullest extent possible in ten chimes and list your conclusions. Can you tell me which of these objects has been enchanted? On and on the questions went, each one forcing her to dig a little deeper, to burn up a little more of her precious final reserves, but she had the bit between her teeth now, staring the auras down until they gave up their secrets to her racing mind, each time they opened like flowers to her Sight was another rush, another affirmation of her own superiority- With an effort, a short, pained grunt that escaped her lips despite all her efforts to the contrary, Alses hauled herself back and shut her ears to the siren voices, the oh-so-seductive call of power and knowledge. She was perspiring heavily from the struggle, her opalescent skin pearled and dripping. “Our apologies, honoured assessors. I cannot continue; to go further would be to invite overgiving.” Admitting defeat hurt, as it always did, a sharp stab to the heart. Silence reigned for several moments, before the man dressed in fifty shades of beige coughed and said: “Exactly, Apprentice. These tests are designed to be trying and taxing. Admittedly, we left behind the usual list of intensive activities some time ago – you appear to have unusually deep personal reserves – but a crucial component of our assessment is to see whether or not you respect your own hard limits, even under pressure. You were perhaps closer to the brink than I personally like to see, but you are still sane and within your evident limits. We will now move to the philosophical and ethical points of auristics, if the panel is in agreement?” A wave of nodding and a toccata on the theme of 'Agreed' hammered out. Beige leaned forwards, eyes intent. “Take the seat, Apprentice. Now, this panel is given to understand there was an incident during one of your lessons, and fairly recently, at that? We have already heard your instructor's recounting, but would you please provide your own account of the events and what you have subsequently learned?” Alses shut her eyes. “We daresay this is about rocks, and our lesson involving them, yes? It was a bright morning, and we reported for our lesson as usual on the fourth floor of this Tower...”

[Alses]

Alses and her instructor faced off against one another in one of the many – relatively spartan – chambers high in the Dusk Tower. The room was a simple, vaulting expanse of skyglass, glowing with all the colours of the sunset, not a stick of furniture to detract from the subtle, shifting beauty of it. At first, these practice rooms had made Alses feel sick, nauseous and dizzy, the subliminal shifting catching her eye, befuddling her senses and disrupting her concentration; since the disastrous first few sessions she'd forced herself (and Syna above, it had been hard) to do her own researches here – at least, as much of it as she could stand. After the first few times, and shamefaced requests of the Tower servants for a mop, some water and a bucket, they'd started to leave a discreet bowl in there for her. No-one said anything, she hadn't had to ask or explain, it had just begun appearing, a simple stone hemisphere rubbed with some oil or wax that smelled rather pleasingly of lemons. Whilst, as a rule, Alses neither ate nor drank, sustained by the warm presence of Syna during the day, her stomach still sometimes rebelled in queasy tandem with her eyes, and if she'd drunk to slake her Konti thirst in the night...she thought ferociously of four-dimensional glyphic interactions and their applications in magecrafting until the revulsion faded and she no longer felt like bolting for the privy. "You are calmed now?” The soft, breathily hesitant tones broke the cathedral-hush which had descended over the pair. Dark eyes, perfectly rimmed in sweeping lines of black ink and shimmering with the elusive touch of magic, blinked slowly at the radiant Ethaefal; Alses cursed internally. Sometimes it was a disadvantage to be studying auristics – your teacher generally knew a lot more about yourself than you generally ever wanted them to. “Yes, thank you, ma'am.” Alses had been attempting to cultivate the quiet and measured cadences of the Lhavitian accent, trying to overwhelm the refined Zeltivan drawl she'd been brought up speaking. It was very heavy going; at this stage, it seemed like she would be stuck with her first accent. “Good. Now, attend. Today, we'll be considering secondary auras. I have been monitoring your progress, and I feel your grasp on the basics of auristics is sufficient to proceed.” Her instructor had been nothing if not pleasant and polite to her ever since they had first been introduced, but deep in her soul Alses just didn't feel comfortable around her. Madam was beautiful, true, but in that specialised sense of the word that people use when talking about a naturally pretty girl who, through cosmetics and three hours of skilled labour every morning, has managed to achieve the manufactured, distant beauty of a porcelain doll; that flawless and somehow faintly melancholy mix of pallor and rich darkness, a face of dramatic, designed contrasts. There was a coldness about her, a distance that cut a little close to the bone for Alses' liking; the two of them were cordial, but no more than that; neither would dream of inviting the other out for tea at Mhakula's, for instance. A greeting, should they happen to meet in the street, that was about as far as it would go. “Thank you, ma'am.” That was how all these sessions went, words shifting from one to the other in measured time. Her teacher seemed to like that pattern for some reason. A glacial incline of the head. “Indeed.” A wave of her hand, indicating the line of, well, objects, between them – chunks of stone, a bowl of soil taken from the Dusk Tower gardens, a few pieces of wood, a hunk of skyglass...all common, everyday items. “At your current level of the discipline, you may not find this technique as useful as at higher planes of understanding. However, it is a useful teaching tool and something which grows in usefulness as your proficiency does. Thusly, it is Tower policy to instruct our pupils in its intricacies early on. Now, your Sight at present is fairly rudimentary – you do still percieve auras as washes of colours over objects, yes?” Alses cleared her throat. “We – I -” she winced; her teacher was very particular about how Alses spoke to her. “-I am finding that I hear and touch auras more and more, ma'am,” she murmured. No sense in letting her know about the unsettling changes and shifts that the djed storm had brought. Perhaps if she had been more affable, approachable and likeable, well, then Alses might have confided in her; as a cold porcelain doll, never. A small smile touched the edges of madam's Cupid's bow lips, but her voice was as studied and calm as ever. “That is an encouraging sign of progress. Let us examine the stone, first. You will find meditation helpful; find a comfortable position and empty your mind with your breaths. Let the mountain breezes sweep your thoughts clean; invite them in as you inhale, and allow them to carry away all distractions as you exhale. Clear your mind until it becomes as the snowfields, clear and white, untouched by anything.” Whatever her other faults, the Tower instructor did have the right sort of voice for meditation, when she wanted to. Low and soothing, never hurried or startled, and her auristic talents meant that she could see – and perhaps understand – distractions, from the vibration and colour of her student's aura. It was highly unusual, admittedly, for such basic sessions to be one-to-one, but the djed storm and its aftermath had thinned the ranks of the aurists considerably, though the Dusk Tower was perhaps the best-off of the Tower Council. Many novices had nonetheless left two seasons ago, after seeing the effects of overgiving first-hand for the first time, and while most of the masters had fully recovered from their ordeal, intake was at an all-time low, even if Lhavit as a whole embraced magic. People had been served a powerful reminder of exactly how dangerous a calling magic was, causing many a young Lhavitian to rethink their path in life, away from power and mastery and towards something more mundane that generally didn't carry the possibility of horrific, mangled death or insanity with it. Madam was impatient; even with her eyes closed, Alses could sense that, a tight prickling of her skin, an indefinable sour smell, so faint as to almost not be present. Perhaps the instructor remembered herself, for shortly after she had begun to meditate, too, and quickly those phantom sensations receded; she evidently had a much better grasp of the subtleties of that particular art than Alses did. Meditation was hard; not because of a lack of patience but because of the continual presence of whirling thoughts - 'I should be writing that book,' 'I wonder how Zeltiva is faring?' 'Perhaps I'll go and watch the Taiyang dance later on, that binding on the Patriarch's artifact probably needs attention,' a continual litany of vague ideas and plans for the future, things which needed to be done, things she wanted to do...the list was endless, and supremely unhelpful in attaining a state of relaxed, logical calm. 'My mind is a snowfield,' she thought, trying to focus on the picture of blank whiteness, swept by the cleansing breezes, tossing up snowflakes in shimmering patter-'No! Focus on the breath and the heartbeat. Go back to what we know.' In and out, her chest rising and falling, hearing the steady, thrumming rhythm of her heart, beating out all other thoughts, just the pulse of steady, reliable life pounding in her chest. Her breathing calmed and slowed with the sound, drifting into the back of her consciousness, ripples of thoughts smoothing out into the background. “Very good. You're getting quicker. Look here, and tell me what you deduce from the stone.”

[Alses]

Now the meat of the lesson – but there, ah, Alses had an advantage. Her hands and arms, buried in folds of fabric, were covered in glyphs – sigils of purification – self-triggered, of course – of clarity and of perception, all of them laboriously drawn in thick black ink. 'Thank Tanroa for the Blessing,' she thought, glad she hadn't had to wait for the curling curlicues of the glyphs to dry. They'd taken quite enough time to inscribe - 'A full bell to draw them all, and then we found fifty-four mistakes and it took us three more bells to correct them,' Alses winced briefly, remembering turning the air blue at the Respite with various inventive curses, having finally exhausted reserves of patience she wasn't even aware of having. She'd very nearly broken the quill in a fit of pique after the nth painstaking correction – or perhaps a correction of a correction; it was only the thought of having to buy another, to brave the chill in her thin summer shifts any more than was absolutely necessary that prevented her from snapping it like a particularly annoying twig between her slender fingers. They were done now, though, and she exulted as she called up the solar prominences of her personal djed up from the blazing sun around her soul. Normally, this was a delicate task, the weaving of a complex threadwork matrix, winding the djed through every facet of her body, funnelling the flows and tides up to her skin, and then – crucially - beyond, unleashing the artist unseen to do his work with manifold brush and infinite colour. Now, though, there were glyphs twining sinuously through her hands, interlacing with her fingers and spiralling up her arms: a different approach seemed to call. The bright glow that was her soul in her mind's eye, garlanded about with all her reserves of djed, blazed brightly, a star going nova that hurled djed instead of stellar fire in an expanding bow wave all through her body, lighting up that intricate tracework, waking the latent fire of the glyphs of clarity and perception – Alses was swept up in the casting, her mind nearly pulled free from its moorings as her expendable reserves of personal djed gathered just below her skin, drawing power from the sigils impressed upon her flesh before bursting outwards once more. After the initial surge, overwhelmed by the dazzling colours and sounds, the feel of shapes, the subconscious scritch-scritch-scritch of madam instructor's heel against the skyglass floor, the wheeling sense of disconnection that settled just over her left eyebrow, Alses' mind slowly regained its equilibrium, the upturned paint-pot of a million colours resolving itself into a masterwork pastiche of feelings and impressions. Alses' instructor was at the centre of a webwork of pale vines, breathing deep and slow – she looked closer; the pale threads were flushed green at the very base, an undercurrent of jealousy that her teacher probably wasn't even aware of. The rest of her aura was remarkably still and calm, though, the pale white of a serene mind, only very lightly touched with the usual distractions that so coloured normal auras, proof positive that meditation actually worked. “The stone, Alses. Describe the aura; tell me what you can deduce. Take your time.” Alses was still a relative novice; time was necessary to perceive anything more than the most basic of facts. Time, and lots of djed. Auristics was as much about intellect and reasoning as it was about sight and extension of faculty; because each impression was unique to the visualising wizard, everything had to be interpreted for another. Even bolstered by the glyphs, at least a bell and a half had to have passed before she was able to say anything with any real confidence. “The aura is flattened, sharply contoured around the angles, although that fuzzes a bit at one end...It is quite static in appearance, much smaller than any sentient being's aura, which is what we would expect, and the colouration is quite dense to me. There's-” Alses squinted, synchronizing djed roaring in her ears, easily pouring back and forth to daub the world in obscured patterns. “-there's a touch of...” she shivered, suddenly, as the ghost of heat shimmered across her arms “...a touch of heat, maybe? Right at the core.” Pale white vines mottled with gold, suddenly; her teacher was impressed. “That's very good. What do you think you can tell me about the stone?” Alses paused, momentarily stumped; madam broke her question down. “What do you think the heat might tell you?” “It's very faint,” Alses murmured, by way of reply and thought both. “More like a memory than anything. Wait – I've read that aurists can see the past; has the rock been in a fire at some point in history? Or-” she said, aware that the simplest explanation was often the right one “-has it simply been in the sun a lot?” The sense of a wince, a bright flash of silver chopping at winding threads; chagrin. “Seeing the past is an overexaggeration; we do not step far into the realm of Avalis or Tanroa - or Nysel, for that matter. However, time is an aspect here, nonetheless, so well done there. Think again about where you felt heat; where did you focus your power when you touched the warmth in the stone?” “The centre,” Alses murmured. “The oldest part? So...was it – is it a volcanic rock? Has it been molten, or, or, or on fire, once upon a time?” A smile, fresh spring-green tinged with lilacs. “Very good! It's been lava, once upon a time. Interpretation and deduction are key, you see. If it had been in the sun for a long time, you would probably feel heat on the outer layers of the stone most strongly, decreasing as you moved inwards. Now, elaborate upon 'dense colour'.” Alses pulled her power away from the revelation of molten lava in the rock's distant history with some reluctance; there were threads woven into other threads, whole tangled skeins of other wonders in there, too, she was sure, only maddeningly obscured by kinks of colour and phantom force. “Everything's thick and close, like it's all been compressed. There are so many layers, and they've all been pushed together. Is that right?” “I don't know. We all see auras differently. Keep looking exclusively at the stone, though – ignore me completely. Tell me if you see a change.” Obediently, Alses expended more djed – her extremities began to feel the odd draining tug of heavy expenditure that took with it sensation – and bent every scrap of her vision towards the hunk of rock – the twining vines of the instructor's aura faded and became almost intangible as the last vestiges of her focus there vanished. There was a sharp crack, which almost jolted Alses out of her concentration, but she saw a change immediately. “What did you do? Parts of it are even more closely-spaced, but there's a giant diffuse area now, right through the top!” “Calm yourself, Apprentice.” Her voice was low and soothing; whatever her other faults, her voice at least was perfect for teaching. “Nothing is accomplished in Auristics by getting excited and losing your focus. Control and concentration are essential to the novice. I struck the stone with a chisel, putting pressure on the bit of it beneath and to either side of the blade.” A touch of embarrassment tinged her next words. “I hit it a little too hard, actually, and broke it – that's why you're seeing that fuzzy patch. Tell me what you deduce from that, then.” “Well, the aura was very thick and uniform all the way through – but there's the other softened area that I have no clue about at all...it's obviously been put under pressure at some point, but then other things have released that pressure, maybe? There's a sort of faint second corona, too; I can only just make it out - is that the secondary aura?” There was silence for a while. “Perhaps I should have chosen a simpler rock,” madam said quietly, and perhaps slightly ruefully. “What you're seeing is indeed pressure – and this rock has been under a lot of pressure for a great length of time. However, that pressure was released when this stone came to the surface – which might be the reason for that faint corona you're seeing; the most recent auristic impressions don't carry that sense of compression. Furthermore, the rock was turned into masonry – hence the regularity – but it got broken at some point, which relieved stresses and changed the aura again, giving that more diffuse section. Sum up the facts you now know about this rock, please.” “Postulate-” Alses' teacher was very fond of that word “-One. This is a volcanic rock. Verification: the sense of heat occasioned by looking at the very centre of its aura, the oldest part, and not found to any significant degree elsewhere.” Alses recited, clearing her throat more out of habit than anything. “Postulate Two. This rock is very dense. Verification: the dense layering of colours close to the rock surface, also it seems heavier than would be accounted for judging on size alone. Postulate Three. It has been used as building material. Verification: the strict and regular angular nature of the aura, indicating perhaps a block shape?” 'Also, you told me it was a bit of masonry,' did not seem like a helpful addition to Postulate Three. “Correct on all counts, with a bit of coaching – which is only to be expected, of course.” Madam intoned magisterially, and then produced, magician-like, a slim leather-bound book from the manifold recesses of her robes. “This is an auristics-based study of the geology – that's the study of rocks and earth – of Kalea that a former student sent to the Tower and the Bharani Library. The pages you'll need are 224-228; tell me which one of those you think it is.” The book's pages were thick and creamy, high-quality parchment, and the penmanship was very fine. The pages indicated were full of delicate, intricate diagrams, cutaways of rock structures annotated with many observations in an elegant copperplate hand that was easy on the eyes. Her eyes scanned the text quickly; now focused on the more mundane world, her Sight receded and the fire of hidden glyphs on her hands and arms died to a faint flicker. “Granite?” she asked, unsure and at length. A raised eyebrow, a perfect arch of dark hair in a flawless porcelain face. “Why not basalt?” the question came back very fast. “Basalt produces the central heat component that is one of the defining characteristics of volcanically-produced rocks,” Alses read out. “However, the indications of pressure are much less evident than in other such rocks, and there tends to be obvious layering or roping of the structure.” The instructor nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Acceptable – but we'll take a little break from the practical portion of your instruction for now. Caution is ever the watchword, even if we suffer less from overgiving than some other disciplines.”

[Alses]

A resounding 'crack', the sound of flesh on flesh – Alses toppled sideways at the unexpected force and the bright rose of pain suddenly flowering on her cheek; madam instructor was on her feet, hand upraised, having delivered a powerful open-handed slap, her eyes glittering with anger. True-blue light flickered across her cheek; the bruise was quashed before it even had time to fully form, fire-opal skin remaining unblemished and undamaged. “You hit us,” Alses hissed, eyes narrowing into slits. 'Bugger serenity,' shouted the multitude of past lives that always thronged her head. 'She's fair game now! Burn her for her presumption and hubris!' Memory burst behind her eyes, some event far in history that had been significant for her resonating with the moment. Her left hand rose of its own accord as she picked herself up off the skyglass floor; had she been a reimancer, it would doubtless have been holding a blazing ball of elemental flame, hot enough to melt flesh from bone in a single, searing instant. “Don't do anything rash, girl,” came her teacher's voice, from far away. It had shed its breathy hesitance, and was now cold and hard. “Ethaefal or no, I can still gut you like a fish.” Something cold and sharp prickled at Alses' torso; a gleaming length of steel sharpened to a razor-point. “Wash those runes or whatever you call them off your hands and arms – did you really think I wouldn't sense them? Such unthinking arrogance and pride. I expected better of a god's chosen; even one that has fallen.” 'It took you a while though, didn't it, for all that you crow your skill in Auristics to the rooftops!' Alses snarled, but only for internal consumption. Sod forgiveness: madam had instantly earned herself a spot in the 'I shall dance on your grave' list – a list currently consisting of exactly two people. Then and there, Alses resolved to learn reimancy or some other offensive magic at the earliest possible opportunity, in order to have some means of defending herself. Ruefully, under cold and watchful eyes – still with that Dao sword in hand, ready to hiss around and cut right through her without even slowing down, likely as not; Dusk Tower people were nothing if not strict and efficient – Alses resentfully scrubbed her fire-opal skin free of the ink, watching hours of painstaking work go sluicing off into the water-bowl that a Tower servant had brought, silent and unnoticed, the beautiful patterns blurring and sloughing into nonsensicality, merging with the natural djed flows of the world. It was a travesty, really. 'All I was doing was making full use of every resource at my disposal!' she grumbled, wise enough not to give voice to her internal thoughts. Madam Instructor would not bend to Alses' point of view, devoted as she was to the purity of each discipline of magic that she practised. “Now. Let us try the exercise again, this time just using your skill in auristics.” A black frown – Alses let her personal djed (or rather, what was left of it) synchronise her senses with the auristic notions of every object around her in order to escape her teacher's black expression. Not that the aura was much better; madam's twining vines had become interleaved with barbed, stabbing spines of red and orange that tore at the air. It was definitely much harder to percieve things without the benefit of her glyphs, without their subconscious steadying, calming, regulating presence. Thick blocks of colour and nonsensical sound lay over what she knew, now, to be lacework regressions of geometrical shapes, or delicate symphonies cargoed with meaning – but, regardless of her teacher's opinion on the matter, it had been worth glyphing herself, even if her cheek and eyes were still throbbing, despite the Blessing. The niggling little squiggle in the middle of the stone, tickling at the very edge of her augmented senses, for instance, she now knew that, if she focused on it long enough, hard enough, spent enough djed, it would resolve itself into the faint and fading ghost of heat, whilst the shimmering vibrations that muddied the silver-gray of the rest of the granite's aura she now knew were separate impressions of the great pressure the rock had been under in the far distant past. So what if she hadn't been able to sense them clearly without the aid of glyphs? The magic was still magic, yes? Everything was wobbly and half-formed without those painstaking sets of glyphs, however, and pushing her auristics to try and See at anywhere near that level was causing her to practically haemmorhage djed, a fire that was rapidly burning up what little was left of her expendable reserves, and taking with it sensation and control. 'Just a bit more,' Alses thought, stubborn in the confines of her own head. 'We'll show that purist our combination wasn't worthless!' 'Look at yourself,' snapped the more rational part of her mind, that bit of everyone (or rather, almost everyone) which put the brakes on murderous impulses, quashed the mad little voice that whispered 'Go on, jump!' on high precipices and generally helped to maintain the façade of a reasonable, intelligent creature. 'You're going to burn out any second! Then what use will you be?' Suddenly, it was as though every aura was as bright as the sun at noon, searing and somehow hot, brilliant brands that lashed across the back of her eyes. A pained shriek burst, unbidden, from her lips as the burning lines flashed into incandescence and then vision snapped off, abruptly, plunging her into complete darkness. Her hands were clawed over her eyes – she could feel the pressure of her fingertips, and the heat radiating from her palms, but it was as pitch black as a new moon at midnight. “Not the dark,” she moaned, rocking backwards and forwards, reeling from the shock. “Not the dark!” “Apprentice!” the voice came as though through water. “Apprentice Alses, can you hear me?” There was worry, now, in that voice – Alses felt a flash of mean pleasure at that. 'Serve the Ice Flower right,' she thought, briefly, but the yawning darkness rose up against the distraction. “Where's the sun?” she mumbled, then repeated herself, louder, more urgent. Her mind was coming apart at the seams, a patchwork welter of confused impressions and memories assaulting her. Phantom hands at her throat, feather-light caresses – and more; her face blushed furiously – across her body, sounds that had no physical source, snatches of conversations long past. She barely felt hands around her, helping and supporting, directing her stumbling steps. A “Back with us, I see.” Her instructor's voice had returned to equanimity. Alses had no sense of the sun in the sky, no hint of its position, but as muscles instinctively bunched, retracting her eyelids, blessed sight returned! Blurry and wavy, distorted, as though seen through a bowl of water – it was water, actually, she discovered, on raising her fingertips to her eyes and finding them coming away wet; she was crying freely. A noise – somewhere between a hiccuping sob of relief and hysterical laughter - fought its way out of her throat. “What can you see?” A pause, and then “Apprentice Alses, focus on the question. What can you see?” Alses sniffed, making an effort to pull herself back together. “It's all blurry,” she complained, though without any real heat. Seeing glorious light again was enough. “But it's night-time. Are there torches?” Bright smears of light around her, and the smell of woodsmoke. “There are.” A sense of movement, and then a scent of jasmine drifted into Alses' sensitive nostrils. “Open your eyes again, Apprentice. How many fingers am I holding up?” Blearily, Alses squinted at the vague shapes in front of her, the images seeming to seesaw and ripple across one another, flaring brightly where they superimposed on one another. “Four? Six?” A sigh, and then the feel of silk – once touched, never forgotten – brushing across her eyelids. “Try again, Apprentice.” Alses squinted – some of the water had been wiped away, and her vision was now much clearer. “Ah. Two. Sorry.” “As you should be, Apprentice. Divine child of Syna and wise Konti both together make twice the fool, it seems. You could have been blinded!” her voice cracked out, iron-hard in its control but so effortlessly conveying anger – and, perhaps, some small part of concern. “I don't know who taught you before the Tower, and I don't know how they taught you, either – but if you haven't learned this yet, learn it now. Magic is dangerous business. An invaluable tool, yes, but one that will turn on its wielder in an instant, an instant, if given the chance! I suppose you were trying to prove something, that you pushed yourself so hard; instead, you vindicated me.” Two warm hands grabbed her shoulders and shook her back and forth. “Nothing, no argument or, or, or point of pride is worth the price of overgiving! Zintila give me strength; do you understand?” A deep, shuddering intake of breath. “Apprentice Alses, do you understand me?” “Yes, ma'am,” she murmured obediently, somewhat dazed from the shaking. “Good.” Another pause, the sound of hands on silk; smoothing down a dress, Alses guessed. “Good. You are to do no personal magic – of any sort – for at least two days. Preferably three.” A warm finger tapped her cheek. “You got off lightly this time, Apprentice. Next time you might not be so lucky. As your instructor, it is evident you are in dire need of remedial teaching.” She rattled off a list of books, obviously from memory, each of which dealt with a differently-gruesome aspect of overgiving. “I expect you to have read all these and be prepared to answer questions on any and all of them the next time we meet – which will be in two weeks, to provide ample time for recovery and study both. Further, you are required to answer, in full and with references, the following questions. Bring them to the Tower secretary when you're finished – he will see they are conveyed to me.” The instructor imperiously held out a single sheet of paper; Alses' slightly-shaky fingers took it and she squinted at the fine writing there. Question One: What are the most common specific symptoms of overgiving for an aurist? Question Two: Define 'secondary auras' and describe how and why their diminution and blocking may be useful in the practice of Auristics. Question Three: Describe, with examples, the three main stages of overgiving, drawn from disciplines of personal magic other than auristics. Question Four: Explain, from first principles, why glyphs can be interpreted by any wizard. “Now, I have wasted quite enough time waiting for you to wake up and stop screaming in whatever barbaric tongue it is that you know besides Common, so I shall bid you a good evening, Apprentice. Do not disappoint me in your tasks.” 'Again' hung in the air, unsaid. With a swish of silk, she was gone, leaving Alses shakily alone on one of the Dusk Tower's many terraces, surrounded by a ring of flaring, guttering torches.

[Alses]

Alses shivered convulsively at the memories and then came to a stop, her tale done. She looked expectantly at the panel watching her, and was not disappointed. “Very...comprehensive,” murmured one. “Thank you, Apprentice.” Another leaned back in their chair and said expansively. “So, Apprentice, what have you learned from your experiences there? Enlighten us, do.” Alses blinked, slowly, marshalling her thoughts and clamping her lips against: 'I learned to really dislike my inflexible-as-a-bar-of-iron instructor.' That probably wouldn't go down too well, and in any case was something straight from her heart rather than any form of rational thought. “Caution,” she settled on, after a while. “How grotesquely horrific overgiving can be – and we do realise that's quite an understatement. We've suffered somewhat from milder forms of it in the past, but we never lost our sight before, even for a little while. Our sight! It's one of our most important senses; without it, I couldn't appreciate the infinite energies of Syna nearly so well. A very sobering experience.” A glib varnish over the sheer terror which had washed through her when darkness, rather than glorious light, had been her lot. “Did you learn anything else, Apprentice?” “I learned everything there is to know about that lump of rock. I think I've still got it somewhere, actually.” Flippancy did not seem to go across terribly well. Jolly smiled thinly, not looking particularly congenial. “Most amusing,” he said dryly. “Now, let us consider some further ethical and hypothetical questions. Tell me; under what circumstances do you consider it appropriate to employ auristics in conversation?” Alses blinked, momentarily stumped. “All the time?” she ventured. “We can't exactly turn the Sight off; it's always there, painting the hidden beauties of the world for us to delight in.” “I see. Well then, allow me to rephrase. How deep do you think it appropriate to look whilst in conversation?” “We can't focus very well whilst conducting a normal conversation,” Alses replied, “So in all honesty I must say the question hasn't been a burning concern for me.” “Your skill will only increase, and what was once difficult will become second nature, so consider it now,” came Purple's command, even as Alses was continuing: “However-” she spared a split-second glance, almost a glare, but moderated at the last moment, for the colossus bulking on the far left “-in the interests of prudence and good manners-” she stressed it slightly, for Purple's benefit “-we don't think it's appropriate in normal conversation to dip too deeply. Overgiving is a constant spectre; we'd rather not give into it mid-discussion with someone, or when experiencing lunch, perhaps, having exhausted our reserves in discussion with...with the pottery-maker, the baker and the butcher, for example. Of course, if we were talking with our instructor, or for that matter with this panel in front of me, we'd expect some measure of auristic investigation to be par for the course, as it were. If we felt threatened by our conversation partner, or had some cause for concern – or even if we were asked to do so - we might synchronize ourself more deeply to find out what is giving us that reason, too.” “Thank you, Apprentice. Have you ever used auristics to influence a conversation?” The question came out hard and fast, leaving Alses squirming. “Well, Apprentice? Only truth will serve you here, as you well know.” Alses' lips thinned, but she felt her flippancy earlier had put her on thin ice. “Once or twice,” she allowed. “Once I used it as a proxy for my senses to impress a bookbinder's son who I believe also had some talent in the art, and another time I used it to gain a quick impression of a new inhabitant of the city, a reimancer who was at that time unregistered in the city. We felt justified in so doing, in order to decide whether he would voluntarily register with the city government or whether we would have to inform the Shinya.” There was a long exchange of looks. “Apprentice, would you please explain your own understanding of the term 'experiencing'?” 'Aha! So you do know at least a little bit about me!' Alses crowed, but only for internal consumption; there wasn't time for more, since they were watching her like hawks circling their prey. “I am an Ethaefal of Syna,” Alses murmured, at length, having ordered her thoughts. “As we are sure is evident.” No, not a smile, not from anyone. Just watching and waiting for her to continue. She swallowed, nerves returning and a little voice in her brain railing about being cavalier. “We get sustenance from Her infinite radiance. Food and drink are not necessary, at least, not whilst in celestial form; the only hunger we have is for the sun's warm and giving light. Further, I had-” she paused for just a moment, wondering how to phrase it delicately “-an unfortunate experience, shall we say? with food and drink shortly after...arriving...on Mizahar. The thought of actually eating and drinking makes me quite unwell, but I do enjoy the taste and smell of food. Just not the next bit.” She shrugged, purposefully nonchalant. “I use the auristic arts to expand my senses and allow me to experience those things without actually physically resorting to eating, you see.” “Well, thank you for the clarification, Apprentice.” Evidently writing it off as a fairly harmless, though odd, peccadillo, Jolly looked up and down the table at his compatriots. Again, there was that sense of a silent conversation, before he turned to her abruptly, smile back to full beam. “Thank you for your time, Apprentice, that will be all. It was a pleasure to meet you.” They ran through all the other meaningless pleasantries and courtesies that made Lhavit a courteous and pleasant place, and then Alses was out in the corridor, wondering exactly what had just happened and what time it was; by her own instinctual connection to the sun, she estimated it was well past noon and not just heading but vaulting, leaping and bounding towards sunset. Had she looked back along the skyglass hallway, she'd have seen a section of it swing noiselessly open and a figure who would become much more familiar to her in coming weeks emerge and enter the room Alses had just left. Had she loitered nearby, too, her sharp ears might have been able to pick up snippets of conversation between Lady Chiona Dusk, the orchestrator of this little blip in the schedule, and the examiners. The tests had been more numerous and more subtle than Alses herself likely knew; tests of honesty, diplomacy, probity and integrity woven with infinite care into seemingly-throwaway observations and questions along with probing assessments of her ability with auristics, all of it designed to Lady Dusk's exacting standards. As it was, though, Alses had no idea of the greater significance of her minor inquisition and treated it simply as another method of progress-checking that the Dusk Tower used, resolutely putting it out of her mind and getting on with her day in as normal a fashion as possible, grateful only that the mild oddity had spared her the grating company of madam instructor. END

[Elysium]

Alses

Auristics	+5
Glyphing	+3
Observation	+5
Rhetoric	+3
Investigation	+4
Meditation	+2

Auristics: Identifying a Veiled Object

Auristics: Overcoming a Glyph

Auristics: Identifying the Properties of Magecrafted Items

Overgiving: Knowing Your "Hard Limits"

Glyphing: An Unfair Advantage

Overgiving Symptom, Blindness

Overgiving Symptom, Fainting

Flippance, a Faux Pas

The Adjudication Process of Dusk Tower

Notes

This was remarkably well done, as always. I very much like the personalities you construct. They're quite unique! I think you're more than earned these skills and lore. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me.

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