Game: Session 1

Things have changed. It is as though a giant picked up the school and shook it, tumbling its occupants and contents. Quite a few people didn’t survive (metaphorically – no one has actually died) the upheaval. Most of the teaching staff, in fact. Only three of the teachers still remain in their posts: Vence, the rites and rituals tutor, Father Iyr, the channeling tutor (and an utter bastard even if he does like me for being a channeler), and Opala, teaching Knowings and Divinations. Kerun, the librarian, has begun teaching classes as well, but I’m still not sure what he teaches. Whatever it is, he doesn’t cast magic. Even more improbably, one of the slug demons that infest the school (the aftermath of a poorly executed summoning demonstration – they’ve infested the school for decades. I think they breed.) has been selected as the summoning instructor. He calls himself Slub’gor, and I avoid him as much as possible.

The person responsible for all this? Archmage Ethan. He’s not the new master of the school; that individual has retained his position. The Archmage is tall, muscular, red-haired, Vessan, and devastatingly handsome. And married to an Archmage possibly even more powerful than he is. I’m trying to not be attracted to him, but it’s hard. He’s one of the very few people in my life who actually gives a shit about me. Even though I’m a bastard orphan girl, he thinks I might be worth something. How do I keep from liking him too much?

Distraction serves fairly well. I’ve been spending even more time in the library or practicing the fighting arts. I think I’m one of maybe three of us who actually likes the calisthenics Archmage Ethan has established first thing in the morning. I don’t like that it requires us to get up before dawn, but I’ve always liked the exercise. And believe me, some of the other kids here need it. Anah is pretty cheerful about it too, after griping some about the early hour.

When asked about what we would do in the heat of the day, he told us that the air conditioners would be repaired. Whatever an air conditioner is.

Another change? We have school uniforms. Anah, Salvation (”don’t call me Whitey”), Quin, Pirin, Haidar, and I got them first for signing up for a visit to the Magister’s School. It wouldn’t look good for us to go in the clothes we had, after all. Most of us are poor and some – like me – have only the clothes the school gave us. That means black, poorly made, too large (”You’ll grow into it.” If I keep growing until I’m thirty-five, maybe.), stained, and frayed from long use. The new uniforms are the color of the desert sands, embroidered with purple and silver. A knee-length tunic, trousers, headscarf and veil, sandals, gloves, a white sash, a heavy leather belt. A scimitar hangs from the belt, balanced with a curved dagger. The blades are rather plain, but like the clothes are very well-made. The maker’s mark stamped on the ricasso of each blade indicates Davin manufacture. There are not cheap swords. The dark, steel of the blade really needs no decoration, damascened and rippling like light on water. They’re gorgeous.

I slept with my scimitar the first night I had it. It’s much better than the rag dolls Cook used to make for me. Twins above us, please help me find the strength not to gamble it away.

Along with the uniforms, we were also given silk chemises and drawers. The girls, anyway. (And I’m thinking about stealing some boy’s shorts. It’d be fun, knowing that I was wearing boy clothes and that no one else knew.) Silk! I’ve never worn anything so nice. It feels like a breath of cool air in the heat of the day.

~`~

I’ll be here at least a year longer than I thought I would be. Archmage Ethan announced at the assembly where he introduced himself to the school that every student had failed the year. It was no reflection on us, he said, but the result of chronically poor teaching. We would need at least a year to catch up to where we ought to be in our studies. Actually, I don’t mind. I’m learning something in class now instead of having to do it all myself. The witchcraft tutor is gone, so I’m in Father Iyr’s class now. That part I don’t like so much, even if he does favor us. The way he treats the sorcery students – ignoring them completely unless they speak up, and then beating them for their ‘impertinence’ – is pretty distracting. Not just because it interrupts his lectures, but it’s completely unfair. Of course he is a convicted war criminal. Teaching here is his punishment. I just wish it didn’t have to be ours too.

~`~

Anah and Salamander – Salvation – have been gone for days. They didn’t say anything, they just sort of disappeared. Pirin and I looked around, asking after them. Nothing. I sent my Felicitation to find them, but she’s not back yet either. I’m worried.

~`~

Felicitation has come back, with only a pottery shard to give any indication of where she’d been. Pirin and I asked Kerun the librarian what it was. Turns out that the snake people, the Sessalorians had settled in a place called Rogue’s Ravine not far from here on their migration northward. The shard was from their work.He also told us he – and the other teachers – had known where they’d gone and that they’d be back in a day or so.How to feel dumb. At least I was a little smart and sent my familiar to find them. That’s the sort of work familiars are for, when they’re not supporting me while I’m casting. She’s absolutely not a pet. She’s smarter than an average lizard, thanks to the magic of the familiar bond, but she’s a ways from human-smart. About as smart as one of the more clever goats I’ve met.

Anyway, Anah and Salamander will be back in time for the visit to the Magister’s School.

~`~

They’re back.

Pirin’s an idiot. Oh, he’s clever enough, but he’s still a moron. Some time after midnight, I was woken by the shutters in my room all banging open at once and a hot wind blowing through. The desert is cold after night falls – it couldn’t be natural. Besides, all the dust-sprites were all running away from the school.Being an idiot myself, I went to go see what was going on. The wind eventually led me to the summoning chamber, where the wind had taken on a definite odor of sulfur. Hot wind, sulfur stench, summoning chamber. Fabulous. Some fool was summoning a demon. I was eventually joined by Quin, Haidar, and Salamander, and a few of the teachers. We found out the fool was Pirin, eventually. Slub’gor had told him how to do the summoning. Asking a demon how to do summonings sounded like a phenomenally bad idea to me. But no one died, no one was carried off to hell, and I left pretty quickly when the excitement was over.

The next time I saw Pirin, I hit him. He didn’t ask why, and I didn’t tell him. Idiot.

~`~

The visit to the Magister’s School was well worth going on, and not just because of Orrin. Overall, I thought the school was… creepy. Of course, Magister Faro himself is more than a little creepy, and his school likely reflects that. I’m deeply envious of the library there, and the kitchen constructs make better food than I’ve had in, well, ever, making chicken with lemon and olives in ten minutes. It came out as if it had been stewing for hours. Delicious.So was Orrin. Um. During the after-supper speeches, we went off to an uninhabited room and kissed for a while. Not sure how long. She’s Irosian, very beautiful, and experienced at kissing. She tastes like apples. I wonder what she’s doing at the Magister’s School with its insistence on asceticism. Maybe she is an ascetic. For an Irosian. But she also told me about the Verdant Order of Witches, a group of, well, witches up north somewhere. I’ll have to do some research on them.

I’m not disappointed that things didn’t go any further than kissing. It wasn’t exactly my first kiss, but it was pretty close. I’d kissed Haidar before, after making it very clear that it was just for practice. It was pretty awkward, trying to figure out where our noses were supposed to go and how to keep breathing and where we should put our hands. The practice session ended when I started giggling and couldn’t stop. Haidar got all huffy and left, I guess thinking that I was laughing at him, which I wasn’t. I was just laughing at how ridiculous it was. Kissing Orrin was a lot different. She knew where her hands were supposed to go: inside my tunic but over the chemise I wore underneath it, for one.

I still get a feeling like being punched low in the belly remembering her hands on my breasts, our skin separated only by the thin silk of my chemise. When she was actually touching me the feeling was so strong I almost fell over. Somehow she kept me standing upright, more or less. At least I didn’t totally collapse. I leaned into her and nuzzled the curve where neck met shoulder; she laughed at me, her breath warm and soft in my ear. I started laughing too – Orrin didn’t mind at all. Maybe it’s just one of the differences between boys and girls. Boys get bent out of shape when you laugh while you’re kissing them. Girls just laugh and kiss you harder.

I could be wrong about this. More experiments. Clearly I need to do more experiments on kissing. One thing different about her is how soft she is. Was. Anyway. She’s slender and soft where I’m harder, wiry, and boys tend to be harder and bulkier. Maybe it’s the desert that makes me different, but some of the girls at Shining Sands look pretty soft too. It’s probably just me.

There was more to the trip than just kissing Orrin, but that was sort of the highlight of it. For me, anyway. Pirin looked like he was going to sit next to her at dinner too, but moved on when he saw me. Maybe I should sort of apologize for hitting him.

Orrin’s the class president – she greeted us as we came through the portal, but had some kind of ambassadorial stuff to deal with. So she wasn’t our tour guide. That’s probably a good thing, really. I’m not sure I would’ve paid a whole lot of attention to the stuff around me instead of how short her skirt was. All the girls had really short skirts there. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know why. Anyway, Magister Faro had one of his students show us around. I can’t remember his name – started with a k, but I’ve lost the rest. I do remember that he was closely related to the Vessan Emperor, and was utterly sure that he was better than us.

Actually, he most likely is, in a lot of ways. He’s handsome, very well-educated, good at magic and adequate with a sword. He’s also intimately connected to one of the more powerful royal families in the world. So he’s better than me. So what? He’s still a wanker, and I bet he’s never kissed anybody. The Magister’s School has very strict rules about students and sex – the punishment for it is radical sterilization.

It’s weird. It seems especially weird since they’re mostly training to fight demons in Gates. Given how demons tend to fight with temptations of the flesh and all, I’d think that having a little experience in them before they’re confronted with an incubus would be useful. And just in life, too. If you’ve never kissed anyone, never had a crush, never been in love, it would be hard to resist someone who’d be willing to give you sex or affection or love, even if they’re really bad for you.

I don’t know. I’m just glad I’m not a student there. I’d make a really bad ascetic. I’m too physical for that. After we’d been in the library for a while, the wanker came back and took us to their gymnasium. They had calisthenics, armed close-quarters combat, unarmed close-quarters combat, ranged weapons practice, and practice casting while other people threw spells at you. (I don’t know why they didn’t have practice casting while people hit you with sticks.) I picked the unarmed combat. I held my own in it, but I was kind of disappointed. They made all the close-quarters combat students wear these dueling belts that kept you from taking any real damage. It hurt getting hit, but it was only pain. I didn’t even get any bruises from it.

The one thing I wish we had that they did was the library. They’ve got a ton of books. Somewhere. What they’ve got is several rooms, each with a long table, pens, inks, parchment. What you do is write down the title of the book on a piece of parchment, stick it in a hole in the table, and a librarian construct brings you the book. If you don’t know the title, write the subject you’re interested in and titles fitting your subject will appear on the reverse side of the parchment. It’s utterly amazing; the second or third-best occult-oriented library in the world, and I covet it deeply. I still wouldn’t want to come here, but being able to visit and do research would be great.

There’s a minor demon bound to their summoning room. It has to know what I am, but at least it didn’t say anything.

In the end, I was glad to get out of there. Archmage Ethan talked with us afterwards, wanting to know what impressions we’d gathered from the trip. I said that I thought avoiding temptations like sex and love and whatever made you more vulnerable to them when you finally encountered them, not less. The students our age at the Magister’s School were all much better than us at magic. We might’ve been about even at fighting physically. And they were all rich. I’m an orphan and a ward of the school. I’m a half-breed demon. I don’t need that many reminders about it all.

But Archmage Ethan pretty much agreed with me, that experience in the world was useful in ways that learning from lectures and books wasn’t. Like when I was little and playing in the kitchens, Cook told me not to touch the pots on the fire. One day I grabbed the kettle hanging over the hearth and burned both my hands. After that, I didn’t touch the pots without a dish rag to keep my hands safe. I didn’t have to think about it. I just knew. It’s hot, don’t touch it. The students at the Magister’s School are kept safe from a lot of things, including the consequences of screwing up.

Archmage Ethan said that he thought we all had the potential to become masters, archmagi, even Magister some day. He said that some of us were not what we seemed to be, some were more (he was looking at me when he said that), and some were less.

I don’t know if he knows. I’ll have to ask.

~`~

Okay, so I asked. Not, “Do you know I’m a demon?” but something more like, “What did you mean when you said some of us were – I was – more than I looked like?” I remember exactly what he said: “We all have within us the possibilities of our fathers and mothers. We can bend ourselves to their expectations, to the desires of the Nine, or to our own paths. Whatever we choose, young Sofiyah, you are the master of your own destiny, and I expect you to become as great as you desire. I know you can overcome any obstacle of your past, or of the future. You are a gifted woman.”I still don’t know if he knows. I hope I can live up to that.

~`~

Our next trip is to a school in Kesser. Kesser. Of all the places in the world, why there? Members of the Order aren’t supposed to fight among themselves, but still. They hate us, we hate them, we’ve been fighting a war for as long as anyone’s been keeping histories.The only thing I’m looking forward to about this trip is that we’re not going in uniform. I’ll get new clothes out of it. Maybe something in dark blue, or shades of saffron. That part, I’m actually excited about. I’ve never had nice clothes before.In the meantime, we’re being sent out to assist an adventuring team. There’s a bunch of ruins – elaborate tombs, basically – that have been pretty well picked over, but it’s still possible to find something of value there. We’re going as temporary apprentices, I guess. We’ll get a lot of the scum work, but Archmage Ethan says there are some puzzles there that we might find interesting to solve. Hopefully it’ll be fun at least some of the time. And not too dangerous.