Vila’s interruption left me in a bad state. Alyx yelled at her and got hauled away for it, which gave Mae the chance to clear up my intoxication before I had to scurry off for class, but it’s the thinnest of silver linings. There’s a black mark staining my record, but I don’t even have the space to worry about it — I’m stuck on one thing, and one thing alone.
Alyx kissed Mae, and you didn’t. Worse yet, Alyx kissed you, and she was good at it! Is Mae sitting around wishing they didn’t get interrupted?
If that’s not enough, the moment their lips touched keeps looping in my mind. Mae’s arms wrapping around her, eagerly, hungrily. Gods, if I’m stuck on it, there’s no way Mae isn’t. The only other thoughts that filter through this mass of anxiety are my hand on Mae’s shoulder, me wiping her back… her little yellow underwear. I should’ve stayed in my room and dealt with this — at this point I’d do it in front of Nym if I had to, just for a bit of relief.
I end up a few minutes late to class. More accurately I’m there with time to spare, but sit down outside the door with my knees pushed together and my fingers digging into my palms, wondering who I need to see to get these memories suppressed. If I need to see Alyx kissing Mae every time I close my eyes, I’m not going to make it through the night.
The classroom is a dingy little thing, so unlike the huge hall where they tested our Disciplines. It’s not even laid out like a lecture hall. More like a cellar with a few old tables pushed together; no light but the flickering torches in their gargoyle sconces. There’s not a soul around but our Dean of Students, Tailina, sitting at the head of the tables before a blackboard with a book in her hand. A midnight black cat with a spiralling ivory horn purrs in her lap.
“You’re quite early,” she says.
“I thought class started at the 17th Hour?”
“Yes, but most of the Mystics are so… eccentric,” she says the word like it’s slimy and dripping. “The others are probably off scrawling runes in the catacombs or stripping the gardens bare of any alchemical flowers.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Quite the opposite. Come, sit,” she says, gesturing to the chair closest to her. “It is a relief that at least one of you is studious. Though I must say, I didn’t expect it to be you.”
The heat rises to my face. “Is it because-”
“Because of the black mark, yes. Five hours and already marked. I expect that from my Mystics; I just don’t expect them to then show up on time. Most just keep racking up marks.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tailina rolls her huge, round eyes. I accept the admonishment with my head down before I hear her laughing. “You really are nothing like my other Mystics.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, stupidly.
“Please, enough. I don’t want your apologies — I want to hear about this unauthorised magic. What could so possess someone like you… Swept up in the moment?”
“It was my first spell,” I tell her. And then it all comes rushing out, even the parts I should leave out — like the drinking.
“Not bad for a first spell.”
How to wrangle the rest of it, though. I’d rather not come into my first class and tell the teacher about the kissing. I settle on a white lie, but when I speak, my mouth refuses to cooperate. “There was something strange, though. One of the others said someone might dare her to dr… to kiss someone, and the orb flashed blue. It’s not meant to do that, right?”
She leans back in her chair and steeples her talons. “Interesting. You are right, of course — it’s not meant to do that. I assume this dare did indeed come to pass?” I nod. “At higher levels of complexity the spell can ascertain truths known to reality itself, rather than subjective knowledge. But to see the future? Furhaps it was a fluke, some strange fluctuation within the spell.”
“No,” I say, confidence bolstered by how seriously she takes me (I’d expected her to say I was being stupid and chastise me). “We were talking about what it could be, and when Alyx said we wouldn’t figure it out it flashed blue again.”
“So it’s reading the future… You are fortunate you came so early. There is a test for this.” Tailina stands and her cat hisses in annoyance, bounding off somewhere when it’s forced from her lap. Without another word she walks over to big wooden door between two torches. I hadn’t noticed it was there before. She stands there, hands clasped behind her back. Nervously, I follow.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“You tell me.”
Is this the test? Standing in front of a door? Or is this a sort of pre-test where I’m meant to say something unexpected and insightful? Am I meant to tell her what the test is?
“You’re, um, standing in front of a door. Do you want me to go in?”
Her moon eyes widen. “You’re telling me you can see the door?”
“Um. Yes?”
She seems rendered speechless for a moment, but regains her composure. “You have seen through a very powerful glamour indeed. The test was for you to ascertain that there was a hidden door in this patch of wall, but to see it? It seems your power goes beyond precognition.”
I blink. I consider telling her that I saw through Nym’s illusions in my bedroom earlier, but I have a feeling that if I try, my tongue will betray more than I want it to. Tailina has such an unsettling and powerful presence, it feels dangerous even thinking about such things around her.
“So, do we go through the door?”
Her eyes soften in a way that suggests a smile.
“You’ll be ready to open it when you can tell me what’s behind it. Still, to see the door at all suggests a very unusual and interesting specialty indeed.”
She hums a note, looks about the still empty room. “Would you like to try an exercise? I warn you, it can be intense.”
“Yes,” I say, automatically, thinking of the rush I got when I cast the truth spell. Anything that gets me closer to my magic, I want.
“Hm,” she closes her eyes and nods. “Take my hands. I’m going to channel Mana through your body. Try not to direct the Mana in any particular direction. The object is to see the ways in which your latent powers interact with it naturally.” She stretches her winged arms toward me. “Ready?”
I swallow and take her black taloned hands. They’re warm and soft with downy feathers. She smiles a little, then closes her eyes. I follow suit.
The mana moves through me like a rush of glorious white light. My eyes open despite myself, and Tailina’s still relaxed face dissolves into a scene of bright orange desert, punctuated by a large, brightly coloured structure with cyan roofs. Tailina’s face remains, only gets smaller, younger — now, she is a tawny pubescent owl with her baby feathers half-shed, tiny against the immense building, the very picture of clumsy adolescence. Her appearance is, I’m sorry to say, hilarious; my amusement is short lived though, because little Tailina, well, she just looks so miserable.
I watch her, tiny mote against flat cosmos orange that spreads out like an ocean, interspersed with incongruous structures floating atop like ships, enter the building. The awareness comes to me that I’m looking at a school. What kind? I let the awareness float to me.
This is an academy far to the south, Dunmyr, one of the only schools which dares teach magic to students younger than 18 (private tutorship is one thing, but classrooms full of tiny hormonal magic bombs don’t tend to go well). Tailina is young for a magic student, even by Dunmyr standards. She is the only owl in the intake this year; she’s frightened she’ll be teased.
As Tailina walks in, the other students — a wide mix of sleek serpentine maws and elves, fennec foxes and dark lashed camels — scoff, and then break into open laughter. She stares miserably at the ground, tears coming unbidden. I’m so ugly, she thinks.
Oh no. This is too much, too personal. I need to try to steer away.
Of course, the first subject my mind offers is Mae, and before I have time to think no, oh no, this is a very bad idea, the scene before me turns to a wash of running colours, and then becomes the familiar, cosy space of Mae’s bedroom.
The purple blankets shift, and a moan escapes the flexuous heap. Frustration radiates from the pile. If only Vil had come just a little later. I could have kissed her.
I’m so shocked by the clear image of my face in her head, that I’m knocked out of the scene. Theres a nauseating rush and another flood of colour as I’m propelled into the next.
This scene is different, because I’m there, looking out of my own eyes. Except they’re not my own, because the paws that are thrust out desperately before me are cream furred and blue nail-polished. I’m Vila, I’ve always been Vila and right now I’m in horrible, unspeakable danger, and so is the Academy. My mind is wordless, a flood of white panic and desperation as I pour all I have into my magic, my fire. All I can see is the flames, pouring out from the depths of me, superceding my vision.
“I can’t hold it,” I cry, and I have no idea if my voice is loud enough to be heard by the others.
I scream as I pour all the rest of me into the fire.
My eyes open. I’m- I’m Hattie, of course I am, slumped over the table with a soft feathered hand to my forehead and a horned cat rubbing its head against my leg, scratching up my thigh in the process.
“You’re back with us?”
Gods, maybe. Maybe. Everything lingers, and because magic is annoying (Mysticism most of all) it’s both blindingly clear and mired in fog. “We’re in danger,” I say, only to hear a soft coo.
“What have you seen, child? From the beginning.”
“I saw- I’m sorry, I saw you as a child, on your first day at Dunmyr academy.” Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly. “You were… sad, and it felt personal, so I steered away. Then-” There’s no way the Mae vision is relevant. I push ahead. “Then I saw the future, I think. The Academy was in trouble! Vila was using her fire magic… I couldn’t see what the danger was, but I know it was a terrible threat to the Academy!”
Tailina looks at me for a moment, measuring, and then hums a note.
“Considering all signs point toward you being a Seer, Hattie, I’m inclined to believe you. I’ll discuss this with the Headmistress Lyra after class.”
A wave of achievement washes over me, until I’m startled by the realisation that there’s someone new beside me, a golden creme furred mouse girl with pinprick black eyes and a messy mop of pink hair. She smiles at me. “H-hi,” I say, in response to the expectant look. The mouse just raises a paw in greeting.
“Um. I’m Hattie.”
She smiles and nods. Honestly, I’m grateful. Confusion is easier to handle than fear — right, fear! The vision. The danger. But as I try to focus on it it recedes from my grasp like the tide. Somebody’s calming me, I think.
“You can show her,” Tailina says, and the mouse gathers purple light in her paw before flicking it into my forehead. It remains tethered to her fingers by a wispy cord, which she reels back so the light flings from my head and into hers.
“Hello,” she says, in a calm, soothing voice. “My name is Syrene, of the Silvertails.”
“-” I say, and panic shoots through me. Syrene puts a paw on my wrist.
“Please do not attempt to talk. I was born cursed, and cannot speak. I have borrowed your ability for my introduction. Would that we could share it, instead. Regardless, it is a pleasure to meet you, Hattie.”
The thread of light in her hands winks out and my voice comes rushing back.
“You can do that?”
“Woe to any who underestimate the versatility of Mysticism,” Tailina says. “As good a place as any to start our lesson, now that Hattie has recovered.” I wish they didn’t have to wait for me.
“Please,” another student sneers, a black-furred porcupine with a slender snout and green eyes obscured by huge metal-rimmed spectacles, “we’ve waited long enough.”
“You were here last, Gelstra,” Tailina chastises, and the porcupine prickles.
“I was collecting ingredients…”
“Yes, all well and good. But Hattie was honing her magic, too.”
Gelstra doesn’t seem convinced, but our teacher pays it no mind. I burn under the Alchemist’s judgemental gaze.
“Before we begin,” Tailina says, snapping two claws. The cat rushes over and leaps onto the table, sitting on its haunches like a proud lion. “Please pay Blue Moon here no mind. She will try to get your attention; it is only to bring you to her food bowl. She has, however, been fed many times.
“Now then,” she raps her claws against the blackboard, “it is my intention to begin this class with an introduction to the theoretical side of Mysticism, which some of you may find boring or irrelevant — know that this assumption would be very foolish indeed. I see you have all found your callings, for the minute — a Seer, an Alchemist, and a… Thief.” Syrene’s ears twitch. “Might any of you tell me the commonality?”
My mind scrambles. I have to work hard, get that black mark bleached, or at least prove to the professor that I’m not that kind of girl. So… It’s the Discipline of mortals? Because there’s no truth without people, plus I see people, and Syrene takes the attributes of mortals? No, that seems stupid. Doesn’t even explain the Alchemist.
It’s about magic? That might be too broad, but presumably this seeing is an unconscious channeling of my mana to project myself across the rushing lines of magic that connect all mortal life? Something like that, at least. And the theft works the same way… Anything you can use for alchemy grows on leylines, right? Otherwise it’s just your garden variety herbalism, the providence of village crones. Oh! And the high-level magic nullification effects Nym mentioned! So Mysticism is the manipulation of magic itself, in a sort of mirror to how Alteration is the manipulation of physical reality.
I think that’s it, but what if I’m wrong? If I throw my hand up and humiliate myself…
The silence drags on. Gelstra coughs and drums her fingers against the table, trying too hard to look like she’s thinking. Syrene appears to be meditating. Eventually, Tailina sighs. “Mysticism is the Discipline of magic itself. You might think of it as a sort of mirror for Alteration — and indeed there is often overlap between the Disciplines, as both contain a variety of Ward spells — but yes, a mirror, because where Alteration concerns changes to physical, mundane reality, Mysticism manipulates magic.
“It is in all of us. Yes, some have more ability than others — more mana, better control of that mana — but that is not the end of it, not by any means. No matter how easily spellcraft comes, we are all but tassels on the cosmic thread of magic connecting all beings. Hattie’s talents allow her to crawl along this thread like a mite, to glimpse the other tassels or even embed herself within; in a similar fashion, Syrene can harvest chunks of fabric and accrete them to herself. And Gelstra’s potions utilise the magic stored within natural sources, whether flora or fauna; combining this potential is much the same as combining any other spell, only it happens in a cauldron instead of your head.”
Gods, why didn’t I just say it?
“It should go without saying that this is very dangerous indeed. Many a reckless mage has been obliterated when their nullification spell backfired and turned inward, severing them from the thread. This is why it is important for you, perhaps more than any others, to obey the Academy’s rules and only practice in the presence of an instructor.”
Gelstra’s hand shoots up, and Tailina answers immediately, “yes, Gelstra, even you and your potions.”