A Shadow in the Mist

Resembling dream catchers, Wards keep wild etheric threads from tangling and spawning djinn. They take damage overtime from ambient corruption, so they require maintenance to keep active. They absorb the wild threads and must be drained once full, or they will eventually crumble to ash, leaving a tangled pile of etheric thread.”

- From Kiedra Mithradati’s introduction to Wards and Enchanting

Aranea- Thursday, August 15th, 564 AB

I spent the next few days wandering around the academy and familiarizing myself with the places I’d frequent. I found the castle library; we’d had a few books back in the convent, but I’d never even believed this many existed before. I perused through tomes on history, the copies of fragments of old-world documents and textbooks. I couldn’t take them out of the library but I spent a few hours there each day reading.

Cain kept training, coming back home every day towards sunset drenched in sweat and covered in dirt. Eventually I had to make him an extra set of training clothes so he wouldn’t stain and rip his good set. I started going with him to watch him train and was horrified at the brutality of it. While I had experienced what some would consider extreme pain conditioning, it had always served a purpose. This attempt to get them to connect with their Relics was beyond anything I’d heard of for new Wardens to go through.

The really impressive thing was that both Cain and Enoch were doing it willingly. Time and time again I watched them get hit with the heavy leather balls of sand, each larger than my fist, only for them to stand up again and repeat the obstacle course. One day Cain failed to complete the whole course during the three hours and had to go for another thirty minutes until he did the whole thing.

I couldn’t tell if they were making any progress, and there was only so much watching the two boys be beaten within an inch of their lives that I could take. Luckily, I met Rineer’s wife and their daughter-in-law. Their house wasn’t especially large, but it was warm and lively with Rineer’s seven other children.

Hannah was the wife of Enoch. Like me, she had been raised in a convent. We talked about our different experiences. She had grown up further to the south in a higher ether region and was full of stories about the Wardens there fighting high tier djinn. She and Enoch were already expecting their first child, she was six-and-a-half months into her pregnancy. The three Weavers sat together each day working on various projects. Lidia, Rineer’s wife, was enchanting a gambeson using the golden thread of purified corruption for the defensive Wards. Hannah was stitching up baby clothes, darning Enoch’s socks, and mending his clothes.

“I’m glad you come by each day,” Hannah said. “My mother is great, but she can be a bit stifling with her doting.” She smiled at Lydia who swatted her with a smile on her face.

“Hush child,” she said, “it’s my job to dote on you. You’re carrying the future of your house, and mine. I haven’t had a baby in this house in over ten years and I’m ready to hear the soft little cries of another one.”

“He’s kicking!” Hannah said excitedly, grabbing my hand and putting it on her belly.

I could feel the tiny bump, bump as the baby kicked the wall of her womb, and couldn’t help but laugh.

“Do you think it’s a girl or a boy?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a boy,” Lydia said. “Enoch was just like that when I was pregnant with him and just as big.”

“When are you and Cain thinking of starting your family?” Hannah asked me.

“We haven’t discussed it,” I said. “I’d like to start as soon as we can but, maybe it would be best to wait until after we graduate from the academy.”

“Nonsense,” Lidia said. “You're young and should start now. Life can be short and bleak for those of our kind, and the joys of children are sometimes the only light that keeps our feet on the path.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, finishing my set of stitches. I was working on a new skirt for the start of the school year, a bright cheery red.

“Set aside your needles, girls,” Lydia said. “If my husband is training yours then I should offer you some small instruction as well. I will not claim to be a Weaver of great renown, but I have kept the threads of the Mist around our home at bay for longer than you two have been alive.”

Bringing out long, supple willow boughs, along with several pairs of pruning shears, she started going through her grimoire. She showed them several wards, instructing them on how to weave them. The Wards would be hung in the air in the Mist to draw in and catch ambient ether threads to strain and keep them from tangling. When they were full, they would be brought back so that they could draw out the ether from it and spin it into thread. This would destroy the ward, but they would degrade over time anyway.

At first it was very hard to bend the willow boughs into the correct shapes, but I quickly adapted the techniques I’d been taught. Jewel climbed out of my hair where she usually perched like some hair ornament. Jewel spun some silk thread to tie the boughs in place, and I raised the dreamcatcher-like ward up.

Lydia took it and looked it over. “Well done girl, you are a natural. This isn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but it is functional, which is more than most accomplish on their first ward.”

Hannah looked down at her own handiwork and sighed. “You're certainly better at this than me.”

“Don’t be envious,” Lydia scolded. “We all have our gifts given us by the Voice.”

She turned to me. “Keep practicing making this ward. Once you’ve mastered it, I’ll teach you another.”

“Yes mistress,” I said, bowing my head.

Lydia sighed. “Now I understand why Rineer keeps trying to get people to not call him Sir.”

Cain

I ducked under a ball as I jumped, clearing the last of this section of the course. I heaved for breath on the ground, rolling to the side as I heard Enoch coming in behind me. He landed on his back and we both heaved for breath on the grass.

Rineer walked forward shaking his head in disappointment. “You two are forgetting why you’re here,” he said. “You’ve learned to take the hits without falling off, but you’re not here to get better at running and jumping under fire. You’re here to awaken your connection with your Relic.”

He tossed one of the heavy leather balls in his hand. “Clearly this isn’t enough, but I’ve got a new way to motivate you. From behind his back, he pulled out a new ball formed from iron, its surface gleaming evilly.

“You bastard,” I said, my eyes going wide.

Rineer just laughed then his expression went stern. “Start running.”

--

I vomited out into the bushes as I got hit by the iron ball in my gut again. I rolled to my feet and started running again. My feet danced over the stone pylons as I tried to connect to my Relic, hearing the whistling of the approaching iron balls. There was something, or maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part. But I couldn’t make that final leap to use the skill yet. The iron ball clipped my thigh, and I nearly went over. I kept running, doing the monkey bars and then the balancing beam. Enoch was restarting the course too, and I could hear his huffing as he raced behind me and the “oomf!” as he got hit again.

We kept at it for another thirty minutes. The most frustrating part was, I couldn’t tell if I was making progress or not. I would only know if I’d gotten it once I’d done it successfully. Enoch and I both panted in exhaustion, another day without success. We stepped into the practice ring without weapons, ready to get our asses handed to us.

A spear connected with the side of my head as I tried to summon my dagger to my hand. The butt of the practice spear hit Enoch in the gut, and we both went down. We stood up and went again. Every time we got better at dodging or blocking the attacks Rineer would hold back a little less and we’d go right back to the ground. I strained my mind to try and connect to the Relic, but I just couldn’t bridge whatever gap separated us.

Enoch and I collapsed again, and I healed the damage we’d taken to our hit points.

“Do you think this is even working?” I asked Enoch.

Enoch shrugged. “I don’t know, but at the very least it’s still training. My agility has gone up by two points since we started.”

“Mine’s only gone up by one but I think it’s because I put so many points in it already, my endurance also went up though.”

“We’ve only been at this for a week,” Enoch said, clapping me on the back.

“I just don’t know if I can do it,” I said. “I’m not special, I’m the bastard son of a minor noble who was given a Mist Relic because it was the best I could get.”

“You can’t be so hard on yourself,” Enoch said. “My father wouldn’t have chosen to train you if he didn’t believe in you. I’ve only known you for a week, but I can already tell you're destined for great things.”

“I’m a coward,” I said. “Your father hasn’t told you everything about me. He saw me freeze in battle. If my wife hadn’t distracted my opponent, I would have died.”

“A momentary freeze in battle doesn’t make you a coward,” Enoch insisted.

“I’ve always frozen,” I said. “It started with the ether storm that killed my mother and brother. I could hear their screams for help within our house, I could have run in and helped but I froze. I’ve been freezing ever since then, always when the stakes are highest. Fear fills me, rules me.”

“I don’t believe that,” Enoch said. “My father told me how you led over sixty fell men away and faced them all by yourself. You chose to do that; you aren’t a coward because you sometimes have fear. Only through fear can you have courage, learn to master your fear and you will be the bravest of us all.”

I sighed. “I’ll try.”

“Come on,” Enoch said, pulling me to my feet. “I’m starving. Let’s jump into the river then go inside to eat.”