Valor and Violence

Jasmine stalked through the college halls on her way to Ferez’s tower. Those thugs from the north, coupled with her failed experiment, had put her in a dark mood, and people instinctively jumped out of her way as she passed. They knew better than to draw her attention when she was upset.

It was their fault!

If the barbarians hadn’t been there to distract her, if the tall one hadn’t been so belligerent, her experiment would have been a success, and she would have been one step closer to worldwide renown and her Adept’s robes! Though, on reflection, she felt slightly guilty about sending the brute into the wall with a Flash Bomb.

She had overreacted. That much, she could admit. It was only through a combination of fortitude and luck that he had avoided serious injury, though brain damage remained a possibility. He was still unconscious when the short, burly one had carried him to the Aetheris College.

She chewed her lip as she considered the possibility. If he sustained a lasting impairment on account of her actions, the old man would be extremely angry. She caught an attendant staring at her as she pondered, a curious look on his face, and quickly regained her composure, assuring herself that the barbarian would be fine.

He would first need a brain to damage.

She sent the attendant scurrying with a look and continued to the tower, pausing when she reached the door. She ran her fingers over the exquisitely crafted relief embossed on its surface, same as she always did. Although she had seen it a hundred times before, it never failed to impress her. The door was made of Pyrerite, the vibrant red metal her college was fond of using for decoration. This was partly aesthetic, but mostly because it was too difficult to smith for anyone but a fire mage. It meant hers was the only school of magic that had its own colour themed roofs, which seemed inconsequential to her, but some of the other Pyrian’s boasted about it ceaselessly. They were fools, of course. Jasmine had no strong feelings about Pyrerite, unlike the insecure men in her school. It was the historical relief covering the door that impressed her.

The decoration displayed the complete story of the founding of The Six Cities, and she ran her hand affectionately over each scene: the meeting of the first Arch Mages, the founding of the towers, and the pilgrimage of the first magically gifted students, seeking them out. It continued onto the arrival of the merchants, creating the city she was familiar with today, and the siege by a young Emrinthian Empire. That was when the world learned the mages were not to be trifled with.

As a creation of the first mages, the door was in all aspects perfect, except for some scale errors in earlier segments. Until the merchants’ arrival, each scene contained unsightly blocks of space, disrupting the sense of scale and the otherwise perfect craftsmanship. Though it was against tradition to alter these doors, Jasmine had resolved some time ago to fix the blemish when these quarters were hers.

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she imagined herself in the robes of a High Mage, her name known far and wide as a brilliant and powerful mage. What would they call her in the ballads? The Wildfire Lady maybe? Or the beautiful and terrible Desert Rose! She decided either of those would do nicely.

Her daydreaming was rudely interrupted when the door swung open to reveal Ferez staring at her with a disappointed look on his face.

“You were thinking up titles for yourself again, weren’t you?” he said. He hated it when she did this.

“I was not!” she blurted, her face burning. “I… was reflecting on the history of our college,” she said, knowing full well her cherry red face betrayed her attempted subterfuge.

“Of course you were.”

He sounded unconvinced. She couldn’t blame him. The double edge to her raw magical Talent was that other mages could sense her from some distance away, which meant the old man knew exactly how long she had been ‘reflecting’ at his door.

“Anyway, come in. How much did the two young gentlemen tell you?”

“They said the Guild attacked, but you made it to the city. Well… most of you did. I understand Elgan is dead?”

“He is,” Ferez replied, his face falling as his eyes welled. “It is a shame. He was a good guardsman… A good man,” he finished, choking up a bit.

He was an arrogant, rude bastard, Jasmine thought to herself, though she wisely held her silence. Ferez was blind to the faults of those he was close to, and wouldn’t like her voicing her opinions of the dead man.

“They also mentioned important cargo,” she said to head off a further outpouring of grief. “And their names. They told me their names. I can’t remember them though,” she said, waving a dismissive hand as she brushed past him and into the room and settled into one of his chairs.

The room was the same today as it had been for the last nine years. Two high-backed leather chairs with a tea stool between them beside a cosy fireplace, a large mahogany desk littered with parchment and boxes by the far wall, and as many bookshelves as could be crammed along the circular walls, filled to bursting with leather-bound tomes and scrolls.

“Jasmine,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “You will never make friends if you’re rude to everyone you meet.”

“I’m not rude to everyone!”

“Actually, you are. Even me, which we should both be ashamed of; you for doing it and me for letting you,” he replied with a deep frown on his face. He closed the door and collapsed into the chair opposite her, throwing his hands in the air. “I’m a terrible father!” he sobbed. They both knew the sobbing wasn’t genuine.

At least he isn’t crying about Elgan now, Jasmine thought, almost wishing that he was.

“You aren’t my father at all, Old Man,” she replied, groaning and shaking her head.

Here we go again.

“You wound me!” Ferez exclaimed, dramatically clutching his chest. “How old were you when we met? Who has raised you all these years? I don’t know why I do it anymore!”

Jasmine blew a raspberry back at him. She had found over the years that the best way to deal with his melodrama was to ignore it completely, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself. Being the bigger person was sometimes difficult when it was required on a daily basis.

He was right, though. For all intents and purposes, he may as well have been her father. He had taken her in before her tenth birthday, raised her, and taught her magic. She owed him a lot. Maybe she could be a little more respectful now and then.

“I am sorry, Old Man, I will try to be better behaved. For your sake,” she said, standing and crossing the space between them to give him a hug.

“Thank you, Jasmine. It means a lot to hear you say that and gives me hope that my hair isn’t greying in vain.”

“You needn’t worry about that. A few more years and it will all have fallen out, anyway,” she said, patting the conspicuous bald spot forming on his crown.

Well, I can’t start being sickly sweet immediately.

He pulled out of her embrace and scowled at her, though she could see the laughter in his eyes he fought so hard to suppress. He coughed to cover it and gently moved her aside before crossing to his desk, dragging the largest box towards himself and removing the lid.

“Now, for the reason I called you here. Associates sent this from an archaeological expedition in Marduk. They were hoping I might shed some light on its function,” he said, pulling out a block of brassy metal slightly larger than his fist and handing it to Jasmine.

“What is it?” she asked, turning it over in her hands.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Jasmine looked from the object to Ferez. She was about to protest when she noticed the twinkle in his eye. So, this was a test, then. She looked back to the mystery block, seeking clues.

It was an interesting shape, a perfect cube except for a single face in the shape of a seven-pointed star. An elegant and complex pattern of geometric grooves covered its surface, converging at the centre of the star, and when she reached out with her senses, she was surprised to find small amounts of Talent leaking from the point.

She almost dropped the cube in her shock.

“This entire device is made of Resonance Ore!” she exclaimed. She hadn’t identified the magical metal at first because she had never seen so much in one place before. The chunk of metal in her hand was probably worth more than the average palace.

“Indeed, it is, Jasmine,” he replied, happy, but not overly impressed. “What else?”

Jasmine took a moment to compose herself, gently lowering the object back onto the desk as she considered it. It sat on a slight lean, and she peered closer at the points.

“The star surface isn’t completely flat. One point is raised, and its edges are grooved. This may be a leap, but I would suggest this fits into something.” She paused, tapping her chin as she played out the ramifications in her head. “This would mean the stored Talent would be concentrated by the conduits directly onto the other object,” she said, pointing out the grooves as she spoke.

“Very good, Jasmine. Do you know what its purpose is, though?” he asked, his face infuriatingly blank.

Jasmine had no idea. She thought she had done a reasonable job figuring out this much, but there was no way to determine the function of the object without finding the artisan who made it, or saturating it with enough Talent to induce a spontaneous discharge.

“I am sorry to say I do not know and I believe there is no way of finding out. Do you know what it does?”

“No clue,” he said with a flippant shrug. “And, since we don’t know who made it, deducing its purpose is exceedingly difficult,” he said, a sly grin forming on his face as he held up a finger, “but not impossible. There are two options available to us; one is to find its paired object and catalyse a reaction.”

“I assume we do not know what this other object is or where to look?”

“Correct. Which leaves us with one last option.”

He grinned at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something.

“You can’t be serious,” she said, to convince herself more than anything else.

Saturating Resonance Ore artefacts possessing unknown enchantments was extremely risky. There was no way to control the discharge, and if the enchantment was destructive? Well, there had been a very heated discussion at the last Mage’s Summit regarding outlawing the practice after a powerful Aeris device levelled an entire sub-district in the smithing quarter. And that device had contained but a fraction of the Ore in this one.

“Ah, but I am serious, Jasmine,” he replied, the earlier eye twinkle replaced with a new, far more dangerous one.

Jasmine regarded the device and frowned. The associates in Marduk had no doubt already tried stimulating the device with magic to no avail. When it did finally hit saturation, just how much raw magical power was going to be released? And what form would it take?

“This would be grossly negligent of us, Old Man.”

“I believe the nature of the enchantment is not destructive, though!”

“And that reason is?”

“… My gut says so?”

“That is not a reason!” Jasmine cried, placing a protective hand on the artefact.

Ferez played hard and fast with both the rules and good sense. It was one reason Jasmine enjoyed being apprenticed to him, but this was a bridge too far. The old mage looked between her and the object, and from the contortion of his face, she knew he was playing out various arguments in his head.

Did he honestly expect I would just go along with this? she wondered, as his expression suddenly brightened.

“We’d be famous.”

Oh no.

“What?” she asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach telling her Ferez had already won.

“Whatever that device does, there is nothing else like it in the world that we know of. If we could figure out its secrets… just imagine, Jasmine. We would be famous! Everyone would know your name.”

Gods dammit. That conniving, manipulative old bastard!

“Alright,” she replied, scarcely believing the words coming out of her mouth. “How are we going to study it, then?”

She felt a deep sense of shame. Both for agreeing to this insane plan, and for being so easy to manipulate. Ferez’s eyes flashed with something akin to insanity as he replied.

“We’re going to throw fireballs at it!”