61 - Three Problems

Arielle ran into Lyra, who was on her way in as Ari was on her way out.
“Where are you going?” Lyra asked, clutching her book to her chest.
“To find something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Lyra gave her a puzzled look. “You don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“I know what I’m looking for, I just don’t know what exactly it is.”
Lyra opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head. “You know what, never mind. We have to talk about something when you get back.”
Arielle nodded, then added, “It might not be until much later. I have to meet with Telip after dinner. He agreed to help me.”
“Really?” Lyra’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s shocking, but good for you. How did you manage that?”
“By having fun with Selena.”
That seemed to confuse Lyra more, but Arielle didn’t have time to dawdle. She didn’t want to keep wasting essences on an active spell, so she said, “I’ll talk to you about it when I get back.”
“Okay.”
Arielle continued out of the room and hurried down the stairs and to the courtyard, following her senses that had zeroed in on this strange orb that buzzed in a gliding up-and-down manner.
It had combined the movement patterns of Calor and Vitae, the energeticness of Calor’s zig-zag darting, and the smooth calm of Vitae. It was, however, markedly different from both in a way she could not yet entirely articulate. But she would soon. After she learned everything there was to learn about the orb.
However, she soon ran into her first obstacle. Even after walking across the courtyard and approaching the shores, she had not yet encountered the orb. Which meant that it was somewhere offshore. Could it be in Khor?
No.
From the strength of the pull, she sensed the distance was less than ten miles away, if that. She used her compass spell and turned until she felt the strongest draw.
North. Possibly North Base.
Her heart skipped.
Thankfully, the cleaving channels no longer worked, but what if the foreign orb encountered or interacted with manalings? Breaking spells cleanly, the way Arielle usually did, did not create manalings, but she’d been in a hasty, panicked state when she’d broken the bonds of the oath spell, so what if she hadn’t been as precise as she should have been? What if she’d damaged the essence unintentionally?
It made her feel guilty to think about. But even if she had inadvertently created a manaling, she could fix it. She just had to find it first, so it wouldn’t get even more hurt.
She had to get to North Base, so she immediately went in search of Rava. She found her in the custodian’s office, with Garrick at the opposite table, writing something on his scroll.
“Arielle!” Rava greeted. She had her feet up on her desk and was enjoying a plate of melons. “You are a sight for sore eyes. I’ve only had Garrick’s dour mood to keep me company all day.”
Garrick’s only response was a grunt.
“Can we go to North Base?” Arielle asked.
“Right now?” Rava responded.
“Yes.”
“And here I thought you came all the way here because you missed me.”
“No. I wanted to ask if we could go to North Base.”
Garrick grunted again, although it could have been a laugh this time, as Rava shook her head. “You wound me, Arielle, you really do. Are you that eager to earn more essences? I suppose you used up a lot in your recent fights and have to practice quite a bit for severance.”
“Yes.”
Rava sighed. “Unfortunately for you, there haven’t been that many manalings lately. I guess the students are getting better at their spells. Not to mention that there’s a bunch of students who are trying to earn last-minute additions to their essence quotas, so unfortunately, I don’t have any work for you to do either.”
“Can we go check?”
“Check what?”
“North Base. Maybe something is stuck in the grinder.”
“There’s no reason to check. We’ve had record low manaling exposure for weeks. It’s almost worrying, actually. Besides, it’s getting late. It’s nearly dinner time.”
Arielle swallowed. She tried to think of a reason she could give Rava as to why she had to go to North Base immediately, but nothing came to mind, and also, if she went now, she might miss her meeting with Telip.
She blew out a breath.
“Is there something at North Base I need to look into?” Rava asked slowly.
That gave Arielle an idea, one she did not take time to think through. “Yes! The last time I was there, I sensed a presence watching me. Perhaps it’s still there right now. We should go look.”
“A presence. Like a ghost?”
“Precisely. Or a living person. Or the possible disciple of a primordial.”
Rava gave her a doubtful look. “Are you feeling alright, Arielle?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I don’t know. Usually, you don’t make jokes like that.”
Did it seem like a joke? She supposed going with the ghost excuse was a bad idea in hindsight. She just really wanted to check in on the foreign orb before it could get further away.
“I didn’t mean a literal ghost,” she backpedaled. “I just meant that there might have been a ghoul or something equally menacing on that island.”
“Oh, believe me, it only seems that way. It’s been like that for years, and we haven’t had any ghoul attacks yet. Just run-away desks and the occasional giant fish. Once, there was a shadow wraith, but that was ages ago.”
“I see,” Arielle said, disappointed. “I’ll go now.”
“You should. And you should get some sleep. Severance week is going to be tough, so you need both mind and body well-rested by then.”
She nodded as she walked away, but her mind was still working out ways to get to the island.
She guessed teleportation was one way. She’d seen Elric create the teleportation spell form, but teleportation was a complex art that involved not only the spell but also the thought process and imaging of a mage.
One wrong move and she could end up somewhere she didn’t want to be, with no way to go back. Or she could end up in the abyss. That would not be pleasant.
On top of that, Elric had used runes that she did not have–though she could potentially learn how to make them today–and single-person teleportation was a master-tier spell that would undoubtedly get her a hidden ability marker, which she did not want.
Was there another way to get to the island that wasn’t teleportation? Perhaps, she could borrow the boat in the dead of the night, in secret, and get herself there.
She mused on the problem as she went back to her room, where Lyra had a wand pointed at a plant.
She paused her spell work when Arielle walked in. “I thought you said you might not be back for a while.”
“I thought the same, but I did not find what I was looking for. Are you not going down for dinner?”
“No. I figured I might as well spend that time practicing.” She passed her wand over a leaf, and as it brightened, Arielle sat down on her bed and asked, “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Lyra did not answer immediately. She spent time brightening the other leaves, then stroking them in thought.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Finally, she took a deep breath and asked, “Realistically, what would you say my chances are of making it through severance?”
Arielle thought about it. “I don’t know. I’ve never been through severance before, so I’m not sure what it’s like and have only heard second-hand accounts. Have you asked Maus? Or the twins? I’m sure they know more than I do.”
“I already asked them, and they told me I would be fine. But they probably just said that to make me feel better. I know you at least will be honest with me.”
Arielle shrugged. “Honestly speaking, I don’t know. I don’t know enough about your magic still and have not yet discovered a sure counter for the issues that you face.”
Lyra finally looked up at her. The sunset cast an orange glow on her face, which made her hazel eyes turn golden.
“I spoke to my aunt,” she said. “And she finally admitted to me what she’d done.”
“Which was?”
“My family are Greenfingers, but apparently, my mother is from a different Vitae-dominant tribe. She and my aunt are descended from an ancient line of priestesses who serve Yona, a disciple of the Lifetree. When a priestess dies, another from the line is chosen, and if they are of age, they must go to Yona’s temple to fulfil their duties, locked away from the rest of the world. Either that, or they have their cores suppressed for good.” She sighed. “My aunt was chosen as a Yona priestess, but for some reason, I was blessed with potential, too. Typically, there’s only one in every family tree at a time, but my aunt could tell the minute she held me. So, unbeknownst to my mother, she performed a ritual on me, binding me to the priesthood, so that I could take over when I was of age, and she could leave. That’s probably why magic is so difficult for me. I come of age on my sixteenth birthday in just a few months, and after that, I’ll no longer be able to use other essences at all.” That last sentence ended on a bitter note.
Arielle didn’t know what to say at first, but she did know one thing. “That’s a very awful thing for your aunt to do to you.”
“Yes, she’s something else. She wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t told my mother to bug her about it just recently. I can’tbelieve she did that, and let me go through all this for nothing.” She sighed. “I should have known something was wrong when I tested abnormally high in my capacity for Vitae. That was what got Erynwall interested in me in the first place. They thought they’d found a world-class healer. It’s also why everyone, Professor Llywyd, Professor Valeria, and even Professor Graham, has been trying to get me to ‘realize my full potential’. But it turns out that this is just my aunt doing a ritual on me as a child.”
“What does it mean?” Arielle asked. “To be a Yona priestess.”
She made a face. “It means that you must spend your entire life in the temple, with limited contact with the outside world. You must meditate by the tree and remain one of the anchors that enable the flow of Vitae leylines.”
“What does it mean to be an anchor?”
“An anchor is essentially something that has to remain in place to maintain a magical principle, keep the balance, or oversee the proper flow of magic. For example, Archmages are often anchors in their respective cities and territories. Priests are technically anchors of their temple, although not always.”
Hmmm.
So what did Anchors of the Living mean in the context of what she’d seen in Telip’s report? Did they protect the living? Or serve some other function on behalf of the living?
And the souls of the dead part…did they have to die to achieve that? Was that why the entire congregation was dead?
She put that aside for now and focused on Lyra’s problems.
“So what you’re saying is that you would have to leave the academy?” she asked. “And stop being my friend.”
Lyra smiled weakly. “I don’t think we have to stop being friends. The temple accepts letters, and I’ll be allowed to visit, I think, five times a year. I don’t know how we would sustain a healthy friendship with just that, though, and I’m not sure you should even want to. I haven’t been a very good friend to you anyway. It seems I only take from you and don’t give anything back.”
“That’s not true,” Arielle said instantly. “You give a lot. You eat breakfast and dinner with me, sometimes lunch. You teach me how to talk to people. You helped me with Telip, Riorke, and Maus. You still have discussions with me even when I annoy you.” As she listed off the things, Arielle felt a growing sense of unease.
Lyra couldn’t go. She was a good person and didn’t deserve to be locked in a tower for the rest of her life.
Unless she wanted to be locked away. It didn’t seem like she did, but just to make sure.
“Do you want to leave?”
“It might be easier.” Lyra’s gaze dropped to the leaf once more. “I wanted to become someone my family was proud of, but I can do that as a priestess too, I guess.”
Arielle used [Empath Sense] to translate the look on Lyra’s face. It wasn’t acceptance. She was sad and resigned. “You’retired of fighting.”
“Not tired. I just feel like I’m wasting everyone’s time.”
“You’re not wasting my time. I enjoy helping you.”
“You do?”
Arielle nodded. “It helps me a lot, too. Thanks to you, I’ve learned new things, and I’ll probably learn more as we work together, so I look forward to it.” It was thanks to Lyra that she’d learned how to make charms. She had also been looking forward to experimenting more with Vitae, which was her most neglected essence so far. Arielle had used Vitae-heavy spells during her game with Selena, and though it hadn’t been a real fight, it had served her well.
Perhaps there were avenues with the essence she hadn’t explored yet, spells she was yet to create.
“Maybe, your symptoms will be reduced if we focus on Vitae-dominant spells,” Arielle said. “Or spells where the Vitae orbs guard the others against interference. Or maybe spells that only use Vitae.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Except that it’s not.”
Arielle pursed her lips. “Whatever it is, I will find a way, Lyra, trust me. Just give me some time. A week or two. I will find it before the severance trials.”
Lyra bit her lip. “Arielle, I don’t want you to push yourself.”
“I want to push myself. You are my friend, and I will push myself for you as that is what friends do for each other.” At least, according to her observations. Friends were there to talk to, eat meals together, make each other laugh, and also inconvenience each other.
Arielle had not inconvenienced herself all that much for Lyra yet. She had not acted like a true friend.
“But you’re already so busy,” Lyra said.
Arielle nodded. She had a lot of things she needed to figure out, but none of that took priority over keeping Lyra here. Or Maus, for that matter.
“Two weeks,” Arielle said. “I will have your solution in two weeks. I promise.”
Lyra gave her a smile that made her eyes sparkle. “Whatever happens, I’m glad I met you, Arielle Blacksoil, even though you called me a gopher that first day.”
“I didn’t call you a gopher. I asked if you wanted to be one. And technically, since I follow you around, attempt to find humor in your jokes, and seldom defy you, I believe I am closer to being your gopher than you are to being mine.”
That statement made Lyra laugh loud and long, for reasons Arielle could not entirely understand.
Nevertheless, she chuckled too.

---

After dinner, Telip was already in the library waiting for Arielle.
He was at her favorite table, but had left her spot open for her. Thoughtful of him.
When she sat, he pushed over a thick book without looking up from what he was reading, and asked her, “What do you know about runes?”
She essentially parroted what Elric had told her on their carriage ride months ago. “Runes are catalysts, fixed patterns that you can plug into a spell-script to make your spell go smoother and faster by stabilizing it.”
Telip looked up. “That’s somewhat accurate, but it’s a limited view of things. It’s better to think of it like this: every spell has an energy cost, which you can call the activation energy. It’s the energy it takes for your body to get the essences inthe right formation for the spell. The more complex and expansive the script, the higher the internal energy required. The less refined the cores are, or the less focus a mage has, the more energy they expend trying to hold the essences in place,” he said. “That average energy cost is part of what the system measures when assigning tiers. A spell can be complex, but if the energy cost isn’t all that high, either because it’s a low-magnitude spell or it’s a relatively stable spell, then it can get assigned to a lower tier. Runes reduce the energy cost by stabilizing the spell, but that’s not the only way they do it.”
“So do runes change the tier of a spell?” Like how breaking a spell into two parts did?
“No,” he said. “You’ll learn more after you read, but there’s a lot more that runes can do besides simply stabilizing the spell.”
“Like what?”
“Why would I tell you? Realizing it yourself is half the fun.” And then he gave her an instant, tiny smile that was gone as soon as it appeared. “The thing that makes runes so complicated is how distinctive they are. It’s very dependent on the spell you want to stabilize, its three-dimensional shape, its components, and how it interacts with the world. The materials used to make rune ink are also highly dependent on knowing these interactions because the materials can counteract each other, or they can interact well with one essence in one orientation, but not well with the same essence in a different orientation. Usually, runes are specific to a spell, and only sometimes can they be used for other spells. In order to become a rune maker, you must learn all the materials, interactions, and orientations. If you don’t think you can do that, you’re just wasting your time.
“I have to learn all of this?” Her eyes widened at the book.
“Yes, and that’s only one of four. I have left some notes in there that might help you, but apart from that, it’s rote memorization. I predict it’s going to take you months to get halfway through.”
Arielel swallowed. It was a large tome. She had a fairly good memory to the point where Brom often claimed that she remembered everything she’d ever learned.
But a tome this large would be tricky, unless she could find a way to cheat.
She certainly didn’t want to spend years learning it before she could make runes of her own.
“How did you learn about runes?” she asked him.
“My father taught me. I started learning before I could talk.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead.”
“How did he die?”
He glanced at her. “You simply don’t know how to read a room, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there no voice in your head that tells you that certain things aren’t appropriate to say?”
“Sometimes it’s there, but sometimes I get too distracted to listen. Or I get confused by conflicting signals. Usually, you have to tell me first. I cannot know what I don’t know.”
He stared at her for some time and gestured with his chin to the book, without answering her question.
She opened the book, and to her pleasant surprise, it came with images. But there was something that drew her attention first, the scribbling on the sides of the book.
“Is this your handwriting?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have another one?”
“No.” He gave her a look, and Arielle assumed a calm affect.
“I see.”
Internally, though, she was in shock. The handwriting was completely different from the ones she’d gotten so far with Orion, which she’d ascribed to Telip.
It wasn’t even close.
That handwriting she’d found was rounded and a smooth. Telip’s was tall and scrawly.
So the coordinates and all the clues about the Unmaker…it hadn’t been Telip. It wasn’t the primordial’s handwriting either.
Which meant that all the information she’d gotten had been pulled from someone else.
Who?