Chapter 5: Mounting Peril

  ++Seeing magic physically is a boon greater than words can describe. Where others flounder in the dark, I am able to finely manipulate the currents of mana by simply observing where and how they flow. I can also, differentiating by colour, more finely tune the types of mana I conjure. By this stage, I was already certain that my tribe had been right about me—that I was, in fact, some evil spirit given human form.

  And I was fine with that, I welcomed it. Because evil spirits, in my mind, were greater than any man.++

  - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E

  “Children, I am Doctor Brown. You will already know me, Isabel, but I do not believe that you do, Agrian. I will be your tutor while you both remain here.” We were sitting in a room that had recently been turned into Doctor Brown’s classroom, hastily refurbished with desks apparently common in full-sized schoolhouses. It all felt so very artificial to me, but then I had never actually been given formal education before. I did not especially care about the clumsy, forced atmosphere.

  Agrian, however, was not of the same mind.

  “Why is uncle Edwin not teaching me?” He demanded.

  The Doctor winced at that, with a sort of long-suffering expression that I could rather empathise with. Magical prodigies, especially young magical prodigies, are among the most unmanageable creatures alive.

  “There has been a change of arrangements, Agrian,” Brown said patiently. “Your father would like you to learn here for a while, so that you can study alongside your little sister. He thinks that the two of you will grow better with each other’s company.”

  He was, in my opinion, most likely right. When competition did not result in one magician murdering the other in a fit of jealousy, it invariably saw both of them growing faster than they otherwise would.

  Not that I would be competing with a child.

  “I don’t want to learn with a stupid girl,” Agrian growled.

  “What?” I asked him. He turned to me and stuck his tongue out.

  “Isabel is a liar and an idiot, and she’s BAD AT MAGIC. I don’t want to go anywhere near her, I want uncle Edwin back!”

  This little devil had slighted me for the last time. Bad at magic? I had never stood for such an insult, not from those fool Gods who thought themselves my superior, and I would not stand for it now from this little imp.

  “What we learning first?” I asked Doctor Brown, eager enough to humiliate Agrian that I didn’t even mind putting on my mangled, toddler’s speech patterns.

  Doctor Brown was ignorant to my intent, of course, and saw only the eagerness to learn. I imagined he would not have cared one way or the other, regardless.

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  “Eventually, I intend to cover all areas of magic—and the natural sciences needed to best use it. From physics to chemistry to biology. For now, though, given the new student, I think it prudent to start small. We will be covering a simple magic missile,” he smiled.

  “Boring!” Agrian snapped. “I can do that already!”

  I snorted at the absurdity of his claim, then promptly fell down as Agrian blasted me with just such a projectile.

  “See!” He laughed.

  “Agrian!” The Doctor was aghast. More than that, he was furious. Glaring at the boy with utter disgust. “We do not cast magic on humans lightly, I know you have been taught this lesson.”

  Agrian grinned. “Sorry Doctor. I forgot.”

  While he was busy laughing, I got to my feet. It took me quite some time, and a lot of effort. Once I was up, however, Agrian was looking past the Doctor, whose back was now to me, and smirking at me.

  So I smirked back, and worked quickly with aether, weaving it into a few words that drifted gently down between us for a few moments before fraying apart.

  Weak spell, they said.

  Instantly, the boy’s laughter was gone. Replaced by anger.

  Good. I needed to see that spell again.

  I threw out sheets of aether before me and wove them together. This time I wasn’t making a long and fiddly listening device, and didn’t need to worry about tensile forces tearing the material to pieces. Thick plates of the stuff protected me, bound to longer ribbons that reached out in all directions from the central shield. Agrian’s next spell, his ‘magic missile’, struck my defence with several times the power I could have mustered, buckling aether, breaking it open, pushing the construct back and slowing as its flat body and protruding ribbons dragged against the air. By the time it struck me, it had lost enough force that I could have shoved harder than it did.

  I remained standing this time, and now I’d seen the spell.

  From the outside it must have seemed as though Agrian’s powers merely failed him, not uncommon for a young spellcaster. My aether remained mostly transparent and it had all happened so fast that there could not have been much chance to see it. The Doctor was certainly more concerned with Agrian than he was with me.

  “You will not do that again, young man,” Brown snarled. “I don’t care who your father is, you—” my magic missile struck Agrian directly.

  I will admit, the specifics of this spell were new to me. The major benefit to seeing mana, of course, is that where everyone else flounders in the dark, trying to use the invisible force of their own power to emulate the invisible force of other people, I can simply do as I please with it directly. A one-eyed painter in a world of the blind.

  It helped in this case that, though unknown to me, the magic missile was astonishingly simple. It was a mere force conjuration, yet anchored to itself in such a way that the spell’s matrix—the imprint it leaves in the skin of reality—remained dormant and actually moved through the air. It was not a solid projectile, and did not slow until activating upon impact with something. If that something had been me, I would have been flung off my feet again as all the primed mana finally converted itself into kinetic energy.

  A very useful trick, because I had seen already that it possessed many times the range of my own force applications, primitive gusts of wind that rapidly dwindled in power with distance. I was pleased to see that Agrian went down from my magic missile, where he would have merely had a few hairs displaced otherwise.

  Agrian was less pleased. “Stupid girl!” he roared, just as Doctor Brown cut in, too.

  “Isabel!?” He stared at me, seemingly caught between a mix of confusion, shock, awe and, of course, displeasure at my having used magic upon another. Many cultures develop rules against doing so, fueled by either superstition or the simple practical need to not have magical children accidentally eviscerate one another.

  But Agrian had not hurt me, even when I was undefended. What remarkable control for his age.

  I saw the boy sitting down, glaring up at both me and Doctor Brown, and made a few decisions very quickly. He was talented, ingenious even, and tied to me by blood. In the future, he could be a useful ally.

  Or a dangerous enemy.

  Best to act fast and ensure things turned to my advantage, I loosed another magic missile.

  This time, at the Doctor.