Derin Edala

Don’t destroy your most prized possessions by channelling magic through them -- bonus snippet

Don’t destroy your most prized possessions by channelling magic through them.

by Dr. Jessica Phalange

This shouldn’t need to be said.

Fetishes serve a specific purpose – to help bear the straing of magic during spellcasting. Their main disadvantage, when compared to a familiar, is fragility; an inanimate object has no homeostasis to maintain and no way to ‘heal’ from the damage of channelled magic. Their main advantage, when compared to a ...

3.22: Lockdown

“You look worried,” Saina noted, forehead furrowing in concern as I strode into her room, claimed a bed for the next 3 days, and dumped my stuff onto it.

“I’m fine,” I said with a grin. “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s fine, unless we decide to try to kill each other within the next three days, which we probably will. We have plenty of definitely unpoisoned food and nobody can open that door except the two of us and some of the staff, so unless you’re expecting t...

3.21: Dignity

Max looked thoroughly miserable when I got back to the room. He leapt up from his desk and was over his bed and in the main part of the room before I had the door closed. “Where’s Ed?”

I shrugged. “Left, probably? Unless he has other business with you? I dealt with it, anyway.”

He blanched. “Did you – ?”

“No, I didn’t start a blood fued with your family or anything. I was perfectly polite and diplomatic. I told him I didn’t need his help without telling...

3.20: Deflection

Once we were out of Max’s earshot, I said, “So you’re a GP?”

“Indeed. Now, have you been experiencing any fatigue or – ?”

“I already have a GP at home who’s asked me all that,” I cut in. “And Malas here, of course.”

“Hmm. Good point. We could save a lot of time if I requisition your existing medical records from the kuracar. Come along; it’ll be faster if you give him direct permission.”

That’s what was niggling at me. Permission. In the...

3.19: Friends and Family

“Full moon starts in fifteen hours,” Saina remarked as we clambered our way down a rocky slope.

“Yep.” I took her elbow to steady myself down a particularly steep part, then helped her down after me. For some reason, Peter insisted on having our training sessions in nearly inaccessible places, and just getting to the meetings was an exercise regimen in itself. I wasn’t sure where we were exactly, but if I’d had to guess, I’d say it was probably an abandoned quarry destroye...

3.18: Counterpoints

“One question,” I said. “Why, under the seven points of power, did you think that not telling me this theory was in any way to my benefit?”

“Because it’s probably not true! You were right; it’s a bit of a reach. The terms are vague and something else – ”

“And if it is true?”

“What if it is? Does it help you to know? Just as you said, there’s nothing we can do about it! Are you any better off now than you were five minutes ago? There’s nothing acti...

The Fetish Paradox, An Exciting New Theory -- Bonus snippet

The Fetish Paradox, An Exciting New Theory

By Sir Alistair Quiffly

The Familiarity Paradox is a well-known and established phenomenon, but only recently have researchers begun to ask: what about fetishes? After all, familiarity and fetishism share many similarities; so many, that familiarity could be said to be an adapted form of fetishism. If the bonds involved are so mechanically similar, should they not behave similarly? Why do fetishes not show the sa...

3.17: The Hero

“Are you busy?” Max asked one afternoon, strolling into our room.

I scowled at the letter I was trying to write. It ws straightup impossible to secretly tell Chelsea and Melissa what was going on. Our crude context-dependent ‘code’ hadn’t accounted for anything that was currently happening. “Not with anything that can’t wait. What’s up?”

Max shrugged. “Just felt like going for a walk in the sun. You seem like you need a break.”

O… kay? “Uh, sure. Wh...

3.16: The Heiress

I didn’t dramatically leap to my feet and dash out of the classroom. There was no need. The prophecy had clearly stated that the danger would come under a full moon, so I checked my tablet to make sure it wasn’t a full moon (not for over a week), took my train of thought under my own damn control, and finished my rune. It burned beautifully.

Then I went to meet up with everyone and freak out about the prophecy.

When I got back to the dorm, Kylie and Max were already there, and...

3.15: Familiarity

Heading to runecrafting class so early was a bit unfortunate because it meant that when the Fiore ‘happened to bump into me’ in the corridors I didn’t have a convenient excuse to rush off. I could have lied, I supposed, but if he had something to say he’d only find me again later to say it.

Also, he had Socks in his arms, running slender fingers idly through his thick white fur and looking full supervillain. I lingered to give her head a nice scratch.

“Kayden,” the Fio...

3.14: Training

“How do you think they make all the water?” I asked Saina one morning as we hiked alongside a river on our way to meet Hammond and Peter.

She glanced at the river, then at me. “Uh… I think it comes from the mountain? From… melting snow, or something?”

“Not that water. The empowered water. I’ve been looking into potions and stuff – you know, as a potential career – and just about everyone buys their empowered water from Refujeyo. You can make it yourself, but it...

The Familiarity Paradox -- Misconception Or Lie?: Bonus Snippet

The Familiarity Paradox -- Misconception or Lie?

By Dr Jessica Phalange

Much has been made of the so-called ‘familiarity paradox’; the notion that the danger of a familiarity bond and the fact that its strengh is predicated on emotional attachment are at odds with one another. To create a strong bond, strong emotional attachment is needed, but strong emotional attachment decreases one’s will to put the animal at risk by making it a familiar in the f...

3.13: Blood And Ichor

A couple of days later, I awoke early after a restless night battling a stomach ache. I’d assumed it was food poisoning, until I found the blood between my thighs.

Oh.

I stared blankly for a few seconds, then took a deep breath and trudged off to the shower. It was too early for the others to be up, yet, so I’d have some time to myself to deal with… this.

It wasn’t like it was a surprise. Honestly, I was really lucky to have made it all the way to fifteen without a m...

3.12: Destined Advice

I’d seen the top of the tower before, of course, but it still took my breath away. The floor was a solid stone disc that didn’t touch the walls; it was anchored to them by heavy iron rods, but otherwise there was a good three metres of space between floor and wall all the way around, broken only by the top stair. Over us, keeping out the wind and sand, stretched a huge glass dome, complex designs etched in the panes. I recognised some of the designs now – several runes, a few obscure st...

3.11: Duniyasar

“So,” Max asked, “how does this work, exactly?”

Max, Kylie, Saina, Alania, Lydia and I were gathered in the medical ward, gazing out of the large glass windows at the white blanket of snow beyond and ignoring Malas, doing paperwork in the background and doing his best to ignore us in turn. Saina nervously ran a hand through her hair.

“Well. I’ve never actually done it, myself, but. My family were involved in the original construction of the Refujeyo, and initially, it ...

3.10: The Princess

“Hammond and Peter are free to meet up in the cafeteria in a couple of hours to sort out pit comp stuff,” Saina reported, setting her tablet down and returning to crushing peppercorns.

“Great.” I kept my eyes locked on the thermometer in the saucepan in front of me and carefully turned down the heat. The ingredients we were working with were temperature sensitive. “That’ll give us time to get this potion right.” I turned the heat up again, just a little. “Next time I’m...

3.09: Machine Learning

Kayden,

How’s school? Learned to make a potion of fireball yet?

School here is a snore, obviously. Liss is starting a book club, eighty year old woman that she is, and she keep trying to get me to join. You have to convince her to stop.

We’re in a minor fight with youtube right now because some troll keeps falsely reporting…

I read through Chelsea’s letter, looking for coded information, but th...

On The Efficacy Of Familiars -- Bonus Snippet

On The Efficacy Of Familiars – A Brief Overview.

By Sir Alistair Quiffly

When choosing strategies for mitigating the strain of power during spellcasting, the prospect of offloading excess power to a living animal companion, or ‘familiar’, is an inviting one. Familiars have been a popular method of strain management for centuries, and modern linkage techniques far outshine the crude bonds created on the fly by isolated witches in days of yore.

...

3.08: Limitations

“Alright,” Lydia said, reviewing her notes. She’d been taking them on paper, with a pen, which was a weird thing to see an adult do in Refujeyo. Alania always had a lot of paper lying around and some of the students like Max preferred to take written notes from books, but the last time I’d seen an adult in refujeyo actually write down anything other than runes would be… what, Casey? My lawyer? Mostly they used tablets. Lydia had been given one for the duration of her stay at Refujey...

3.07: The Written History

Lessons were the worst.

Not the material. I was mostly on top of that. I wasn’t a great student or anything, but I was mysteriously more motivated to learn about runes after all the rune nonsense with the Labyrinth of Dreams, the magic history class I’d forced myself to take in a fit of motivation to actually have context for what was ever going on was less boring than I’d expected, and my Ido was almost good enough that I could take some classes without translation, provided the ...

3.06: Information Control

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Talbot said, pacing the small classroom we’d gathered in. “Fionnrath? Really? And nobody noticed their spell was missing for fifteen years?”

Hua tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the desk in front of her. “We shouldn’t tell Chery about this. You shouldn’t have told us about this.”

“Yeah, well, I’m tired of being told to keep things about myself secret for other people’s benefit,” Kylie said.

“Do you have a...

3.05: Blood Bonds

Max listened to the recording of our meeting, and didn’t seem particularly surprised by any of it. He just gave us a tight, resigned smile, and said, “I’d kind of been hoping that this familiar thing would be the big politcal hurdle we’d have to deal with this semester, you know? I didn’t expect to have to find a way to avert a war.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, at the same time as Kylie asked, “Avert a war?!”

“I’m exaggerating,” Max admitted. �...

3.04: The Bearer of Destiny

We were intercepted by a few classmates on the way to our room, all wanting to make small talk about the holidays and segue into questions about the familiar thing, but not many. Max and I had paced the tunnels around our room many times for his research, and knew how to avoid the most populated ones. We were, however, unable to avoid the strange woman lurking right outside our door, next to an unhappy looking Alania Miratova.

The woman was tall, with pale weathered skin, kindly eyes an...

3.03: Return

I had a new bodyguard the next day; a young woman wearing a voluminous pink skirt that, I couldn’t help notice, could easily conceal a gun. I considered giving her the slip again, just to be petty, but if these people were here for my safety then I should probably play along, so Melissa, Chelsea and I pretended not to notice the stranger who kept showing up in the same locations as us and never seemed to buy anything.

The idea that I might need protecting was worrying. I’d resigned ...

3.02: Catching Up

Melissa and Chelsea were waiting for me under the big tree in Melissa’s yard, the one I’d used to use to get from my second story room to hers, back when the house next door had been mine. (Whoever owned it now had changed the gardens. I didn’t like it.)

Melissa threw her arms around me, knocking me off-balance into Chelsea. “Kayden!”

“Hello,” I told the cloud of curly hair pressed against my face.

“So are you a badarse mage now?” Chelsea asked. “Ready to...

3.01: Home

Staying in a motel in my own hometown was strange. I supposed I’d still thought of my hometown as, well, home. It was where I’d always lived before Skolala Refujeyo, and it’s where my friends lived, so for the holidays it made more sense for my parents to come back there and meet me rather than for me o go to my parents in their new house, in a new town, full of people I didn’t know.

I didn’t live there any more. I’d never seen my parents’ current house, so I supposed I di...

2.33: Healing

I regained strength quickly, and probably could have left the ward after a few days. But both Kylie and I stayed, and Malas didn’t bring it up. He, I was pretty sure, liked having us where he could quickly and easily monitor the familiarity link. Kylie and I had had six months to adapt to not being stared at and talked about for being witches, and weren’t looking forward to it all starting up again over being a new type of oddity.

“How does it feel?” Kylie asked me one quiet mor...

2.32: Consequence

When I woke up, I could still feel the magic inside me, but either I’d gotten more used to it or it had quieted down. Probably both. I could feel it pooling in my joints, curling through my veins, but it wasn’t distracting enough that I didn’t notice the bone-deep ache of me entire body, punctuated with a few points of sharp agony for variety.

Someone was holding my wrist. I yanked my hand away – or tried to. My arm just twitched weakly.

But it worked; the pressure vanishe...

2.31: Trust

Max and I got to work kicking rubbish out of Kylie’s flailing distance and making sure her robes couldn’t strangle her.

“She doesn’t have epilepsy or anything, does she?” Max asked. “She would’ve told us, right?”

“it definitely would’ve come up,” I agreed. “she kept spacing out with her spell last semester; some types of epileptic fits look like that. She would’ve mentioned if she had epilepsy.”

“Brain damage? Poison?” Max asked. “Maybe?”<...

2.30: The Centre

Something very, very strange was going on as we neared the heart of the labyrinth. I couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly, it was, but something was different.

It was Kylie who eventually noticed. “There are no spells here,” she said. “Should we be worried about that?”

“No,” Max said. “Or… yes. Perhaps? I have no idea.”

“No idea?”

“Actual written records of anything about this place were extremely hard to find. Most of what I have ...