Derin Edala

1.81: Beyond the Vortex

The tablet in my hands was gone. The birdsong and breeze of the forest was replaced by disparate voices echoing in a large stone chamber. I looked up.

Initiates – or acolytes now, I supposed – were scattered about the room in small groups, congratulating each other or waiting on friends. I spotted Simon and Magista sitting nearby. Both of them looked worse for wear; Simon’s robes looked burned in places, and he cradled a large lump on his head. Magista looked exhauste...

1.80: Choose Your Destiny

“Chosen by whom?” I asked.

The spellthing burst out laughing. “That’s the question that nobody asks, isn’t it? Everybody’s always so excited to be part of some grand plan, or annoyed to be part of some grand plan, or apprehensive about being part of some Grand Plan, that they so often foret to ask who makes the plans and why its their plans that get to be considered Grand. But in your case, dear, you have been chosen by destiny.”

“I don’t believe in ...

1.79: The Inititation

The path before me was an ancient creek bed, long dried up and reclaimed by foliage. It was wide and flat, the biggest impediments being stones and occasional shrubs. The shrubs were vaguely familiar in that they had a lot of the characteristics I associated with native Australian plants – spindly twigs, bottlebrush flowers, tiny gumnut-like seed pods – but I didn’t recognise them, specifically.  

The creek bed continued on straight ahead for as far as I could ma...

1.78: Return to Refujeyo

Well, I partially read the orientation materials. I got about one paragraph into the scholarship contract before calling Casey and letting them explain it.  

Everything was basically what I expected. I had a scholarship that covered tuition, food and lodging, a small supply stipend, and various other pservices provided by the school such as legal assistance, provided I stayed on for at least six months and kept to the school advancement policy (that is, I could only co...

1.77: Fallout

Things calmed down quickly. Maybe I was imagining things, but the press as a whole seemed to want to move on from having gotten things so wrong for so long. Some groups did a couple of quick ‘this poor child, look at all of this witch discrimination’ pieces and moved on to more interesting, more current stories.  

There were rumours flying about that Matt wasn’t nearly as badly hurt as everyone believed, and that maybe his family had been faking it in search of a...

1.76: Resolution

We all stared in silence for a little while while everyone, individually, grappled with what Malas’ statement meant.

Then Casey spoke. “H… how long…?”

“I’d estimate that that curse has been dormant for Kayden’s whole life; I don’t think it’s ever activated at all. But there are limits to my analytic capabilities, and I can only tell you with confidence that it’s been dormant for at least a decade.”

“How much confidence?”

“I’...

1.75: The Trial II, Even More Trial

Given that Doctor Marley was definitely on my side, I was pretty surprised that he was the second person that Mr Spline called.

“What is your relationship to the defendant?”

“I’ve been Kayden’s GP for about fourteen years.”

“Since he was diagnosed with the curse?”

“Yes.”

“So you see Mr James fairly regularly, in a medical context.”

“I’ve not seen him for about six months, but before then, yes.”

“And how wou...

1.74: The Trial

I’d been in a courthouse before. Not for legal reasons; it was just a convenient place for Chelsea’s tracker. My first time, I’d been terrified that the blessed flooring and silver door latches would burn my cursed flesh, but I’d stopped expecting that years ago. Still, as I made my way past the rows of reporters, classmates, and various friends and family of Matt and myself towards the front of the room, I was careful not to touch anything. Casey had explained that there...

1.73: Reunion

Wearing pants again felt weird.  

“How can this bother you?” Kylie asked, not looking up from her tablet. “You wore pants for fourteen years. You’ve been in robes for, what, three months?”

“They just do. Were jeans always this scratchy? Ugh, and I have to wear a suit tomorrow.”

“I find suits far more comfortable,” Max remarked.  

“Yeah, well, your suits are probably hand woven from pure silk collected by holy maidens on a moun...

1.72: Aftermath

The next day, I got a message from Magista that just said “Aftermath”, with a link to a nine hour long audio file. I opened it up.

“Okay, where should I put it?” Magista asked, her voice a little muffled through the tablet.

“In here, I don’t think it matters,” Magistus replied. “This place is like a paper tornado. How does she find anything?”

“I don’t think this pile’s been moved for a while.” There was the sound of loud scratching and ...

1.71: The Truth

“Kayden,” Magista said, “nobody’s trying to kill Instruktanto Miratova. I know it’s hard to accept, but sometimes spells – ”

“The Guardian Ring was found in the wreckage of Miratova’s lab explosion. The… the details are complicated, but the situation suggests it was used to destroy the force field, and that what happened to it afterwards affected her power through a familiarity link so she couldn’t control… look, I don’t understand the details. Poi...

1.70: The Party

The day of the party arrived.

Max had, after much internal drama, decided on a favourite sash, and had updated his outfit appropriately. Kylie and I were simply wearing the robes we’d bought for the previous party. I was a lot more comfortable in mine, being used to mage robes by now, but it was more fitted than my normal robes, so I’d invested in a binder. And binders? It turned out that binders were awful.

I mean, I’m not an idiot. I’d been practicing wearin...

1.69: Preparations

“So what happened to your tablet, exactly?” Instruktato Cooper asked.

“I, uh, dropped it in the water,” I said. “And now I can’t find it.”

“Water? There aren’t too many bodies of water in the general access corridors.” He tapped at his own tablet. “It’s not showing up on the network. You’re certain you weren’t out of bounds?”

“No! No, I was, uh… I was outside. You can’t get the network outside. I was at uh, that island? The on...

1.68: Role Reversal

“What now?” Simon asked.

“How should I know? You attacked me, you lunatic; you figure it out.” Oh man, I was bleeding everywhere.

“Hey, I didn’t start this. You robbed me; I was defending my property. And you clearly know something about this place, so spill.”

“You want to know what I know about this place?” Was my wrist or nose the more serious injury? Both were bleeding a lot. Didn’t matter; I had no way to treat either. “Fine. What I kno...

1.67: Plans and Surprises

“Uh. Kayden?”

I got up, tried to stop crying, and failed. Oh man, this was embarrassing. I didn’t cry. I definitely didn’t cry in front of other people. And I didn’t dare contemplate crying in front of other boys. If this had been at my old school, my social life would be over, but Max just walked over, awkwardly patted my shoulder, and fish a tiny packet of tissues out of his pocket.

“Uh,” he said, “is everything, um… what’s…?”

I opened ...

1.66: The Price of Magic

Malas didn’t even look up from his paperwork when we burst into the ward.

“She’s in the third bed,” he said in a bored voice, indicating the row of beds behind hospital curtains. “Don’t touch her, don’t touch the machines, and if there’s a sudden change in room temperature, step out and close the curtains behind you.”

“How did you know what we were here for?” I asked.

“You’re the sixth batch of her students this morning. I’m consideri...

1.65: Reasonable Caution

“Today,” the Fiore announced as he swept into the classroom, cat in arms, “we are looking at our last category of spells, which also happens to be the most dangerous, nebulous, and difficult to define category: contract spells. Who would like to define contract spells for me? Yes, Magista.”

“Contract spells are spells of exchange or law. They uh, they’re not as bound by physics as some categories, but more by how things should work.”

“A good s...

1.64: Ascension

The next day, the glow of the rose had faded, leaving a stick with thick, transparent petals, a dead and obviously manufactured thing. I tossed it out and gritted my teeth through meditation with Max. He seemed pretty sure this would help me, and I didn’t want to ditch him after he’d put in the effort, but come on. Meditation took forever. And it was so boring.  

Besides, I had things to do today.

When I was free, I went out to climb the cli...

1.63: Real Magic

I had been sitting still for about twenty billion years, and my nose was getting itchier by the second.  

Fuck it. I scratched it.

“You’re supposed to stay still,” Max said.  

“My nose was itchy.”

“Acknowledge the itch. Allow it to permeate your awareness. Then let it go.”

“Scratching is faster. How can you sit so still?”

“Practice.”

“I knew it! You’ve done this meditation thing before.”

“No. ...

1.62: Negotiation

“So what’s the emergency, witchnitiate?” Mae took a long drag on her cigarette.

“I need to plan the most romantic date ever for my boyfriend for this Friday, and I thought you might have some out-of-the-box ideas,” I explained.

“Why did you think we would – ” Terry began, but was cut off by a painfully high pitched whine that, it turned out, was coming from Mae.  

“Ooh! Of course we’ll help. Ter-pear, we have to help. Let’s do...

1.61: The Price of Suspicion

After dealing with the complicated matter of exactly how large and exorbitant the box of chocolates I was sending to Magistus should be, I got to the rather less important matter of investigating my friend’s role in the possible attempted-murderer-framing plot. I needed to be sure that both Kylie and Max would be out of the room for a long period of time before I could investigate the letters.  

I got my chance a few days later. Kylie had switched from English class ...

1.60: What Is Real

Instruktanto Miratova dropped several small, shiny stones into her mortar and began to grind them to dust. “The key to understanding a prophecy,” she said, “is understanding that human beings are not real.”

Kylie, sitting cross-legged on the classroom floor, looked up from her bronze bowl of water and frowned. “What?”

“Human beings are not real. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that human beings are not real in the same way that humans are real. And...

1.59: The Secret

“Today, we will be learning about evocation spells.”

This was it; the one single lesson in this school that was actually important to me. So it sucked that I was learning it from someone who might be a murderer, and sitting in front of someone who might be his accomplice, across the room from the boy who might be framing them both who was sitting with the girl who might be keeping secrets from absolutely everyone, while my boyfriend (who might be manipulating me for pol...

1.58: A Verdant Forest

The note that Magistus had slipped under my door on the day of our date just read “Kayden – Alta Foresto.” I plugged that into the map and found myself wandering through a large, verdant forest.

The trees were high and luxurious, leaving the ground under my feet quite dark, but I knew I wouldn’t get lost. Aside from my excellent sense of direction, there weren’t many walking trails, and Magistus had thoughtfully marked the correct trail with bright red flowers. 2020-01-24 16:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post

1.57: Comfort Zone

“So what are we doing, exactly?” I asked Instruktanto Cooper as we drove through some random small town in New Zealand.

“We are meeting Cheryl Castor.” Cooper was back in his suit, and he looked weirdly uncomfortable in it. This guy could look professional in purple Hulk shorts, but put an actual suit on him and he looked ready to crawl into his own mouth. “Like you, she’s cursed. We’re here to offer her training, but there’s a… complication.”

“A...

1.56: Bias

I shouldn’t be thinking like this. Max was my friend. How bad a friend was I, to be so suspicious of him?

Unless he wasn’t my friend. In which case, how much of a sucker was I, to be so trusting of him?

This was stupid. I’d never had to deal with this kind of thing before. With Liss and Chelsea, if anyone gave on of us a hard time, they had the other two to deal with. Our loyalty to each other had never been in question. The idea that we’d lie to each other, a...

1.55: The Story As I Knew It

So the story, as I knew it, went like this:

A few months ago, Max, Kylie and I had arrived at Skolala Refujeyo. Max had been immediately fascinated by Kylie’s curse, which wasn’t too weird; people liked to stare and gossip about curses, that was just a fact of life. We’d ended up rooming together at Kylie’s suggestion, because Max didn’t want to room with the Magistae, whom he’d forgotten were coming to the school. He wasn’t interested in playing social politi...

1.54: Mind Under Matter

“Hey, Max. What are the principal differences between a relative position translocation spell and a fixed position translocation spell?”

“The answer’s in the name, Kayden.”

“Okay, but – ”

“I’m not doing your homework for you, Kayden.”

“But you’ve run out! Don’t you want to take a break from, uh… whatever you’re doing?”

“What I’m doing is taking a break.”

“You’re reading.”

“Believe it or not,...

1.53: Befriending the Wind

“Okay. Here we are.”

It had been almost a week since the awkward encounter at the gym. Instruktanto Miratova had bundled Kylie and I into a rickety-looking car, drove in silence for about ten minutes, and stopped in the middle of a broad field of grass. Aside from the road we’d drove in on, nothing was visible but… well, grass. A huge flat plain of grass, and off in the distance, mountains.

The wind tore at our hair and clothes as we got out.

“Where ar...

1.52: How to Play Chess

Naturally, I couldn’t concentrate at all in the Fiore’s next lesson. Fortunately it was just about translocation spells (spells dealing with space, like teleportation, or enchanted bags that were bigger on the inside, that kind of thing), which I didn’t need to know about. All I could do was stare at him idly scratching his cat’s chin, thinking, This is a teacher who used his nephew to try to kill another teacher.

Also, it didn’t help that I could practic...