A collision shook the building. From beneath the rain, a sword much too big had been hurled and stuck itself into the stone.

 

In the moment she’d intended to release the magic from her fingertips, all of the electricity had been pulled from her and drawn into the blade. Now, the bladed battery remained as a volatile threat, a threat to release devastation upon them all.

 

Orpheus, let loose a breath of air. Clutching his chest, the violent pulses seemed to continue. He heaved and gasped as his knees lay to rest in the shallows that pooled. Red hair hid his agonising expression.

 

“You childish fuckin’ kids,” a barbarous voice grunted from the dimlight of the storm. Its heavy footsteps preceded it. They all knew it to be Kezaiah.

 

“Childish? I was sent to pick up an assignment, and what does he do? Anything but th-” Jadana began, her chest puffed and her arms flailing as if she’d done no wrong.

 

The goliath’s hand grasped her collar, lifting her to her toes.

 

“Dame, it’s true! I watched the whole thing, start to finish and all!” Ned called out from the doorway to the dorm. Kezaiah lifted her gaze to him. He said no more.

 

“Fuck off back to your room. Now.”

 

Ned looked to Jadana and Orpheus, both of whom seemed to have their eyes elsewhere; his was to the rippling puddles across the ground, and hers to the tower’s spire. Ned stepped back and retreated into the dorm.

 

“This is unfair,” Jadana muttered with jaws clenched. Had her tongue been between her teeth, it’d be lopped clean off.

 

“You think being an assistant professor makes you some hotshot? Go up and tell the old lady what happened here yourself,” Kezaiah said as she returned her gaze to Jadana, tossing her back to earth.

 

“I don’t know why you’re so intent on defending him! He’s arrogant and, and weak, and he doesn’t even want to be here!”

 

The blade, stuck in its stone, began to vibrate at the beckoning of its wielder. With no more than a gesture, it pulled itself back into the air and flew to Kezaiah’s hand. She swung it, in that moment it had returned, and let its sky-born violence illuminate before Jadana’s throat.

“I am not the Archmage, with her lessons and her patience, go. Now. And tell her what happened.”

 

Jadana’s expression said it all. How she wished to curse; how she wished to scream; how she wished to yell in the face of that blade. But she held her tongue and wandered off into the storm’s labyrinth.

 

The blade lifted, with its tip to the heavens, and roared with an ungodly arc of raw power. Lightning crackled and surged into the open air, leaving a lingering burn to sail on the swirling gusts.

 

When the light had finally ceased, Kezaiah returned the heap of metal to her back. She made no effort to look upon the man on his knees, and so she stood. Silence.

 

“What? No berating words?” Orpheus mumbled from beneath his hair, his grip on his chest easing. “Or am I supposed to thank you?”

 

“Shut it.”

 

Her fists tightened, her tendons and muscles flexed right up the length of her arm. Grooves formed to guide the rain off of her knuckles. 

 

“Is that all? Maybe the whore’s right, presume I might even blush.”

 

“This is pathetic,” she said as she took a half-step toward him. Kezaiah looked down at him on his knees, but she only let her fists free of the tension. “I should throw you to the rapids and let you drown.”

 

He muttered.

 

“You what?”

 

“I said, I am already bloody drowning!” he yelled, lifting his eyes from the ground and spewing his anger through bared teeth. “These fucking harlots. It’s unbearable. I’ve been here all of five minutes and have almost been killed twice. The dunce you call my neighbour couldn’t part a sword from a spoon; the whore who is sent to my door every second day - whining and shitting, always; a god awful amount of senile bags who should be locked in an asylum; a constant fucking storm that never ceases to piss on me; and some shutaway Archmage who doesn’t leave her bloody tower! It is relentless - relentless, you hear me?”

 

Kezaiah dropped to one knee and leaned forward, her beastly eyes piercing through his skull as she latched onto his coat. She too bared her teeth.

 

“You know, just as well as I, that the only one bitching in this place is you. Would you rather I left you? Do you know where you’d be? If you weren’t already dead, you’d still be chained in that fucking tower. Get your shit together,” she said, inches from his face with enough fury to blow the entire Tower to Hell and back. “Cause yeah, you’re drowning alright - in your own self-pity.”

 

She shunted him back from his knees, sending him to plant himself on his rear. Kezaiah stood back up and turned face, her back now to him.

“Come see the old lady when you’ve grown a pair.”

 

Orpheus sat there, drenched in shame, as he watched her wander off. Slowly he turned over onto his hands and knees, watching the grey of the stone washing over. He raised a fist as if to slam it, wishing to split the mountain which the Tower rested upon. But he could not, so he did not.

 

Instead, as he dragged himself to his feet, he fixed what he could of his clothes. Beneath the black skied weather he limped after her.

 

***

 

After so much time spent in the dimness beneath the storm’s shadow, Orpheus’ eyes strained at the first glimpses of the main tower’s interior. Despite its skyward construction, it had nothing in common with the crooked abomination that stood behind it.

 

Within the confines of its wellkept walls, white and gold marble lay and stood impeccably crafted. From its grooved walls to its opal-lined tiles, and from its opal-lined tiles to the polished pillars that stood in support, the tones of a blissful winter reflected a pure and dominating light from the dome ceiling.

 

The interior seemed to be one absurdly large chamber. Holding a single spiral staircase, it curled all the way to the apex.

 

Orpheus caught a glimpse of the barbarian halfway up the stairs already, peering down at him. She did not stop however, and instead let him limp his way up.

 

At the spiral’s end, the mouth of the stairs opened up into a vast balcony, and from that balcony he could see it. The dome ceiling was not white marble, rather it was glass that peered straight through the swirling eye of the storm; from the glass roof, crown-like extensions continued upward to form the skeleton of a spire.

 

At the tip of the spire, a pulsating clump of white and azure illuminated the innards of the storm and shone down. It was akin to a beating heart, only lush with raw and untapped magical energy.

 

“Wasteful.”

 

When he could finally pull his gaze from the glass, the glimmering opal embedded between each of the tiles led Orpheus forward. A single door resided, opposing the balcony with a silver plaque above its marble frame: ‘Arca-Maga.’

 

Orpheus raised a finger to the barbarian who stood leaned against the wall with her arms folded.

 

“You could’ve at least waited.”

 

“I did, right here,” she replied. Though her tone hadn’t quite settled. She turned to the doors and pressed her hands against them. “Try to keep your mouth shut this time. Not the place for it.”

 

“Thoroughly aware.”

 

When the doors cracked open, the light only dared to venture in a mere few steps. Before Orpheus, he could make out only two colours. A dark and ever encompassing blue filtered through three archtop windows at the rear of the room. It swallowed the rooms blanketing shadows like the unexplored depths of the ocean.

 

Beneath the weight of the window light, he could make out the room’s simple composition; rows of shelves lined every wall, each of them reaching the architraves that bordered the tall ceiling; the woman, Jadana, leaned against one of the shelves with her hands tucked in pockets; and a single desk, sat beneath the central window.

 

It was at this desk he could make out the second colour. Though most of its features were hidden in the silhouette, the hand-clasping figure held silver eyes; they pierced through the sea of darkness, uncompromised.

 

“My gratitude, Dame, for intervening when you did,” the voice spoke, its tone commanding respect. The silhouette, who he could only assume to be the Archmage, Ravyn Whitlock, gestured to the shelves where Jadana stood. “If you would.”

 

She bowed her head, then moved quietly to Jadana. Kezaiah looked her up and down, as Jadana retracted her hands from her pockets and folded her arms.

 

“What, are you copying me?” Kezaiah said as she lightly shoved her from the shelf. “Stand normal.”

 

Orpheus moved for the centre of this ocean of blue, soaking in its deep hue with only his hair and the gold of his coat showing through. He returned the Archmage’s gaze with little fear. He broke the momentary silence with the first words between them.

 

“Now, would you get on with whichever manner of circle jerk this is?”