Excerpt from Captain Zilian Yuka’s ‘Handbook for Self-Defense.’

“A knife is a liability in close-range combat unless you know how to use it effectively. A knife-fight is never clean, and even the so-called victor will invariably come away with injuries. As always, the best self-defense advice I can give is to avoid being in a situation where you have to defend yourself. When trouble comes with a dagger in hand, run away if possible.”

—

The dagger felt heavy in Yenna’s hand. Its sharp, slender point gleamed with veins of coloured crystal, worming their way through the silvery metal. Though the blade wasn’t particularly long, Yenna knew this was a weapon above all else—a knife would be useful for cutting and chopping, functions that were ubiquitous in both mundane and magical life. This was a tool solely for stabbing, for drawing blood and ending life.

“Yenna?” Eone was right next to the mage, massive hand on Yenna’s thin shoulder. “Are you alr– is that a dagger?”

Yenna wasn’t really sure how to respond, so she merely held the slender blade up for inspection. Eone whistled.

“Did your bracelet turn into this? It’s some really fine work. Mind if I…?”

Eone held out a hand and Yenna handed the dagger over. The mage watched as the captain flicked it around expertly in her hand. Then, she blinked.

“W-Woah! Where’d it go?” The dagger wasn’t in Eone’s hand any more, the captain searching the floor in surprise. “Slipped right outta my hand! …Oh, good catch, Yenna!”

Yenna looked down at her own hand—she was holding it, as though the mage had never let it go.

“I– I didn’t…? Um. I need to speak to Lumale about this–”

“Wait.” Eone’s voice was suddenly commanding, and Yenna shuddered to a halt midway through turning. “Can’t it wait until after breakfast?”

“I suppose, but–”

“Good!” With a commanding grip, the captain put a hand to the small of Yenna’s back and gently guided her back to the dining table. “Speak to your master on a full set of stomachs, mage!”

Yenna sat down. She was eager to talk to Lumale—I’ve got so many questions! Even if she is insufferable—but couldn’t fault Eone’s advice. As far as she could tell, the dagger was magically stable—it wasn’t going to explode, fire off spells on its own or do any autonomous stabbing. That, and her breakfast was growing cold. With a slight sigh, Yenna did up the buttons of her shirt that she had opened and allowed herself to be coaxed back to the table.

As Yenna ate, the conversation at the table briefly brushed on the dagger—when everyone realised that the mage didn’t have much in the way of answers, they slowly lost interest. While eating, Yenna discovered that she could put the dagger down quite easily, but anyone else taking it would cause it to ‘drop’ out of their hands the moment Yenna wasn’t looking—everyone would see the thing fall out of sight, only to reappear nearer to the mage herself, though it looked to prefer her unoccupied hand. After nearly buttering a slice of toast with the blade, Yenna opted to avoid letting anyone else handle it for the time being.

The topic of conversation drifted away, back to more mundane things. How they had slept, the quality of the house and the food, what they were going to do later—Yenna felt calmer for it. Quietly listening to other people talk around her was a soothing balm of normality, a window into a world where Yenna wasn’t being thrown into peril on a regular basis. Sitting there, soaking up a bit of bacon grease in a leftover piece of bread, it all felt right. Nothing to worry about, no peril or panic haunting her every step. Just breakfast, warm and filling.

A darker thought chased that feeling. Why not just leave? Home wasn’t exactly a gallop away, but it wasn’t an unreasonable distance for Yenna to cover. Home was safe and warm, the other side of the window that this breakfast had her peering into. Yenna looked down at her injured wrist, bound so tight in immobility she could barely feel it. If this were the only injury she sustained on this trip, it would still be one of the worst she had ever received. At the rate I’m going, there’ll be nothing left of me by the end of the month.

At home, Yenna could go over all her findings, publish a few papers. Observations on a symbiotic spirit possession, the core underpinnings of witchcraft, elementals and their roles in the formation of abnormally large gatherings of beasts, the black book–

Yenna went pale. A vision from her memory, the ghastly remnants of the people of the valley—that had been all that was left after the black book was left in mortal hands. The only thing that stood between Yenna and total consumption at the hands of the book’s unnatural allure was the spirit Demvya—the mage couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen if it was deposited into the hands of a researcher in the capital. Even if they could resist it, would they? What was in the book that had caused such disasters in the first place? Yenna wished she could take it, right now, and tear off the covers–

“Master Yenna?” Tirk’s hand was on Yenna’s arm, those black eyes staring right through her. Yenna realised she was breathing heavily, and some academic voice in the back of her head informed her she had likely been on the verge of a panic attack. Right now, Tirk looked like her little guardian angel.

“It’s nothing, my little friend.” Yenna tried her best to smile, slowing her breathing. No one else had noticed, engrossed in conversation as they were. “Just… something stuck in my throat, I think.”

Tirk gave a wide smile. “You were going to ask me something, earlier. Before you ran into the manor, yesterday.”

As always, he was right—though this was more a matter of memory. Yenna had thought her recollection perfect, or near-enough to, but the sheer volume of events in her life was making it difficult to recall the little things. The old habit of mentally marking something to be done later, shifting smaller tasks til after bigger and more urgent ones, was growing slightly untenable. Those little tasks ended up wholly forgotten, discarded in all the excitement. I still have to talk to Demvya and Jiin about their arrangement—before they drain themselves dry the next time they try to do magic.

“You’re absolutely right, Tirk. Good memory.” Yenna realised she had drifted off into her own thoughts—the boy had waited patiently for her to come back.

“I didn’t remember it, but that’s okay.” Tirk smiled. “Hihi, can we leave the table?”

“Who’re you calling Hihi all of a sudden, boy?” Hirihiri looked down, mock offended. “You haven’t called me that since you were… Well, smaller than you are. Yenna, you’re an adult, you don’t need to ask.”

“E-Eh?” Yenna blushed. “I, erm, okay? Thank– erm. No, I don’t need to thank you.”

Tirk squirmed out of Hirihiri’s lap—Yenna had half-forgotten the old cook was even there, a bad case of tunnel vision from snapping out of her own thoughts—and confidently strode out of the room. Yenna scrambled up to follow him, snagging the remains of her last piece of toast. The adult in her felt a bit ridiculous following the lead of a child, but Yenna the teacher knew that sometimes children held fascinating insights—Tirk was a whole textbook waiting to happen.

Out in the lavishly decorated hallway, Tirk led Yenna over to a mirror. The pair of them looked back at each other through the reflective pane, though the mage couldn’t help but feel like something was off about the reflection. Looking at Tirk in the mirror didn’t feel as warm or alive as expected—the boy laughed as Yenna stared.

“It doesn’t feel right, does it? Seeing someone in the mirror? Like you’re looking at a painting of someone—they’re not there, just something that looks like them.” Tirk’s black eyes stared at Yenna up through the mirror. The mage frowned. Is he capable of reading minds? Tirk is always a step ahead, like he knows what’s going to happen.

Yenna sat herself down beside the mirror, not wanting to loom over the boy.

“Tirk, I meant to ask you about what happened yesterday. With the… beast. With what you said afterwards—you said, ‘you can hear it too.’ Are you… a mind-reader?” 

Tirk shook his head. “My horn tells me things. Sometimes it points me here and there, or it whispers other people’s secrets to me. It never used to speak so much, but it tells me lots about you, Master Yenna.”

“About me?” Yenna put a hand on her chin in thought. “Why me, I wonder…? It could be due to my use of magic—a kind of pseudo-gravitational pull, causing whatever enchantment is on you to tug towards me. Perhaps some kind of incidental entanglement?”

“Umm…” 

“Oh, sorry!” Yenna waved it off. “Lost in thought for a moment. It’s possible that it’s because I cast a lot of spells. But that doesn’t explain what you did to the b-beast.”

An image of the temporally trapped beast-man came to mind. Just thinking about the man scared Yenna on some primal level, caused her back legs to twitch into flight-readiness, but even so—being jailed outside of time like that seemed a fate far worse than death.

“It looked like a spell, Tirk. A complicated spell, with a complete activation phrase. It looked just like one of the spells the priestess had used. What did your horn tell you to do, exactly?”

Tirk looked down at his feet, suddenly sheepish. “... don’t ‘member.”

“You… you don’t remember? C’mon, Tirk. Did it– your horn tell you the words, instruct you on the motions? Did you know about that prayer-magic beforehand?” Yenna reached out and put a hand on Tirk’s shoulder—the boy jumped, and she recoiled in surprise.

“I don’t remember!” Tirk’s soft features twisted into a deep frown. “It just kinda… happened! My horn was all, go and do the thing, an’ I did it.”

“It’s– it’s okay, Tirk!” Yenna tried her best to look supportive. “You’re not in trouble for forgetting or anything, I’m just trying to understand. It sounds as though you were temporarily possessed–”

“It was a gift from the heavens.”

Now it was Yenna’s turn to jump, an embarrassing shriek escaping her throat as she turned. Immediately beside her was the priestess Suee, facing part way between Yenna and Tirk. She was still wearing her night-sky blue robe, her eyes covered with the white veil. Crumbs fell onto her dark fingers as she bit into a slice of toast– Wait, that’s my toast!

“Wh-why are you eating my toast?”

“You threw it at me.” Munch. “A gift from the heavens, also.”

Yenna wasn’t exactly about to ask for it back—she wasn’t so hungry as to try and retrieve it from the priestess’ lips. The mage pinched the bridge of her nose, now more annoyed than startled.

“Let’s back up. Gift from the heavens? Why are you here, anyhow?” Yenna put her hands on her hips and tried her best to look cross—the effect slightly ruined by Suee’s insistent crunching, and Tirk’s giggling.

“I serve Head Aroearoe faithfully in matters of augury. I had a premonition of a conversation I was meant to take part in. The boy has a connection with the grace of the moon.” Suee’s head turned to face Tirk, her expression unreadable. “He has bathed in its light, and receives its gifts.”

Suee wiped her hands clean of crumbs and reached out to Tirk—the boy looked uncertain for a moment, unsure whether to hop out of the way or not. A moment passed and Tirk came to a decision. He leaned in, allowing Suee to place a single finger on the tip of his horn. A soft white light emanated from the tip of Suee’s finger, forming a circle of magic that populated with stars.

Yenna drank up all the information she could get. The circle of light was a visible representation of a magic circle being formed—the same core underpinnings of arcane magic, keeping the moving parts of the spell contained and protected. From those edges, Suee was launching tiny motes of magic into place to form the constellations. Yenna watched as the ‘stars’ formed links of their own accord and began to alter the function of the magic within the circle—her best guess for the purpose of the spell was that of a diagnostic tool.

When the spell circle completed, Suee murmured something under her breath. Tirk’s horn shone with silvery light for a moment before fading back to normal. The light had only been there for a fraction of a second, but Yenna had no idea if that was good or bad. Suee’s hand hovered in the air between them for a moment.

“Hmm.” The priestess retracted her hand.

“... Hmm?” Yenna looked at her. “What did you just do?”

“A small ritual—it verifies the connection to the moon by granting an offering, to see if a supplicant is worthy of priesthood.” Suee nodded thoughtfully, then stood up. Yenna scrambled to her feet alongside her.

“Th-then, what did you find out?”

“By the portents of the moon, I divine the signs. A light shows sign of connection, its continued glow a blessing. Its sudden disappearance means… Hmm. I have had no visions or guidance to account for it.”

Tirk looked up at her, open-mouthed—Yenna was similarly flabbergasted.

“That doesn’t answer my question at all! You don’t know?”

“Do you have the answers to all the questions of magecraft, Yenna?” Suee turned her head, the tiniest smile playing on the edge of her lips. “I shall pray on this, and then our paths shall cross. For now, your next task awaits.”

“My next…?” Yenna watched the priestess go, unsure whether or not to chase her. “Oh. I still need to call upon Lumale.”

Yenna sighed and walked down the hallway—an unoccupied sitting room would be ideal for a conversation with her enigmatic mentor. Why do I find myself surrounded by strange magic, and stranger people?

“... Master Yenna, my horn’s not cursed or something, is it? Master Yenna?” Tirk clutched at his horn as he watched both kesh walk separate ways down the hallway. “M-Master Yenna, don’t leave me!”