Author's Note: I am sorry, I had not noticed that I posted Chapter 13 before 12, I only noticed when I decided to count and realized I should be at 14 including prologue, not 13. I hope you can forgive me and that it did Not spoiler too much. Chapter 14 will follow as well.
Several dozen feet thumped and bounced and the gymnasium’s floorboard sprung and recoiled in response. They were the feet of students of the Erutoris society running in circles to warm up. They all wore the same grey linen trousers and long-sleeved shirts they had been handed upon entering the hall as well as a padded cap not dissimilar to what soldiers wore under their helmets. Carryl and Merry were among the students too, but Nannade had not shown up, much to Merry’s disappointment.
Two students of higher semester had greeted the newly arrived for this semester’s first training of the Erutoris Society. “I am Gualdo, this is Velasca.” had the tall boy with tanned skin and steeled muscle introduced himself and the equally tan but shorter and broader girl. “We lead the Erutoris Society, mostly. Let us be clear about one thing: physical fitness is the most important part of being an Erutor. Anyone who is unwilling to push through the pain of training is not welcome here. If you want lives to depend on you, your body must be dependable enough for two.”
Now those two were constantly yelling to the sweating and panting circle spinning round after round. “Come on! That cannot be all you have.” And “You got to give more than that!” were just a few of what Carryl had heard.
Her feet were tired, carelessly stomping on the floor rather than accurately landing with each step, her heart pounded against her chest, her lungs drew breath in sharply and the veins on her neck pulsated strong enough for her to feel. She did not want to go on and instead thought of dropping out of the warm-up like others had already, but whenever she saw Merry, equally drained but with a bitter, determined mien, she felt as if she had an obligation to go along, to keep Merry's strength up as well, to not discourage her.
Shortly after another such reminder, the side entrance to the gymnasium opened and Nannade entered. Carryl noticed and tapped Merry’s shoulder. The girl called Velasca went over to Nannade while Gualdo continued the training. Nannade was sent to the dressing room and shortly after came back, in the same clothing as the others, but still wearing her blue scarf.
At first, Carryl chalked Nannade’s arrival up to tardiness and her not living in the scholar’s quarter, but then she remembered that Nannade had never been late to lectures so far. It did not take Carryl long to piece the information together as to why she had really arrived late. Just like the scarf hiding her scars from the sigils of slavery, it could very well be that her life as a slave had left much worse scars on the rest of her body, a sight she would ill want to share with anyone else. To avoid sharing a dressing room with the others, Nannade might as well have arrived late on purpose, knowing she would have an empty dressing room to herself.
Carryl did not have any more time to think about it, because Gualdo decided to step up the pace even further. Her feet began to fall onto the floorboards than making proper steps, her breaths became deeper and more desperate, her thighs started to ache, protest against the exertion.
Nannade joined into the exercise and managed to keep up. It was not long before Gualdo raised his hand and beckoned everyone to stop running and come to him. In the crowd before him, everyone but senior members were panting, sighing and moaning. Carryl went over to Nannade for a greeting and saw a crolachan’s feet up close for the first time.
Carryl knew well that they were different from human feet. While fitting well into human shoes, their toes made up much more of their length and the sole less, giving the toes a strong and sure grip when curling around any object, but become sore much faster when walking. Even with her claws cut short, Carryl could see how these would give Nannade an important edge in climbing and holding a sure footing. When Nannade noticed Carryl staring full of curiosity, she answered by curling in individual toes to amuse her.
Carryl blushed out of embarrassment. “I am sorry. I should not stare like that.”
But Nannade chuckled. “Oh, if I was easily offended by curious people I wouldn’t have come to the city.”
Gualdo made his presence known, fists on his hips. “If you think that was too much, better leave now. The training will only get worse. But if you really wish to become an Erutor, I encourage you to work through the pain, even those who had to take a break.” He looked to the edge of the room, where quite a few students had sat down after dropping out of running. “It takes time to steel your body and it will be worth it. But first, I will tell you a little about the work a true Erutor has to manage. Sit down.”
Like deflating bellows, the students sank to the floor, their sighs like the last gasp of a dying man, some even lacking the strength to prop themselves up with their arms and just spreading out all limbs. Panting and complaining was heard all around. Gualdo and Velasca started to explain the duties and methods of the Erutoris to them, ignoring the students’ sorry constitution.
An Erutor was a person dedicated to helping people in times of need, catastrophe and emergency, that much every child in Ackarom knew. They were trained in magic and mundane ways to fight fires, crumbling buildings, storms, floods and even bombardments during sieges. It was their bravery and skill that kept the peoples of the cities safe. Internally, the Erutoris employed by a city were organized into four different roles.
Dashers were the most renown, they entered dangerous areas like burning buildings or sinking ships, protected by magic spells, to rescue people or material, to combat fires at their very core and to prevent the state of emergency from getting further out of hand.
Routers were tasked with delivering necessary supplies like water, medicine and flux to sites of catastrophe and to make sure everyone else would stay away from danger zones, such as rerouting traffic, getting wagons and animals off the streets or piloting ships through difficult waters.
Keepers had the charge of bringing the situation under control from the outside by channelling water onto fires, stabilizing crumbling buildings or keeping dastardly figures from exploiting the chaos of catastrophe as an opportunity to steal or loot.
Menders administered first aid to the injured, cast protective spells on their comrades and handed out necessary supplies. They would often remain in active duty long after the initial danger had subsided.
Gualdo also made it clear to everyone that each of those roles required peak bodily fitness, even the casting of magic. “As life force is channelled through your body, it can wear on your veins. They start to ache and strain quite quickly if you are untrained. Many a young, over-ambitious mage has ruptured their blood vessels simply from thinking they were ready for the load to bear. Some of us, born to families of mages or nobles might have been blessed with a better outset, but even commoners new to magic can train their body to withstand just as much. That’s why as soon as you have acquired your preliminary licenses, you will undergo stresses loaded onto you to temper your body.”
Merry seemed at unease at that remark and inched closer to Carryl. “What does that mean?”
Carryl shrugged. “Probably they will force you to go to the bounds of your abilities.” She herself was little concerned. Even if her pedigree had not prepared her, years of pinching flux and reading by the light of her own flame had given her a head start for sure.
Merry’s face showed no ease of discomfort at that answer. Nannade, however, seemed little concerned. She seemed even mildly disinterested in the entire presentation, having her ears in all directions but forward. Did she eavesdrop on someone? Shortly after Carryl asking herself that, Nannade turned her head to them, then scooted a bit closer.
“You look exhausted, was it really that bad?” Nannade said in an almost mocking tone.
It appeared as if Merry took that personally. “You weren’t running at the head of the pack, either!”
Nannade grinned, then stretched out her foot to Merry. “I was doing my best.” And waved with her long toes. “But these aren’t exactly made for running.”
It was at that point that Gualdo, again going in his tirade about bodily fitness, noticed Nannade. “We have a crolachan among the student body this semester?”
Nannade turned to him. “Yes, you do.”
Gualdo’s mien turned a little darker still. “Are you clipped?”
“You mean if my claws are cut and filed? Yes, they are.” She stretched her foot towards him this time and waved with her toes.
“Good. Because if we find scratches on the floor, it’ll be you buffing them out on your free day, not me.”
“I just told you, my claws are cut. It cannot be me.”
Gualdo left it at that and turned back to the rest of the class. Carryl and Merry looked to each other with a feeling of unease, but Nannade seemed little bothered by it. Not long after, the door to the hall opened and in came another person. It was an old woman in the robes of a professor, handling an ancient staff of bent and gnarled wood bearing a plethora of metal bands up and down the shaft.
“It seems Professor Oesevir has arrived.” Gualdo said. “Everyone, stand up and show her some respect.”
The students stood up and made their usual bow.
“Professor Oesevir is the head of the Erutoris society and an accomplished Erutor herself. She'll be the one to stitch you back together shall you get injured during training.”
The Professor smiled and bowed, then took place at the edge of the hall and observed Gualdo as he finished his lessons on teamwork, co-operation and dependability.
When the lecture was over, he beckoned all to stand up, then gave Professor Oesevir the stage. Another member of the Erutoris Society hasted off to a door in the back of the hall and soon after came back, rolling an entire barrel of flux along. When he arrived at the Professor, she took off the lid and rammed her staff in deep, so that it stuck upright in the dark powder. The Professor seemed visibly concentrated and invested in calculations when suddenly, the floorboards started to creak and the beams to groan. One by one, they tore themselves loose from their bindings, twisting and weaving, leaving a hole in the floor leading down into a cellar filled with bags and pillows. The loose boards and beams started to form stairs, platforms, ladders and towers in the hall, an obstacle course floating freely, turning and swaying as part of a routine.
The present students were visibly impressed, Gualdo had a smirk of smug satisfaction, as he looked to the newcomers that realized the task at hand. “Fine then, let us see which one of you are even able to hold on. Do not worry, nobody is expected to pull their own weight up, yet.” He clapped his hands and an orderly queue formed in front of the stairs leading up to the first platform.
Merry seemed visibly daunted, but determined. To Carryl, memories of the castle’s towers and walls came back, from when she still tried to climb the trees and vines to see what is at the top, bypassing locked doors and attentive guards. Nannade seemed barely fazed by the display, naturally, this was her element. Carryl was eager to see what the crolachan would be able to make of Gualdo’s challenge.
It was Velasca who demonstrated the first run. Quickly, she made it to the first platform and waited for Gualdo, who remained on the floor and spoke up for everyone to hear. “Velasca has kept up with her training routine and will demonstrate the skills necessary to traverse the obstacle course safely. This one will be easy, for the newcomers, but as the semester progresses, you will be expected to perform more demanding feats. Be prepared to suffer through training or leave.”
Velasca started by some simple skips to other platforms, all within stepping range of someone with long legs. She obviously made a point of presenting the skips and jumps required. Then she climbed up a ladder onto a higher platform, from where she jumped down onto one that was slowly floating left and right below. Next, she took a running start and skipped across a series of spars too far apart for single steps. At the last tower, instead of grabbing the rope hanging there to get safely to the ground, she hopped off the platform and into the hole in the ground, landing safely on the bags below.
A few students applauded and the first made his try. He managed to get across the first few platforms and up the ladder, but at its top, he was too out of breath to gauge his drop down onto the moving platform and narrowly missed. His fall found a soft end in the basement and he was helped back up by Velasca.
It continued similar to this, until Nannade was the first in line. The other students stopped their chatting and fell silent as the bronze-coloured dwarf climbed up the first ladder.
Nannade stood there on the first platform, looked around, flicked her ears, and then began her attempt.
With a running start that put Velasca to shame, she was across the platforms and up the ladder faster than anyone before, she took three or four steps of the ladder at once, swinging her body and limbs with the impetus of a sprinter. She landed on the moving platform below without any problem and skipped across the spars. As she reached the last spar, her foot hit something. She stumbled and fell forward, her fingers mere inches from the platform’s edge.
The other students sucked in air just to release it in an “OOOH!” when they saw that Nannade was still holding on, her toes on her left foot wrapped around the last spar in a strong grip. Heads down, she hung there, holding on without any sign of fear or urgency. She put the other foot on the spar as well and then pulled herself up onto it, hopping to the platform, from where she just dropped down to the end, ignoring the rope.
Murmuring and chatting came from the other students, Gualdo meanwhile looked rather offended, as if he wanted to call the crolachan's smile out as smug showmanship.
“You were amazing, Nannade!” Merry exclaimed as Nannade arrived next by them. “Oh, you make this look like playful fun.”
“Thank you, it feels good to stay in shape. The city does not offer that many opportunities, unlike the forests and mountains.”
Merry’s excitement grew with every bit she learned about Nannade and even Carryl could not withdraw from the allure of the mysterious mystic. “I guess the two of us ought to give our best then to at least not fall behind.”
Nannade beamed a smile as she remembered something. “I have something for the two of you. Please wait for me to get dressed afterwards. I hope you understand that I do not wish to get changed with the others.” With that, Carryl knew her theory on Nannade’s tardiness was confirmed.
For three hours, the training continued with all sorts of different exercises, like balancing on narrow beams, layaway along ropes, push-ups and passing along heavy weights in a bucket brigade. The moment came that both Merry and Carryl had to drop out for a moment to catch their breath, but even during running and sit-ups, Nannade persisted. It seemed her life in the depths of Sturreland entailed quite some taxing activities.
After the two human girls got done dressing, they stayed behind and waited for the crolachan girl. When she finally emerged back out, she held two paper envelopes sealed with wax in her hand, each addressed to one of them by name.
“These are invitations by Madame Susanna Bellia for you. It is for Le Debut Petit on the evening before our next day off. It was not hard to convince her to let you attend, Carryl, but for Merry I had to put some effort in. I hope you will be able to come.”
They took their invitations. Merry marvelled at her name being written in such a beautiful hand while Carryl inspected the seal. It was a simple flower, likely a daisy, with stem and leaves, and along the rim were the initials of Susanna Bellia. “What kind of social occasion is this?”
“Every year at the beginning of the summer semester, when new students come to the city, Madame Susanna Bellia organizes for a meeting of influential people from the city and the land around, imitating the debutante balls of old nobility. Not everyone there will be noble or even involved with magic, but for people such as you, it will be a great opportunity to maybe find your way into the upper society of Halonnes.”
Upon the thought of Teresa’s get-together that Carryl had avoided that day, she could not suppress a sigh of exasperation.
“Don’t be rude, Carryl, you have been invited.” Merry chastised her. “Thank you so much Nannade, I’ll make sure to look my absolute best.” But she saw that Carryl was not entirely convinced. “Why are you acting like this is so much to ask of you? Our friend got us invited to a significant event because she cares about us.”
Carryl wanted to retort when she saw Nannade’s look and knew the mystic was looking deep into bher again. “I am not ungrateful. Thank you Nannade. I just never was one for formal festivities. I always thought that at university, I would hear the call to do something greater with my life than attending parties and chatting with people over inconsequential stuff.” The answer still felt off to Carryl, as if she had left out the bulk of her frustration at all the noble and high-society peacocking and chit-chatting she knew was coming her way.
But Nannade smiled softly. “I am sure you will hear your call soon enough, Carryl. Besides, you will never hear it from your books. Those are just dead echoes from the past. The present is the time to live in.”
Nannade’s lyrical statement made Carryl’s eyebrow raise in curiosity, but she did not comment on it. “I will be there, and I will look the part, Nannade. Thank you.”
They walked back to the dormitory together and said their goodbyes, but as much as going to Erutoris training felt like getting away from Teresa’s chickencoop of mindlessly chatting nobility, this invitation felt like being called back to it. Maybe the presence of commoners would ease the stilted verbiages a bit. Or maybe, it would mean even more, albeit different verbiages, to learn and endure.
Carryl and Merry grabbed lunch in the form of old bread and spreads leftover from breakfast and then spent the rest of the day reviewing their notes of the previous lectures, more out of Merry’s urging than Carryl’s sense of duty to her academic achievements. She still felt as if she had only been told things her family had taught her a long time ago, but helping out her friend could have no ill effects on herself.
It was after dinner that Carryl felt the pressure of everyone around her again. It drew her back up to the roof, to witness the sunset over the shore. When she asked Merry if she wanted to come along, she quickly shook her head. “Oh no, I much rather stay down here and go over my notes again. That place isn’t for me. Besides, you should stay out of trouble as well!”
Carryl decided to enjoy her time alone and made her way up again. The salty breeze atop the roofs welcomed Carryl back into the solitude of her favourite vista. She found her spot and watched the sun’s slow but inevitable descend onto that line formed by sea and land. As the shadow cast by the city walls crept across the houses, the lights again turned on in many windows. Carryl remembered a tale once told by her mother when she had received her first, tiny light vial that still hung around her neck.
Before the scholars of the universities had found out about how to grow crystals in their laboratories, they had to search for fitting natural crystals within the rock of the mountains. Only the largest and most pure could be carven into the most precious magical items. To use them for something as frivolous as mere lights was frowned upon back then. The mages would cast their own lights and the commoners would have to bear candles and lamps. The wealthiest kings would have their courts and halls illuminated by thousands of tiny vials like this one to imitate the stars, each dutifully refilled with flux by the servants, for their repository had to be tiny. It was all show and vanity for the arrogant. That is why you must treat this vial with respect, to remind yourself with the power you hold and the charge that comes with it. Thanks to the work of the noble and gifted it is that the commoners can now walk at night with their own lights that were unbothered by weather or dangerous to hold.
Carryl held her vial close to her heart and thought of her mother. What might she be doing right now? She was most likely on her farming estate on one of the quieter islands within Dwyllaigh’s holdings, given as reward for her loyalty to the house and the birth of four healthy, gifted children, that much Carryl knew. Her mother now had her own herds of cattle and her own fields, attended to by her own servants, but she had always been one that liked to put her hands on the matter of issues herself. She would not shoo away from milking cows or wash her children herself; dirty little Carryl could attest to that.
A chilling breeze reminded Carryl that it was time to turn in, but when she cast a last gaze down the roof, she felt it again, the wrongness of something missing. The shadow of sense and meaning was there again. She could not see it but she knew it had to be there. Fesure had lied, he had not taken care, that much was clear as the shadow passed through the gate unstopped and unnoticed. Carryl could hear it. The call.
If Fesure would not follow his charge to keep the campus safe, then the blood of Dwyllaigh would have to.
