Olga McArrow - Hot Obsidian

The team followed Juel’s orders. Despite all the fears, the rest of the night was calm, calm and boring.

“Teach me

Lots of all sorts!

Teach me

New facts, new thoughts!”

I dreamt,

I questioned,

But I was taught by Fate’s contempt -

Taught my lesson.

I didn’t know I’d see

the day’s end

When malice and night on me

descend.

But the thrawn mind

learns night-lore too;

A new teacher I’ll find

When I’m new.

Milian Raven, from the “Thorn poem”

Aven Jay Zarbot heard two young voices crying out her name. Again. And just when she was finally going to have her lunch! Those students! Those stupid, stupid kids… Aven took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m a Crimson Guardian on duty, an experienced mage, and a responsible adult,” she repeated her daily mantra in her mind. “I’m going to be super patient with those kids even though all I want is to strangle them both. Let’s consider it a punishment for me being a stupid kid myself once…”

“Master Zarbooot!” the young mages cried again.

Aven stifled a curse.

“What!” she roared, the soothing mantra instantly forgotten.

“Take a look at the road! There are visitors. What do we do with them?”

Aven sadly glanced at a sweet diadem bun she had been hoping to eat in peace and put it into her pocket, with much regret.

“What do we do with them! Hah! Oh, why can’t these youngsters just work it out for themselves for a while? I can’t babysit them all day!” she grumbled as she was making her way upstairs to the lookout tower. Once there, she grabbed a spare pair of binoculars and took a look at the visiting party.

Great! More stupid kids!

The visitors in question were ten young Lifekeepers. The youngest of them must have been six or seven. The oldest looked like a pureblood Faizul. And all of them looked like trouble. Aven had seen enough during her service to know how much trouble even one ambasiath can be and there were ten.

“Follow the standard welcoming procedure, boys,” said Avenge with a sniff, then she fished the bun out of her pocket and took a bite. She bit through the white dough into the soft jam core at the first try. The diadem stuffing was honey-sweet and bloody-red.

The young Lifekeepers carried no forbidden items and seemed just a bunch of ordinary neophytes on a quest. With the Temple of Life being so close to Firaska, their kind visited the city often. The leader of the group – a young Faizul – was the only unusual thing. Aven decided to ask him a couple of questions, just to be sure he was who she thought he was. There was no harm in asking and the young mages under her supervision could use the opportunity to learn a thing or two.

“I greet the great warrior! May his blade be praised by the Moon!” she recited the only Faizulish phrase she knew. The young man’s reaction surprised her. His wide shoulders drooped, his cheeks blushed as if he was ashamed.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a proper answer,” he said in her own language, without even a trace of foreign accent. “I barely remember the language of my people. I grew up in the charted Omnis, my lady.”

He seemed like a genuinely good boy. The way he responded to her simple test… it was not play-acting, the Faizul did feel ashamed for failing to return the greeting. Immediately, Aven felt bad for hurting him so. She did not remark on the incident and proceeded with the usual questions instead.

“What is the purpose of your visit to Firaska?” she asked.

“We want to buy a Transvolo here,” said the young Faizul.

“Where to? And what for?” Aven continued.

“To Torgor, to fulfil our mission,” was the Lifekeeper’s answer, as truthful as it was vague.

He wasn’t stupid, that one, even though he looked like a simple savage, Zarbot thought. The boy didn’t even try to deceive her, the head of the Firaskian Crimson Guard, but he wasn’t going to be open with her either. Aven had a hunch about the boy and his followers; something in them made her heart tingle with that subtle sense everyone serving on the edge of the No Man’s Land has: the sense of hidden danger. But she had no evidence against them, no logical reason to send them away.

Aven let the Lifekeepers pass, of course, but made a note to herself to keep an eye on them. That tingling sense of hers had never let her down before. Those ten kids were trouble.

***

Most cities of the charted Omnis have peacefully spread beyond their armoured shells ages ago, for their inhabitants had nothing to fear from the outside world anymore. But Firaska was one of those who still needed all the protection it could get. It had thick walls, lofty watchtowers, and massive gates that it kept closed all night. Also: strict curfews and brightly lit streets patrolled by mage Sevens.

What was the city like within the walls? Crowded. Ancient. Noisy. A labyrinth of tall, sometimes dangerously overhanging buildings flooded with pedestrian traffic by day but empty by night when only the Crimson Guardians were allowed to stay outdoors.

To avoid losing each other in the crowd, Juel and his teammates had to walk in a single chain, holding hands. Milian was the last one in line, following Orion who was carrying Jarmin on his shoulders to keep the little boy away from the frenzied crowd.

Milian had not liked Orion in the beginning but things were different now.

Orion’s grasp on Milian’s hand was firm but careful; to him, young Raven was just another little kid that needed to be kept safe. That seemed both awkward and heartwarming to the twelve-year-old boy who couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a family and a father…

Several sharp turns of the alley later, the Lifekeepers found themselves at the central square of Firaska, the only open space inside the city walls. In the centre of that luxury, shining like a precious gem, was the heart of the city: Helga-Vlada’s College of Battle Magic. Originally, the building was a fortress Firaska had grown around. It had narrow windows, a moat filled with water to the brim, and a drawbridge. But now it looked as peaceful as an old warrior who had retired to spend his remaining years playing with his grandkids. Students were throwing paper birdies and magical sparks from the fortress’s windows; tangerine and diadem peels – a whole fleet of them – floated in the moat’s water; swift little fishes nibbled on them; colourful dragonflies soared above the moat.

Pai looked at the college with wide eyes full of awe. The young self-taught mage was seeing a proper magical establishment for the first time in his life; to him, it felt like beholding a lovely oasis in the middle of a desert.

“Let’s go?” said Orion, a tinge of uncertainty in his voice.

“What? All ten of us?” laughed Oasis. “I’d say you don’t need an army to storm this thing now,” he added with a grin and a sharp nod in the direction of the old fortress.

Juel pondered that for a moment. They already had drawn too much attention to themselves at the gates, so he didn’t want to make things worse. Both Sainar and Kangassk Abadar told him to keep quiet. There was another thing to consider: Juel Hak knew nothing about magic.

“Pai,” Juel addressed the boy. “You’re our only mage. Go there, investigate the place, find someone who knows Transvolo.”

“I will!” Needless to say, Pai practically shone when he said that. “Will you go with me, Milian?”

Raven nodded.

“Meanwhile, I’ll look around the city, if you don’t mind,” Oasis, the urban jungle specialist, chimed in. “We may have to stay here for a while, so a cheap apartment can come in handy and…”

“Go. Learn what you can. Just be careful,” Juel stopped his cheerful chatter. “Today, we will stay in that inn,” he gestured toward a long narrow building at the edge of the square. “Meet us there.”

“Sure! I’ll be back before the curfew. See ya!” said Oasis with a careless smile.

Before diving back into the crowd, he left his sword with Orion to keep. Right: when you are exploring an urban jungle, a long sword only slows you down. The boy didn’t go unarmed, though, for he still had his knife with him.

Orion shook his head and smiled as his eyes followed Oasis rushing toward an adventure.

“It may take us some time…” Pai hesitated under Juel’s heavy gaze, “but… but we will do our best!”

“Let’s go!” Milian pulled at his sleeve.

That was how the young Lifekeepers split for the first time.

As Pai and Milian made their way to the college doors, the students in grey cloaks lined with crimson noticed them. Some even followed the two young Lifekeepers to find out what they were up to but everyone kept their distance.

It rained briefly over the square as if some young mage were practising water magic. Their clothes dotted with water droplets, Milian and Pai reached the moat and stopped there, fascinated by a neat underwater ecosystem that kept the water crystal-clean.

Those beautiful violet sponges, cultivated by the worldholders themselves, according to the books, were filtering the filth away. Green and red algae provided oxygen and food for the fish. The fish cleaned the sponges of parasites, etc. There were many more other species, too small to see with a naked eye, involved in the maintenance of the system’s balance but who ever remembers them when there are those huge violet sponges that look so alien and so cool…

“Lycopersicon abberata,” Milian couldn’t miss a chance to show off his biology knowledge, “a true masterpiece of bioengineering.”

“What’s bioengineering?” asked Pai.

“It’s a branch of science that messes up with life-things’ genetics. And ‘genetics’ means everything we inherit from our parents and pass on to our children,” explained Milian gladly. “Water-cleaning systems are super new, I heard.”

“Must be,” Pai made a wry face. “I still remember that time when I visited Lumenik with my master. The moat was so filthy there… and I fell in it…”

“Ugh!”

“Ugh indeed!”

Milian imagined that too vividly for his own good. Falling into the moat of the biggest industrial city in the world must have been quite a lifechanging experience. Near-death lifechanging experience, probably.

“Maybe even Lumenik’s moat and sewers are clean nowadays,” said Pai with a hopeful smile on his lips. “I like it that moats are just little city lakes now and no one expects wars and sieges anymore.”

“Same,” muttered Milian. He was more concerned with the fact that his friend was standing too close to the water and leaning forward too much. In his daydreaming state, Pai could fall into this moat as well, so Milian carefully took him by the shoulder and led him away, toward the bridge.

The ancient blocks the college fortress was made of were cool to the touch and so infused with magic that even a non-mage could feel it (as a childish sense of wonder or a gloomy foreboding of impending doom – it all depended on the person’s character). If someone were to take even a small piece of that stone into the No Man’s Land, it would certainly explode somewhere beyond the border.

The narrow windows didn’t allow enough sunlight inside the building, so the mages compensated for that in their own manner: light spheres of all sizes and stages of perfection floated everywhere. Seeing so many active spells in one place was too much for poor Pai. He just froze there, his mouth agape, his eyes wide with wonder, and nothing Milian would say or do could make him snap out of it.