Mages Must Fall Read online

  “In the Mages' Guild you are judged on three things: Your natural talent for magic, your performance at your assigned job, and the esteem of your superiors. These are the only three criteria on which a Mage is judged.

  “However, you may encounter difficulties, and it may seem unfair. While all of you have enough magical talent to enter the Guild, you may feel deficient compared to your peers who have had magic bred into them for generations. While your superiors will try to judge you fairly, they have trained and worked with the parents of the other recruits. The only aspect over which you have complete control is your performance at your assigned job- and if you do well, then your children will know the privilege that you lacked.”

  Gottfried paused dramatically, signaling the end of that portion of the speech.

  The rest of the talk was a high-level overview of the day-by-day workings of Mages' Guild. Specifics on which department scrubbed the toilets (it was non-mages hired by the Department of Resource Management), proper ways of greeting a fellow Mage depending on rank, that sort of thing.

  When they were finally released an hour later, Johanna was sitting on a step outside, reading. She looked almost peaceful- at least until she turned from her book and locked eyes with him.

  “I can see it,” she said. “Your mind opening. You’re starting to understand.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll be able to like you soon.” She gave a predatory smile and walked slowly away, her hips gyrating with each movement.

  Every instinct fought within him.

  When he got home, he grabbed Anne wordlessly and thrust her onto the bed. She started to giggle, but he blocked it out with a kiss. What followed was like nothing he had ever done to her, and she loved it.

  10

  “You’re an orphan?” asked Adolfo.

  “What?” The second day of training was about to start, the first real day, and these were the first words Adolfo — or anyone — said to him as he walked into the Mages' Guild.

  After Terrance hesitated a few moments, Adolfo sighed and looked crestfallen. “I should’ve known she was lying. Your parents are probably the leaders of the Warriors' Guild or something.” He stepped back, reconsidered. “No, probably Merchant Guild. Definitely not Warriors' Guild.”

  “You know she hates you,” said Angelika. “Why would she tell you anything true?”

  “I just… hey Terrance, sorry about that. Who are your parents, really? I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

  The two of them together blocked his entrance into the training area- not physically, because he was past the narrow gate of the eastern entrance, but socially. There was no way he could slip away without making even bigger waves.

  His whole plan of getting through this unnoticed was failing spectacularly. Might as well tell some truth.

  “They’re dead.”

  “I knew it!” said Adolfo, exultant. “That explains so much. It’s okay, Terrance, we’re here for you. It must hurt so much. Even if you make some bad decisions, we’ll take care of you.”

  “It’s fine,” lied Terrance.

  “I think you’re freaking him out,” said Angelika.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I just want you to know that we’re your allies.”

  “Allies in what?”

  “In… it’s an expression. In life. I mean, I knew I liked you, but I thought you were just ignorant and I would have to educate you. Now that I know the troubles you’ve been through, I realized why you were so unsure of yourself yesterday. I can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through.”

  Terrance looked at Angelika for help.

  “He’s always like this,” she said, “but you triggered him more than most.”

  Adolfo sighed. “Why can’t I show some compassion without you getting on my back? I swear sometimes, you’re almost as bad as the rest of them.” Then he pepped up again. “But you, I want to help you. Just let me know.”

  “Uh… Sure.” Adolfo struck Terrance as unstable, but he would probably be a good source of information. Might as well stick with him while scouting out calmer and more profitable routes to understanding. Angelika might be good, although her association with Adolfo made her unstable by proxy.

  Terrance was saved from saying more by Gottfried calling a meeting to order. While everyone was quieting down, he heard Adolfo whisper to Angelika: “He’s so brave.”

  “Welcome back, new Mages!” said Gottfried. “Today your training begins in earnest. The next four months will be spent preparing you for your transition into full Magehood.

  “This is a profound time in your life. Many changes are occurring, and this is perhaps the most important one. It is my sincere wish that you can look back on this time and mark your graduation as the day you became not just a Mage, but an adult.

  “This training will not ask of you the same things that your trials did.” The comment was met with nervous laughter. “The new demands placed on you will be even more grueling in their own way. In each of the four main areas you will have a final project that will test you, grow you, and show us what you’re made of.

  “Your training shall consist of five distinct areas of training: Magical Control, Self-Defense, History and Politics, and Structure and Design are the core competencies. In addition, we have the Introduction to Departments, in which you become acquainted with the work of each department. We have the best mages in the Guild assigned to teach you, so in order to accommodate efficient use of their time, we have split you, by lots, into five associations. This is so the experts can teach all of you in one day, but still be able to provide the individual attention needed to shape a young Mage.”

  “Now for the rest of the day we will split into your associations.”

  He gave out instructions for where each group was to go, then began reading off the list of names. Adolfo lit up when Terrance was grouped with him. Terrance groaned a little inside — there would be no escape.

  Even worse, Johanna got stuck in their group. At least Angelika was there- something of a buffer between him and Adolfo.

  Even if he didn’t enjoy Adolfo’s company, he didn’t exactly want to kill him either. Johanna and her parents he could definitely kill. Cut them down the second he got the chance. But Adolfo, Angelika, Gottfried… they seemed decent enough, even if they were part of an evil organization. This would make his revenge much more complicated. Bringing down the Mages' Guild was going to be hard anyways, and bringing it down without harming the relative innocents was nothing short of impossible.

  Sacrifices had to be made.

  But in the meantime, he could pump Adolfo for information, keep looking for weak points. Adolfo’s new-found… whatever it was, regarding his parentage… would make him less likely to suspect subterfuge.

  Once the list of names was finished, there were around twelve students in each group. Each group was assigned a proctor who would be in charge of “ensuring proper organization and keeping sound the spirit of the group” (Gottfried’s words). This proctor’s first task was getting them to their opening classes.

  The rest of the day was a blur as Terrance tried to take in the sights and sounds of the Mages' Guild compound. Their training took place entirely in one quarter of the the circular compound, a quarter that Training shared with Admissions and Genealogy. Each of the four quarters housed several departments in curving arc-like stone buildings that started off hugging the wall and moved inward in layers. Between those layers were circular paths that went all around the compound. Then, in the center, was a huge stone tower.

  His attention flitted between his surroundings and the overviews given by each of the instructors, lectures talking about expected behavior and plans for the class that seemed to bore the other students even more than they bored Terrance. The next day would be the true start, where the real lessons began — except for Self-Defense, which started right away.

  In Magical Control they were to practice holding on to the connection to
magic without using it. Their final test would be holding on to it for two hours while completing several feats of agility, attention, and wit — feats designed to distract them from their connection with magic, make them either slip and let go or slip and use magic without authorization.

  In Self-Defense they skipped the intro and spent the entire first class learning how to fall properly fall without injuring yourself too badly. They practiced on padded floors where a proper fall was (he heard) nearly painless, but in the real world this technique would merely reduce the injury. Still, that was better than nothing, and he wished he had known this while fighting the two paid-off street thugs.

  Halfway through class he had to assure Adolfo that he was fine, the falls didn’t hurt him that much. “Of course not,” said Adolfo. “Not in comparison to what you’ve been through.”

  Terrance’s sigh was inward. Outwardly, he tried to emote whatever would be appropriate for such a statement. It was difficult.

  The final test for Self-Defense would be a series of non-magical sparring encounters. Those who won the majority of their encounters would pass automatically while the rest of them would be judged by the instructor and a panel of Mages. Terrance was shocked by how far behind the other students he was in this area- anyone could train for this, but they had known that it was coming and had actually done the preparation while Terrance had been simply studying and stocking shelves.

  History and Politics was what excited Terrance most- not only had he studied for this, but it had a focus on how the Mages' Guild had been involved in the history and politics of Nordheim. This was one avenue of uprooting the Guild: loosening their grip on power, turning the other forces of Nordheim against them. Of course, the knowledge taught here wouldn’t be enough — everyone in the Guild knew this information, and would be on guard for any attacks that had come close to working before — but this would be a good foundation upon which to build his investigations.

  The final test for History and Politics would be a two-part written exam. The first part was a simple section where they spat out facts and figures. The second part was a set of essays where they were given a situation and asked to specify the actions which would maximize both the position of the Mages' Guild and the health of Nordheim as a whole.

  The final core class was Structure and Design, which might as well have been called, by someone less pretentious than Gottfried, “How Inanimate Objects Work”. They would study architecture, both magical and conventional. They would study the makeup of various artifacts, such as mage cloth. They would study “logistics”, or how materials were stored and moved from one place to another — basically what he did in the shop, but on a larger scale.

  The final test for Structure and Design would be another written test, which would have questions and logic puzzles pulled from all the different domains that they studied.

  Last, they had the Department Introductory Class. Starting the next day, they would have a rotating set of instructors pulled from each of the Departments, but today they had someone who gave an abbreviated history of how they had all formed. It was mostly review from Arnt’s introductory “exam”, so Terrance was finally able to relax. He wondered if the speaker knew that this material was a repeat; was it meant as a respite at the end of a long day, or did Arnt and the rest of the Department of Recruitment fail to coordinate their activities? He suspected the latter.

  In any case, Terrance was glad when the classes were finally over. Excitement over what he had learned competed with mental exhaustion. On another day he would go home and study until he fell asleep (unless Anne was insistent enough), but today he had promised to meet Frederick afterwards.

  First, he had to get out the door — the one where Johanna was waiting.

  “I can’t believe that made Adolfo like you even more,” said Johanna. She bounced subtly as she talked with Terrance, enough to keep dragging his eyes downward to her chest. It was probably on purpose. “You were supposed to be all mine. He’s so weird. Who thinks dead parents are a good thing? I’m going to like you in spite of your flaws, not because of them.”

  Terrance still couldn’t figure out why it mattered so much to each of them, but this was his new reality. He would have to get used to it.

  “There’s a guy there who’s happy my parents are dead.”

  “I told you,” said Frederick, “the Mages' Guild is fucked up.”

  “I mean, not happy that they’re dead, but happy that he knows someone whose parents are dead. Like that makes me better or something.”

  “That’s still fucked up. A very different kind of fucked up.”

  “And he’s being all nice to me, unnaturally nice, just because I have dead parents.”

  Frederick pondered this while chasing the foam on his beer with a spoon. Even during the most serious of conversations, he was always playing with something. “Maybe he thinks it’ll make it easier to kill you, when the time comes. They are all evil, right?”

  “That’s the thing. Most of them seem… nice. Weird, yes. Part of an evil organization, yes. But…”

  “Well that’s just downright mean of them!” said Frederick. He slammed down his beer for emphasis, but he had to pick it up first, somewhat ruining the effect.

  Terrance startled anyways.

  “You go to all this trouble to destroy them, and then they start playing mind games with you by being normal people.”

  “They’re not normal people.”

  “Fuck it, you know what I meant. By not being monsters. By having feeeeelings, and personalities, and desires, and families, and actual genuine lives that might be hurt by what you’re trying to do.”

  “You’re not going soft on me, are you?”

  Frederick shook his head. “No, of course not. It’s just… I’m going to be Justice Guild soon, right? Things look different when you have that responsibility. When I was a kid, I thought they were just spoilsports, no fun at all, but they’ve got all these reasons for the annoying shit they do. Not always good reasons, but still: reasons.”

  “You’re saying the Mages' Guild had reasons for killing Aaron.”

  “Not good reasons, but things that make sense to the people in it. No one thinks of themselves as a monster.”

  Terrance laughed. “Let me tell you about Johanna.”

  Terrance did not tell Anne about Johanna. No need for that drama.

  It would not have been the right time, even if he had wanted to share everything. He could barely stand. His last night in this basement, and he could barely stand.

  Anne tried to start something, but after a couple minutes of Terrance’s drunken fumbling, she gave up. Instead she drew and sang a soft lullaby as he drifted off to sleep.

  Something sad, about times that could never return.

  11

  Maybe it was the hangover, maybe it was the relative lack of adrenaline, but connecting with magic was harder on the first real day of Magical Control than it had been during his Trials. Before he could get a good hold on his connection it would sputter, and then the source would pull away from him.

  “It’s okay if it’s difficult,” whispered Adolfo. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “A lot of alcohol, maybe,” said Johanna. “You’re really making this more difficult for me than it should be.”

  “Maybe if you concentrated and left him alone, he’d be able to make a connection.”

  “Says his new mother,” spat Johanna.

  Terrance tried to step away from them so he could concentrate, but they both followed.

  “Just because I care doesn’t make me a mother. And how in hell did you come to associate those two things?”

  “You don’t know anything about my parents.”

  “I know that Magda liked watching us get tortured.”

  "She loves me, more than your mom loves you. You think someone of her standing would let you act like this if she really cared?”

  Angelika walked over, began herding off Adolfo, trying to distract h
im. “Hey Adolfo, I need your help connecting. How can I…”

  Johanna tried to provoke Adolfo again, but Angelika had already gotten in between them, blocking out Johanna with her back. Finally Terrance could concentrate on connecting again.

  It hit, the magic pulsing through him. It filled his senses at the start, drowning out anything else, but soon he was able to relax into it and pay attention to other things that were happening. It still filled him with the urge to use magic, but that was to be expected; the main purpose of this class was to turn that urge into a background feeling, one that was instinctually ignored.

  He started noticing something else as well; he could see the traces of connection, like some sort of light radiating from the person who was channeling the magic. Some were radiating more, some less.

  Johanna was staring at him, jaw agape; she was so shocked that she temporarily lost connection.

  The proctor moved closer, eyes wide. “Who are your parents?” she asked.

  That shook his connection, but it was probably better to let it go rather than risk using unauthorized magic. “They’re dead,” he said. Why did everyone want to know about his parents?

  “Who were they when they were alive?”

  “No one important,” he said. His chances of slipping into the Mages’ Guild unnoticed just kept getting smaller and smaller. “At least, they’re not Mages.”

  “Hmph. Well, I suppose it does sometimes happen spontaneously,” said the proctor. “I wonder how that’ll cross with our current lines.”

  Johanna smiled. “Yes, that will be interesting, won’t it.”

  The proctor glanced at Johanna, shook her head in disdain. “Of course you would,” she said. “I’m going to have a word with your father about the disruption you made today with Adolfo.”

  Unfamiliar emotion flashed across Johanna’s face, but it quickly turned back to resolve. “He supports me.”

  “I’m sure.” She turned to Terrance. “Be careful of that one, you understand?”