The Warden of Saint-Louis, Sylvie Garnieu, is well-known for her hard-won friendship with the Harpy tribe, earned while retaking the town from the Wildland Beasts and the Deep-born mermen. She is rumored to have received guidance from Brishnah Nabeela herself on the ways to shape and call Lightning. She is considered by her colleagues and the Council to be the most offensively powerful and mobile Flight Mage of Saint-Denis.

Extract from “The Council of La Réunion” by Tanaka Inagi, First Librarian of La Réunion

Manon returned home, passing the gate of the manor that served as the Mayor of Saint-Denis' official residence, built on a hill-garden towering over the harbor of Saint-Denis. Turning her head to look beyond the manor's grounds, she glanced at the opposite hill, that had been emptied, transformed into a bastion and armored with a Colony-ship’s worth of hull during the second founding of the colony-towns of La Réunion. She was late, almost an hour past her curfew, and she expected her father to be waiting for her. He would acknowledge her arrival with a nod, then wait for an explanation. If he was not satisfied, there would be consequences.

This particular evening, Manon wasn’t worried. The knowledge of her… friend? Damien’s sword, and more importantly, the knowledge that he was capable of creating such a complex Enchantment so soon after his Awakening, would ensure that she would not be punished for her tardiness. Her father had shown a considerable degree of interest in Damien ever since she had told him of his half-elven heart, and she expected that more information on his abilities would earn her some leeway. Maybe even to truly manifest poor Cûn Anûn… She allowed herself a faint smile at the prospect.

One hour later, Manon was drinking yet another cup of fruit juice. Her father was pacing around behind his study’s desk.

“You have been very active these holidays, Manon.” Jules Addington gravely said, finally sitting down on his -extensively padded- armchair. “I’m especially happy about the feather. It will be very much useful. You did say that it came with strings attached, hmm?”

Manon brightened up. “Nothing problematic, father. I promised it wouldn’t be used against the Harpies in any way.”

With a nod, Jules affirmed his daughter’s decision. “I’m still trying to understand why our ‘dear commanders’ are hiding young de Hautlieu’s Spirit from me… And everyone else for that matter. Did Damien tell his father? And Jean, did he tell his fossil of a grandfather?” Scorn was palpable in his voice.

“Damien told me he didn’t when we discussed it this evening. I think Jean probably told his grandfather.” Manon answered. “And...”

“Yes?” Her father encouraged her.

“I think Mister de Carné guessed that there’s something wrong about our escape from the tunnels anyway. He’s good at guessing when someone’s lying to him, you told me that, and he knows his son...”

Jules laughed softly. “I did tell you that, didn’t I? Well. No matter, whatever secret plan High Command may have, it’s no secret anymore.” He reached down in one of his desk’s drawers, searching for a scroll. “Here. You can study this, and I allow you to free Cûn Anûn while on the manor’s grounds for this week. I expect you to be ready to use that Spell for the summer solstice’s demonstration.”

Manon nodded. She hoped the spell in the scroll wouldn’t be too problematic to learn.

“Very well… I think it’s time for you to sleep. You do need to get to school tomorrow, after all.” Jules dismissed his daughter and turned, extinguishing the small Lumen-globes over his desk’s sides. He heard an excited bark, and his lips curved in something that could pass for a smile.

Damien walked to school in a bad mood. He had once again been visited by nightmares of burning forests and breathless pursuits. They were fluctuating in vividness, but he didn’t think he’d had a full night without seeing some part of the recurring dream since the beginning of his fortnight of holidays. “I really should ask someone about that,” he grumbled to himself, knowing full well that he wouldn’t. Those dreams concerned his family’s history, and could probably be used as political leverage against his father.

He caught the sight of Julia and Manon passing the school’s front gate, before being stopped by one of their teachers. “First and second years, you’re going to the training grounds! You’ll have a bit of practice!” He told the girls. Seeing the pair of boys following them, he pointed at their classmates and told them to follow.

Once in the great training ground, a vast gymnasium dug out from yet another of the magma chambers that punctuated Saint-Denis’ underground, they were informed that they would all be tested in their progress as offensive or defensive casters. Damien, Jean, and others who intended to take on more specialized roles, such as battlefield controller, communication specialist, or non-combat focused trades such as specialized material Transmuters protested, some, like Damien, on the principle of testing their skill for another battlefield role, others because they didn’t see the point of training for combat at all. They were overruled. The exercise, the teachers explained, was aimed at ensuring that if they were ever forced into combat by circumstances out of their control and in truly dire straits, they would be able to survive.

As such, the Abjurers, Illusionists, and Transmuters specialized in defensive buffs among them were isolated and ordered to muster as strong a grouped defense as possible around a flag in a corner of the training ground, while the others were asked to overrun them as quickly as possible, with a minimum starting distance of a hundred meters between them and the flag. The assailants’ goal would be to get one of their number to touch or destroy the flag, while the protectors would attempt to hold their classmates back and safeguard it for three minutes.

Julia, Jean, and Damien, among others, were designated as part of the assaulting team, with fifteen others, mainly Evokers and Fire or Air Transmuters, along with a Diviner. Damien, assuming command by highlighting his results in theoretical tactics, requested that the former set up a temporary network of short-range Message beacons, thus allowing him to transmit his strategy in silence.

Immediately after the Diviner finished casting his Message Relay, he asked Jean telepathically. “Do you have Lucille listening to them?”

“They guessed we would try that. One of the Illusionists sent out enough Minor Images to make it panic. It won’t approach them any closer.” His roommate answered wryly.

“You really should stop using your Familiar to spy on people,” Julia remarked with a hint of schadenfreude in her mind’s voice. “Now you’re so well-known for that that people are taking precautions against it.”

Damien nodded. Jean was using this trick a tad too often, as a matter of fact, and while Lucille was a great scouting tool and above average as far as Familiars went, it was not exactly stealthy.

“Alright, listen. Here’s what we’ll do...”

Once both groups were done conferring, a proctor gave a first whistle, allowing both sides to prepare their buffs and their barriers. Twenty seconds later, the second whistle allowed Damien and the other assailants to let loose.

A multicolored salvo of spells rapidly broke down the first layer of Earth Walls and Water Domes. Then, Julia, Lucille, Jean, and Damien appeared in a twin flash of Conjuration at the foot of Louis’s Maximized Earth Wall, a veritable castle Wall of clay, half a meter thick, two meters high, and crenelated, rather than the simple thrown-together walls his comrades had produced.

Julia quickly took the measure of the obstacle, and under Damien’s telepathically transmitted instructions, she puffed out a prolonged Dragon’s Breath, chilling it to the point the defenders on the other side left, on pain of ice burns. She nodded to her classmate and Hasted herself, joining the others at a safe distance, followed by Jean.

Damien quickly finished casting an Ember Knife, marveling at the lack of Negative Drain afforded by the Druidic Essence in his veins, protecting his Astral Body from the slow burn of Embers upon it. Projecting the Spell upon the rime-covered wall, he fully expected the enormous slab of frozen solid clay to crack and explode inwardly, forcing the defender’s mana to be consumed by their Shield spells.

However, Damien’s plans quickly proved to be catastrophically flawed. He had neglected to confirm his assumption that Louis’s Signature Wall was, like most of the spell’s variants, a solid slab of compact earth. However, to allow Mana efficiency while creating a greater variant than usual, Louis had incorporated a latticed structure, not unlike hollow bricks. As a consequence, only the outward-facing layer of the Wall exploded from the sudden temperature difference. The shrapnel of clay produced by the explosion, instead of showering harmlessly on the Abjurer’s Shields and the Transmuters' armors, draining away their reserves of mana by forcing them to defend against the exploding wall as he had planned, were now flying towards him instead.

Damien was a more than competent mage, able to learn most cantrips irrespective of their Schools. However, his understanding of Spellcraft suffered a crippling gap. He had never managed to Manifest a Shield without using an Enchantment to support his casting. He was utterly incapable of channeling even the simplest Abjuration-specific Major Incantation. Manon was more than aware of this. She also knew that while the flag holder's camp was heavily enchanted with reflex shields that would trigger in case of a defensive break to prevent serious injuries, the assailants did not benefit from the same protections, as they were the only sources of firepower on that particular mock-battlefield. So, when she saw the shredding shrapnel of clay flying toward her friend, she took an instantaneous decision.

“Dimension Door.”

She translocated herself and her Familiar, Cûn Anûn while maintaining the Guardian Spirit they had planned to use as a last resort against the other team. Its manifestation, a small thicket of trees, disappeared from inside Louis’s Castle Wall and manifested, with her and her Spirit at its heart, before Damien. The aura of the protective spell alone dispatched the shards of earth that would have otherwise mangled the boy. Then, a moment of silence fell on them. The head-splitting headache she expected from the breaking of her Geas assailed her. Manon felt her body trembling, then she fell, convulsing on the ground.

Étienne de Carné looked upon the nervous young man in front of him, sitting on one of his living room’s armchairs, and sighed. “Listen, Jean. Manon has been unconscious the whole day, and her father swears he has no idea of what’s happening. We both know he’s lying.”

He gazed again at his interlocutor, who remained quiet. His son was observing his roommate too, he noted. He tried again. “Let’s try going around the problem. Nod once if you think I’m right, twice if you’re sure. Shake your head if I’m not going in the good direction. Can you do that?”

Jean hesitated, then nodded.

“You knew that Manon was training in Conjuration without reporting to the Council?”

Jean shook his head.

“But you saw her practicing something that was not Abjuration via Lucille, correct?”

Two nods.

“Mmmh… Some kind of ritual, then? Old magic, perhaps?” Étienne was intrigued.

One nod.

“Was there a vocal component to it?”

Jean grimaced, but he nodded twice.

“Did you understand it?” The Intendant asked with little hope. If he was right and Jules Addington had used a pre-Spellcraft ritual on his daughter, there was little hope its vocal components would work in a modern language.

As he had expected, Jean shook his head in a definite motion.

Finally, Étienne asked the question that was haunting him, as a father. “Did he hurt Manon during the ritual?”

He waited for a moment. Jean didn’t move. “You don’t know?” He guessed.

Jean nodded.

“I see. Damien, is there something you want to ask? Be careful, it would be…. Unwise to name certain restrictions, lest they trigger and cause him to fall unconscious too.” Étienne warned his son.

Damien extracted a book he’d found earlier in the Library. “I’m going to read something to you,” he told Jean, “if you think I should stop, raise a hand immediately.” He cleared his throat, then read from the book, with a sing-song cadence. “Hoof and horn, hoof and horn: All who die shall be reborn. Corn and grain, corn and grain: All that falls will rise again.” He waited expectantly, then asked. “Does that remind you of something?”

Jean nodded.

“Did it happen near the great oak in their garden?” The young man asked a last question.

Jean confirmed his fears.

“Thanks. I think I know what Jules’s doing. You should leave, just in case.” Damien gently showed his friend out.

Étienne looked at him quizzically. “So, what did you find?”

“Just to make sure, the Addington family is from Berkshire, near London, right?” Damien tested his theory.

“I would have to check, but I think so. Does it matter?” Étienne answered, still trying to guess what his son was getting at.

“I think we have a bigger problem than a politician hiding his daughter’s power with Geas,” Damien said somberly. “Jules’s trying to Conjure Herne the Hunter and his Wild Hunt here, and I don’t know who his prey will be.”