Chapter 9: Unstable Sorcery

"The mage bid the castle's guardsmen put down their arms. They refused. Where Castle Brinbeck once stood, there is now only an overgrown pit."

-'True Accounts of Magicke', Published 112 B.U.

“This is not what I had in mind when I offered to help!” Stephan exclaimed as he ducked for cover, hands over his head.

A shower of smashed rocks rained out of the air and thudded into the soil around them.

“Sorry!” Taira exclaimed as the wobbly portal of dark energy she had summoned high in the air dissipated.

They had landed on the small, unnamed island a few hours hence, waiting for the warship to draw close enough for them to spring their ambush. Quintilla expected it would take roughly a full day, depending on the punctuality of the Concordians, so in the meantime, Stephan had agreed to help Taira practice her astromancy.

As it turned out, that was quite a more comprehensive task than he had anticipated.

It appeared that her chief talent, just as he had seen before, was teleportation. However, when she attempted to move anything much larger than a human, things started to go wrong.

This had been her third attempt to move a chunk of rock about the size of a car. The first time, it had been split in half and shot out of two separate exit portals. The second time, the boulder simply hasn’t exited at all. This time, it had exploded into a thousand tiny pieces upon exiting, pulled apart by the chaotic forces that maintained Taira’s spatial anomalies.

Once everything became still, Taira stood in the middle of the wooded clearing and sighed. She turned to Stephan and offered an apologetic grimace.

“And Quintilla wants you to move the whole ship?” Stephan asked. He glanced skeptically back towards the vessel, which had been landed on a beach close by, safely away from the tides. “I’m beginning to understand your trepidation.”

“I explained it to her,” Taira said. “Still, she has no concept of the danger. When she sees gold, she sees nothing else.” There was almost a hint of anger in her placid, monotone voice.

Almost.

“Well, is there another way to achieve the same result?” Stephan asked. “It’s not too late to think of an alternate plan.”

“My talents are limited. I am only a beginner. Relatively speaking.”

“Then, you don’t think there’s another way? All we need to do is get past the Intrepid’s great guns.”

Taira shook her head. “None. Only my portals.”

Stephan brushed a bit of fine gravel off his shoulder. “I guess we’d better get to practicing, then.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m no mage, but I figure we should start with the basics. Work our way up. See where you can optimize your process. Tell me what you do when you cast that spell.”

“I… sort of gather myself,” Taira said with a half-hearted gesture. She was clearly struggling to find the words. “Then I speak the rune. ‘Tano’. Then I mold what comes out of me. It’s hard. It resists. Sometimes, I fear if I push too hard… it will bite me back. Sometimes, the magic comes out of me even when I don’t want it to. Even when I don’t speak the rune. It scares me.”

“Let’s start with the first thing you said.” Stephan tapped his glasses. “Enhance.” Taira’s aura snapped into place, cold and subtle. If he had to pick her out of a crowd, he would never have guessed that she was a mage. He would have pictured the aura of a magic user to be a bit more… ostentatious.

“Okay,” Taira said. “If you’re certain.”

She brought her hands together in front of her and closed her eyes. For a few moments, nothing happened. Then her aura changed. Inky darkness welled up from her core. It bloomed within her like a black rose, slowly undulating as if underwater.

Black anima. The raw material needed to cast spells of the astromantic discipline.

“Okay, that’s good,” Stephan said. He walked a little towards her, as close as he dared. “It looks stable. No need to cast any spells just yet. I just want to take a look.”

Now that he peered closer, however, he saw that there were disconcerting spikes in her aura. Every few seconds, the rose of black anima would fractalize, dematerialize, shoot out into spears of energy, before collecting back into its original state.

It was an unstable structure. It was no wonder, given what he had heard about black anima. It was by far the most difficult of the five variations of anima to control. He had heard it described as trying to make a sandcastle out of black-powder.

“You’re a little anxious, I think,” Stephan said. “It’s affecting the anima you take in. Slow down. Take a breath. Just focus on holding the energy inside you.”

Taira took a deep breath, just as he asked, and her aura evened out a little.

“Good. Good. Just keep breathing, slow and steady.”

As she focused on her breathing, eyes closed, Stephan couldn’t help but regard her person, rather than her aura. The sun hit her face just right, and her smooth, dark skin seemed almost radiant. His eyes wandered over the smooth curls of her black hair, and downward, the curve of her breasts contrasted against her concave waist, and her hips which flared out wide, connecting to legs thick and womanly.

“Am I doing it right?” Taira asked.

Stephan broke out of his reverie and cleared his throat. “Uh, ahem, yes. Your levels are a little more steady now. Why don’t you try your teleportation once more?”

Taira nodded and opened her eyes. She settled on a nearby boulder—comparable in size to the rest—and thrust her hands forward, sparking with black lightning that worked itself into infinitely fine patterns.

“This time, don’t focus on leashing your power,” Stephan said. “Your body knows what to do. Let it run free.”

“Are you certain?” Taira asked.

He wasn’t.

“I am.”

“Tano!” Taira called.

The boulder was engulfed in a roiling, black-and-white mass which shot out of Taira’s hands, growing as it flew. A gap in space opened up above their heads, and the same boulder was spat out of this weeping gash in reality.

As it hurtled towards them, Stephan could only remark that it was entirely intact.

Then he realized he was about to be crushed by a rock weighing several tons, and leapt out of the way.

Taira did the same, and they ended up next to each other in the undergrowth a fraction of a second before the boulder slammed into the ground, causing the earth to quake beneath them.

Taira looked horrified, and she opened her mouth, no doubt to speak some sort of apology.

Stephan couldn’t help but laugh at the scene. Both of them laying on their stomachs like beached fish, running away from falling rocks.

Taira giggled as well, and no apology came. He stood, then helped her get back on her feet.

“I call that progress,” Stephan said.

Taira wobbled on the heels of her feet, and Stephan took hold of her arm to keep her steady.

“Tired?” he asked.

Taira nodded wanly.

“Alright. Enough training for now.”

He sat her down on the boulder she had just moved and allowed her to rest. She was eager to get back to practice, worried that she only had a day to perfect her spell, but Stephan insisted that she would only fizzle out if she kept burning through so much anima.

“Now that we have a moment to breathe,” Stephan said after some time, “I was hoping you could help me, too.”

“I know only a little,” Taira said.

“Regardless, humor me with your opinion. I have never killed a man before. I sincerely doubt I have the stomach for it. How did you do it? Surely, your sister must have put you through the same ordeal as she is subjecting me to, once.”

“I have never killed either.”

“Then… you were never brought on a boarding effort?”

“No, I was. Once or twice. I did not want to, but… Quincy can be forceful in her words.”

Stephan nodded and looked expectantly for her to continue.

“I pretended. I let Quincy see what she wanted to see. No more. I took a pistol and swallowed my better nature. Fired it a few times. At the end of a massacre such as the crew left behind, no one can say who killed who, exactly.”

A weight lifted from Stephan’s chest. “So I only have to pretend?”

“Yes.”

Stephan smiled. “Thank you. That’s made me feel a lot better about all this.”