Chapter 04 : Spot in the eyes

It was several hours since Nikolaï had discovered the strange marking on his forehead and he was still trying to figure out what was it. He kept rubbing his eyes believing that it was just a hallucination but eventually he had to accept that it was not going away.

His eyes were still recovering from being blinded for weeks, he was experiencing spots of colour in his field of view as if he had looked at the sun for too long but he was able to see again. As clear as he saw the room he was in, he could see a pattern of dim light on his forehead.

He was watching it from a bucket and couldn’t stop thinking about the mark looking like a Sigil. The shape was too regular to be just a visual anomaly. Nikolaï took the bucket next to his desk and search for a piece of paper and a quill.

After a few minutes, he had finished copying the pattern. It took a while because Nikolaï wanted to be precise but also because his fingers had been a bit numb after all this time. He looked at the drawing, trying to figure out what it was but he didn’t know how to start.

The first thing which was unsetting was the invisible property of the mark. Sure in the water he could see the pattern made of light but when he held his hands up there was no trace of light on them. The thing was written in a light that doesn’t produce light which was exactly the same property as a Sigil.

In order to cast a spell, an Arcanist needed to project a Sigil made of ether. Ether was an invisible energy but when it was shaped into a Sigil it consumed itself and the combustion made it manifest visually. The Sigil would appear made of a light that casts no shadow or more brightness.

Nikolaï focused on his Ether, wondering if he had lost so much of his sensations that his Ether was unconsciously powering a spell that he had no knowledge of. The idea was ridiculous and impossible but he was lost. Nikolaï’s sense was a bit chaotic but he was sure he couldn’t feel any draining effect. He was not casting, consciously or not.

So he didn’t know what this thing was and how it appeared on his forehead. He knew nothing except maybe the start of an idea of why the thing reflected in the water and not in the mirror. Whatever this thing was it was connected to Ether and the best way to reveal Ether was to confront it with elementium.

Elementium was everywhere in everything but the way matter was transformed or refined could change its way of hosting elementium or what kind it could. The water in the tower pipes was simple water collected from the rain and the underground reserve so it was natural that it could host water elementium and not so much of the other types. If the water had been from the sea the salt in it would have allowed a bit of metal elementium in it because it was a mineral.

On the other side, the mirror used by Nikolaï was made of metal but it had been refined and transformed by heat and such. Its process of fabrication had made the object able to host other kinds of elementiums like fire and water. Metal elementium would naturally flow in the mirror but it would not be the only type, contrary to the water.

Nikolaï believed that the elementium in the bucket being singular, it was easier for it to reveal the Ether because each particle of elementium reacted the same way to it. The various elementiums in the mirror were parasitizing themselves and cancelling a reaction, that from the beginning, was pretty weak.

Finally, Nikolaï started to dress. He was still very confused but when he realised that the day was still on he decided to be active. The chance he would have to solve this mystery was not going to happen if he just waited in his room.

After finishing putting on some clothes he took the crutches that had been prepare for him in advance. Yes, he could walk but there was a difference between going into his bathroom and climbing to the library on the first floor.

***

On his way to the library, some people noticed Nikolaï but no one approached him. Rumour had spread in the tower about Expert Orsana experiment and its survivor. It made Nikolaï a curiosity for the average tower dweller but that didn’t mean someone would actively investigate Nikolaï side of the story.

Any Expert, and especially Orsana, were an entity to fear and nobody wanted to attract their resentments by poking around their research.

The result was people whispering on Nikolaï passage but nobody engaging in any conversation with him.

Slowly Nikolaï climbed the stairs, not caring about what people could say, he had other things in his mind. Nevertheless, he paid a little attention to the first reaction of peoples who saw him and if their eyes were looking at his forehead.

Unless people had really discrete reaction he was pretty sure that nobody seemed to see the invisible mark above his eyes.

Nikolaï took a break halfway to the library. The tower was made of so many stairs that even for people in good shape it was not unusual to see them taking breaks. Nikolaï looked around him, his eyes were still adjusting. He was seeing properly but there was still parasite dots. Reflexively he kept blinking but the dots were still here.

Nikolaï was not especially worried about that, the fact that he had blinded himself for so long couldn’t be ignored. From his point of view, his eyes were still adapting to the light. He looked at one of the torches hanging on the wall where he could see a lot of those dots. The torches were a product of the Mechanical Arcane. They used the fire elementium in the air to produce a small flame to light the corridors.

Nikolaï eventually arrived at the library. The place was not just large but also high. It was made of several levels and countless books. Nikolaï approached one employee at a desk. She was wearing a dark top uniform similar to the scribes employed by the Tower. Servants didn’t wear any kind of uniform but it was not hard to spot them from the Aspirants and Arcanists.

The employees in charge of administrating the tower, on the other hand, were easier to identify as they wore a distinctive dark robe. Most of them were scribes and none of them were Aspirants or Arcanists. Nikolaï could see two of them filling some book but the librarian facing him was different.

“_ Good afternoon.” Said Nikolaï while saluting his fellow Aspirant.

“_ Good afternoon.” Responded the librarian while saluting the same way.

Nikolaï took out the folded drawing of the mark on his forehead and handed it to the female employee.

“_ I’m looking for a match of this Sigil. I saw it in a book but I’m not sure which one.” Lied Nikolaï.

The woman took the paper while sighing. She looked at the drawing rapidly before extended her hand. The gesture didn’t really need words and Nikolaï paid her for the service.

After receiving the payment the woman joined her hands, forming a circular space between her thumbs and index. She aimed at a quill on the desk and a Sigil appeared between her palms. The quill vibrated a second before moving itself and started to copy Nikolaï’s drawing perfectly on a new piece of paper.

It was a subjugation spell pretty useful for a librarian. The woman was an Aspirant, probably of the 2nd circle and she was older than Nikolaï, certainly around the same age as Orsana’s assistants. The Tower offered different jobs to help its students support their studies. Working in the library was probably one of the most stable jobs that an Aspirant could wish for. It was safe but you probably needed to pass an exam to qualify for it. The majority of the students had to work to collect material in the huge gardens surrounding the Tower. It required no specific qualifications but it was dangerous.

The librarian cast another spell on the piece of paper which started to fold on itself a precise way. After a few seconds, the piece of paper had taken the shape of a bird. The paper bird started to move and flapped its wings before taking off. The librarian and Nikolaï followed the flying bird through the bookshelves.

Nikolaï was slowed by his crutches but he did his best to not let the spell be wasted. This kind of spell was temporary and he didn’t want to pay for it again. The paper bird was animated by Subjugation Arcane but it had also been given to him the ability to find the written pattern by a divination spell from the Mystical Arcane.

Mystical Arcane users were not very common, not because it was a specially hard topic but because it took time to produce real results. Most Aspirants studied its theory because it was focusing a lot on Ether and how to reveal it but learning practical application from it couldn’t be as rewarding as others in the short terms.

The librarian woman had probably spent months mastering the spell she just used and even if it was very useful for the position she occupied it would not be in other contexts.

The paper bird had indicated two books before the spell stopped and the paper unfolded on itself. Nikolaï brought them to a consulting table with difficulty. Seeing him struggling the librarian seemed to take pity on him. Once they arrived on the table she cast two spells on the unfolded paper and the original one.

The two pieces of paper moved like leaves in the wind before sliding into the books, at the pages the drawing was pictured. The spell was not part of what Nikolaï had paid for.

He had been so surprised by this simple gesture that he didn’t find the words. He nodded to the woman with a smile and she nodded back in acknowledgement. Before leaving him to his reading she turned the table’s sandglass upside down. Consulting the books was not free of charge in the library and student needed to rent a consulting table to do so. The price of the table depended on the time attached to it.

Nikolaï had rented a half-hour table and had no intention of losing even a second of it. He opened the first one which was a theoretical essay called : Causal rapport between the different elementiums. The subject was widely treated in many books so Nikolaï looked directly for the page and skip the intro. He found his drawing in a section describing a projection enginery.

Nikolaï read the page many times while keeping an eye on the sandglass.

He then moved on to the other book which was an anthology of family banners and crests through the ages. It didn't talk about Arcane directly but referenced Arcanists and noble families in the Empire.

Nikolaï ignored the questions forming in his head. It was not yet the time to make sense of what he had read and what he was reading. Poor Aspirants like Nikolaï developed a habit of not processing the information as they read but focusing and memorizing it for a time when the clock was not ticking.

Nikolaï had done that for the 3 years he had been in the Tower and even after all he had been through, he was so familiar with the process that he didn’t struggle as he thought he would. He took few notes to cement things in his mind and avidly memorized the important parts.

The half-hour ended and Nikolaï put the books away before leaving the library. He was going back to his room, thinking about what he had read. He took a break between two floors and sagged against the wall.

The “projector” described in the first book was a tool built to make elementium visible to the naked eye and it was built around a Sigil called the Third Eye. It was a gift that Arcanists of the 8ht circle developed naturally.

While recalling the words about the projector he was looking at the torch on the wall in front of him. All around the flame were dots of light and Nikolaï couldn't help but wonder if they were really chromatic aberrations like he had thought. Maybe the things he was seeing was elementium.

The thought was preposterous, he was not an Arcanist of the 8ht circle. In fact, he could not be so far from it now that he had lost his Ether Rune. He was not even a real Aspirant anymore.

Nikolaï started to think about the second book. In it, he found a part of his drawing on the banner of an ancient noble family where a significant number of his members were Arcanists. The banner of a family was often linked to their history but they were free to change it at will. It was not rare for an heir to change it when he took over the title of leader of his family.

But when a family banner displayed a Sigil in it there was a specific meaning. It was an affirmation of power and to do so they had to prove to the Empire the existence of hereditary traits. By displaying the Sigil the family showed that they possessed secrets rituals to improve the quality of their Arcanists.

The Messenger House was the most known example in Nikolaï’s era. The clan was under the direct control of the Emperor.

Nikolaï refocused on what he had read. The family had now disappeared through weddings and wars but at the peak of their power, they didn’t seem to have an Arcanist of the 8ht circle even if they had a large amount of Arcanist of the 5th and 6th circle through the ages. Nikolaï wondered if it’s meant that they had a version of the Third Eyes without reaching the level of existence of an 8th circle Arcanist.

The truth sank in Nikolaï mind and he couldn’t ignore it. He could see the elementiums. How could he have such a gift ? He didn’t know. He had no link to the ancient family from the book and nothing in Orsana experiment was aiming at this kind of development.

“_ How ?” Whispered Nikolaï to himself.