“Damned robe, I can’t even feel the wind,” complained Zai to his brother, the siblings sitting on the edge of the observatory, legs dangling over the huge fall, gazing into the blue morning sky and the view. It was a hell of a view in fact, but the brothers were both preoccupied with different things, though they kept their usual banter with little thought about it needed.

“At least I don’t have to look at your ugly face so often anymore,” Erst replied half-heartedly.

“You would be surprised if you could look into a mirror before it broke.”

The clearing of a throat made them both turn and see Orsa, to whom they waved. “Boys, being a Tainted is harsh, but it’s still better than falling off a cliff, believe me.”

Erst and Zai got up walked towards their new mentor, who put her hands on their shoulders and turned them back to the view. What a contrast it was, the wide mountains on one side, and the wide desolation of their homeland on the other one. Though they were up high, they could see the burned husk of a once mighty fortress of the Empire of Kalidor, a constant reminder of their past and their duty. From an Empire to a gathering of poor Oasis villages, ever fearing roving bandits, warlords, magical beasts and the many dangers left from the Fall of the Empire. After a moment of silence, the Tainted that had become a motherly figure for the two in the last couple of days, patted their shoulders.

“Boys, the Tainted that was coming to teach you hasn’t made contact in three days. We believe that the Sleeping Horror must have attacked him and his escort…” said Orsa, shaking her head at the loss.

“The Sleeping Horror is real?!” asked Zai, his eyes widening at the revelation.

“I’m afraid so, Zai. Most of them exist, or at least existed, though some tales are exaggerated.”

Frowning, Erst asked, “So who will teach us then, Orsa?”

“I will,” she smiled at the brothers, who answered in kind.

“Why don’t you give us some pointers then?” asked Zai, grinning mischievously.

“So you want unfair advantages over your pairs?” She replied.

“Of course not,” He said, mockingly indignant, “Everything I do, I do only for our noble Order!”

Erst scoffed and slugged Zai’s shoulder in reply, still unhappy at his brother’s attitude about their sacred duty. Still, he kept himself shut and looked at Orsa expectantly. The Tainted shook her head at the antics, and gazed behind her shoulder to make sure no one was going to interrupt them at the observation post. They probably wouldn’t, most of the aspirants were being worn down by incessant training, and the unfortunate Tainted aspirants were obliged to suffer through the Paladin aspirants’ physically taxing training. The brothers only escaped because they still had this last day of leave after their suffering in the Activation.

“Well… Everyone knows a little bit about mana, or magical energy, I suppose. It’s a simple concept, though it has its complications, and there are a lot of theories about some of the more advanced ramifications…” Orsa was saying, when she felt Zai’s magical energy stirring and stopped. “Do not try to mess around with your mana before you receive specific orders to do so, Zai. They weren’t kidding. The punishments are serious.”

Chagrined, the boy grimaced and stopped, giving her a nod of assent.

“Mana is mana, then?” asked Erst, distinctly unimpressed.

“Yeah, young man. But there are different types of mana, with different affinities, though they can all be filtered eventually.”

“Elemental mana and so?”

“That’s right. And other more obscure types too… The one I was meaning to tell you about is life mana, or death mana, depending on who you ask,” said the Tainted, stopping in expectation of another question, but the boys kept silent, awaiting her explanations. “At the beginning of the training, you’ll have to study a lot of magical history, and one of the most taught topics is The Witching Order. They were depraved on their research and use of life mana, wasting countless lives with their experiments and tests. Some of the Horrors are actually their creations.”

“How could they do something like that with life mana?” asked Erst, the brothers frowning as they tried to imagine it.

“Physical enhancements were the beginning and they weren’t so bad. Then, the mages started working on mind enhancements and things started going downhill fast. That’s when the Order started intervening, hunting them down and burning the worst of them at the stakes to make a point. Naturally, they didn’t heed the warning, and started working in even more vile things - merging and fusing animals and magical beasts, and then people.”

“Really?” Zai incredulously questioned.

“Yeah. We declared the Extermination of their Order. The Witching Order then sent their most dangerous chimeras and deranged fused people to hunt for our home base.”

“How many years ago was this, Orsa?”

“A dozen decades ago or so, Zai. The Witching Order was based mostly on Savlan, and we destroyed them, though it was bloody a conflict. Some of their damned creatures hound the Wasted Lands still, though we have made efforts to locate and exterminate them many times. It’s almost a mercy to them.”

“And what about death magic?” Erst said after he took some time digesting the information they had received so far.

“It can be a vile magic as well. All of the magical affinities can be used for evil, even elemental, and that’s part of why we exist.

“Really? What great evil can elemental magic do, besides their obvious uses in combat?” asked Zai, still not quite buying everything the Order of Kalidor was selling to its newcomers.

“Do you know what a tsunami is, Zai?” she said, receiving a nod of confirmation. “Hard to imagine here in the Wasted Lands, full of sand isn’t it? Well, one ancient Tribe washed their neighbors off the map completely after they got all their water mages together. Another one caused a giant eruption that caused famine for…”

“You can tell us about that later, Orsa!” complained Erst. “Please, tell us about death magic, don’t let him get you sidetracked.”

She chuckled at the boy’s impudence, he would discover that their relationship as teacher-student would be quite different from this casual chat between friends. She rose her hands in surrender while Zai rolled his eyes at his brother.

“Okay. Our most recent case of life magic abuse would be the Elfey. They are a people situated mostly westwards of the Realm, though they are really disorganized. Besides neutral mana and any eventual mana with affinity someone might have, there’s always life mana. It’s what lay-folk would call life force, I think. Vitality.”

“Even animals and creatures have it then?”

“Yes, Erst. It’s a common kind of mana, but it’s really hard to extract it from a living creature or people - thankfully. It’s theorized that people with a strong enough focus or power of will are completely immune to it, according to some reports we’ve heard from the Elfey Wars. The Warlocks - they are the Elfey’s mage-cast - have some unique characteristics in dealing with magic, and the most relevant one is their ability to more easily harness life mana. They are absolutely terrifying opponents to face on the battlefield, as many mages and wizards of the Realm discovered back in the day.”

“You mean they get more powerful with each enemy they fell?” asked Zai, finally getting interest in the subject.

“Not per se, they can’t really accumulate that much energy. But they can use it, and the faster they are, the bigger is the amount of mana they can ‘steal’ to cast a spell. Thankfully, their mana capacity is sub-par, that’s why they haven’t conquered the whole word.”

“That’s scary, but doesn’t sound so bad,” pondered Zai.

“Oh, that’s not the truly bad part. They have a big facility in dealing with life mana, and so the most unscrupulous of their kind started practicing rituals with the life mana of sacrifices. And as it happens in every case, their mages started getting used to sacrifice people for the extra life mana we possess.”

“Did the Order wipe them out?” asked Erst.

“I’m afraid not, Erst. They weren’t an organized group of evil magicians like we’re used to fighting, and we didn’t want to do a genocide. I believe that the Order was weakened from the war against the Witching Order as well. So, we helped the Realm and the Wizardly Order to repel and banish them from the Realms. We helped to build the Spires that powered the ritual.”

“Wizardly Order?” inquired Zai.

“That’s enough history by now, boys. Even I am starting to get bored by it. You’ll hear plenty of it from tomorrow on, don’t you worry. More than you want to, I’m sure.”

The boys bugged her a little longer for more information, but she deflected them and soon left, claiming she had to prepare for the beginning of the classes on the following day. History wasn’t looking quite the chore she imagined they would think, and the boy animatedly discussed everything she had told them.

*

*

*

Orsa had been right, the brothers agreed after history class. It seemed that all history class this period would be mind-numbingly boring. Their teacher had probably seen everything he was teaching the class about in person, because the man was probably a contemporary of the mummies he talked about, and had a similar appearance, gaunt, nearly all bones, and with a lingering smell of decay. The entire class had let out a sigh of relief when the man announced that his class was over.

The brothers would be hard-pressed to answer if he asked what they thought about their classmates, and (hopefully) future colleagues in the Tainted. The aspirants were a taciturn lot, no one particularly happy about having being singled out because of their magic potential and taken to the less glorious side of the Order. Everyone dreamed about being a Paladin, wearing the iconic resplandecent white armor and charging valiantly at the face of their enemies. No one wanted to be the covered and masked sidekick that produced most of the Paladin’s enchanted and warded equipment, and served as ranged support. And they were sidekicks with an expiration date to make things worse still.

“The Temptation” with a capital T was how most of the teachers began their classes, hammering the notion inside their heads that they must never give in, under risk of being sealed or expelled from the Order of Kalidor and hunted down. Even the damned foreign languages’ teacher started his class saying it, and the annoying man had to say it in all the languages they would have to study. Erst payed the uttermost attention to everything that was said, while Zai was divided between sleeping and trying to carve his wooden table with a pocket knife. They had almost half a day of classes, and at least for now, most of them were the kind where their butts didn’t leave the chairs.

One of the rare and fortunate exceptions was the class after the language’s teachers from what they had gathered. It was the magical instruction class, the one that Orsa herself was responsible for. After their teacher ended the introductory languages’ class, Zai nearly jumped out of his chair, half-cheering. That earned him a dark look from the exiting teacher, but the boy pretended it had nothing to do with it, while Erst face-palmed. The man would mark his brother, and probably him as well, if he knew his luck. Still, he could agree with the feeling, though he was not stupid enough to show it. This would be the most interesting class of all.

There must have been a couple dozen Tainted aspirants, and the group moved with uncommon enthusiasm through the mountain-fort to reach the courtyard where Orsa’s class would happen. The sweaty and weary Paladin aspirants looked dumbfounded at the upbeat group when they crossed paths.

“While the sword-wavers are carrying heavy sacks of grain up and down the fort, we’ll be learning magic!” exclaimed Zai to his brother, who merely grunted in reply, wanting to hide his own enthusiasm. Magic was one of the biggest problems in the world, but no one could say it wasn’t interesting.

They found Orsa seating on a bank, and she gestured for them to situate themselves likewise around her, and began a explanation much like the one she had given them before, though it was a lot more formal, and cited more theories and less interesting practical examples. All the students took notes attentively during half the class, until the Tainted clapped her hands.

“It’s time for something truly interesting now. I’ll check your affinities, and you have my permission to *cautiously* practice moving your mana in the meantime.”

She began testing her students, jotting down on a notepad each of their affinities, and stopping occasionally to berate the more enthusiastic beginners. There were some completely unaligned and a few with more than one element. But most of them had only one and of the four classical elements, fire, water, earth and air. There were others with more uncommon ones, like ice, lightning, light (flesh would be the more technical name), and even a dark aligned one (there was no way that the Order would allow a necromancer, though, so that path was barred to the girl). The Tainted held off on telling them their affinities for now. She left the brothers’ tests to the end of the class.

“Let’s see, boys. We can begin with Erst.”

The boy nodded, and approached, working hard to avoid trembling. The last time he’d done something like that, Orsa had started the Activation, and he’d suffered terribly. It was of no help that he hadn’t seen any of the others having a bad reaction to Affinity Testing - he hadn’t seen it happen in the other one either. Orsa put a hand on his shoulder and focused, starting a small chant. And then other. And another. It went on for quite some time.

Luckily, he passed through no such a hardship this time. Still, Orsa opened her wide eyes after a while, and gestured for him to go and his brother to come near her. Zai went through the same process, but in his turn, she took even longer. After Zai’s turn, Orsa looked a bit disappointed as she wrote down on his notepad. After a little while, she called an end to class. The Tainted didn’t linger to talk with the brothers, though they were hopeful she would tell them something earlier.

She sighed and talked to herself silently after she got away from the band of aspirants. One of them was impressive and uncommon, but the other one was really rare and dangerous. Mind. One of the most hated affinities, even more so than Death. Dying was awful, but losing your free will, that… that was a nightmare. She would have to be very careful with that information.