Well here it is... Hope you'll enjoy it. The original plan was to pace it up by the 7th of 8th chapter but i think it'll take a 'little' more. The first arc is essentially introduction. Essentially. Still plot but... I don't even.

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The room was dimly lit, with light changing its shape as the little flame danced behind the glass of the oil lamp. Outside of the window, night sky, clouds covering the stars and only lonely moon, unbound by the clouds, illuminated the never-sleeping city, almost reaching the horizon by its colossal frame. Soon, just a month or two and the moon will come so close to the land that it will seem as big as the world itself.

Some said that there is a place where there is no night but only dusk, sunrise and a blue day, the Twilight Kingdom. Placed in the center of the world, surrounded by the mountains, built on the mountains, it had a majestic castle, the tallest castle in the world created by the best artisans from ivory, moonstone and sapphire, erected in the heart of the kingdom, the Night City. People said the castle’s highest tower, made out of sapphire with elder magic, transparent as the glass, turned dull dusk rays, into the bright blue light, casting twilight day everywhere it fell. Twice each year, when the moon is the closest to the land, it reaches the tip of The Blue Castle, touching it barely, forcing the old elder magics to once more reawaken, creating, giving birth to a small blue sun, under moon’s gentle glow, colouring her in blue, sending the twilight glow across the whole world.

She was looking forward to see it.

Looking back at the drawing of the rune, she sighed. It was another failure of a crappy drawing. She looked at the book, staring at the imprinted symbol, with measures of sizes, properties and etc., then dropped her eyes at the table, at the parchment with her... ‘mess’.

Drawing never was her thing. She didn’t like the activity and the activity didn’t like her. Mutual hate, mutual war. She just never could draw that one line without screwing up and that always frustrated her, making each her ‘masterpiece’ go in the bin, torn to pieces on the way. She could’ve easily done it, probably if they knew here a concept of a ruler, or at least gave her a pencil or something and not this damn brush, with an ink cursed to spill of its edge ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Even though she was calling it a drawing, in reality it was closer to calligraphy rather than anything, but she was too angry to acknowledge this point by now.

She grabbed the paper and violently torn it to shreds with visible bloodlust glowing in her eyes. Once the paper was dead, she took a deep breath and grabbed another clean sheet. She glared at it for ten seconds or so, then glared at the brush, the runework set inside it really pissed her off, it felt somehow wrong. Despite that she still grabbed it and dipped it in the ink. She took a deep breath before she lifted the brush out of ink, and then quickly holding her breath moved to the parchment, carefully placing the bristles on the paper. With a focus of a gem cutter, she moved her hand, slightly,slightly to the side. Success the first line is done. Just 12 more… And then her hand, entrapped in invisible threads, twitched. Some bristles escaping the pressure, moved to the side, sending the accursed droplets of ink in the air, colouring the paper with lovely black fireworks.

She looked at the horror, gaze cold as the stone.

She stared at it, stared at it as if her gaze would burn a hole through the paper. A droplet fell from her paintbrush, adding another pretty firework to the inverted night sky. She glared at the paintbrush, the hateful creation, the monstrosity…

She took a deep breath, placed the paintbrush in its brush stand and moved her hand through the hair, letting the fingers feel the touch of her golden locks and then smirked.

“’Transcribe the rune on the paper and enchant it. The paper will become as solid as rock. It’s easy!’ Easy. Easy. Oh, very easy. So very easy …- she spoke in calm tone, recalling Mistress’ Varghnsslffpft- whatever expression as she set up the assignment. And being the naïve herself she actually believed it.

“Easy, truly easy… EASY MY ASS! Look at this shit! Is this what you call easy??! What the hell do you fu…” – Allana couldn’t contain her inner hysteria and rage, exploding in a violent storm of ranting and self-pity. Good thing or not, her only audience was herself. But a good thing for sure was the wards set on each of the rooms not letting any sounds escape or enter the room, else there would be people storming her room this moment. She spent whole 2 hours, 2 HOURS on this. It was the only homework left to do, the only damn assignment which was (surprise, surprise) due tomorrow.

She decimated the paper to pieces with a violent roar, adding another cluster of torn paper, to the floor made from brown bark, littered with white, creating a small snowy mountain around her chair.

She took out another piece of paper and then looked at the brush. It was the brush given by the teacher, the only thing that is able to dip in this special ink that the Mistress also provided. Allana knew that there something wrong with the brush, she could sense the faint threads caressing her hand whenever she touched it. She could try to disenchant the wrongness out of it, but was too afraid to break the actual enchantment… or the brush itself. She wielded weaving with raw power rather than finesse, after all. Where she lacked skill, she simply complimented with her tremendous strength, though she was careful about it, not revealing too much of it. But right then she was just about to give up this principle.

“Screw this.” – she whispered, stretching her hand towards solidified ink, frozen blackness in the transparent crystal vial, feeling the eerie power coming from it.

At first the ink didn’t budge, but then Allana closed her eyes and imagined a lake, as she always did whenever she wanted to invoke more of the power. A wide lake, as wide as the world, as clear as ‘now’, as bottomless as time, flowing into the rivers leading somewhere far away, far into places shrouded by the dark of aberrance and inconsistence. A massive tree the size of the lake, yet unlike it afraid of the dark, with its silver leaves bathed in mercy of grey light, the domain of logic and existence. A dark blur in the light, the scribble of a human shape on a white sheet of paper, standing there gazing at the tree and the lake with its eyeless enshrouded face that didn’t seem to be a face, for the dark was its eyes. It reached its fogged limb, what supposed to be a hand attempting to grasp the platinum bark. The dark passed the trunk as the tree was not there, but an illusion of its presence, yet it was there as sky exists as the moon floats in the night. The shade pulled back, turning its gaze for the lake, walking towards it, entering it…

The ink budged, the droplets of it slowly floating out of the vial, connecting with each, forming a symbol, a perfect copy of a rune from the book.

Allana pictured a command, a thought instructing the floating ink to imprint itself on the parchment, and then started to weave smaller ideas around, thoughts regarding the weight, mass, forces applied on it, forces needed to be applied on it. Just a second ago, she had no idea about all of this, but once her mind connected to the threads, to the entanglement of webs, all this knowledge flooded her, clearing her mind of everything else. Ink slowly descended on the paper, first barely touching it then etching itself on stark sheet, sacrificing all of its self to create the symbol.

As she let go of her power, a sharp headache invaded her, increasing in its severity by each passing moment. Her ears started ringing and eyes water. She always experienced this pain whenever she wanted to invoke the weaving stronger than her mind could deal with, though she lied to everyone calling it the usual headaches. Principal even made an attempt to ‘heal’ her but eventually reluctantly settled for ‘an otherworldly incurable condition’. No one knew the real truth, but he despite his words still seemed suspicious. At times she passed out, which generally caused an uproar, but with time everything becomes mundane, even someone on the floor having a fit.

The longer she stayed at this place, the better she understood how it works. Principal said that this is a den of snakes and he was right, except he forgot to mention, the biggest one and the most poisonous was no one but himself. Succeeding the institution at the young age of 50, seeking to find new potential to strengthen Amrolk’s forces against warring clans of Hjaalmar, Mridrazl Foregvenn was a master strategist and legendary war-mage known for his formidable iron manipulating skills. The previous principals Joran The Lake, Vhsheil The Tree, Forgnren The Owl,( and so on, the number exceeds that of a thousand with some even being still alive), for ten generations remained devoted to science and research of magic, where him Mridrazl The Hawk was obviously of the other kind, the warring, the ambitious kind. Named such by the Oracle, he was destined to soar through the battlefields on winds of carnage, until his wings soaked with blood will rust away and he will disappear in the large shadow he himself would create.

It was only by chance she found out the principal’s true side, a simple chance, and even by the magic she wasn’t even aware she invoked. It happened during the usual ‘shielding’ classes that she and Warax attended.

Warax was one of her closest friends in these 3 months she spent in Amrolk. They attended similar classes and she was fun to hang out with, if not a little too up about herself but nobody is expected to be perfect. She was only 20, older than Allana just by 3 years, had strangely coloured green hair, which looked almost real, despite them being utterly ridiculous, brown eyes and fair skin. She wasn’t far off on the beauty list from Allana either, making Warax slightly better looking but still average. Ironically, she was also the person Allana flung in the air when she was pissed off. Warax was the one throwing those spiteful filthy words at her and she was about to punch her anyway, so the effect was desirable. Than Warax apologized and helped out Allana with lessons and learning Ersille, which is just slightly different from the Common Tongue. Naturally, Allana still didn’t trust her, but that still didn’t stop her from becoming friends with Warax.

The teacher told them to practice the ward ‘wall’ - 4 weaved circles, with 5 triangles in each circle and 8 cubes in each triangle. It was one of the easiest shielding wards out there, protecting their minds from dream-wraiths, thought-thieves, dieyelales, taintlings, blotreks and many more at least before they actually will start trying to invade your mind. Allana, as usual was done within minutes of the start of the class, and found her attention wondering from the transparent glass ball, dimly glowing in red due to her ward, to Warax at the side meditating, weaving the symbol in the air with her mind, setting up the invisible wall.

Allana closing her eyes, in obvious boredom, imagined herself slowly leaving, passing through her own flesh, up, to float in the air. She viewed the whole class, people and desks blurred in shade, like in an eerie dream, limited by imagination, the instability of her thought. She focused and pictured Warax right beside her but then she was there. She floated towards her, easily passing through the golden halo around her, touching her.

Images, sounds, feelings, blurs, tastes, smells, pain, all of these flowed into Alanna’s mind, like a crushing torrent of water, first smashing the mind then drowning it in itself. From the first memory of seeing her mother, to the first kiss, to the time she first hurt herself, to the first time she failed, to the first disappointment, to the first success, to dull school days filled with nothing but hard work and constant homework… till the moment she attempted the shielding of the ‘wall’ and right afterwards seeing the blinding red sun.

Thoughts jumbled between, and with, each of themselves, her memories intertwined with that of not her own, creating mindlessness in which she submerged, forcing her to simply stare at Warax, but not really look at her, looking through her, until the moment later her eyes rolled back and Alanna fell on the floor, blacking out.

With the mind resting, the memories organized themselves in the subconscious; possibly thrown there by the powers she herself wasn’t fully aware of. Once she was awake, memories dulled by means unknown to seem rather like a movie flashed before her, showing the ploys principal set up against her, the truths hidden from her. The principal told Warax to abuse her, enforced it in her mind, forcing to hate Allana, to truly despise her, storing the charm and memories of the meeting deep down to the depths of her mind. When it played its trick, he erased the mark, placing another one, tempering with her emotions and recording everything she sees, making her feel guilty towards Alanna, encouraging her to become friends with her.

She looked back at the paper, her ears still ringing, a black rune on stark white. Despite the headache she invoked the power, weaving patterns of thousands and thousands of different shapes from circles to octagons, moulding each around the symbol of paper. When she was done, the paper looked exactly the same as it looked before, but only looked. Those with even a trickle of the power would’ve felt that the threads flowed strong through it, weaved itself around it, covering the sheet of paper from anything beyond them, protecting.

“Finally…” – she muttered.

Rubbing her eyes, she turned off the lamp, stood up, walked step or two away from the desk and then fell… on her bed, yawning.

Tomorrow, same routine as today - healing, runecrafting, shielding and combat classes, calligraphy, element research, biology and biological implementation of weaving, actual weaving with needle and thread. The last was compulsory for all students regardless of the gender.

Alanna covered herself in sheets, she was already in her night gown and had a shower right before the homework. She closed her eyes and drifted far far away, to the otherworldly realm of dreams and memories.

She saw her mother, her sister, her father, friends, boyfriend, everyone that she held dear to her heart.

It was almost reticent in the room, silence exalting the subtle beauty and tranquil majesty of the great pale she-orb and only a quiet, almost silent, whimper could be heard in her room.

Ah yes, forgot one thing. The cover page for this FF is actually moon and sun cycle with moon in the center and sun going in the circle around it.

Everything else will be unfolded gradually/eventually.

Cheers!