Chapter 12 — Troubled Dreams

Linton relieved himself, yawning against the back of his hand. The stream of urine produced a happy gurgle as it hit the toilet bowl.

It was about time for bed. He hoped he’d get in at least a few hours of good sleep. He wasn’t often graced with such luxury.

Finishing, he wiped, flushed, and did up his pants. With a chuckle, he recalled having to teach Aeva how to work a toilet earlier that day. He couldn’t imagine that wildkin simply defecated in the woods all their lives, but apparently that was their way.

Next, he set to brushing his teeth, sluggishly working up a lather. He stared at himself in the mirror, tired rings under his eyes. Inspecting himself closer, he found that black roots had started growing into his blue hair.

Linton spat in the sink. “Fucker,” he muttered. Brushing with one hand, he raised the other to his hair and ran it through the stubborn curls. “Farga.”

The black in his hair slowly paled and shifted in color, eventually matching the same electric shade of blue as the rest. Satisfied, he nodded to himself. He finished brushing his teeth, gurgled water, and was left looking at his own reflection once more.

With nothing else to set his mind to, guilt crept in. He remembered the boy from earlier that day, the one who had been carried away by truthers. Linton knew all too well that the boy’s tender age would not keep him from being harshly punished. The reeducation camps run by the Department of Public Compliance were not known for their leniency.

You should have saved him, his conscience nagged. You had the ability. Why didn’t you?

“Ridiculous,” Linton muttered in rebuttal to himself. “I can’t save everyone. That was never the plan. Trying would only result in failure and death. It would compromise everything I’ve worked for.”

But Linton couldn’t forget about the boy. The memory pestered him.

He went to bed with a bitter lump in his stomach.

***

Aeva awoke from a light slumber to a scream of terror.

She rolled off the floor onto her feet, moonlight falling in through the window.

Another scream.

It sounded like it came from this floor.

She rushed into the hall, and further cries guided her into Linton’s room. He thrashed in his bed, covers around his waist as his arms flailed weakly, head tossing.

He looked pitiful.

Aeva shook him, but he would not stir from his unsettled sleep. She slapped him across the face. He sat up straight with a start, abruptly quieting. He looked blearily at her, one side of his smooth, gaunt face illuminated by moonlight, the other wreathed in shadow.

“Why are you here?” he asked, frowning.

“You were calling out in your sleep,” Aeva explained.

He rubbed the back of his head and sighed. He fell back against his pillow. “Yeah, sorry about that. Forgot to mention my… night terrors. The others have gotten used to it.”

“I see.” She stood away from the bed. “Will you be alright?”

“Yeah.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Good.”

She turned to leave.

Something made her pause.

She looked back.

“I had another vision,” she said.

“That so?” Linton asked.

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I do not know what Gjurin expects me to learn from you people. You are weak-willed, capricious, and duplicitous.”

Linton sat up. “Maybe a little weakness is just what you need. Being hard doesn’t make you strong. It makes you brittle.”

Aeva padded over to the bed and sat down on the very edge. She let her head sink into her hands, thumbs playing with her horns.

“I must become stronger,” she said. “Otherwise, I will not be able to wield the Crown. Only the worthy are allowed to place it upon their brow. Anything else is an insult to Gjurin.”

“I saw you put it on,” Linton said. “The other test subjects at the Arcanex just exploded the moment it touched their heads. You’ve still got your limbs attached.”

That made her feel better. Even if she wasn’t considered worthy, she had been allowed to live. That had to mean something.

“You’ll get there,” Linton continued. “All in due time.”

“The magic you wield,” Aeva said, looking up at him. “Could you… teach me?”

Linton smiled apologetically. “It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. It took me years to learn what I know. My whole life, really. You might as well ask me to make you a surgeon in a day.”

“I see.”

He rubbed his chin, staring off into the darkness. “Maybe there is one thing I could teach you.”

Aeva bowed her head and set her jaw. It was humiliating, having to prostrate herself in this fashion before a human, but Gjurin’s dictate was firm, and could not be questioned.

“Some basics, then,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Within the realm of sorcery, there are five disciplines. Psychomancy, the art of manipulating the mind. Vivimancy, the art of manipulating the body, and life as a whole. Geomancy, the art of manipulating one’s surroundings. Astromancy, the art of manipulating reality itself. And lastly, auramancy, the art of manipulating the soul. That’s the one we’re interested in.”

He touched his own chest, then hers.

“You may not think it, since I’m only a filthy human and all, but our souls are, functionally speaking, identical. Predictably enough, the soul appears to hold an important role in religious worship. Those engaged in fruitful prayer usually emit low levels of white anima—which is associated with auramancy—even if they aren’t proficient in its use.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Aeva asked.

“Patience,” Linton said with a chuckle. “I’m getting to that part. If you want to do magic, real magic, you can’t just speak the magic word and expect miracles to happen. You have to understand the moving pieces behind it. There has to be intent behind the words.”

“I… think I understand.”

He drew up his legs in a cross and let his hands rest in his lap. Light played across his naked chest, tracing the lean curves of his thin form.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but faith itself is not as intangible a concept as it might seem. It’s a vital resource. The sustenance upon which gods subsist.

“When you pray, you are beseeching an idea. If many people pray to the same thing, that idea can become real. Like a thousand raindrops coming together to form a puddle. Prayer offers power to a deity, and in exchange, they may choose to return it to their worshippers. Divine magic is unlike any other, both a combination of all five arcane disciplines and divorced from any of them.

“As you may have gathered by now, arcane magic is exerted through the use of runes. It’s both how spells are cast and how enchantments are made. There just so happens to be an auramantic rune that is used to beseech deities and otherworldly entities. It’s called Draga.”

“Draga,” Aeva repeated. “We have this word in Gjosi. Draegir. It means ‘peace’.”

“I can imagine. Different versions of the same runes are used in all sorts of cultures. There are actually scholars at the Northmark Academy for Arcane Learning who study magical accents. Isn’t that kinda cool?”

“Focus.”

Linton cleared his throat. “Right. Anyway. When you speak the word, focus on it. On what you want from it, which is to establish a genuine connection of some kind with your god.”

Aeva closed her eyes. “Draga,” she spoke.

Nothing.

“Don’t expect anything to happen right away,” Linton said. “It requires practice, trial and error. Auramancy is generally considered the easiest discipline to learn, but it’s still a finicky process. The biggest hurdle is teaching your anima network—which is the part of your body attuned with magic—to produce white anima.”

“How do I do that, then?” Aeva sighed.

She wasn’t so certain this would be worth the effort, after all.

“Go with your gut,” Linton said. “Like I mentioned, there’s a lot of trial and error. Right now, your body has raw anima flowing through it—a byproduct of life itself, a powerful force of creation and destruction. If you coax it just right, your body will eventually convert raw anima into anima of the type you need from the sheer stress placed upon it. Once you’ve done that, you can learn to recreate it.”

He tapped his chin with an index finger. “We learned some cheat methods at the academy. Converting different types of anima tend to have a unique sensation. Keeping that in mind can help speed up the process of discovery. Auramancy, let’s see… I think I’ve heard it likened to keeping a feather floating by continually blowing on it.”

“That is impossible,” Aeva said.

“Magic is all about doing the impossible,” Linton said with a wink. “You have about a day to practice while the other half of the Bluebirds travel to Spitforge.”

“I will do my best.”

Linton chuckled. “I’m joking. It takes months to learn the basics of a rune. Add on another year if you’re starting from scratch with anima shaping. You might have some sort of a head start since you already have a connection with the divine, but still…”

“Oh.”

Aeva clenched her fists.

It can never be easy, can it?