Micah

It was a couple days yet before Firenze or Gaillard were able to do anything with Micah, which gave him plenty of time on his own to devour the book on herblore, its content as dry as the leaves it described.

The continued novelty of Sidhe kept the content from being boring; every time his attention began to drift away from the text, he would refocus on the sense of wonder he felt that all he was reading was real and relevant knowledge to this world. He would stare at the images inside, like the lovingly-drawn, giant scarlet flower with long, wispy tendrils for petals, with its spade-shaped pink leaves, and imagine it in the wilds of Sidhe. Hours were spent in this way.

No one paid him much attention aside from a few curious or suspicious stares, so outside of reading he was able to explore the compound and watch or eavesdrop on his fellow Vanguardians. He discovered he was not only able to automatically understand Cotidean, but any language — as soon as it was spoken in his vicinity, he was fluent. He felt an incredible sense of power, as if Gaillard had given him a cheat code, one that he intended to utilize as much as possible.

Without any natural light from above ground, it was hard to know just how many days passed in the caverns, but for the first few cycles of waking and sleeping, he kept himself occupied while his thoughts continually returned to his excitement and impatience to learn the things Gaillard had promised.

This desire was finally realized one morning when Micah was told to report to one of the training rooms. Upon arrival, there was a small group of fae already present, forming a loose ring in the center of the cavern. Slightly apart from the fae was one of the tall, horselike creatures Allie had called bellicar, leaning comfortably next to a rack of javelins as he watched the fae.

“Are you Firenze?” he asked, straightforward and already moderately confident in the answer, having put two and two together from conversations with Gaillard and Danica.

“Yes, I’m your new instructor,” he said warmly, dark eyes panning to the human. “I’ve heard good things about you from the mage.”

Firenze gave Micah a small respectful dip of the head in acknowledgment. Micah returned the gesture, relieved that the bellicar hadn’t held out a hand to shake; he found Firenze’s eerily-long fingers a little unsettling. The bellicar in general had anatomy unfamiliar to Micah’s eyes: he had muscular, cat-like hind legs ending in hooves, but his forelegs were long, wiry, and ended in eerie, long-fingered hands that brushed the floor in front of him when he stood in neutral. His coat was sleek and russet-colored, but his braided mane was dark as coffee. He wore vambraces on his upper limbs and greaves on his flanks, connected by leather straps that criss-crossed his chest and hips, binding a pair of gunmetal-grey, guardless sabres to his back.

The strangeness of his appearance was successfully offset by his soft, round, brown eyes and gentle temperament.

“It’s good to meet you,” Micah said.

“Likewise. We will train here, but only as soon as Danica handles this match,” said Firenze, nodding his head toward the fae. Micah heard the name of one of the few people he knew here, and turned his head, interest keen on his face.

Danica and another fay stood in the middle of the wide, loose circle of perhaps a dozen of her students. She stretched lithely, rolling her neck and head and shoulders, smiling at her opponent with something that could have been read either as excitement or amusement, but probably was a lighthearted mixture of both. Her opponent looked nervous underneath a compensatory scowl, cracking his knuckles. The students didn’t seem to know who to root for and possibly just wanted to see the fight in general, some of them switching between names and others just taking up simple goads to get on with it.

“She does this sometimes, when the students get overconfident,” remarked Firenze.

“Are you warning me that you teach this way, as well?” Micah asked, eliciting a chuckle.

“It depends on what you respond to,” replied the bellicar, which Micah had to admit sounded like a fair response. “But it does offer a good opportunity for you to glimpse the strigamyr in action… of a kind,” he revised.

And a good opportunity it was.

The student was the first to dive in, going on the attack to prevent Dani from doing the same. He jabbed at her head a few times, testing, and she bent slightly backwards, easily dipping her head away and around the strikes, her center of motion as stable as her smile. She performed a quick half-moon sweep with her foot along the ground, forcing the other fay back to keep his feet underneath him.

The fay tried again, darting into close range and jamming his right foot down to try to stomp Dani’s instep. They were not moving particularly quickly, but Micah, with so little combat experience, was hardly able to process what happened as it did: Dani moved a half-step to avoid the fay’s stomp, but with his new stance inside hers, he was able to use his left foot to push out her other foot, widening her stance past her stable point. Or, that’s what he intended, but instead Dani widened her feet with ease and ducked low, one hand going to the fay’s thigh and sweeping up powerfully, wheeling the other over his center and right onto his back.

Micah could tell that the other fay was testing boundaries, and Danica was barely trying, letting him see how serious he would have to be. Micah would have thought she was toying with him, but her face was unmalicious, her attitude that of a mother tiger teaching her cubs to pounce. Embarrassed, her student thought it was the former.

“Fight me seriously,” he exclaimed, frustrated, rocking on his back to kip up to his feet. He dove in again without hesitating, bracing his core and throwing hard, angry punches at whatever surface she presented.

Danica seemed to move like a leaf in the wind, her hands appearing where his fists would land and glancing them off to the side. There was no energy or effort behind her deflections, simply the force of her student’s blows wasted and petering out without making contact. Her dark braid whipped behind her like a snake following her movements.

The fay changed tactics, sweeping a low half-moon as she had, and then performing an over-the-top backflip, its zenith a kick that would have clocked her jaw like an uppercut, had she still been standing in the same place. Dani had already moved well away and was in place for when he landed on his hands, and, his balance upset and his orientation upside down, he was entirely defenseless for her high-arcing kick that caught him in the torso. He crashed to the side several feet away.

For all that, her kick had been gentle. Everyone in the room, including Micah, could tell that if she had put real force into it, his ribs would have been shattered. Instead he only rose to a crouch, clutching his side and coughing. He was angry now, but to his credit, he didn’t allow it to blind him. Instead, he paused for a moment, appraising Danica as she stood at a slight distance. Her smile showed her approval of his pause to gather himself.

“Do you want critique?” she asked.

Her student grimaced and nodded, rising to his feet.

“The backflip was unnecessary and only served to put you at a disadvantage. You rely too much on your own force to drive your blows. You thought to take the offensive so that I could not get in a strike, but you neglect the use of my kinetic force, which can also be turned to your advantage,” she listed off matter-of-factly, and then asked, “Do you want to continue?”

The anger faded from her opponent’s face, and he shook his head. The battle was over. Micah would have confessed disappointment, only because Danica had obviously shown so little of her real ability.

“We’ll resume overmorrow,” Dani said to her students as they dispersed, and she crossed to the younger fay and patted him on the back, offering him quiet encouragement Micah could not hear at a distance.

“So, what she does, that’s strigamyr?” Micah asked Firenze, impressed.

“Something close to it,” replied the other. “Danica uses a hybrid style, but the elements of what you saw today figure heavily into its foundations. I had truthfully thought she would demonstrate something more impressive, but she was rather mild.”

Dani spotted them off to the side as her class cleared out, and she gave them a wave before departing as well.

Their classroom now free, Firenze began with the formal teaching.

“I apologize for the delay in the last few days, but it could not be helped. I will try not to waste your time with trivialities. Gaillard has requested that I teach you the fighting arts of my people — strigamyr, as you’ve learned. I come from the bellicar of Sitis, where the strigamyr has a long, honorable history in battle.” A smile lit his horsey features. “We do not fight like the Hyperborean fae, so you will see none of their acrobatics.”

Micah had already spent some time watching a few of Dani’s other soldiers, and had noted that although undoubtedly skilled, they seemed to spend a lot of energy and time tumbling around each other and not trading blows. He said as much to Firenze.

“Strigamyr stresses efficiency and versatility, with the idea to dispatch opponents as quickly as possible. What Dani was doing, in essence, though she herself is also prone to being the acrobat at times.”

He proceeded to sit on the floor of the training cavern, and signaled Micah to do the same.

“Are we going to be fighting?” Micah asked as he did so.

“Shortly, but patience. We must shape the riverbed before allowing the stream to flow. Do you know much about the bellicar?” he asked.

Micah shook his head.

“As the eldar are to fire, so the bellicar are to the wind and air — historically. The proper magics of the goddess Spira have been lost to the bellicar, but still the strigamyr lives on in form.”

“What do you mean?” Micah asked.

“The forms of strigamyr past were once part of wind magicepts, and a true spectacle to behold. Over time the magicepts have sadly fallen out of practice, and today our fighting styles bear the wind in name only — the cyclone strike, tempest shield, and so forth.”

He drew a circle in the rocky dirt of the floor.

“There are three mindsets in which you must learn to reside, not just as a warrior, but as a being with passions and desires.” He looked up quizzically, as if a thought had struck him. “Humans have passions, yes?”

Micah exhaled in a small puff of a chuckle.

“Yes, definitely.”

“Hrm,” the bellicar responded with a nod as he mentally catalogued the information. “The first mindset is ohugr, or ‘no mind’. To reside in ohugr is to disengage with the unceasing river of one’s thoughts.”

Now that’s something I could use, Micah thought to himself, proving the point.

“The second mindset is nesturmaz, ‘no storm’. This serves to free one from the tumult of the emotions and reside in equanimity,” Firenze continued, drawing a second circle, followed by a third. “Finally, there is garaidaz, or ‘perfect readiness’, which in combination with the first two means that one’s mind is still and aware, ready to react to the situation at hand rather than the situation one builds in one’s head.”

“No mind, no storm, and complete awareness,” Micah repeated, etching the concepts into his mind.

“You will need to practice these mindsets independently of your physical training. I will show you later how to sit and dismiss thoughts in order to achieve ohugr.”

He stood and Micah followed. The bellicar placed a hand over his lower abdomen.

“This spot, the med, is your center of power and stability. You can breathe in and out of it, and when you strike, it comes from here. You can protect it from strikes to prevent being taken down. When you wish to ground an opponent, then you will strive to upset his balance from this central point.

“I don’t wish to bore you with words, so I will demonstrate,” continued the bellicar. “Put your fists up, and try your best to hit me.”

Micah followed suit, putting his fists up as if grasping a pole in front of his chest, his best approximation of a boxer’s guard. It felt unnatural, and he felt awkward, but he ignored it, darting forward and throwing a clumsy jab at his teacher.

What followed was Firenze stepped forward once inside Micah’s guard, swept a hoof under Micah’s leading leg, and brought one hand to Micah’s solar plexus, pushing him backward over his center of mass with astonishing speed.

What registered for Micah was simply that he reached for Firenze, and then the ceiling whizzed overhead as he flipped and found himself on his back. He was only able to take shallow breaths as he regained the wind that had been knocked out of him.

He let out a string of curses, more out of amazement than frustration or embarrassment.

The bellicar helped him back up.

“The essence of strigamyr is in your balance. If you put yourself in an unbalanced position, then you are vulnerable. You must avoid these positions, but at the same time, seek and exploit them in your opponent.”

He guided Micah in basic forms and stances, slow and stable, all the while outlining the finer details of what they would be studying in the future.

“The movesets within strigamyr are guided by the four winds,” Firenze said as Micah performed a two-shot strike driven by the hips, over and over and over. “Boreas and Zephyrus are the heralds of cold winds, which are techniques executed with your own force and strength. These are moves such as vital strikes and direct blocks.”

He demonstrated some of these, his movements precise and swift.

“Notus and Eurus are hot winds, masters of soft techniques such as parries and throws, which allow you to conserve your own strength but use the force of your opponent to the ends of offense or defense. That is what Dani was trying to stress to her over-eager student.”

Micah didn’t understand these divisions of effort at first. He just copied Firenze as best he could.

The bellicar critiqued him as they went, saying things like, “Cold moves executed with force must have your will behind them!” He performed a vicious kick that set a straw dummy spinning on its stand. His gentle demeanor was temporarily replaced by eyes full of fire and delight in the martial exercises.

“An enemy will come at you with the intent to kill or injure you; you must strike with a sureness of the same. If you are unsure, do not throw the blow. You must be ready to make contact, hit hard, and expect the consequences.”

After over an hour of drills and instruction, Micah was impatient to progress. He asked Firenze about training with weapons, gesturing to the bellicar’s twin sabers. Firenze laughed, a whisper of a whinny in it.

“Once you can control your body, I will teach you to control a weapon. In order to use the weapon as an extension of yourself, you must be already comfortable with your own body as a weapon.”

He drew his blades, one in each hand, and assaulted an unlucky dummy. Micah saw why the swords had no guards; in Firenze’s hands, they were lethal threshers, seeming to roll over and around his wrists in circles that hand guards would have not allowed.

In a matter of seconds, the dummy was shredded down to straw clinging to a wooden post.

“Were you watching my stance?” Firenze asked.

“No,” Micah admitted. The bellicar had been too quick, and Micah had only focused on the whirlwind of blades.

“That’s alright. Here, take this and you’ll understand why they are used like that.”

He flipped the saber and caught it deftly by the blade, handing the hilt to his student. Micah took it, and as soon as Firenze let go, the weight of the metal bade was heavier than the hilt, and it seemed to dip in his hands. He could see why spinning the blade would be a natural movement as he brought the the sword down in a graceful arc.

“When you are ready, we will move to weapons,” his teacher said, taking back the curved saber. “You can select whatever weapon you like, and we will focus on it. Each weapon comes with its own strengths, weaknesses, proper settings in which to use it. Mastering the fundamentals of strigamyr will provide versatility. If you are caught away from your sword, your glaive, whatever you prefer to use, you can pick up nearly anything and disarm your opponent with it. The most skilled users of strigamyr need nothing but their mind and bodies to gain an advantage; my plan is that, eventually, neither should you.”

Firenze continued to push him through the motions until his muscles ached dully every time he lowered into a balanced stance. His thighs burned; his shoulders and arms strained; his core ached from keeping it rigidly tensed.

Firenze noticed and told him to keep loose and relaxed, but Micah, already sore and still inexperienced, was unable to do so. As he began to feel a little dizzy from hunger, Firenze stopped him.

Gaillard entered the caverns.

“Firenze, I hate to steal your student,” he called cheerily, no regret whatsoever in his voice, “but it’s time I teach him how to blow things up.”

The bellicar dipped his head to Micah and said in parting, “Be here on the morrow when you wake. Eat lightly.”

Micah nodded and jogged over to Gaillard, who handed him a chunk of bread and a leather bladder filled with crisp-cold water. The bread was dense, dark, and tasted of the toasty grains grown near Olympus.

“What do you think of the strigamyr so far?” the mage asked as they walked toward the lab.

“Ish goot,” was the human’s response, muffled by dry bread. He washed it down with water.

Gaillard chuckled and said, “Excellent. Physical stimulation is as important for growth as mental stimulation, and here you will lack neither. You learn with an appreciable enthusiasm.”

They made their way to the caverns that served as Gaillard’s clandestine lab.

“So, tell me what you know about alchemy,” the mage said, abruptly changing the subject. “I know it was a bit of a fad in the Overworld.”

Micah, in the middle of another big bite of bread, swallowed hard, forcing it down.

“Humans used to practice it, I guess, but I don’t know if our alchemy is the same as yours,” he said reluctantly, unsure whether he was being tested or not. “These days most people consider it bullshit science from a time when people didn’t know any better.”

“Bull shit, huh? Well, here in Sidhe, the shit of this bull would be worth its weight in silver, in the most literal sense,” Gaillard responded as they entered the lab, where his other students were absorbed in their work. He crossed to one of the wooden tables strewn with minerals and ores, and picked up a palm-sized, black crystal.

“Alchemy as it is in the Overworld is a long and tedious chemical process, using the sun and fire and many instruments and not a small amount of bull-shit faith to perform simple tasks,” he explained, smiling at his new word, and then he picked up a piece of chalk and knelt on the ground, “but the principle is the same, at its root.”

With the chalk he drew a small symbol on the stone floor. Without warning he clapped the crystal to the symbol on the ground, and there was a small burst of light from the impact. When he turned his palm, the black crystal was sleek silver, smaller than before. The symbol on the floor was smudged and no longer recognizable.

Micah took the mineral from him, turning it over, fascinated.

“What is it?”

“Previously, inkstone, but the symbol I drew altered it on a most basic level. It is now pure silver.”

Something struck Micah.

“If it’s this easy to make valuable minerals, can’t you just take rock and make it into currency?”

Gaillard chuckled.

“‘This easy’, he says,” he said, clapping Micah on the back as if he’d told a joke. “In theory, I certainly can do that. I could teach you the sigils that do so. But in practice, if you were to use them, you’d likely find yourself in a mire of ill consequences.” Mirth departed him and his face became serious. “Alchemical sigils circumvent the need for one to develop a magicept. There are certain simple ones that are prevalent in Sidhe that other races have picked up over time, but the mages closely guard anything more powerful than a simple amplification sigil. Alchemy is one of the most precious and dangerous magical languages.”

“Dangerous because it can completely upset the economy?” Micah asked, half trying to be clever, but Gaillard didn’t react.

“No. Not only because each symbol is a magicept in and of itself, but because it removes the limiting factor from a being’s personal magical energies, allowing one to change any thing on a most fundamental level without using his or her own source. Alchemy would be of the most criminal activities in Sidhe if the general populace knew we still practiced it.”

Micah tossed the hunk of silver back to Gaillard and replied, “So you’re teaching it to me.”

“I am an older mage,” the other admitted, shrugging, “and I have had a handful of apprentices, but none lasted and this knowledge I’ve never passed on. Please tell me if you think there’s another way you can learn magic.”

Micah was quiet.

Gaillard paused, considering his words, and then continued, “I’m sure it’s obvious how useful alchemy can be. I would be remiss to neglect mentioning its history of grotesque abuse.”

Micah could take a guess where this was going.

The mage continued, “Alchemy works on a deeper level than most magicepts, sometimes working with the particles that make up the essence of things. For our purposes, I will be teaching you weidan, the external alchemy, but there is also neidan, which was regrettably used to twist and contort many beings and creatures into monstrosities by a handful of mages. But that was many, many years ago; those who even remember alchemy’s existence consider it among the lost arts, like the bellicars’ wind magic.”

Micah pieced together a thought that occurred to him.

“So in theory, a magicept could be developed that is able to accomplish the same task as a sigil and work with the…the particles?”

“It takes enough energy that most beings cannot manage and would not have the skill,” came the reply.

“So it’s not strictly alchemy that’s illegal; it’s that particular use of magic.”

Gaillard shrugged, taking in hand another chunk of mineral from the table.

“Don’t get caught up in labeling it as ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. ‘Heavily frowned upon’ is how I’d put it, but we’re talking about using alchemy on non-living things, which is to me more morally ambiguous anyway. But! enough questions.”

The mage kneeled and drew another symbol on the ground.

“This is your first symbol to learn. It means to separate or undo, loosely.”

It looked like an upside-down Y with another smaller line on one of its branches.

“How do you say it?”

“You don’t. It only has a written form, this language.”

“It’s completely non-verbal?”

“That is indeed what I just said,” Gaillard replied, the blade edge of his wit painless in the wake of his laughing smile. “Now, all I want you to do is ‘undo’ this Crimsite. For now, all you're aiming for is to get the particles to respond through the sigil. Good luck.”

He handed Micah the ruddy rock, gave a cheery little wave, and walked away.

Micah frowned at the reddish mineral in his hand and then at the chalk sigil on the floor.

No hints, no instructions, just ‘good luck,’ he thought as he sat down, crossed his legs, and got to work.

After almost two hours without results, he could tell alchemy was going to be a bit of a bitch to learn.

Micah put the rock in his left hand and clapped it down on the sigil like Gaillard had, and was rewarded with a sharp jab of pain where one of the facets stabbed into his palm. He had performed the movement so many times with his right hand that his palm was tender.

He changed his approach and focused on it mentally, willing the symbol to work with his mind. He concentrated on it so hard that he began to feel the bloom of an oncoming tension headache coupled with frustration. The particles, or the symbol maybe, just weren’t bending to his will. He set the rock on the sigil and sat still, glaring at it.

“Don’t try to force the rock,” came a voice to his left. He looked up to see one of Gaillard’s other students gazing down at him, leaning against a bookshelf full of dusty tomes. He advised, “Try to get inside it. Lay your hands on it; pretend like you can feel the particles making up the stone. Breathe between them, blowing them apart. You are persuading the stone, not commanding it.”

Gaillard mentioned particles, too, he thought. Molecules, maybe? Seems like it follows.

Micah did as the fay instructed, putting his hand on the Crimsite and breathing deeply, trying to imagine what the other had described. A minute passed and he grimaced, opening his eyes and glancing up at the fay.

The other student motioned toward the rock again.

“Get in the spaces between,” he repeated.

Micah tried again. He thought about the tiny molecules and tried imagining all the space between them, and then pretended he was wriggling into those spaces, letting them fill the space around him. Then he pushed them apart.

The Crimsite dissolved into a thick red liquid that puddled on the stone floor. Micah pulled his hand back from the puddle, then grinned, looking back up at the fay, who returned his smile.

“Micah,” he offered, along with his hand.

Giving him an odd look, the fay took his hand tentatively, without shaking it, unsure what the gesture meant, but returned, “Fizz. Well, Fisandraxmor.”

At Micah’s raised eyebrow, he clarified, “I wish I could say my parents are entrenched in tradition, and that my father and my father’s father’s names are Fisandraxmor, but no, they’re just vindictive.”

Fizz was a slender, short fay, with a slightly effeminate softness about him and an air of steady equanimity.

“So you’re the human. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

“Like what?” Micah asked, his voice over-saturated with nonchalance.

“Friends with the returned queen. Smells weird. Sits around reading. And Gaillard has apprenticed you, making you an especially lucky human.”

Micah sensed a flicker of jealousy from the fay.

“Aren’t you his student, too?” he asked, gesturing broadly to Fizz and the other student, who was oblivious to their conversation.

“Student, yes, but apprentice, hardly. He teaches us things we could, presumably, learn elsewhere. Mages only teach their personal arts to other mages, not fae.”

“Mages are different from fae…?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Fizz replied, grinning as if Micah had been kept unaware of a particularly juicy morsel of gossip. “Mages are something else, not fae at all. Hated, feared, admired. Gaillard is no fay like I am no pixie.”

Micah paused, looking back on the interactions he’d had with the mage in a new light.

“You won’t meet many who look kindly on mages; besides being few in number and fairly solitary creatures, they’re infamous for their unscrupulousness and mercenary tendencies.”

“Gaillard doesn’t seem…”

“Bad?” Fizz finished for him, shrugging. “Danica and Geir trust him. Aeliana trusts him, maybe because her father did. But her father paid him. I’m sure even mercenaries like job security sometimes.”

“I meant he doesn’t look any different from anybody else,” Micah answered.

“Oh. He doesn’t look any different because he intends to. No one knows what mages look like under all their spell work and glamors. If a mage is working with fae or nymphae, like Gaillard is with us, he will take on a shape similar to theirs. Inspires that much more trust, you see.”

Micah was silent, wondering now how much of the mage’s kindness and tutoring could be taken at face value. The fact that he was learning dangerous magical concepts from him implied much deeper meaning than he had first thought -- though what meaning he did not know -- and he wasn’t sure whether he should be flattered or especially cautious of the mage now.

“How did you know what I was supposed to do with the sigil?” he asked Fizz.

The sigil in question was also smudged beyond legibility after having been used.

The fay sat next to him, taking the hunk of silver from the table as he went. He fiddled with it on the floor as he spoke, spinning it on one of its points.

“I was watching you,” he confessed. “Gaillard isn’t very subtle, much as he likes to think he is.”

Micah wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Was he supposed to deny it? Play it down?

“It’s okay, I get why he chose alchemy for you,” said Fizz, looking at him with lucid, unjudgmental eyes. “My specialty of study is actually magiceptual roots, so I understand what you’re trying to do, in essence.”

“You’re not…upset?” Micah asked, unsure how else to phrase it.

Who would he rat me out to? Assuming he even cared enough to do it.

“I wouldn’t have any right to be. As much as I would like to learn the kind of arcane arts you are, my attention and efforts are absorbed where I am.” He didn’t elaborate further on that as he slid the silver to Micah. “I’m actually sort of pleased that someone is inheriting the knowledge. Gaillard has no children of his own, and in the time I’ve known him, he has not been amenable to taking on an apprentice. His knowledge is one of a kind and would be lost if we lost him.”

Micah didn’t comment on the detached way Fizz said that.

“Anyway, you’d probably get back to work, assuming you remember the sigil he wrote,” Fizz said, pointing to the silver as he got back on his feet.

“Thanks for your help,” Micah called after him as he departed back into his own area of the lab.

He re-wrote the sigil with the chalk, and proceeded to practice undoing the molecular structure of as many hunks of minerals as he could find in his immediate area.