Allie

It was dawn. Nibiru’s light shone through the arrowloop windows of the guest quarters, waking Allie. She was warm, thanks in part to the body heat of a velvety fawn that had decided to snuggle up in her bed.

Lady's enormous bear lumbered to her door, poking his snout into the room and snuffling at her unfamiliar scent before padding away.

She spent a moment or two trying to will her eyes to stay open, looking around the room.

She could see on the walls the apocalyptic depictions Lady had mentioned.

The rising sun illuminated a great drake, snakes and vermin falling from his open wounds upon the tiny figures that had cut him open. A deadly winter snowstorm struck down fae and crops alike. An enormous wolf had brought low the sun and had been depicted in the act of devouring the celestial sphere.

Allie’s eyes panned over these and then away as gooseflesh broke out on her arms.

She turned over on her stomach to reach over the side of the bed to her pack she’d brought.

She had run out of coffee a couple weeks ago and the lingering caffeine headaches had dissipated. She had, however, stashed her other self-soothing items in her bag — the smooth mark lay nestled in a pouch with her gobie leaves, and Esmere’s journal poked out from among her rations and a spare set of clothes. She pulled out the journal and turned on to her back, opening the book.

Her ability to read Cotidean was slow to progress, but at least now she was able to tell where one word ended and another started between the little flags, and some words were translatable. It made her feel just a little closer to the departed eldar, to read a piece of the life they had shared.

Allie had managed to pick out her name among the flagslines, and, further back in the entries, her mother’s name. It was difficult to make out much more than that.

She slid the book under the pillow and rose from the bed.

Inside the small bathroom of her guests’ quarters was a full tub and an empty bucket. Outside the loophole window, Allie could see the castle well, from which someone had drawn water to fill her tub. She removed her clothing, folded it, and draped it over the edge of a privacy screen before gingerly sliding one foot into the clear water in the basin. She shivered, feeling the skin on her legs prickle, and withdrew her foot.

She stood in the sunlight and put one hand in the water, focusing her energy, amplified by Nibiru’s rays. Her magical efforts made only a modicum of difference in the temperature of the water, so she resigned herself to the cool bath.

She used soap from her pack to wash her hair and body, and then lay soaking in the water some time longer, knowing it would be even colder when she got out and her wet skin was touched by the cool air from the loophole. It occurred to her that the season would probably be changing soon. It had been late summer when she and Micah had landed near the dragon's eye, but now the year was shifting into autumn's slow decline before winter's death rattle.

She dressed in the cleaner set of clothes and found her way to the bottom floor of the castle, her stomach aching for food. Lady was nowhere to be seen, so Allie sat at the vacant table in the dinner hall.

A fox trotted to her side, offering food. He wore a harness strapped to his back that bore a wooden tray, which held flat, dense bread, cold meat, and a fresh green apple. The vulpine beast appeared to grin at her, panting and wagging his fluffy tail, and she unloaded the food from his tray with care.

Free of the burden, the fox walked away, barking at a rodent that attempted to climb onto the tray on his back.

Allie ate everything greedily, filling her stomach as much as she could. She had not eaten well in days; the Vanguard stores were always low as of late, and she knew her fae needed the food as much as she did, so she ate only her rations or less.

She relished the apple the most, as fruits and vegetables were especially scarce now. Its crisp tartness filling her mouth like candy. Sugar of any sort was beyond decadent.

When her stomach hurt and she knew she’d eaten too much, the fox came back, freed of his harness and tray, and prompted her to follow him with a brusque yip before bounding out the front doors of the castle, into the bailey. She followed.

She found herself faced with an enormous boulder that blocked most of the west side of the courtyard. It was over seven feet tall and equally as wide, and then again as thick.

Lady was behind it, sitting in a tree with a low-slung fork, the huge bear lying next to her while she casually sewed up a leather boot with a bone needle and gut.

“Good-den,” she greeted Allie, her lips curled into a smile that Allie instinctively didn’t trust. Allie nodded in response, putting one hand on the enormous stone.

“Your sense of decor leaves a lot to be desired,” she said.

Ignoring her comment, Lady continued, “Mercer tells me you had breakfast.” She paused, squinting at the cheerful fox next to the fay. “At least, I think that’s Mercer. Might be one of his grandchildren.” She shrugged, then dismissed it. “Anyway. Now that your belly is full, you can begin your training you wanted so desperately.”

She reached the end of her repair, knotted the gut, and clipped it with her teeth.

Allie wasn’t so sure she liked the Lady’s tone, which was hard to decipher, but not necessarily well-meaning.

“What will you have me do?” she asked.

Lady pulled the boot over one slim foot, stretching out her leg and appraising her patch job.

“I want you to lift the rock.”

Allie’s eyebrows raised.

“I came here to learn magic,” she argued, knocking her knuckles against the boulder. “How does lifting this translate to magic?”

“You came here asking for my help,” the other replied sharply, “and I know what I’m doing. You think you’re ready for the kind of magic I can teach you? Your body would be a shattered mess. Now, lift the rock.”

Allie squatted and put her arms as far around the rock as she could, gripping the rough surface, and tried to lift it, her legs straining.

The boulder, of course, didn’t budge, no more than a mighty oak would be uprooted by a squirrel.

“Keep trying,” Lady said simply, watching her interestedly as she cracked open a nut and ate the meat inside.

Allie strained against the rock, wondering what sort of point the Lady was trying to prove. It was obvious she’d never be able to lift the boulder.

“Hopefully the Ghriands are a powerful line,” commented the other female, her words suggesting nothing more than casual conversation as she rose from the tree, “so that your body is better suited to handle large amounts of energy.”

Allie ignored her.

Lady lifted an empty hand, palm to the sky. Dark clouds rolled above her where there had been none before, and there was a rumble of thunder as lightning arced from the ominous clouds, cracking down to hit the Lady’s hand, and then redirected right to Allie. The flashing tree of lightning struck her.

She screamed, feeling electricity sear through her; her heart skipped several beats and then restarted with a vengeance, and she gasped, barely able to draw breath, then collapsed on the ground. She lay there, breathing heavily, her mind in shock, as Lady looked down at her.

“You want to train with me? You better learn to handle that power. Your body has no extra energy right now, I understand. That’s what I will give to you. But you have to condition your body to process it, quickly, and in large amounts.”

Allie was still, eyes staring into the sky, which was still burdened with its swollen, ominous darkness. She questioned her decision to come here and train with this psychopath.

“If you don’t think you can do it, then you can go home and watch your people suffer.”

Allie pulled herself up to sit, gritting her teeth. The bolt of lightning had struck her in the back, just below her left shoulder blade, and she felt the burnt skin stretch painfully as she moved. She put a hand into her pocket and felt the cold, smooth metal of the mark between her fingers as she tightened her fist around it.

She stood.

“Good,” said Lady, her face impassive.

Allie put her back against the boulder and tried again, letting the unforgiving edges of the stone against her tender back fill her with pain and drive her. She heard the rumble of thunder and braced herself in the fractions of a second before the lightning struck again. The energy, she thought, concentrate on it. Draw it in.

The second bolt flashed down and hit her with incredible force, causing her to stagger, her muscles convulsing.

“Again!” Lady commanded, and Allie pushed herself against the boulder.

I am strong. I can do this. I am the only one who can do this; no one can do this for me.

The third bolt struck her, and the raw energy surged into her, channeled by her focus. The boulder moved, just a little, and she felt muscles in both her arms tear with a sickening feeling of separation. She fell back from the surface of the stone to her knees and began hyperventilating.

Her chest rose and fell too quickly as she tried not to whimper. Her arms were limp and useless at her sides.

Lady walked to her and knelt, placing hands on Allie’s shoulders, who gasped and cringed away from the other’s touch.

“Use the energy to also reinforce your muscles this time,” she instructed, and Allie felt a soothing warmth from the Lady’s dark hands on her. “You can use it to make the muscle fibers denser.”

Lady concentrated on her arms for a few seconds, and when she pulled away, Allie was able to lift her arms with only a mild soreness.

She looked at Lady and saw the absolute seriousness in her face, and she stood, rolling her shoulders back. She took a deep breath and embraced the rock again. In her peripherals, she saw Lady raise her hand, and instead of focusing, she winced when she heard the thunder; the lightning hit her just as it had the first time, throwing her backwards.

Lady cursed, coming back to her.

“You cannot afford to be so weak,” she said scathingly.

“I c-can’t...I can’t do it,” Allie whimpered, eyes clenching shut, laying on her back.

“If you can’t suffer for your people now, then how do you expect to be strong enough to help them? Look inside yourself. When the moment comes, you may be asked to give up more, to suffer more — will you be able to do it? If not, then you will watch them die.”

Allie felt tears dampen her eyelashes and the all-too-familiar roiling of self-hatred deep in her chest. She had pushed it down with busy-ness, but it was still there.

Lady lay her hand upon Allie’s belly, letting the soothing warmth unknot her muscles and heal her burns.

“They will die, and believe me when I say that watching them die… That is a different kind of suffering, the kind of hard that will make you wish you’d suffered this.”

Allie opened her eyes and sat up, feeling tightness in the newly-healed skin on her back. She stood in silence, wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and turned her gaze from the Lady to the boulder.

“That’s what I like to see.”

Allie braced herself against the stone and tried to remember her childhood, when Gaillard had taught her simple magicepts, focusing on the basic tenets rather than the results themselves. He taught her endurance rather than flashiness. This, she assumed, was Lady’s goal as well.

The lightning arced down, and Allie clenched her jaw, staring at the ground in front of her as she tried to direct the vicious power from her skin to her muscles. The boulder tilted again, her muscles ached terribly, and her grip slipped; the boulder thudded back into place as the jagged surface tore her palms. Blood streaked the dirt on the rock.

“Again.”

With the next attempt, Allie’s muscles ripped again, this time not only in her arms but also in her straining thighs, and she almost lost herself to unconsciousness before Lady could heal her.

They continued, and finally, in the third hour, the Lady paused.

“Let’s take a break.”

She lay a hand on Allie’s shoulder and nodded her head toward the castle doors. Allie nodded weakly.

The food in her system had been converted into energy and expended long ago, and she felt as if her stomach was beginning to eat itself.

However, when Lady led her to the kitchen, she was vastly disappointed. While the Lady ate salted meat and had a saucer of raw milk, all that she gave to Allie was a cup of weak tea.

“You expect me to continue on only this?” she asked, swirling the liquid in the wooden cup.

“Yes,” Lady replied.

Allie lifted the cup to her lips and drank. It left a slightly bitter taste on her tongue.

“It’s an extract of Spearleaf,” Lady mentioned.

“You say that like it will help with my training.”

“Oh, it won’t. It’s just for flavor.” Lady smiled, teeth bared in an expression that could have passed for a snarl.

Allie was certain that she hated Lady. She let the rest of the tea slide down her throat and stood, feeling the liquid slosh in her empty stomach.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Lady’s smile betrayed a hint of approval.

Several more hours passed until Allie was finally able to lift the rock.

The final bolt didn’t even hit her before seeming to strike an invisible buffer around her, immediately absorbed into her body and channeled. In that moment, her strength was that of Atlas: her fingers dug so deep into the rock that they created small furrows, and her muscles were reinforced cords of steel. She pushed herself into the ground and heaved; the boulder cleared the ground a full eight inches before she let it drop again, shaking the ground with the force of a small quake.

Lady was pleased, standing with her arms crossed and a half-smile on her face.

Allie straightened and stood tall, turning to face her teacher with her head held high, her face defiant.

“Good,” Lady said, and walked to the boulder. She put a hand on it and said, “Now, destroy it. With your bare hands. I want it to be dust by sunfall.”

Allie didn’t question her this time; she stood close to the stone and gazed at it, took a deep breath, planted her feet firmly, and then focused energy leftover from the lightning before striking the rock with an open palm. It resonated with the force of the blow, but did not break or crack.

Lady shook her head. She stepped next to the fay and mimicked her lead up, but her strike was the speed of a snake’s, her fist lashing out and hitting the surface of the rock at an angle. A large chunk of boulder fragmented and broke away at her diamond fist.

Allie was silent, observing Lady carefully. The other female turned the rock with a mighty heave so that an unbroken side faced Allie, and then stood back. Allie marveled at her strength.

“Go.”

Allie paused, studying the stone, and then she smiled. She steadied herself and closed her eyes, drawing energy into the center of herself, strengthening the muscles in her arm, and then struck.

Her speed was not impressive, and she hit the boulder dead on. The bones in her hand and wrist shattered.

She hissed in pain and cradled the broken hand to her chest, and Lady shook her head again.

“Foolish child. What were you think--” she started, but fell silent as they heard the sound of shuddering stone, and before their eyes the boulder crumbled to pieces, sliding off each other like melted chunks of butter.

“Clever,” Lady said softly.

“I didn’t have enough energy to reinforce my arm and break it,” Allie remarked, holding out her mangled hand for the other to heal as she already had many times prior. The Lady touched her wrist and the skin glowed, the bones popping back into place and re-knitting. Allie felt a little nausea rise in her throat. She’d let more magical energy roll through her in the last twelve hours than in the last fifteen years combined.

“You converted the energy into waves and used the vibrations to break it, I suppose?” Lady asked, kicking a chunk of stone aside with her boot.

“Right,” Allie replied, flexing her healed hand. It was a little stiff.

“Well, you’ve proven yourself to be more clever than strong.” Lady’s teeth made an appearance again, but now her face was excited, her eyes glittering. “I will try to make you both.”

Allie swallowed, her face determined.

“Come,” said the Lady. “You won’t be eating or sleeping this night.”