62 Ash 120
The Academy of Kalzasi
“Let us start at the very beginning,” said their instructor.
The Leukos twins had the same goal whether people outside them had any idea. Both had come to the capital nominally to learn. Kaus had dreams of joining the Sky Guard, but first he had to pass his Warren March. Kala would spend time in the great city learning, though she had every intention of having a Warren March of her own, even though the daughters of Avialae had no such requirements to be considered women fully grown.
Kala might not have wings—yet—but she would do everything in her power to prove herself worthy, should she ever have an audience with the Crystal Lady to plead her case.
“A very good place to start,” she agreed quietly.
Already kneeling upon her zabuton, the diminutive blonde was the very picture of serenity while her brother inspected the wards of negation inlaid upon the wall, all tied together with those on the ceiling and the floor of the salle to protect the outer world from magic gone wrong. Kala had already taken a quick look while they were awaiting their instructor.
Their family would not have been surprised to see Kaus following his focus. They would have heaved a sigh of relief to see Kala so self-contained. But she had never had a problem playing her role; she was just more forthcoming when surrounded by her own. But in Kalzasi, her only own was her twin.
She knew enough of scrivening to know that the protections of this room were there for the protection of those inside as well. Glyphs would siphon off excess energies cast willy-nilly rather than letting them rebound upon the user. It was a wise precaution, she thought, though unnecessary for them. But she understood why the Academy would take precautions.
“My lord,” their instructor prompted.
“Yes, of course,” he said with a casual smile and came to kneel on a zabuton facing his sister. This felt silly to him, but Kala’s logic was sound: it were better he make certain his foundations were secure before they delved into the dangers of the Warrens. They might only have been Mother’s spares, but Father had died young. There was no telling what the future held. A little boredom was preferable to either of them not making it out of the Warrens alive.
“Clear your mind,” the instructor began in a sonorous tone. Though both of them could move through the basics without much thought, Kala, at least, was listening, obeying, submitting to the will of their instructor. It was a meditation for her, forcing herself to bend so that her inner strength was flexible rather than brittle. There was strength in this, she knew.
At their instructor’s request, they plied their aether to cantrips. Make a candle flame burn twice as high. Snuff it out. Light it with will alone. Create a whirlpool in a tea cup. Draw the moisture out of the air into a droplet that hovered there, gleaming. A gust of wind blew Kaus’ hair back to remind him to focus. Snap a pebble in twain.
These were all old hats to them, but they were quick about it and their instructor nodded.
“Twins,” the instructor mused. “I must admit, I am curious. Show me what you can do together.”
Two sets of blue eyes swung from their instructor to each other. With a shared smile, they began to show how their synergy would within the arcanum.
Kaus held out his hand, palm up, and kindled a dancing flame. It fed on his aether, mere air burning without wax or wick. It was a strange sort of flame. Anyone would notice it wasn’t natural. Holding it out as if to offer it to his sister, she gestured in the air, blending Air into the mix, and the flame stretched and twisted in a similar pattern until one end met the other and there was a glowing symbol of infinity between them. While Kala maintained this, pulled the water in the air closer and closer until the heat of the glyph caused it to steam.
It was showy, but lacked substance. Their instructor hadn’t pushed them past the basics and so they were just playing with those basics.
“Pretty,” they remarked, nodding to themself as they made another mental check mark. “Interesting. You work well together, which should come as no surprise. This could be a source of great power in the future. Sometimes group magic can become chaotic, but when mages can truly work together, they become greater than the sum of their parts. Now, continuing on from sculpting…”
Of the two, Kaus had an edge on skill, but Kala had better focus and determination of will. They had always been more or less equal, but he had one advantage on her: his wings. They didn’t know if the wings themselves gave him a greater affinity or if it was just when he began to truly excel at flight, he found his Element. It made sense that Air would befriend him who had wings.
Focus, he reminded her, sensing her jealousy. He didn’t take it personally; whether fate or accident of birth, he was born with wings and she wasn’t. If anyone could figure out how to fashion some of their own, it was his sister—at least to his mind. Of course, Kaus longed to share the skies with her as they shared most everything else.
The corner of her mouth quirked upward as she redoubled her efforts, showing their instructor how she could enmesh Fire into one half of the broken pebble while Kaus enmeshed Water into the other half and when the two pieces were held back together, steam rose from where they met.
This too was nothing new, but the twins dutifully jumped through their instructor’s hoops. At least for Kala, the concentration required helped her maintain her own inner equilibrium. While she shared Kaus’ intuitive knack, he relied upon it more while she strove to also understand the steps of a process, the better to internalize them and know where and how a thing might have gone wrong when things did not play out as planned. Of course, things normally went the way Kaus wanted them and he relied upon his sister’s more exacting eye when something didn’t cooperate with him. She sometimes berated him for being lazy, but neither of them liked to think about being in situations where one sibling couldn’t support the other.
If there was a fear they shared, it was for one to die and the other survive; the world would be imbalanced. It was best not to think of such an eventuality, though. They would both marry, move back to Starfall, and help Aquilios administer the Mountain. This was the way.
“Very good,” said the instructor. “Now, have you both created a lodestone yet?”
“Yes,” they replied in unison.
“Excellent,” said the instructor, and began to walk them through the process anyway, voice predictable as a metronome. Kala, at least, enjoyed walking through it again. Kaus preferred to fly, but he was always amenable to his sister’s leadership.
There was something meditative about this exercise in particular. The structure of a crystal was fascinating to her. Since she had been trained in Semblance, she had begun to see patterns in life as well as in magic. These weren’t necessarily the same as that crystalline structure, but there were echoes. Perhaps she merely lacked the context to see the full patterns around her. Perhaps someday she would understand everything she saw.
But perhaps that was a conversation better suited to a learned theologian, one she might have on another day. She ought to visit the Temple soon in any case.
This level of work required a bit of a meditative trance for Kala. Fortunately, her mind knew the path rather well by now, and so it walked to that place where her mind was quiet enough to pay close heed to the aether that made her, which was a strange way of looking into a mirror, and the aether around her. The aether was everything, really. All life and all matter, all thought and all magic. She wondered idly how the world seemed to the Gods—if they merely saw aether and the complexities of patterns that yet eluded her much smaller, entirely mortal mind.
All the same, her small, entirely mortal mind shaped her aether and gave it Form. By the end of the exercise, she held a crystal sphere that was blank, empty, and waiting for her will to fill it. And that was where she stopped and merely watched, still in that meditative state where she allowed her thoughts to manifest, but did not attach to them, observing without comment or judgment as her brother went on to imbue his crystal cube with a bit of Fire that sought to gently draw Fire from everything around it, storing energy to be used later. Her charismatic twin even made the instructor laugh, suggesting he would drop it in his drink at a party and never need ice.
And then he showed the instructor what he could do now that he had discovered his arche element. It was Air, naturally. She was not jealous. There was no point in being jealous. His agility in the air had increased when he became so innately attuned with the medium of flight. The winds supported him. He belonged among them.
Of course, she hoped Air would prove her ally someday soon. If nothing else, she might master the element, develop such a keen rapport with it that she could shed her wingless body for a time and become the winds itself.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
The Academy of Kalzasi
“Let us start at the very beginning,” said their instructor.
The Leukos twins had the same goal whether people outside them had any idea. Both had come to the capital nominally to learn. Kaus had dreams of joining the Sky Guard, but first he had to pass his Warren March. Kala would spend time in the great city learning, though she had every intention of having a Warren March of her own, even though the daughters of Avialae had no such requirements to be considered women fully grown.
Kala might not have wings—yet—but she would do everything in her power to prove herself worthy, should she ever have an audience with the Crystal Lady to plead her case.
“A very good place to start,” she agreed quietly.
Already kneeling upon her zabuton, the diminutive blonde was the very picture of serenity while her brother inspected the wards of negation inlaid upon the wall, all tied together with those on the ceiling and the floor of the salle to protect the outer world from magic gone wrong. Kala had already taken a quick look while they were awaiting their instructor.
Their family would not have been surprised to see Kaus following his focus. They would have heaved a sigh of relief to see Kala so self-contained. But she had never had a problem playing her role; she was just more forthcoming when surrounded by her own. But in Kalzasi, her only own was her twin.
She knew enough of scrivening to know that the protections of this room were there for the protection of those inside as well. Glyphs would siphon off excess energies cast willy-nilly rather than letting them rebound upon the user. It was a wise precaution, she thought, though unnecessary for them. But she understood why the Academy would take precautions.
“My lord,” their instructor prompted.
“Yes, of course,” he said with a casual smile and came to kneel on a zabuton facing his sister. This felt silly to him, but Kala’s logic was sound: it were better he make certain his foundations were secure before they delved into the dangers of the Warrens. They might only have been Mother’s spares, but Father had died young. There was no telling what the future held. A little boredom was preferable to either of them not making it out of the Warrens alive.
“Clear your mind,” the instructor began in a sonorous tone. Though both of them could move through the basics without much thought, Kala, at least, was listening, obeying, submitting to the will of their instructor. It was a meditation for her, forcing herself to bend so that her inner strength was flexible rather than brittle. There was strength in this, she knew.
At their instructor’s request, they plied their aether to cantrips. Make a candle flame burn twice as high. Snuff it out. Light it with will alone. Create a whirlpool in a tea cup. Draw the moisture out of the air into a droplet that hovered there, gleaming. A gust of wind blew Kaus’ hair back to remind him to focus. Snap a pebble in twain.
These were all old hats to them, but they were quick about it and their instructor nodded.
“Twins,” the instructor mused. “I must admit, I am curious. Show me what you can do together.”
Two sets of blue eyes swung from their instructor to each other. With a shared smile, they began to show how their synergy would within the arcanum.
Kaus held out his hand, palm up, and kindled a dancing flame. It fed on his aether, mere air burning without wax or wick. It was a strange sort of flame. Anyone would notice it wasn’t natural. Holding it out as if to offer it to his sister, she gestured in the air, blending Air into the mix, and the flame stretched and twisted in a similar pattern until one end met the other and there was a glowing symbol of infinity between them. While Kala maintained this, pulled the water in the air closer and closer until the heat of the glyph caused it to steam.
It was showy, but lacked substance. Their instructor hadn’t pushed them past the basics and so they were just playing with those basics.
“Pretty,” they remarked, nodding to themself as they made another mental check mark. “Interesting. You work well together, which should come as no surprise. This could be a source of great power in the future. Sometimes group magic can become chaotic, but when mages can truly work together, they become greater than the sum of their parts. Now, continuing on from sculpting…”
Of the two, Kaus had an edge on skill, but Kala had better focus and determination of will. They had always been more or less equal, but he had one advantage on her: his wings. They didn’t know if the wings themselves gave him a greater affinity or if it was just when he began to truly excel at flight, he found his Element. It made sense that Air would befriend him who had wings.
Focus, he reminded her, sensing her jealousy. He didn’t take it personally; whether fate or accident of birth, he was born with wings and she wasn’t. If anyone could figure out how to fashion some of their own, it was his sister—at least to his mind. Of course, Kaus longed to share the skies with her as they shared most everything else.
The corner of her mouth quirked upward as she redoubled her efforts, showing their instructor how she could enmesh Fire into one half of the broken pebble while Kaus enmeshed Water into the other half and when the two pieces were held back together, steam rose from where they met.
This too was nothing new, but the twins dutifully jumped through their instructor’s hoops. At least for Kala, the concentration required helped her maintain her own inner equilibrium. While she shared Kaus’ intuitive knack, he relied upon it more while she strove to also understand the steps of a process, the better to internalize them and know where and how a thing might have gone wrong when things did not play out as planned. Of course, things normally went the way Kaus wanted them and he relied upon his sister’s more exacting eye when something didn’t cooperate with him. She sometimes berated him for being lazy, but neither of them liked to think about being in situations where one sibling couldn’t support the other.
If there was a fear they shared, it was for one to die and the other survive; the world would be imbalanced. It was best not to think of such an eventuality, though. They would both marry, move back to Starfall, and help Aquilios administer the Mountain. This was the way.
“Very good,” said the instructor. “Now, have you both created a lodestone yet?”
“Yes,” they replied in unison.
“Excellent,” said the instructor, and began to walk them through the process anyway, voice predictable as a metronome. Kala, at least, enjoyed walking through it again. Kaus preferred to fly, but he was always amenable to his sister’s leadership.
There was something meditative about this exercise in particular. The structure of a crystal was fascinating to her. Since she had been trained in Semblance, she had begun to see patterns in life as well as in magic. These weren’t necessarily the same as that crystalline structure, but there were echoes. Perhaps she merely lacked the context to see the full patterns around her. Perhaps someday she would understand everything she saw.
But perhaps that was a conversation better suited to a learned theologian, one she might have on another day. She ought to visit the Temple soon in any case.
This level of work required a bit of a meditative trance for Kala. Fortunately, her mind knew the path rather well by now, and so it walked to that place where her mind was quiet enough to pay close heed to the aether that made her, which was a strange way of looking into a mirror, and the aether around her. The aether was everything, really. All life and all matter, all thought and all magic. She wondered idly how the world seemed to the Gods—if they merely saw aether and the complexities of patterns that yet eluded her much smaller, entirely mortal mind.
All the same, her small, entirely mortal mind shaped her aether and gave it Form. By the end of the exercise, she held a crystal sphere that was blank, empty, and waiting for her will to fill it. And that was where she stopped and merely watched, still in that meditative state where she allowed her thoughts to manifest, but did not attach to them, observing without comment or judgment as her brother went on to imbue his crystal cube with a bit of Fire that sought to gently draw Fire from everything around it, storing energy to be used later. Her charismatic twin even made the instructor laugh, suggesting he would drop it in his drink at a party and never need ice.
And then he showed the instructor what he could do now that he had discovered his arche element. It was Air, naturally. She was not jealous. There was no point in being jealous. His agility in the air had increased when he became so innately attuned with the medium of flight. The winds supported him. He belonged among them.
Of course, she hoped Air would prove her ally someday soon. If nothing else, she might master the element, develop such a keen rapport with it that she could shed her wingless body for a time and become the winds itself.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
