Guild Mage: Apprentice

Arjun was easy to find, because the wounded soldiers hobbling or being carried by their comrades up through the fortress of Akela Kila made a trail as obvious to follow as the Aspen River in flood. Liv was sorely tempted to load a few of the ksatriya up onto a floating disc of mana, to help them along. The only thing that stopped her was that she was already stewing on how to solve their mana shortage problem.

The fortress infirmary had a familiar, recognizable feel: like the rooms that had first belonged to Master Cushing at Castle Whitehill, and later Mistress Trafford, or the building where Professor Annora treated injured students at Coral Bay. Liv recognized the smells, the equipment, the efficient movements of the chirurgeons as they hurried from one patient to another. They found Arjun tending a soldier whose face had been nearly entirely clawed off by the grasping, boney fingers of one of the corpses.

"That looks horrible," Wren observed, as they approached, and Arjun shot her a hard look.

"Maybe you can be helpful carrying away some of the used bandages or cleaning up," Liv suggested, holding Wren's eyes for a long moment. Maybe you can find an opportunity to drink some blood while not terrifying the patients, was what she tried to communicate silently. She doubted the second part got through, but Wren nodded and moved off into the bustle to see what could be done.

"Help me with his helmet," Arjun said, and Liv leaned over next to him, getting a grip on the edges of the shaped steel. "How bad is it?"

"We're going to have a problem," Liv admitted. "Our people don't have enough mana to be fighting for hours at a time. They're going to run themselves out in half a bell, an hour at most, and then there'll be nothing until the next shift comes. Do they have a steady supply of mana-enriched food here, at least?"

"Pull," Arjun grunted. Liv tried to remove the helm as gently as possible, but a sudden gush of blood spattered onto the floor anyway. She counted the man lucky she couldn't see his brain. Arjun began to mutter incantations, and Liv watched as the rents in the man's flesh, his ruined nose and missing eye, began to scab over and then to heal. Days, perhaps even weeks of the body's natural processes were accelerated to occur in only moments.

The man groaned in some mixture of pain and relief. Liv knew how good, how warm and comforting, Arjun's magical healing felt, but she also could imagine the horror of losing part of one's body. She'd broken enough bones, and seen how much pain Matthew was in after losing his arm - some injuries simply could not be recovered from quickly.

"There should be a supply for the healers and the ksatriya, at least," Arjun said. "That's been the case whenever I've accompanied my father to support soldiers before. "Whether anyone's thought to make allowances for our group, I don't know. And keep in mind, if they're stretched thin from three eruptions at once, they may be having a hard time with supplies, also."

"When you're done here, can I leave it to you to deal with this?" Liv asked him. She helped Arjun wrap the wounded man's face and skull in bandages, and resisted the temptation to chill the temperature of the cloth.

Arjun nodded. "I'll find whoever is in charge. Here, take your wand with you," he said, and passed the length of bone over from where he's stuffed it in his boot. Liv replaced the wand in its sheath at her belt, and immediately felt more comfortable. Once the bandaging was done, she collected Wren and left the infirmary.

"Any luck?" she asked, as soon as they were out in the hall.

"I was able to squeeze a bit out of the bandages," Wren answered quietly. "Maybe a mouthful. Don't count on me doing a lot of shape-changing while we're here."

Liv nodded, and cast about for a servant, an unoccupied soldier, or someone that she at least recognized. "Commander Jagan!" she called out, upon recognizing the man from the general's chambers. The stern looking man wouldn't have been her first choice, but at least she knew that he spoke a bit of Lucanian.

"Magia," the commander said, breaking off from the group of officers he'd been speaking to and approaching the two women. "How did you find the gates? Too gruesome to stand?"

Liv couldn't help but raise her eyebrows, but at least she managed to not roll her eyes. "I've seen two eruptions, and this is my fourth rift, Commander," she said. "I've been hunting and dressing mana-beasts since I was a little girl. I'm not going to be suddenly squeamish at a bit of blood." Unbidden, the memory of the way that Karis' exposed brain had pulsed, and then stilled, with her blade in it surfaced in her mind. Liv shoved the thought aside.

"That is good to hear," Jagan said. "The general believes your people will be able to help us get the eruption under control."

"I have some thoughts on that," Liv said. "But for now, I'd like to join the rest of our people in the barracks. Is there someone about who might show us the way?"

"Of course." Jagan inclined his head, called out in Dakruiman, and a soldier hurried over to them. "This man will show you the way. Now, if you will excuse me, I am quite busy."

Once again, Liv resolved to learn as much of the local dialect as she could, as quickly as possible. They followed the soldier they'd been assigned to a room with thin beds built against the walls on a stout wooden frame, stacked one on top of another, to that over a dozen people could sleep in a single room.

Like the rest of the fortress, the floors, walls and ceiling were all of stone, and the entrance was hung with a stout wooden door. Liv stepped in, looked around, and saw that the journeymen who'd not accompanied them down to the lower gates were sitting on the lowest beds. Whatever they'd been talking about, they ceased when Wren and Liv entered the room.

"There you are, m'lady," Thora said, jumping up from where she'd begun unpacking Liv's things. "This is completely unacceptable - they've put the men and the women in the same room, and we're supposed to use some sort of common bath chamber down the hall. You need to talk to that general and get separate rooms!"

"Believe it or not, Thora," Liv said, "that's the least of my concerns." She pulled the door shut behind her and found a place to sit, though it required shoving aside a stack of her own skirts.

"What's it like down there?" Elenda Fisher asked, and the others leaned forward to listen.

"It's not the same as the king tide," Liv told them. "The dead come in a mob, packed together like - I don't know, like an avalanche, or a stampede of cattle. There's no organization to them, they just press up against the shield wall and climb over each other. You can't use mana blades," she said. "It hardly does anything at all. You need to make discs or planes and use it to crush them against the floor or the walls. The problem's going to be mana," she concluded. "How many spells can you all get off before you're out of rings?"

"Three or four, for most of us," Hamon said. "That's why we carry swords."

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"Blades are the wrong kind of weapon for this," Wren said. "You want hammers, or clubs. We'll have to get some of those from the soldiers."

Liv shook her head. "No, that's going about this the wrong way. If we're swinging hammers about, we might as well just be another half dozen soldiers, and that isn't going to make any difference. General Mishra reached out to Archmagus Jurian because he knew he needed something different. We need to focus on what we can do, that he can't with the soldiers he already has. Honestly, I don't think our people should be charging in at all."

"I'd be more comfortable hanging back, anyway," Elenda said. "Not all of us like rolling around in the dirt, Hamon."

"Still," the last journeyman, a boy whose name Liv didn't recall, spoke up. "We may have to, if they break." He had several days growth of stubble on a rather square jaw, and Liv wondered if he was doing it to try and look more mature.

"I'm sorry, I'm not certain I ever got your name," Liv said.

"Wyman."

"Thank you, Wyman," Liv said. "That's my whole point. Look, if the local soldiers break, one of us running in with a shield isn't doing anything different than one of them. The better move is to put up a wall of mana for a moment, and hold the dead long enough for the officers to rally their own men or bring up fresh bodies."

"That may not have been the best turn of phrase to use," Wren observed.

"Soldiers. Men. Whatever," Liv said. "Arjun's going to see about getting us mana-enriched food. Everyone's got a guild ring, right?" The journeymen nodded, or held up their hands to show a sparkling piece of mana-stone on one of their fingers. "What else have people got in the way of mana storage, or enchantments?"

She was met only by silence, and eyes sliding away from her, so Liv decided to go first and make an example. "Look, I've got a wand I can't risk using," she said. "But there's a mana-stone in the pommel with four rings in it, so that's something. I'll be leaving it up here in case of an emergency. I've got my ring, one pearl from the bay, and a set of gold bracelet and rings that can hold eight rings of mana all told."

"Eight?" Elenda exclaimed. "That's ridiculous. Where did you even get that?"

"Won it off a princess in a duel," Liv said. "I've got leather armor that will help keep me from bleeding out or freezing to death, and I'll wear it, but I doubt it's going to be much good here."

After a moment of silence, just when Liv was about to give up on anyone else sharing information, Elenda spoke up. "It's no set of princess' jewelry," she said. "But I've got a pearl for each ear, from the bay. That's a ring of mana each. My wand's made of driftwood, so it should be safe down there, right? And I have a filetting knife enchanted to use mana along the edge."

Hamon was next. "I've got a pearl-handled knife," he said. "Not actual pearls, mind you, but it comes from the oyster shells and holds mana all the same. Enchanted boots, to keep my feet from sweating." Everyone looked at him. "Look, wet feet lead to rot," he said. "My family comes from just west of the pass, and it gets really wet. I've seen some horrible things when people don't take care of their feet."

Liv turned to look at Wyman, who sighed. "Besides my ring? I've got a buckler enchanted to summon a mana-shield big enough to protect my entire body," he said. "It's powered by pearls set into the boss."

"Alright," Liv said, turning things over in her mind. "I'm sure the other three have a few things with them, as well."

"It doesn't seem like much," Wyman grumbled.

"Maybe not," Liv said. "But we can choose how to use it. Look, the pearls absorb mana from the Tidal Rift long before we ever harvest them, right?" she asked, and the other mages nodded. "It's the same thing with the mana-stone at Bald Peak. And something about how the mana settled in calms it down, makes it safer to use than wild mana straight from an eruption. What if we bring everything we have down with each shift?" she asked. "Less the bone wand, of course."

"What, just lay it all out to soak in the shoal?" Elenda asked. "It'll take hours. Days, for something like your bracelet."

"We set up a kind of station," Liv said. "One of us stands with the back line, and steps in if it looks like they need help, but not before. The others hang back and protect the stones and pearls that are absorbing mana. When something is full and safe to use, it gets passed up to the person on duty; when it's empty, it gets passed back. The three people on each shift rotate."

"And if there's a breakthrough of these... bone monsters, we lose everything we've brought," Wyman countered.

"We're there to stop a breakthrough," Liv argued back. "That's our entire purpose. Step in only when they truly need us. Conserve our mana. Always have our storage being refilled by the shoal."

"We can try it, at least," Elenda said, and after a moment the two boys nodded.

"Here." Liv pulled her bracelet and rings out of storage, then passed the set of jewelry, along with her pearl and guild ring, to Elenda. "Run these down to Isabel and the rest, will you? We can get started now. One of the soldiers about can show you the way."

Elenda nodded, and stood up from where she'd been sitting. "Rings," she demanded, holding out her hand palm up toward the other two second-years.

"One minute, now," Wyman objected. "We really going to let some first year just tell us all what to do?"

"Until you've got a better plan, Wyman Carpenter," Elenda said, "We're going to do just that. Be sure and let me know when you've come up with something. Rings." Hamon slipped his guild ring off and put it into Isabel's palm, which left everyone looking at Wyman. Grumbling, he finally followed suit. "Be right back, then," Elenda told them, opened the door, and hurried off.

Wren sat down next to Liv. "I have a hard time believing you're just going to stand back and wait for an emergency before you do anything," she said, keeping her voice low.

"No," Liv admitted. "I won't. We need to get this eruption under control as quickly as we can, if there are two others they're having problems with. We can't send anyone to help those while we're all here. Plus, I'm sick of not understanding what Ractia's trying to do. I want to get down past the shoals, into the depths of this place, and see what I can learn."

"They're probably not just going to let you do that," Wren said. "They've built an entire fortress to keep this rift contained. It's more powerful than any of the places you've fought at before. That means its more dangerous."

"The Tomb of Celris is a greater rift," Liv said. "Though I've only ever skirted the edges there, and gotten out as soon as I could," she admitted. "But I don't see any other choice, Wren. If we never do anything differently, then nothing's ever going to change. We've lost at Soltheris, at the Hall of Ancestors. We almost lost at Coral Bay. As far as I can tell, there's no enemies here yet."

"As far as you can tell," Wren repeated. "And we've only just arrived."

"Think you could take a look around the city?" Liv asked her. "See if there's anything suspicious?"

"This place is so different from anything I'm used to that I'm not certain I'd know the difference," Wren admitted. "I can't even speak the language."

"There it is, then," Liv said. "The only way to move forward is to go down. I'll make certain the local soldiers take back every gate between the fortress and the well itself. Once we're certain they can hold, you and I will go down and see what we can learn."

"What about Arjun?" Wren asked.

Liv frowned. "I don't know yet," she admitted. "They all seem to expect him to just stay up in the infirmary, but I'm not certain that's going to happen. Then again," she realized, "if he uses all his mana treating the wounded, he won't have any left to come with us."

"I'm not sure he's even thinking about it that clearly," Wren observed. "I think he's just fallen into the pattern of what he's used to doing, now he's back in his homeland."

"It may be for the best," Liv decided. "I can handle the mana in the depths, but I doubt anyone's ever taught him to do the same. What about you? Is it safe, or will the mana sickness infect you?"

Wren shook her head. "Ractia designed us to stand up to things like that," she explained. "By that point in the war, the first few of the old gods had already been killed, and she knew we might be fighting in rifts. We can hardly even feel the mana until we get into the depths, and even then it's only a bit uncomfortable."

"Good to know," Liv said. "I'll trust you to watch my back when we go in. Until then, let's try to get some rest." She scooted back and turned her body to lay lengthwise on the bed, and was pleased in spite of herself to find that Thora had brought her nice sheets from Coral Bay.

Eight hours. That was how long a shift would have to hold, with only three groups. Liv closed her eyes, and tried to relax until it was her turn.