Batshit Mages - 8. What Comes After

"Why do I even bother?" She tipped her head back with an exasperated sigh.

"Honoured Lady, if I may..." tried the captain.

Her bored sideways nod with only slightly rolling eyes bade him go on. He nodded curtly and turned from her to the assembled rabble. The whole dozen of them were all supposed to be chieftains and seasoned commanders, but the Honoured Lady was clearly dissatisfied.

"Maybe our Honoured Lady has not been clear enough on this: The marsh people disappear by noon the day after tomorrow, or all of you do. It's as simple as that. Is that understood?" He seemed calm and patient when he said that, and even smiled a little. He was a people person. Mala was glad to have him along. Without his steady handling of her other subordinates she would probably have no other subordinates by now. She was not very impatient or unreasonable. She did not have a temper problem. She had a goal, a very clear assignment, and that required order and discipline. Her only problem was that she had little talent for gentle guidance and even less time for idiots.

It was not a hard or dangerous task she had been given, but the morons under her command made it rather difficult at times.

To be fair, the three mercenary captains were cunning and experienced. Their companies were capable and understood their respective jobs, but even they could only do so much damage within a week. Her nine tribes of violent inbreds were the only real challenge.

Now they nodded, grunted and voiced assent for the most part.

"By 'Get them gone' we mean 'Eradicate them.' Do not run them off, do not take prisoners, do not take souvenirs. You may take food for yourselves, but their settlements, cattle, tools, clothes, every single person... needs to vanish from the face of the earth. Burn everything. Have you got that?" said Captain Harat.

More grunts and nods, louder this time. Their blank stares through cowls, beards and helmets were changing into something hungrier.

Mala smiled minutely.

"You have the whole night, a whole day after that, another whole night, and when the sun is high again after that, this stinking swamp is all ours," she drawled with a smirk, taking care to keep her words simple, just to be safe.

The ensuing thunder of footstomping, shieldknocking and general grunting in the command tent amused her.

"Weapons and gold! Meat and ale! A feast in two days, after blood and fire!" she shouted, pounding her armrest with a fist that was clad in a scale glove, willing it to thud more loudly under a small spray of sparks, and the chiefs and their small entourages roared. Her shout was repeated several times, until even Captain Harat and the mercenaries joined in.

"And now we wait," said the captain, after the twelve commanders and their seconds had filtered out of the command tent to rouse their warriors and mercenaries.

"And now we wait," agreed Mala.

-

"Was it an attack, an accident, a prank gone awry or a freak occurence of some kind?"

"It looked very deliberate."

"So an attack or a prank?"

"Too vicious for a prank, it was an attack."

"Too weak for an attack, too concentrated in one spot, no direct hits on any part of the island-"

"It did not originate on the island!"

"Something more elemental, an unconscious-"

"Ah, shush, no one wants to hear your spiritual sheepshit."

"Watch it."

"Or what? Going to wave some incense at me?"

"Quiet!" The Magister's voice boomed through the chamber. He had entered unnoticed by the debating pupils and was now whipping the thin pointing stick on a tabletop with few sharp, loud raps. This served not only to shut everyone up successfully, but also to break up the groups and scatter them around the room. The time they took to take their places and practically stand at attention by their respective workplaces allowed Teague to get up slowly and finish the sentence he was reading before laying the book down.

At first he had been listening in with half an ear, sharing some of the voiced notions, disagreeing with others and inwardly shaking his head at the sillier suggestions and weak arguments. But as the discussion went nowhere and his book became more interesting he focused on the text entirely. It was something he did not usually read. He did not usually read for enjoyment, especially not entertainingly narrated stories like this one. It was a travel account from a Magister who initially set out to study cultures of 'The Ordaran Peoples' and ended up having too much fun on his charmingly idyllic adventures. His style of writing was very artful and quaint, but Teague could not tell whether that was because he had written the book decades ago or whether this was just what 'fun reading' should sound like. It was certainly enjoyable as well as educational and Teague frequently caught himself picturing the described landscape and people, imagining himself in these forest-green, sun-gold, bark-grey surroundings among drums and those 'haunting wails' of 'multiple flutes on leather sacks,' painted people with wild, felted manes playing them... He also found himself picturing every other of the mentioned natives as Kjeld. For no other reason than that he was the only Ordaran he had ever known.

"Mag-" ventured Alba, but Magister Deman cut her off.

"There will be no! No more speculation on what caused the magical storm, are we clear?!" His impatient glare glinted at every pupil in turn until every mouth was closed and every pair of eyes looked sufficiently cowed. Teague alone looked as disinterested as usual and only observed the other students. Magister Deman did not seem to care. He passed over Teague as if he were a piece of furniture, which was pretty normal.

"Show me what progress you've made on – no, don't bother with your notes – take out your metal and show me in the front, one by one. I'll call each of you, the others can keep practicing in the meantime."

One by one, as promised, the pupils each carried a piece – a little block, a spool of wire, a nugget – of a metal of their choice (and means) to the Magister's desk and performed on it whatever spell they had chosen to study. The scowling Magister barely looked at their faces and only scrutinised the work of their hands and voices, snapping crushing remarks at them and allowing all of two pupils a gruff grunt of approval. Teague was one of them. The last to be called up, of course. That was normal.

While watching his classmates' mostly weak attempts at doing anything to their metals, Teague found his mind wandering to Kjeld's powers. They rivalled that of any Magister's. In a fight he would best most if not all of the ones present on the island. He was so out of place here. And he should have to be bored half to death by now. As soon as he could find a task more equal to his ability he would be gone. Now that everyone had seen him in action... Teague did not know much about the military, but he was fairly certain that it wouldn't be long now before Kjeld got an offer to sign up as something high-ranking. And he would have no reason to refuse. He was a good, experienced warmage. He owed no exclusive allegiance to Ordara anymore. He had nothing else to do, especially not here. Why would he choose to stay locked up in the tower that only cost him gold for tuition and board if he could earn gold outside? If there was nothing more to learn for him here when he could use the things he already knew outside? He could be well suited for command, even, whereas here on the island he had to take orders and obey people who were less powerful than he was.

Teague's resulting mood was one of exquisite resentment, which incidentally supported his spell a great deal. With no more than one murmured word and a single, lazily outstretched hand, he turned his cube of solid lead into a purplish-brown, pitted cage with slicingly thin edges. The magic itself had no audible effect, but the heavy metal started to sizzle and crackle softly as soon as its smooth surfaces had glazed over with a dark grey sheen and started blistering and browning.

"Lead, correct?" grumbled Magister Deman and looked up in time to see Teague nod. He nodded in return. "Good work." Both he and Teague himself knew what a feat it was to make a non-corrosive metal rust, so there was nothing more to be said. Teague picked up his little rust-cage and returned to his desk.

"There's no point in discussing any of your sorry performances any further," snapped Deman at the class, "If you goatshits seriously believe that handing in a paper while chitchatting about unrelated events is enough to pass this course – ANY course – you'll end up repeating them until your chances have all run out... and even you all know by now what comes after." His voice had turned softer gradually, until the last bit about what comes after was only carried through the room and into everyone's understanding by the menacing meaning it held.

On his way to the tower he lived in with Kjeld and most of the students and apprentices, passing herb gardens and vegetable patches, Teague reflected on what comes after. He knew very well what it was, and he had always half expected it to be his fate, once the Magisters decided his mind wasn't so brilliant after all, or that maybe it was a little too brilliant to be useful to them.

What comes after was the Stunting. It was a routine procedure that cut off a person's connection to mana, and pretty much cauterised the wound this left in their mind, and sealed it off. A person with no magical talent would be unaffected by it, but to a magic user, someone who has always lived with their connection to that vast, roiling ocean of magical energy, it was akin to an amputation. An arm they were used to having, even if they didn't use it much, severed so they wouldn't be able to strike out with it. Teague had read of a similar practice in medicine once. It was very new and revolutionary, apparently, but hardly anyone was able to carry it out and it was too expensive to use on the ones that ought to receive it. According to the text, that procedure was meant to make people more docile and it worked, but it had the necessary side effects of capping their emotional range and incapacitating their imagination and independent thought.

None of this was news to Teague. The Stunting worked in the same way.

Criminal mages, talentless mages, too talented mages...

When Archmage Braegan had found him in the abbey cellar with the fifth grade demon he had summoned, he'd been certain that she would either kill him on the spot after expelling the demon, or that he would be up for the Stunting at the very next opportunity. But that hadn't happened. Instead, she had offered him her silence, guidance and protection in return for his service. He had always been a servant to the entire circle of mages anyway, ever since they bought him from his mother as a toddler, but now he would be assigned to her before anyone else, assisting her in her research, whatever that may be. His part in it may amount to no more than tedious chores like the daily measurements on blood vials he was taking care of recently, or it may be something more... interesting.

By now, he had assisted her in about a handful of illegal experiments, including another demon summoning and the full revival of a sheep whose short absence from the pen had luckily not been noticed. He had had to steal it in the evening, take it down into the abbey cellar, slaughter and skin it, so that Magister Braegan could try and puzzle it back together via magic. It was a success, apparently, so Teague was tasked with washing the blood out of the sheep's coat and sneak the confused beast back into the pen with the others. He still had had to check on it every other day or so, to see if it was properly revived or actually undead. But it hadn't seemed in any way extraordinary, up until the day it was slaughtered for skin, chops and stew. He hadn't heard anything out of the ordinary from the kitchen, either.

When he reached the stout dorm tower it was almost dark. It was still afternoon, but the early tendrils of autumn weather snaking down from the sea in the northwest were starting to tug thick, dark bundles of stormclouds their way. They usually did not start spilling their guts and hurling lightning at the island before the leaves turned, but they brought winds and drizzle with them, as well as a bleak, grey-blue twilight that tricked you into thinking night was trying to creep up on you.

This weather made anyone who could afford to stay inside do just that, stay in, light a fire and get some much-needed studying done, catch up on sleep or, if you were not Teague, have a nice chat and play some games with friends by the fire. Teague knew people did that. He had never really grasped why, or how those situations came about, but he was neither blind nor stupid.

As he climbed the narrow steps, alternatively stone or wood, cold and winding or dusty and creaking, he caught the warm flickers of light through the keyholes, gaps and cracks in doors, spilling out of the rooms and onto each landing he crossed. He could hear soft rustling, paper ripping, calm voices, laughing and the clatter of wood. When he was halfway up, he caught another sound: The big brass bell from the top of the laboratory tower. It meant that the wind was picking up and was a warning to close all windows and shutters.

On the last floor below the attic, where only he and Kjeld lived, Teague went about tying up all the shutters around the outer walls and in his room, which took a bit of patience, because they were already flapping about like excited birds and banging against the walls and each other. When he had taken care of that and could still dimly hear some wood getting knocked about, he went to Kjeld's door. A wary glance around its frame told him that the room behind it was dark. At this time of day and with all this noise, Teague decided it was rather unlikely that Kjeld was asleep, so he simply opened the door.

And that's where the simplicity ended.

Kjeld was indeed out, and the room was dark, the shutters outside the two windows on the opposite wall were open and loudly and repeatedly getting knocked against the windows, and Teague had the most straightforward task imaginable, namely crossing the room, opening each window in turn and tying their shutters together. Then closing the windows again and walking back out. Easy, right?

But the room was dark.

It used to be Mala's.

It had shapes in it.

The flapping shutters shot black lances of shadows across them, that deformed them. Stretched them. They jerked back and forth, longer, shorter, longer, shorter, longer -

Teague took a step back before the rugged tip of the shadow could touch his feet. The tower tilted forward, as if to usher him into the room, but he did not slide into it, wide-eyed and powerless in the dark as he expected, instead, something big and solid smashed into his back and punched his breath away, just when all light suddenly blinked out, and took the faint rushing and cracking sounds with it.