Olga McArrow - Hot Obsidian

Before diving back into the crowd, he left his sword with Orion to keep. Right: when you are exploring an urban jungle, a long sword only slows you down. The boy didn’t go unarmed, though, for he still had his knife with him.

Orion shook his head and smiled as his eyes followed Oasis rushing toward an adventure.

“It may take us some time…” Pai hesitated under Juel’s heavy gaze, “but… but we will do our best!”

“Let’s go!” Milian pulled at his sleeve.

That was how the young Lifekeepers split for the first time.

As Pai and Milian made their way to the college doors, the students in grey cloaks lined with crimson noticed them. Some even followed the two young Lifekeepers to find out what they were up to but everyone kept their distance.

It rained briefly over the square as if some young mage were practising water magic. Their clothes dotted with water droplets, Milian and Pai reached the moat and stopped there, fascinated by a neat underwater ecosystem that kept the water crystal-clean.

Those beautiful violet sponges, cultivated by the worldholders themselves, according to the books, were filtering the filth away. Green and red algae provided oxygen and food for the fish. The fish cleaned the sponges of parasites, etc. There were many more other species, too small to see with a naked eye, involved in the maintenance of the system’s balance but who ever remembers them when there are those huge violet sponges that look so alien and so cool…

“Lycopersicon abberata,” Milian couldn’t miss a chance to show off his biology knowledge, “a true masterpiece of bioengineering.”

“What’s bioengineering?” asked Pai.

“It’s a branch of science that messes up with life-things’ genetics. And ‘genetics’ means everything we inherit from our parents and pass on to our children,” explained Milian gladly. “Water-cleaning systems are super new, I heard.”

“Must be,” Pai made a wry face. “I still remember that time when I visited Lumenik with my master. The moat was so filthy there… and I fell in it…”

“Ugh!”

“Ugh indeed!”

Milian imagined that too vividly for his own good. Falling into the moat of the biggest industrial city in the world must have been quite a lifechanging experience. Near-death lifechanging experience, probably.

“Maybe even Lumenik’s moat and sewers are clean nowadays,” said Pai with a hopeful smile on his lips. “I like it that moats are just little city lakes now and no one expects wars and sieges anymore.”

“Same,” muttered Milian. He was more concerned with the fact that his friend was standing too close to the water and leaning forward too much. In his daydreaming state, Pai could fall into this moat as well, so Milian carefully took him by the shoulder and led him away, toward the bridge.

The ancient blocks the college fortress was made of were cool to the touch and so infused with magic that even a non-mage could feel it (as a childish sense of wonder or a gloomy foreboding of impending doom – it all depended on the person’s character). If someone were to take even a small piece of that stone into the No Man’s Land, it would certainly explode somewhere beyond the border.

The narrow windows didn’t allow enough sunlight inside the building, so the mages compensated for that in their own manner: light spheres of all sizes and stages of perfection floated everywhere. Seeing so many active spells in one place was too much for poor Pai. He just froze there, his mouth agape, his eyes wide with wonder, and nothing Milian would say or do could make him snap out of it.

One of the battlemage magisters noticed the curious boy and stopped by.

“This is a Liht spell, kid,” he explained in a kindly manner.

“I know,” said Pai, his voice sad and yearning, “I’ve always wanted to cast one myself.”

The magister raised his brow, surprised, and gave the boy a closer look. Judging by the handguardless sword and a simple cloak, it was a young Lifekeeper. Most of them were ambasiaths.

“Did you ever try?” the magister asked, very carefully.

Pai nodded.

“Can you show me?”

Pai nodded again.

It was the second time that Milian saw Pai cast his Fiat-lux. Just like the night before, he waved one hand above the other and quietly sang a wordless song over them. The spitting, hissing ball of light appeared above Pai’s palm; he made it float near one of the perfect corridor Lihts. But if the Liht was staying in place, Fiat-lux kept bobbing up and down like a cork on the waves: Pai’s levitation spell was different from the classic one as well.

The magister was surprised, to say the least, but he did his best not to show it. He scratched his chin thoughtfully, frowned, then turned back to Pai.

“What a curious little thing,” he said. “A hybrid between the classic Liht and a battlemage’s fireball. Very, very interesting. Did you invent the formula yourself?”

“Yes!” Pai couldn’t help being proud.

“Oh well…” the mage made a wide welcoming gesture. “My name is Einar Sharlou. I’m a junior magister of battle magic. I teach here. How can I help you?”

Einar was surprisingly nice to the two seemingly useless boys (kids of their age are too young to be accepted into a magical college). After a tour of the college, he took them to his study where he treated the boys with the best Southern coffee and sweets and asked them a lot of questions about their life. Milian got tired of stepping on Pai’s foot under the table every time his friend was about to say too much. Sharlou didn’t notice that or maybe just didn’t show that he noticed: he just moved on to the next topic.

When the Transvolo question resurfaced again, the magister had to disappoint his guests: there were only two mages in the college powerful enough to cast such a difficult spell and both of them were away now.

“How hard is it to learn Transvolo?” asked Pai.

“Very. It’s a spell few people can master. I can only hope to be one of them someday,” Einar sighed.

“May I try?” Pai continued.

“Ah, you are a very talented lad, Pai Prior,” laughed the mage, “but don’t try to jump too high too soon. Anyway, if you, both of you, would like to visit our library, you have my permission to do so…” he hesitated. “You see, I firmly believe that every ambasiath is a potentially powerful mage. People like you are extremely rare. So if you want to… Of course, our senior magisters are away now, but we can accept you both even in their absence by assembling a junior magisters' council and voting. Just say a word and you’ll become students here. No exams.”

Milian half-smiled sceptically at that. Pai grinned, his eyes shining. But despite their reactions to Einar Sharlou’s offer being so different, both boys jumped at the opportunity to see the library. Pai grabbed all the books about Transvolo he could find and lost himself in reading. Milian wasn't so quick in choosing his subject. After wandering among the tall, dusty bookshelves for a while, he felt a familiar warm feeling flicker under his heart; that was how he usually picked a book to read. Today, it was the newest edition of Encyclopaedia of the No Man's Land. Milian disliked its simplistic chapter summaries at once but enjoyed the chapters themselves immensely.

Through the desert of scientific lingo and the jungle of diagrams, through the dry, emotionless text and the iridescent lens of his young imagination, Milian Corvus saw the No Man’s Land so vividly that he forgot about time itself while he was reading.

It took him only four hours to read the whole book but, as he returned the encyclopaedia to its place, he knew that the memories of what he had just read would not fade in his mind for many years to come.