Day 1: Welcome to Glorestra! | Chapter 1 | PoV: Aisha
In Glorestra, Aisha rapped the back of her left hand against the door to Rafiq's office. Her right hand clutched her staff. In her left, she constricted a most concerning missive sent out four days ago.
No response.
Aisha knew Legislator Rafiq better than the others. If she had an issue, she could count on Rafiq. His diligence in completing his paperwork and organizing tasks had no equal. So, just the slightest amount of concern poked Aisha. Although, Rafiq could be out doing any number of things . . . It was mostly likely that he would have been here.
Aisha knocked again, louder this time.
She sighed. She turned to leave, but . . . It would not hurt to snoop around his office a little. Maybe it would give her some hint as to where Rafiq was.
She turned to face the door to Rafiq’s office again. She leaned her staff against the wall and moved her free hand over the doorknob. She hesitated. She could just come back later. Maybe a meeting occupied Rafiq—or he went out on some errands. She noticed a particular lack of people in the hall today. Not a guard or courier had she passed in a minute.
Well—Aisha did have to go back to work soon . . . She decided to just drop the missive off on his desk and maybe write a note. She opened the door to Rafiq's office and stepped in after picking up her staff. Due to the rarity of wood, her staff was made up of some rare metal scavenged in the middle of the desert. It felt weightless in her hands, an unusual characteristic of a six foot rod of ornate metal. Hints of orange reflected off the staff in exposure to light. Vertical etchings rippled along the staff to give it texture. The top of the staff ended in a perfectly circular orange crystal mounted on top. A full circle of metal looped up from the top of the staff, around the crystal, and connected to the other side of the staff. Her staff was like . . . a stick figure without limbs and a sun where its mouth should be.
Only light from the hallway illuminated the dark room. Aisha could barely make out an unlit candle on Rafiq's tan, stone desk. His—also stone—chair sat quite a bit back from his desk, at an awkward angle, as if he pushed it away and stood in a rush. Her heartbeat picked up, which she realized was silly. He was probably just in a meeting . . . an emergency meeting? Some desperate summon? That would mean a bad event had occurred.
Okay, the panic and worry set in again.
A couple of papers littered his desk in an unrefined and sloppy manner. Aisha shook her head, a frown forming. This was uncharacteristic of the usually neat Rafiq. Usually Aisha could praise his work ethic. The bookshelves behind the desk attested to this, neatly arranged books and impeccable stacks of paper rested on the dustless shelves.
Aisha stepped up the desk and dropped the missive in her left hand. It fluttered to the floor. She picked one of the papers up from Rafiq's desk, hand shaking.
She gasped.
She held the same exact missive in her hand—this was what she had come here to show him. He had figured it out too, he must have rushed out to investigate the issue.
What now? Did she wait for him to return? Did she need to be here anymore, now that he already knew too?
Her shoulders slumped.
Time to head back to the mage tower, I guess . . .
She turned to head out of Rafiq's office—enough trespassing in her friend's space. Which, she did admit, made her feel just a tiny ounce of guilt. Just a pinch.
Footsteps echoed through the empty hall. A soft tapping of boots against stone—not hurried, and not loud or determined. Quiet. Careful.
“Rafiq?” Aisha poked her head out of the room and turned in the direction of the noise.
Something told Aisha that was not Rafiq.
The hallway went both left and right, candles in sconces on the walls danced, illuminating the sandy-colored hall. A mosaic of tiles at eye level—well, a little below Aisha's—ran parallel with the walls, breaking up the monotony. The only non-flat surface was the vaulted ceiling. Rafiq's office was a little far in the building, where large and ornate architecture made way for sad hallways like this one. Rafiq was too stubborn to move into a room better befitting his station.
Something something humility and utility.
A rush of darkness swept through the hall, all the way until it enveloped Aisha. The darkness flickered like candlelight, brief respite of light before plunging into darkness.
Except it wasn't actually all black—more like a dark gray. A splitting headache yanked Aisha to the floor, staff clattering to the floor. It sounded quieter than it should have, for metal against stone.
As the darkness flickered, searing light replaced it for brief moments.
She held her hands to her head. What? . . . And ow ow ow.
Her breathing and heart rate licked up, threatening hyperventilation and slamming against her chest. She could hear her heartbeat against the eerie silence. Ah—no, she felt it, it slammed in her chest like the stepping beats of a spooked, runaway camel. She did not actually hear a thing. It was as if someone dipped her into a deep vat of water.
“Wha—?” She croaked.
What was happening to her? Why? She had never experienced anything like this before? Was the toll of her magic abilities finally snapping her? She shook her head—that was impossible, mages didn't end this way.
The shape of a human stood in front of her. Yet, the rapid swapping of light and dark made her vision swim. She could see no face, only robes like her own—and a staff, but not like hers. She could not focus. It felt like some deep dream in a mind of partial aphantasia. The shape’s staff warped the air around it. It was a simple staff, with some spiky black crystal affixed at the end and no other styling.
Her head pulsed. She cried out in pain and anguish. She groped in the dark for her staff, as the pulses got darker and longer.
If she could just get a hold of her staff—she could cast a spell that would definitely get her out of this. One she had thought about a lot, but never actually got to use. This would give her a great excuse to try and cast it.
The shape came closer. It kicked her staff, further away from her desperate hands. It slid across the floor of Rafiq's office and slammed against the far wall to her right. Aisha glanced at it in despair, mouth wide. That severely limited the spells available to her, and also kicked the scholar in her for not having access to that spell she wanted to try.
A boot came down on her right hand, attempting to crush it. Aisha winced. The wince became a grimace, then a smile as the pain dulled. This skinny little creature would have to do more than that to injure Aisha.
She looked up at the figure. Its mouth moved—it was incantating. Yet, Aisha heard not an utterance.
All mages had access to a simple, innate ability. It gave them a small range of silent options. Staves connected the user to mana and incantation, opening up the whole of spell usage.
The light playing tricks on her and her head throbbing—what kind of magic was this?
There were temporal mages, thermal mages, and aeolian mages. Time, heat, and wind. This . . . This was new. Aisha stared at the figure, horrified. Enough of this . . . It was time to fight back. Aisha gritted her teeth.
She channeled her innate ability and created a time bubble around herself—well, a shape that fit perfectly around her and wasted no space, considering her skill, not really a “bubble.” All she had to do was think—to will her magic into existence—no staff and no arbitrary utterance. She sped up motions by about two times. In other words, everything around her slowed in half.
Unfortunately, this made the lighting around her stop syncing with the light beyond her. What a trip—it only increased her headache and delusion.
Aisha pushed herself up, freeing her right hand from the boot of the mage.
They lost their balance for a moment. Or two moments, for Aisha.
She readied a fist and slung a punch at the mage, pushing her innate ability as far as she could. Without her staff, it would be capped somewhere . . . somewhere irrelevant. Her fist traveling twice as fast in the mage's eyes made it even stronger—not to mention Aisha's already powerful physique. While, yes, her main responsibility was a support for the aeoliam and thermal mages keeping the tempest at bay from Glorestra—one could say she had a bit of a hobby in preparing herself for any potential brawls. Aeolian mages and thermal mages could win fights just with their magic, but temporal mages? They needed a little extra oomph.
Her fist slammed into the mage's face, their bones cracking. She knocked the mage all the way across the hallway. The impact against the wall knocked the mage out cold, body slumping against the floor.
Aisha smirked. It only took one.
The weird darkness bled away back into warm but weak candlelight. The aching in Aisha's head stopped. It felt like someone had picked her up and thrown her off a cliff, though.
She took hold of her breathing and began to slow down. She put a hand to her crazy heart, waiting for it to drop back to normal.
She dissolved her time bubble, and picked up her staff. She walked out into the hallway and then sat up against the wall, opposite of the new mage. She . . . she needed to take a break and just breathe for a bit—to just exist.
W—wait. Something weird rose up in Aisha's chest.
She turned her head to the right and threw up, suddenly feeling awfully sick. She groaned. That weird, disorienting new magic must have messed with her health.
She put her head against the wall and closed her eyes.