Chapter 26. Elven Encounters
I dreamed of cold fire. This time I knew it was a dream right away. Everything was clouded over, like there was smoked-glass between me and my burning home. The flames moved slowly, without heat, somewhere far away, even as they burned all around me. My mother reached down for me, but I already knew it wasn’t her, the porcelain-white bone shining through her skin. It crouched, but there was an impenetrable wall between us, an uncrossable, infinite distance of a couple of steps.
It clawed at the air, bone breaking through and pushing out from the fingertips, scratching the nothing between us.
I watched it struggle. I could imagine the hissing, but I heard nothing. It looked desperate, the claws pressing against the nothing that kept us apart. I reached a hand out to it, but that only drove it away, sent the thing stumbling on its back. Flesh fell off it as it hit the burning floor, leaving it white and pitiful.
I woke with a gasp. A tear ran down my face. I wiped it off, steadying my breathing in the dark and quiet dorm. A small magical light flickered at the opening in the wall that pretended to be a window. Grit and Fek slept, chests rising and falling. Minnelil sat in her bed, a book placed on her knees, finger moving along the page.
“It’s too dark to read,” I whispered.
She glanced at me and smiled, her teeth white in the dim light. Small motes of gold swam in her large eyes, bright flecks dancing around her irises. “You should be sleeping,” she said in a low voice.
I pushed the duvet off me and sat up. “You’re not either. Need to revise something?”
Fek moved in his sleep, twitching and frowning.
Minnelil glanced at him and raised her finger to her lips. She nodded her head toward the door and grabbed her robe.
I pulled on a pair of pants. The walls were hot anyway, and I had been sleeping with my shirt on. Old habit. I’d feel too exposed if I took off too much, didn’t want to be running away butt-naked if something bad woke me up.
Minnelil pulled the door shut quickly but carefully, making sure no gust of wind slammed it in either direction. “I don’t need to sleep as much as you do,” she said. “So I often read during the nights. The library here is very well stocked.”
“Huh, I haven’t even found the place yet. What are you reading?”
“Just some book,” she said, and even in the dark I saw her cheeks blush.
I chuckled. Funny, I’d have thought she would have been cramming for some exam. “The library stocks some books as well? Fun.”
She leaned against the wall, resting the back of her head on it. “It is rather fun. There’s a limit on how much theory on the dissection of cadavers anyone can read in a given time.”
I sat on the walkway, dangling my legs over the edge. Knowing there were enchantment to keep me from turning into a wet stain if I fell off made the place feel a bit safer. I had always liked sitting with my legs hanging down, the wind brushing on them, nothing below me. Toying with the idea of falling down. Had that really been the reason? It felt so alien at the moment.
“What woke you?” Minnelil asked. “I thought you were sleeping.”
I scooted back, dragging my knees as close to the platform’s edge as I could. “A weird dream. Nothing important.”
Saying that felt great, now that I could mean it. The memory had been with me always, lurking behind every moment, gnawing at me when it wasn’t drowning me completely. Being in this place had kept it mostly in check. There was nothing here reminding me about my childhood, except perhaps Lombarte in the worst possible way.
“If you say so,” Minnelil said, walking to stand next to me. “Mind if I sit here?”
I stared into the swirling snow and nodded. The merchants had gone to sleep. The Bursar had said there were fewer of them than was usual. She wasn’t happy about that, but the last merchant had complained that the routes had become harder to get through and that the weather had been outright hostile the whole way to the Academy.
Minnelil wrapped her ankle under the shin of her other leg, grabbing her knees with her clasped hands. She rocked gently in place. “It gets lonely here, sometimes. But I guess it’s part of the bargain.”
“Bargain?” I asked, absently. The web of magic tingled on my skin, the wards holding back the wind, the ones nudging me gently to stay on the platform, the whatever it was that kept the walls warm.
“Being outside of the forests. Away from Silloin.” She sounded like she was at least as far away as me, looking with those gold-speckled eyes into the distance, through the black wall towering over us on the other side of the Academy building.
“Ah,” I said.
“We’re not that different from you, you know,” she said, then continued more quietly. “But people often think we are, and that almost makes it true.”
I tensed, pushing my hands on my knees. This was what I had always tried to avoid, what always happened. People talked to me, made me care about them. The Kertharians had burnt Lann and Taum, still holding hands, the charcoal of their fingers mixing together. At least they never had to be apart, the way I tried to be. I clenched my teeth together, waiting for the cushion to pop, for Falar’s ward to fail and the pain to swallow me whole again.
Minnelil patted me softly on the back, the touch feeling like an electric shock. “Thanks, Lina. For listening, sitting with me. It’s part of the bargain, but the nights are lonelier than any other time. Still, you should get to bed or you’ll look worse than the zombies come morning.”
Her hand lingered on my back for a moment. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I should.”
I didn’t dream more that night. The bone thing had been pushed and kept away, along with everything else. I woke fresh and happy, like a puppy. Minnelil was already fully dressed, nudging Fek awake as well. Grit was brushing her hair. Jonungaard hair always made me jealous. Thick and brilliant white, like autumn snow on the rooftops, before the pigeons and rats and thieves got to it.
“Does anyone have any plans today?” Fek asked, wiggling to get the robe down all the way. “I was planning on going to the beach.”
“Hmm, it’ll be quiet around here, then,” Minnelil said.
“Suitable for reading more Coratorus, perhaps?” I asked, chuckling.
“Perhaps, perhaps!” she said, rubbing her hands together and grinning wide like a cat. “Oh, and if it gets too much, we can continue with the channelling lessons.”
“Fine, it’s a deal.” I’d almost said date, but flinched at the last moment.
Grit put down the comb. Her hair reached to the small of her back, straight as an arrow. She leaned her head down over the backrest of the chair and looked upside down at Minnelil, wiggling her head from side to side.
Minnelil smiled quietly, moving behind her and starting to braid the hair. “Just something simple. I don’t want to miss breakfast,” she said, building smaller and larger braids, rolling together while leaving part of Grit’s hair hanging loose like snow on the back of her black robe.
“You just want to get back to read the book,” Grit said, eyes closed.
All three of them snickered.
I did too.
Minnelil paced in a circle behind me, hands on top of her head.
“So, reinforcing a living body with the Null works in a similar fashion as normal magical reinforcement, but… the opposite?” I said. Minnelil stopped, rubbing at her temples. “Hmm, I think… I think…”
“I can see,” I said, chuckling. My belly was full and my toes were warm. I had bought a pair of new boots from one of the merchants yesterday. My old ones had been full of holes and the leather had worn thin and shiny. The new student crate had only had a pair ridiculous velvet slippers, but also a small pouch of money.
Money. All silver.
More than I had ever had when living on the streets. I had been so shocked I stashed it in my chest and didn’t look at it before now. I had been sure everyone would have realized the mistake, or blamed me for stealing the pouch.
No wonder the Bursar was so angry all the time, if the school was determined to hand out money to anyone who happened to wander in.
“I’m just thinking how to explain it properly. Normally you add in more power, more energy. Mana is basically life, so you can infuse it into the body rather easily,” Minnelil said, still pacing around.
“Null is… not,” I said, staring down at the book. “So using it allows the body to ignore things like wounds or it being physically impossible to throw a fully grown lecturer twenty steps into a wall, right?”
“Curiously specific, but yes. The benefits of being beyond cause and effect are manifold. The problem is containing the power precisely, allowing it only to affect things that don’t end up killing the user.”
We were both explaining it to ourselves, not really talking to each other. Coratorus’ book lay open on the table. It bristled with enough power that I wondered if it would blacken the tabletop, make the lacquer bubble away. The concepts weren’t difficult when spelled out, but grasping the actual meaning of stopping everything, pumping the muscles full of something that didn’t slacken or relax or budge was making my brain smoke. When filled with Null, the body didn’t so much move as direct the energy that never changed to start not-existing in the desired direction.
“I think I tied my brain into a knot,” I said, pressing my face into my hands. “It was so easy when I just did it.”
“Also extremely deadly, I understood. Your skin still doesn’t look normal.”
I lifted my face off my hands. My fingertips were dented, tinged grey. One my fingernails had dropped off. “It’s lucky there are no mirrors here. No one has really said anything about the way I look, either. People must be pretty used to everyone looking like a corpse?”
“Comes with the profession,” Minnelil said. “And the silver would scare the undead. No chance of getting proper mirrors here, especially now that the Kertharian glassworkers are gone.”
“Good riddance.” I growled the words before I could think. I bit at my lip. At least some things still registered, even with the collar insulating me from whatever effect the Null was supposed to have on all living things.
“I’m sorry,” Minnelil said. “I know many carry scars from those days. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I mean, it’s not. But at the moment, it’s close enough.”
She rested a hand on my shoulder, slender fingers giving me a soft squeeze. I breathed out. I had let no one touch me for years. Not after learning how things worked in the city. I lifted my hand to rest it on hers. “Does Coratorus write about Null affecting feelings?” I muttered.
She pointed her other hand over my shoulder, finger trained on the book. The hand resting on my shoulder started to shake me, wobbling my head from side to side. “Turn the page already, and maybe we’ll find out!”
Just a reminder that there are now over 20 advance chapters available on Patreon. I also started a new The Academy by Night bonus content collection that has scenes suitable for adult readers. The first one features Chancellor Jextor summoning a succubus and the one that just went up has Grit attending a student party and meeting a fun girl there. Check out the teasers for both on Patreon!