Chapter 28 - Learning A Lesson
“Over the course of my travels around the Empire, and even its neighbours, I have seen many things. Some filled my heart with joy, others made my stomach turn with horror or disgust. Throughout it all though, one thing stood out beyond all others, inspiring me to ever greater efforts in my quest to document the Empire. The sheer love and respect that its subjects feel for Her Eternal Majesty. Other rulers, be they kings, despots or sorcerors might maintain the loyalty of their subjects, but only through terror or oppression. Every subject of the Undying Queen, from the lowest peasant to the greatest noble knows that they have her love and wisdom and they repay that with their own equally undying loyalty.”
Two Thousand Years of Empire by Jahangir Amini
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“Not at all, Killer. I am just stating the facts as I see them. However, we are both Mages, if I cannot discourage you from your course of action, maybe I can help you. Aziz, Lord Deljou to you, said that we have until evening. Perhaps I could teach you a lesson on using magic in combat. It might help you to make sure the right people die the next time you thrust yourself into an inappropriate situation.”
Ester gripped painfully hard at the skirts of her dress to help her resist the urge to set Mohsen on fire. He’d been unpleasant, in a distant way, at the Academy. Now though, she couldn’t work out what she’d done to make him dislike her so vehemently.
Ultimately it didn’t matter. He was being beyond rude to her. She’d thought she’d escaped that bloody nickname when she’d been awarded her Charter and she was damned if she was going to back down to him.
“Sister, I think you…” Tobie seemed to be a sweet man, but this wasn’t his fight.
“Thank you, Brother,” she cut him off, keeping her eyes on Mohsen. “But I shall accept Lord Mohsen’s kind offer.” She wasn’t going to call Mohsen Brother, not after he’d been so rude to her. He had no right to snub her like he had! Even the Battle Mage, Lord Deljou, a man who’d saved her life and had entire decades more experience than her addressed her with respect.
“Excellent.” Mohsen clapped his hands together, suddenly full of cheer. “Let us find a nice open space and we can get to work.”
He headed off without another word, leaving Ester to hurry after him. The other two trainee Battle Mages trailed along behind. This was almost certainly a mistake, she knew that. She wasn’t an idiot. She was already sore all over, to the point that even a brisk walk was unpleasant. She certainly wasn’t in any condition to fight. However, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She doubted Mohsen actually had any intention of teaching her anything. In fact she’d be stunned if he did. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to learn.
As they walked, Tobie and the other trainee, Sahand, sped up slightly to catch up with her.
“Sister, are you sure this is wise?” Tobie looked genuinely worried for her. It was nice she supposed, but not very helpful right now. She didn’t want a protector, she wanted a teacher. “He is only trying to humiliate you, no one would think less of you for telling him to go fuck himself.”
She blinked in surprise at the profanity, then shrugged as she walked. “Perhaps, but I need to do this.” Did she? Or was she just letting her ego get the better of her? She wasn’t sure, but if no one would actually teach her then she’d need to learn the hard way. Whatever happened, however unpleasant it got, this would be easier than when someone was actually trying to kill her.
“Sister.” Sahand spoke for the first time since Lord Deljou had dismissed his trainees. “Tobie is right. You may of course do as you wish, but Mohsen is the strongest of the three of us, I do not know what you intend, but fighting some kind of duel with him would be inappropriate and only likely to result in unpleasantness for you.” He looked around, slightly wide-eyed, as if he was surprised he’d said so many words.
“Thank you, Brother. I appreciate your advice.” She didn’t break her pace though.
A couple of minutes of walking took them out to an open space, a little way away from the camp, although still in sight of it. That was probably a good thing. Mohsen would need to behave himself better if he was in sight of non-Mages. He turned to face Ester with an infuriating smirk.
“This will do, Killer. Shall we begin?”
“Of course, thank you Professor.” She carefully didn’t allow any sarcasm to bleed into the title. Just her using it when he knew he had no right to it would be enough.
If it annoyed Mohsen, he showed no sign of it. “Good. Now, being a Battle Mage requires endless amounts of practice. It is that which makes a Battle Mage so superior on the field of combat. Well, that and a few other things. I must have sparred thousands of times over the years. All to prepare me to save people like you on the battlefield. How many times have you fought with another magic user?” He paused and just as Ester opened her mouth, he continued, “and secretive sparring sessions with other children at the Academy do not count.”
He was going to make this as humiliating as possible. She’d expected it. Although maybe if she played her cards right… “Do you mean practice where you are not really trying to hurt each other or true fights to the death?”
He grinned. “There you are, Killer, going straight for the throat, just like I expected.”
“I cannot say that I have had much experience with practice fights. Not many people are willing to engage with me sadly. So nothing like your experience.”
“Indeed.”
Ester continued before he could say anything more. “I suppose I have been in five real fights since the Academy though. You must have been in many more than that though.”
Mohsen’s lips turned down and she felt a flush of satisfaction. He hadn’t! She knew it!
“Well, hopefully you will be able to do better in any future ones once we are done. Or even learn to avoid them.” Annoyingly his smirk had only disappeared for a second. “Now what sort of combat magic might someone like you be able to pick up a bit of, without taking too long to learn?” He paused dramatically. “I know! Disjunction, you must know the basics and really beyond that it is just a matter of strength, skill and practice. Something to work on when you are back in your proper role. It is not even something inappropriate for someone like you given it really is more a technique for protecting yourself.”
“That sounds helpful,” Ester kept her voice neutral. It might actually be. “Please, do explain to me what you would like me to do.”
“Of course, Killer. How about this? I shall hit you with spells, you can try to dispel them. Do not worry, I shall be sure not to hurt you.”You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Of co…”
Magic flared around Mohsen in the middle of Ester’s sentence. He didn’t speak, just sent a silent spell at her.
“Dachaid.” Ester snapped the word, helping her to pull the small, simple, spell apart in an instant. If she hadn’t expected him to try to fool her she’d have been left sprawled in the mud.
Mohsen frowned, but then his smirk returned. “Not bad, Killer. Of course that was an easy one. Let us try something a bit harder.”
“Diwaien cobieden’fa ai’gan.” Ester felt the wave of magic behind the spell. He’d put rather more into that. Still, it wasn’t all that complex.
“Dachaid.” Again she pulled it apart into a flurry of dissipating runes.
Mohsen didn’t comment, just cast again. “Diwaien cobieden’fa ai’gan.” He spoke identical words, but Ester could see the added complexity in the spell. Sneaky.
She smiled faintly. “Do’aelt dechlaidalan.” Less directly powerful, more fiddly. The words helped her mind into the right shape. She curled her own power through his spell and with a flex of her will it stopped dead and dissolved.
That made Mohsen pause. His eyes narrowed and he studied Ester for a second. She did her best not to smirk back at him.
“Dolox ai’diwaien.” He broke the momentary silence with a shouted spell. “Sodaire saarde’fa.” Another. “Dolox cobieden’fa.” And another.
The stream of spells came at Ester, faster than she’d seen anyone throwing spells before. Desperately she called on her magic. Words of power spilled out of her mouth, but her mind was focused on the spells, applying her magic, focused by the words, to pull them apart.
Each came apart in her grip, but every successive spell ended that little bit closer to her. In seconds Ester was struggling under the onslaught. No one she’d fought had thrown spells like this. They weren’t subtle or clever, or even all that powerful individually, but there were so many of them.
She had to stop herself from taking a step back. Mohsen’s spells were getting nastier, with more force behind them. Desperately she dispelled another and another. She nearly fumbled one, struggling to keep her face calm as she did. She was going to miss one, she couldn’t keep up with this!
Suddenly the spells stopped. They were both breathing heavily, but Mohsen looked like he’d swallowed a lemon.
“Better than I expected, Killer.” His lips were definitely turned down. “You should try to relax though, you are expending far too much energy trying to keep up. I think we should move on before you make a mistake and I accidentally hurt you. Neither of us would want that after all.”
Had he really stopped rather than hit her? Ester dismissed the thought a moment later. He’d tried to catch her by surprise, he was determined to humiliate her. Excitement surged through her. He wasn’t stopping for her benefit, he genuinely didn’t think he could touch her! She was fairly sure he was wrong about that, but just the fact that it was close enough that he was fooled made her heart soar.
She gave Mohsen a perfunctory bow, disrespectfully shallow. More of a nod of the head in fact. “Thank you professor, I appreciate your wisdom.”
As a scowl flashed across his face Ester looked around and realised Velxe had joined the other two trainee Battle Mages. Her face flushed. How long had she and Mohsen been going then? She hadn’t thought anyone else would be watching. She didn’t want Velxe to see, particularly not when she knew this was likely to get unpleasant sooner or later.
She glanced at Velxe again. He looked interested rather than worried, but then what would he know about Mages? Even if he did know what was going on, she couldn’t imagine he’d say anything. Every noble should know not to interfere in Mages’ business. Some conventions were stronger than laws and an angry Mage could…
Ester’s train of thought was broken by Mohsen. Beneath his affectation of casual amusement there was an undertone of anger. “Anyway, perhaps some work on silent casting. Of course the more skilled and powerful you are as a Mage, the less you need to speak. Words of power are just the focus for our minds. If you are sufficiently strong then you can…”
As he continued the patronising lecture, more appropriate for a new apprentice at the Academy than a Chartered Mage, the anger faded from his voice. Ester could tell he loved lecturing. Or at least lecturing her. Another attempt at humiliating her. After a minute she allowed herself to yawn. That didn’t seem to stop him though, he was clearly just enjoying treating her like an apprentice.
“… because of this, silent casting is also useful in combat.” Ester resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Obviously. “Your enemy cannot hear what you are doing and it makes it easier to catch them by surprise.” It seemed trite, although if you could just read the magic in their spells fast enough it wasn’t that much of an advantage.
Mohsen gestured and a large clump of dirt tore itself out of the ground and rose into the air. It was perhaps the size of his torso. Despite herself Ester was mildly impressed by the way he managed to look completely casual doing it, like he wasn’t concentrating at all.
“Now, I am sure that you have the basics down, but there is more to it than a freshly Chartered Mage would know. Observe.”
The clump of dirt began to move towards Ester at the speed of a brisk walk. So that was his game. He could do it faster of course, but he wanted her to see it coming.
She could see the shape of his spell around it, his will holding the dirt together and in the air. A single word and she could tear it apart, but that would be what he wanted. To force her to choose between being humiliatingly covered in dirt or showing that she couldn’t match him.
Like he’d said, silent casting was a matter of strength and skill. She might not be able to look as casual as him doing it, but it wasn’t something that only Battle Mages were taught. Ester focused her mind, was about to tear apart his spell, when she hesitated. It would be easy to break his spell, it was simple and not all that powerful, but maybe she could do better.
With a thought, Ester applied her magic. Instead of trying to break his spell she met it head on with her own, literally grappling with his magic for control over the the ball of dirt. She set her mind and leant forward slightly, focusing intently on the muddy ball.
It wavered, coming to a jerky stop and then, as her strength overwhelmed his spell, started to wobble back towards him.
It took Mohsen a second to realise what was happening, but the moment he did was clear. His feet shifted and his eyebrows narrowed. The amount of magic he was feeding into his spell also rocketed up, with all pretense of doing anything other than devoting his full attention to it gone.
Ester suppressed a wince as Mohsen poured unspoken power behind his spell and the clump of dirt changed direction. He was putting a lot of strength behind it. Was it everything he had? She didn’t know, but it was a lot for a silent casting. She narrowed her eyes and fed her own strength into the contest.
The ball came to a halt and then started back towards Mohsen. Ester could already feel herself sweating. The lack of words of power to focus her magic left her severely limited, but the same was true of Mohsen and it seemed she had the advantage. Not a huge one, but enough. Neither of their faces fully showed the effort they were going to, but Ester knew he was straining just as hard as she was.
The dirt continued to move, slowly but surely, towards Mohsen. She was actually winning! Had he really been that confident that he was stronger than her? Then again if she’d been asked she’d have guessed he was too. He was older than her and Sahand had said he was the strongest of them.
As the ball got closer to Mohsen Ester found a smile creeping across her face. He’d miscalculated and now he was going to be the one that ended up covered in mud.
Without any warning Mohsen’s magic twisted, changing, and wrapped itself around Ester’s spell before pulling apart. With a thump the dirt fell to the ground and a spike of disappointment shot through her. Still, he’d resorted to disjunction. That was a win for her. She’d avoided his trap and even won their little contest. It was interesting what he’d done too. She’d have to think about that, she wasn’t sure she could have used disjunction silently in quite the way that he had.
“It seems you are not so interested in learning from me after all, Killer.” All of the amusement was gone from Mohsen’s voice and she quickly dismissed her thoughts about silent disjunction.
Now, when Ester met his gaze she saw only barely suppressed anger. It made her want to take a step back and call a halt to the whole thing. Ester scowled at that. He’d tried to humiliate her and failed. He’d insulted her repeatedly and now he was angry because she wasn’t embarrassed in front of everyone. No. She wasn’t going to back down. Not to him. He clearly wasn’t interested in teaching her anything, but it was still her best opportunity to learn. Unlike him she could keep her temper.
“Perhaps if you were actually trying to teach me anything I might be.” Alright, maybe she was struggling with her temper too.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tobie glance at Velxe and take a step forward, but before he could say anything Mohsen replied.
“Very well.” He practically spat the words. “You wish to see what it truly means to be a Battle Mage, I shall teach you. Defend yourself.”