Elemental mage 2, p.1
Elemental Mage 2, page 1
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Cast of Characters from Book 1
Thomas Starke: Earthshaper, metallicist, flameworker. Green eyes, brown hair, tawny skin. The series’ protagonist, plucked from a relatively hum-drum life in D.C. and thrust into ‘the Black World’ due to a spell-gone-wrong. Kind, honest, and extremely curious, Thomas wants to learn about this world as much as he wants to figure out why he was brought there, and how to get home.
Thessaly ‘Tessa’ Grave: Windforger. Gray eyes, dark hair, nut-brown skin. A welcoming, bubbly young woman and a student in her penultimate year at the University. She is as curious about Thomas and the manner of his arrival in the Black World as he is, readily becoming his friend and guide into this strange new world. They quickly formed a strong bond and slept together at the end of the last book.
Arian Constantine: Rainsmith, windforger. Blue eyes, white hair, pale skin. A pragmatic and somewhat standoffish student in her final year at the University. Arian is wickedly intelligent and keeps her cards close to her chest, but to those who have her trust, she is unfailingly loyal and dependable. Thomas dreamt about her prior to coming to the Black World, but since his arrival, she’s been aloof toward him.
Fabian Ardere: Flameworker, metallicist. Amber eyes, golden hair, tawny skin. Also in his final year at the University, Fabian’s family name opens doors, despite the rocky relationship he has with his father, and he has a very dry, cutting humor.
Juliet Keegan: Earthshaper, flameworker. Green eyes, red hair, bronze skin, and very tall. Another final-year student, she is the most measured of the group overall, often acting as peacemaker, with a calm demeanor and a practical outlook. Like Arian, she is very well-studied and though wise to the risks of their activities, can’t resist a little bit of adventure any more than the others.
Zephyr Grave: Windforger, metallicist. Gray eyes, dark hair, nut-brown skin. A level-headed, kind-hearted young man who graduated from the University the previous year. Now working as a jeweler and locksmith in the city of Asturel, Zephyr finds he cannot escape the hectic escapades of his friends and sister, especially when the group begins to uncover something more sinister.
Kell Tamsen: Earthshaper, metallicist, flameworker. Green eyes, brown hair, tawny skin. Thomas’ peculiar doppelganger who went missing as inexplicably as Thomas appeared. Ravenously curious and recklessly ambitious, Kell could very well be his own undoing, assuming the group ever find him.
Acheron Dolos: Rainsmith, windforger. Blue eyes, fair skin, gray-streaked brown hair. He was a professor at the University and Kell and Arian’s personal mentor. He had high hopes for Kell’s academic prowess and encouraged curiosity, but only so far. He believed some magic to be too dangerous to contemplate in earnest and eventually revealed himself to be embroiled in a dangerous Asterium conspiracy, before he was killed in self-defense by Thomas.
Hermia Adamine: Earthshaper. Green eyes, dark-brown hair, nut-brown skin. Headmistress of the University, stern and pragmatic, but also committed to fairness and always willing to give second chances to those who sincerely want them. She values honesty above all else and has no patience for the Asterium’s conspiracies. She has a quintessence bond with her partners.
Chapter 1
“Okay, Ari. Do it.”
I leaned forward in my seat and held the gaze of the white-haired woman sitting opposite me. She and I, along with our four friends, were in the ‘lounge’ section of the dormitory I shared with Fabian.
Arian Constantine’s expression was focused, and she rested her elbows on her knees as she surveyed me for a moment. Then she closed her eyes and began to murmur something under her breath. I had the impression of some veil descending over me, something invisible yet tangible, and when she opened her eyes again, she nodded.
“Okay,” I said again, and I leaned back in my seat.
As I thought over what to say next, I glanced around at the other four people in the room.
Fabian, my ‘roommate,’ was standing off to the side with his arms folded. He was a fraction shorter than me with a short crop of golden-blond hair. Usually, he had a glib joke or a wry comment at the ready, but right now his flame-orange eyes were fixed intently on me as he waited in anticipation.
Sitting beside Arian, with a similarly-intense expression to Fabian, was Juliet. Even sitting down, she had a commanding presence about her, one I could only describe as ‘Amazonian,’ with a cloud of fiery-red hair and piercing green eyes. It sometimes unsettled me to look at her too long, like I was about to be told off for something.
Then I settled on Tessa, who was sitting on my right, and her mist-gray eyes were shining with encouragement. She regarded me with a bright, sweet smile, one I found myself eagerly returning, and she squeezed my hand where she’d cupped it between both of hers.
“Hello…” I said, very slowly and deliberately. My lips struggled to form the unfamiliar syllables of Tessa’s native language-- the native language of everyone in this room except for me. “My… name… is… Thomas.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Thomas,” Tessa replied, and her words were smooth with easy fluency.
Because of the translation spell Arian usually had going, I’d rarely heard Tessa speaking her native tongue, and I relished the chance. Her accent, which sounded a little peculiar in English, had a musical lilt that complimented Relician words far better.
“My name is Thessaly,” she continued, and I could tell she was speaking a little slower than she would normally, to give me a chance. “I’m a student at the Asterium, in-- anadis meya.”
“Huh?” I asked, a question whose meaning was evident in every language. The last part of her sentence was new to me, but I knew this was the only way I’d pick up the vocabulary necessary to improve. “Ana-what?”
“Anadis meya,” Tessa repeated, and she held up six fingers. She then nodded to Arian and Juliet and raised a seventh. “Laris meya.”
“Oh-- you’re in your sixth year,” I said in English, and I nodded in understanding. “‘Anadis.’ Sixth.”
Tessa nodded with a bright smile. Over the last two weeks, I’d learned she was an excellent tutor. Patient when I made errors, encouraging when I was unsure, and always with a kind smile at the ready.
She was-- and I felt sappy just for thinking it, even though it was true-- kind of wonderful.
“Meaning ‘laris’ is seventh,” I said slowly, and then I switched to Relician again as I continued. “Kell is in his seventh year.”
“Ti!” Tessa answered happily, a word I now knew meant ‘yeah!’
Kell was the one member of this little group who wasn’t present, as well as the only member I hadn’t properly met-- unless you counted a weird, dream-sequence-type thing.
For many reasons, he was a mystery to me. To all of us, really. He was the entire reason I was even sitting here right now, in a world where no one spoke English except for me, where the night sky was empty of stars, and where the people could control the elements with magic.
This world, the Black World, was-- as best as I could tell-- another dimension, far removed from the one I’d grown up in, the one I called my home.
Almost three weeks ago, I’d been swept from my house in Washington D.C. and shunted into Fabian’s basement, into the middle of an illegal spell circle, the exact spot where Kell Tamsen-- who I happened to look nearly identical to-- had occupied only moments before.
It had been a transportation spell, designed to take the caster across the barrier between worlds. According to my new friends, this kind of magic had once been commonplace, but following the ‘Calamity’-- a disaster as destructive as the name implied-- all traveling magic had been strictly outlawed. But Kell, a prodigy with too much curiosity for his own good, had sought to try it anyway, to uncover those lost magics and maybe to find a way of making transportation magic safe.
The spell didn’t go as planned, though, and now I was here while Kell was stuck back on Earth.
Tessa and I continued chatting, her in her easy fluency and me with my stilted hesitancy. But I was actually pretty pleased with myself, because it was a lot better than when we’d started these lessons two weeks ago.
“You’re really improving, Thomas,” Tessa told me warmly after Arian recast the translation spell and once again made all their Relician sound like English to my ears.
“Your conjugation needs work, but you’re picking up the vocabulary well,” the white-haired woman agreed in a slightly rasping voice.
She was, as ever, ruthlessly practical, and never offered praise without highlighting at least one area to improve. I’d come to all but confirm she was like that with everything-- herself especially.
“How are you doing?” I then asked her, and my gaze, as it always did these days, briefly darted down to the fading purple marks on Arian’s throat. “Your head okay?”
“A minor headache, but I’ll be fine,” she answered as she raised a hand to rub at her temples. “Being able to take breaks for your lessons is helping.”
Over the past fortnigh t, the six of us had essentially been confined to house arrest-- or, technically, ‘dormitory arrest’-- and with little else to do, Juliet suggested I try to learn Relician, so Arian wouldn’t need to constantly maintain a translation spell for me.
For one thing, we had no idea how long I’d be trapped here. Because Kell, the prodigy who’d actually conducted the traveling spell, was stuck in my world, and my world had no magic.
Through some strange, magical contrivance, I’d actually managed to speak to Kell, if only briefly. He’d managed to sort of astrally project himself into my mind-- though it was easier when I was asleep or unconscious-- and from there, we’d actually been able to speak.
However, despite this, I hadn’t had any contact with him in the two weeks since that first time. No matter how hard I tried to reach out in my dreams, I’d received no answer. Not even the faintest hint there was even anyone to reach out to.
I didn’t know if Kell was unable to reach me, or if he simply didn’t want to. It was, either way, up to the six of us back here in the Black World to get him home. And, hopefully, returning him to his world would also return me to mine.
It was far from all bad, though. For one thing, there was the fact I could do magic in this world. Like my missing doppelganger, I was a ‘trinity,’ which meant I could influence three elements-- the same three elements as Kell. Fire, earth, and metal. I was only just getting a grasp of the basics, but it was exciting
For another, there was Tessa.
Like everything here, whatever existed between the windforger woman and me was new and fragile and intensely exciting. Joy and brightness just seemed to radiate out of her, and I’d been helplessly drawn to her when I’d awoken in this world. She was quite literally the first face I’d seen once I’d arrived.
She’d patiently answered my dozens of questions and made an effort to get to know me as more than just someone who bizarrely resembled her missing friend. And I, in turn, had been captivated by her kindness and the excitement with which she’d asked me about my own world. We’d fought at one another’s sides and saved one another’s lives, and with all of that combined, it was probably no surprise how quickly we’d fallen for one another.
“I wonder what’ll happen first,” Fabian remarked in the sort of overly-thoughtful tone that meant a quip was incoming. “Thomas becoming fluent, figuring out how to get Kell home, or being released from this fucking confinement.”
Admittedly, he wasn’t wrong. The whole reason I was learning Relician was because, while we were stuck here, we had a whole lot of free time to kill.
Being final-years, Arian, Fabian, Juliet-- and technically me, since I was masquerading as Kell-- were supposed to be working on their final projects, essentially their dissertations. All the regular work they were expected to complete had been sent over to our new dorms, which were situated at the far end of the University’s accommodation so we weren’t anywhere near any other students.
This was both for our protection and for everyone else’s. Two weeks ago, as we’d been trying to figure out how to contact Kell, and how to put everyone back in the world they belonged to, we’d run afoul of Professor Acheron Dolos, Arian and Kell’s personal tutor at the University. Once he’d learned Kell had attempted illegal cross-world magic, and I was not native to the Black World, he’d tried to kill us all.
He was the one to blame for the bruising on Arian’s throat. Juliet had tried to heal her, but because the bruising happened from rupturing tiny capillaries, it was a highly-complex bit of healing magic for injuries that usually weren’t too serious. Subsequently, the white-haired woman had been relegated to healing the slow way.
Dolos claimed his attempted murders were in the name of protecting the world against another Calamity, but I didn’t really buy it. Kell and Arian had been his favorite students, and we’d found old notes belonging to Dolos himself about cross-world magic. Though, Dolos claimed he’d only ever dabbled in theory.
Either way, he’d tried to kill us, and we’d ended up killing him in self-defense. But Dolos had been highly respected, particularly by the Council, and the death of such an important figure was likely to be met with retaliation.
“I’d settle for some answers,” I said to Fabian plainly. “Some kind of progress.”
“They’ll have to let us out eventually,” Arian said as she leaned back in her seat and folded her arms. Against her moon-pale skin, the bruises stood out starkly, even though they were mostly healed. “To release us or charge us. The Astilegis aren’t going to waste this many officers on us for much longer, it’s inefficient.”
While the University-- and the Asterium as a whole-- was getting to the bottom of Dolos’ death, including our claims that he’d been engaging in illegal magic, we’d been confined to the campus. After a couple nights, we’d also been relocated to these more out-of-the-way dorms, with Astilegis protection for good measure.
“And it’s not like they’re guarding us out of the goodness of their hearts, either,” Fabian added with a snort.
As if to punctuate his point, there was a knock at the door to our little prison. A moment later, it opened, and three figures entered.
Two were Astilegis officers, and their faces were unfamiliar but interchangeable by way of their red uniforms. They had been given orders not to speak to us unless absolutely necessary, though we weren’t exactly eager to get chatty with them, either.
The third was Zephyr, who-- as the only member of our group who’d actually graduated the University and was no longer a student-- had been granted permission to attend work during the day. He was under close guard the whole time, though I didn’t know how interesting it would be to watch the man fix keys and jewelry.
Zephyr was also Tessa’s older brother, and while he had the same coloring and the same curls as his sister, he’d inherited the lion’s share of both height and nervousness.
He was a tall man, the tallest of us by far, but it was counteracted by his wiry build. It was fitting, how he seemed to loom over us anxiously, because he was by far the most nervous of our group, like he was a big brother to five people instead of just one. Normally, his dark brown curls fell across his forehead, but right now, they were swept back from repeatedly running his hands through them, which made his mist-gray eyes stand out all the more against his nut-brown skin.
“You alright?” he asked us in an agitated tone once the Astilegis guards had exited the dorm and locked the door again.
We all nodded.
“Same as always-- bored out of our fucking skulls,” Fabian drawled.
“You shouldn’t be standing,” Zephyr told him. “You--”
“If you mention my concussion one more time, I’m going to give you one to match,” the flameworker told him without malice.
Zephyr rolled his eyes, but he managed a small smile when Tessa stood up to hug him.
“Thomas is making good progress,” the windforger told her brother.
“Glad to hear it,” the taller man said with a smile at me.
Despite the myriad of differences between him and his sister, their grins were eerily identical.
“Did you get any trouble from the scarlet bastards?” Fabian then asked with a distasteful glance toward the locked door.
Apparently, in Relician, the words ‘scarlet’ and ‘bastard’ rhymed.
“Not today,” Zephyr answered, though he said it with a frown.
I knew he didn’t like being escorted everywhere under armed guard, as if he’d already been found guilty of some crime. He hadn’t even been present in the room when we’d been fighting Dolos.
“But they’re still watching me too closely,” Zephyr then continued with a sigh. “They barely let me leave to take a piss. No way I’m getting anything else.”
“Damn,” Juliet muttered dispassionately, as if she’d expected this answer but was still disappointed.
This ‘anything else’ primarily consisted of figuring out where the Asterium was storing pre-Calamity records. The University Archives claimed to have only very few records, most of which were unreadable from centuries of linguistic drift, but Fabian and Arian suspected the archivists were hiding something.
Frankly, we all suspected the entire Asterium was hiding something. Dolos’ reaction to Kell’s cross-world spell had been too extreme, and the Astilegis’ chasing after us had been too intense, for us to suspect anything else.
