Dream - Chapter 34 (Patreon)

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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 3
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 3, Current/Flow 3

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“I suppose this makes you something a little more than a classmate then?” Rose asked, brushing some of her steel grey hair out of her face as she pushed one half of a lightweight barrier into the prairie soil.  The thin metal spike sank deep into the ground before she unfurled the treated canvas, walking it toward where Samazzar sat cross-legged.

“I really hope you’re serious about joining the academy, Sam,” she continued, pausing to hammer another spike into the ground next to him.  “There are plenty of people with the interest and drive to learn some of the mysteries, but very few with agile enough minds to actually pursue anything more than an uncommon mystery.  Even amongst them, most practitioners refuse to rush forward.  Baptisms are dangerous.  They lose years of inquisition and research to caution.”

She unrolled the last length of the canvas past Samazzar, hammering it into the ground just behind him.  A couple of seconds later she stepped back into his field of vision, a small mallet over her shoulder as she surveyed her handiwork.  On either side of him, two lengths of canvas formed a cone that stretched well above Samazzar’s seated head, blocking out his peripheral vision.

“How many apprentices does Pothas have?”  Sam questioned, addressing the taut expanse of cloth.  “I know you’re one, but he called some of the other people his students.”

“There is a difference between student and apprentice,” Rose replied, her voice fading as she walked toward the mouth of the funnel.  “Pothas is paid to teach his students.  It’s a business transaction and he approaches it with professionalism.  Apprentices are his legacy.  They’re almost family, and they reflect upon their master or mistress.  Right now Pothas only has one apprentice other than me which would make you the third if you accept.  He’s an enthusiastic teacher, but he doesn’t stand for apprentices that are too scared to continue their studies.  If you refuse a baptism more than once, you’re out.  It’s a tough rule, but a fair one.”

Samazzar frowned.  He ran his clawed fingertips anxiously over the scales of his knees as he mulled the woman’s words.  Finally, he responded.

“Who would turn down a baptism?  It’s an exchange of pain and risk for an opportunity to learn and grow more.  Crone Tazzaera has had to turn me down at least a half dozen times when I’ve begged to undergo a baptism because she claimed it was ‘too early.”

The woman laughed, a quick joyful bark followed by a distant chuckle.

“I’ll go get Master Pothas,” she said, “but don’t worry Sam.  When the time comes, you’ll fit right in.”

He sat for a minute in the center of the funnel, and Samazzar’s thoughts turned to Crone Tazzaera.  Worry tickled the back of his mind.  She was a strong Kobold.  Tazzaera had survived more adversity than he could fully comprehend, but still, Sam couldn’t help but worry.  She was sick, and he thought she could hold out until the hard times of the coming winter, but what if he was too late?

What would happen if after everything, he made it back to the caverns and found the Crone dead, yet another victim of Lellassa’s duplicitous nature.  The very thought caused Samazzar’s blood to boil in his veins.

Strength.  That’s what Samazzar needed.  The magic and bloodline power needed to dictate his will to the world.  Lellassa had sold him for a handful of spears because he did not have enough power.  Through magic and blood, he was going to change that.

Pothas strode around the corner of the funnel, what looked like a blade strider horn glinting in his hands as he whistled cheerfully to himself.  He flashed Sam a smile as he approached before leaning down to hand him the chunk of ivory.

Samazzar turned the object over in his hands.  His first guess was right.  It was clearly a horn, but Pothas had done something to it.  The metallic coating was scraped off, revealing a creamy white core that practically hummed under his touch.

“This is why we hunt the blade striders,” Pothas offered helpfully.  “The outside of their horns touches on the lesser mystery of sharpness, but the inside, well.  That’s the good bit.  You probably noticed when you fought the beasts, but they have powers related to the uncommon mystery of sound.  Technically sound can be used as one of the keys to unlock wind, but that would take months of hard work.”

“Luckily,” he continued, fishing a second shaved horn out of a robe pocket and passing it to Samazzar, “an object of power can be used to trigger a baptism for the lesser mysteries aligned to the magic that it taps into.  In this case, air pressure and current are both key elements of the mystery of sound.  We will still need to find something that will resonate with my magic so that we can baptize you into wind, but–”

“What about this?” Samazzar asked, reaching into the pouch at his side and pulling out the stormcrow’s air bladder.  “I don’t know much about aligning things with their mysteries, but every time I touch it, I can feel something, just out of my reach.  Like the magic itself is calling to me.”

Pothas went down to one knee, gently taking the dried organ from Sam’s claws.  He turned it over twice, inspecting the bladder for faults or blemishes before smiling and standing up once more.

“That’s because it is my boy,” the old man said with a chuckle.  “I’ll hold onto this until you’ve finished your baptisms into pressure and current.  With a stormcrow bladder and the level of understanding you’ve demonstrated, I’ll eat my beard if you aren’t inducted into a second noble mystery tonight.”

“You recognized it?” Sam questioned, cocking his head slightly to the left.

“Of course,” Pothas replied, winking back at him.  “My master used one of these to help me break through to the third level of wind.  Stormcrow air bladders have a lot of magical potential.  It’s just hard to access that power efficiently without an accomplished alchemist or a wind magi, and luckily for you Sam, you have much more than a magi helping you out today.”

He grinned back at Pothas, sharp saurian teeth gleaming in the afternoon sun.

“Splendid,” Samazzar purred.  “What do you need me to do?”

“Just hold one of the horns in each hand and sit still,” Pothas answered as he began walking out of the canvas funnel and into the ash covered prairie beyond.  “I’m going to channel a typhoon’s worth of wind at you while triggering the horns from a distance.  They should start resonating, and so long as you concentrate on the mysteries, you should be able to complete your baptism in short order.”

“Of course,” he continued nonchalantly, turning once he was about five paces past the opening to the funnel, “this is going to hurt.  Make sure not to drop either of the horns.  It will stop them from vibrating and we’ll have to restart the ritual from scratch.”

Samazzar nodded, gritting his teeth as he held the two ivory cylinders on either side of his head.

At the other end of the funnel, the good humor disappeared from Pothas’ face.  The old man closed his eyes, lifting his wrinkled hands above his head and letting the sleeves of his robe fall and bunch around his elbows.

The wind stilled, no longer blowing the canvas from the side.  Then it changed directions, flowing from Pothas down the narrowing tunnel of canvas toward Samazzar.

He closed his eyes, letting the air tickle his scales as it whistled past him.  On either side of Sam’s head, the blade strider horns began to vibrate, emitting a low whine and numbing the scales of his palms.

Then the wind howled toward Samazzar, rocking him backward.  He gritted his teeth as the horns screamed.  The humming chunks of ivory squealed loudly enough that Sam’s bones ached.

Still, there was something there.  The way the pressure pulsed incredibly rapidly as the pitch rose, the way the wind buffeted him while howling down the corridor created by the treated canvas, all of it spoke to him.  It whispered of some truths beyond his comprehension.

His scales shook.  The torrent of air slammed into Samazzar, curling around his immobile body to create a small whirlpool just behind him.  Somehow, Sam’s very body was creating a break in the pressure-front that let the air bubble and create a small patch of still and calm.

Samazzar’s hands were numb.  His ears couldn’t process the high pitched ringing from the horns anymore, but that didn’t stop the pain as the rapidly pulsing pressure from the ivory reached into his body and plucked at his innards like they were the strings on an instrument.

It robbed him of his breath only for the unrelenting windstorm to force itself down Sam’s throat, refilling his lungs in an instant.  Distantly, he felt a trickle of blood leak from either nostril as the dry air and fluctuating pressure assaulted the tender membranes of his sinuses, but the liquid dried immediately under the magical onslaught.

Agony filled Samazzar’s ears.  Air pressure thumped into them in waves, each iteration inflicting more and more torment upon him.  Dizziness and nausea swarmed through his body as something seemed to pop only for the noises to grow orders of magnitude quieter.  Everything inside Sam told him to struggle, that he needed to flee from whatever was attacking him, but he suppressed the urge.

Pothas was right.  There was something there.  Between the pain and indescribable chaos of the gale, there was an understanding that was cresting over the horizon like the dawn.  Its rays reached out to him, bathing his aching body even as it warmed and soothed him.

His arms were shaking.  Sam couldn’t feel them anymore.  They’d long ago been numbed by the humming, and it took everything he had to not let them droop or fall even as the wind tried to blow them out of position.

Just as Samazzar became accustomed to the wind, it blew harder, rocking him backward and sending him sprawling in the prairie soil.  He hit the ground and something clicked.

Suddenly, the current and pressure around him made sense in a way it hadn’t before.  It was like someone drew away a curtain revealing fundamental truths about the world.  One minute, he was struggling to make sense of what the horns in his hands were truly doing, the next, Sam was on his back, blinking at the afternoon sky marveling at how logical it all was.

He reached out with his mind, stilling the pressure fronts around him.  Moments later, the air current they were pushing died out.

The singing horns in either hand shuddered to a halt.  Samazzar sat up, letting out a sigh of relief as he looked down at them.  The ivory was covered in dozens of cracks, some of which ran through their entire structure.  Whatever Pothas had done to activate them, it had stretched them beyond their limits.

A dull shout dragged Sam’s attention away from scraps in his clutches.  Pothas was running toward him, a cheerful smile on his face and his mouth moving.  Samazzar could tell that the old practitioner was saying something, but he couldn’t make out the specific words.

Pothas grabbed the horn from Samazzar’s right hand, replacing it with a vial filled with a purple liquid. The magi mimed bringing it to his lips before smiling and giving him a thumbs up.

He drank the potion.  It was thicker than expected, clinging to the sides of his throat and burning as he consumed it.  Almost immediately, it felt like his ears were on fire.  Sam reached out with his will, frantically trying to find the source of the heat only to come up empty.

Then the pain disappeared, and suddenly, Sam’s hearing snapped back into focus.

“-about now?’  Pothas asked, the first part of his question lost   “Can you hear me Sam?”

“Yes,” Sam croaked out.  “What in the name of the thousand and one mysteries was that.”

“Eardrum rupture,” the human replied, taking the empty potion bottle from him and handing Samazzar the stormcrow air bladder.  “When pressure grows too high, it can rip any number of soft membranes.  It’s one of the more effective attacks I’ve seen someone make with a lesser mystery.  Remember Sam, always remember to have healing draughts on hand when performing higher level baptisms.  I’m sure you’re aware that they only get more and more dangerous as you progress, but that only tells part of the story.”

“To become a magi,” Pothas continued, crouching next to Samazzar, “I needed to go through eight healing potions over the course of a day and a half.  I could barely remember my name by the time I broke through.”

“And that, young Sam, is the dirty secret of the mysteries,” he said with a grimace.  “Many practitioners will gain the understanding they need to make it to the next level, but refuse to undergo a baptism.  Of course, this isn’t entirely without reason.  Every year or so the civilized kingdoms lose another high level practitioner or warrior on a baptism or elixir gone wrong.  The process is dangerous, but the moment someone lets fear impede their quest for knowledge.”

“Well,” Pathos finished, slapping Samazzar on the shoulder.  “That’s the sign of a second rate practitioner.  Someone like that has reached their limit.  They might make it one or two levels higher, but complacency has stalled the careers of more willworkers than anything else I can think of.”

Sam ran his claws thoughtfully over the air bladder as he mulled over Pathos’ words.  The idea of stopping, of letting anything get in his way was so alien that he struggled to even process it.  He was a dragon.  Master of the sky and flames.  Despite any… temporary setbacks… related to his form, Samazzar simply couldn’t stop until his outer form matched how he saw himself in his reflection.  It just wasn’t possible.

“Why would they even start if their plan is only to stop once things get hard?”  He asked, looking up to lock eyes with Pothas.  “I don’t understand?”

“Money,” the old man said dismissively.  “Power, acclaim, women.  There are as many reasons as there are failed practitioners.  I don’t really care to inquire after those who have lost their drive.  It’s a topic as depressing as it is fruitless.”

“Tell me what I need to do,” Sam responded.  “I want to know more.  I want to become more.”

The old man’s face split into a grin, brilliant white teeth contrasting with his beard as he stood up.

“Thatta boy Sam,” the old man replied.  “Just hold onto the air bladder.  We won’t need to break it open right now, the power would overwhelm you anyway.  I’ll just sync my magic with it and you’ll be inducted into the mystery of wind in no time.  Then, once you’ve found your friend, come to the Vereton Academy and tell them that Wind Master Pothas sent you.”

He began walking toward the entrance of the tunnel, speaking quietly as he receded away from Samazzar.

“You’ve got a bright future in front of you Sam.  I’ll be watching you with considerable interest.”