Chapter: 166 - Brutal (Patreon)

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Tala and Rane walked over to one side of the Mages’ training area and through a door before walking up a flight of stairs to a small room that overlooked the private arena.

There were a few seats set up so that people could watch the goings on, but neither of them sat.

They stood and watched as another set of Archons fought, but Tala didn’t really register what was happening. Instead, she was waiting for Rane to say something. He obviously would, at some point.

I’ve been doing that this whole time, haven’t I…

So, what did she want?

I don’t want a relationship. I don’t want to have a family. The pain caused by her own family still loomed too large, though she knew, more and more, that she had and was likely over reacting to hard choices made in a difficult situation.

But she didn’t want to face that either.

Is it fair to expect Rane to wait for me to be ready? She hesitated. Do I want him to?

Rane still hadn’t said anything.

Tala gave him a grimacing glance.

He saw her move and smiled her way before turning back to gaze out at the fight, below.

She looked back as well, once more folding into her mind and her own thoughts.

Why isn’t he saying anything?

She kept herself from growling.

Why am I not saying anything?

She did growl at herself, then, but internally. Gah…this is giving me a headache…

Rane finally took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m glad that we’re in a place where we can just be here, watching a fight together in silence, and it isn’t weird.”

Tala felt her eye twitch. The one on the far side from Rane, of course.

“I did want to talk to you, though.”

She gave a tight-lipped smile but didn’t turn. “Mmhmm?”

“I’d like to go to dinner with you, just the two of us.”

She shrugged. “Sure. I have to eat, after all.”

Rane huffed a laugh. “True enough.” After a moment, he nodded as if to himself. “I want to be clear. I want us to get dinner, not as friends.”

Tala turned to him and sighed. “I knew what you meant, Rane.”

He hesitated, caught with his mouth open. No further sound came out.

Now or never, Tala. “I need you to understand a few things: I don’t want anything more. Not right now, maybe not ever. Casual can’t exist in light of eternity.” She shook her head. “We could both live for thousands of years, if not longer. That feels like an eternity at the moment.” She sighed. “So, I don’t want casual, and I’m not in a healthy place for anything serious.”

He shrugged. “I can understand that. What do you need?”

She shook her head again. “Rane, I can’t give you a list of things I need before I go on a date with you. There isn’t one, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be fair to give you a ‘to-do’ list.”

“So, you need time, more than anything.” It wasn’t a question.

“It really isn’t fair to ask you to wait for something that may never come.”

He shrugged again. “You aren’t asking me to. Your answer is simply: ‘Not now.’ I hear you. Beyond that, if I wait it’s on me. Fair?”

“Yeah… that is fair.” She gave him a searching look. “You are having far, far too well-crafted responses to all of this.”

Rane blushed, looked away, and scratched the back of his head. “Well… Mistress Aproa pretended to be you, and I practiced…”

Tala blinked at him a few times, then snorted a laugh. “That sounds like something Mistress Odera would do.”

He grinned in return. “Yeah. Turns out, like grandmother like granddaughter.”

“So, it would seem.”

They went back to looking at, but not really watching, the fight below.

Only a short time later, Rane cleared his throat. “So… do you have any interest in me?”

Tala sighed loudly, but Rane held up his hands defensively.

“I don’t mean now, of course. We just settled that I understand that now is ‘No.’ I mean: is this something that could ever work out, or am I just not of interest to you, no matter the circumstances?” He pointed between them to indicate what he meant by “this.”

Tala reddened, not looking at him. “There is nothing objectionable, no.”

Rane snorted a laugh. “That’s probably as good as I can hope for.”

She reflexively punched him in the shoulder, not hard enough to be considered an attack.

Even so, he staggered to the side a bit, the blow having pushed him off his footing.

Huh, that might be a weakness, though he probably doesn’t regard me as an opponent, at the moment. She shook her head. Now was not the time to be thinking of how to overcome him in a fight.

Rane rubbed his shoulder, not trying to hide the motion. “Ow.”

She glanced his way, suddenly feeling guilty. “Sorry… I didn’t really think before I did that.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine. Doubt it will bruise.”

She smiled self-consciously. “Even so. I apologize. I shouldn’t have done that.”

He smiled in return and dipped his head but didn’t say anything else.

They lapsed back into silence for an extended time, watching the match finish up.

Finally, as the winner was announced, Rane broke the silence. “So, dinner?”

She gave him another searching look.

“As friends. I know that’s all it can be.” He didn’t add: “for now,” but Tala heard it anyways.

Should I keep my distance? Pull back? She didn’t want to lose one of the better friends she’d made since leaving the Academy. She huffed a laugh internally. Not that I had any good friends before that. “Sure. Invite others?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure.”

“Looks like the challenges are done. Ready to get some practice in?”

“Yeah, Mistress Aproa said we’d be doing focused skirmishes, today.”

“What’s that?”

*      *      *

As it turned out, “focused skirmishes” were team fights centered around conflicting goals rather than elimination.

In some cases, outright elimination of the opponent was a negative.

At the moment, Tala was cradling a blown egg. Her team was tasked with defending it for five minutes without “killing” any of their attackers.

They had been forbidden from simply placing the egg in a storage space, and the other team had no restriction on the elimination of the defenders, though that wouldn’t win them the round.

Their unrestricted goals were made obvious by the storm of ice and other magics that absolutely shredded the designated arena.

Jets, walls, and columns of freezing water flowed around the other attacks, making the battlefield a slurry of danger.

Tala would have been unable to fully protect the target from even those magics, despite her speed and resilience, if it weren’t for Stan and the other fire Mage.

Aproa had thought it entertaining to pit fire against ice and water.

Lightning also wove among the ice and through the water, filling in the gaps in the all-encompassing assault.

The fire Archons continually met incoming spears, spikes, and blocks of ice with detonations of flame, pushing the attacks aside more than melting them. Their explosions also disrupted the workings of water but had the negative effect of creating a constant smattering of sleet that quickly soaked them all.

Water is stupidly heat resistant…

Aproa was surprisingly the best counter to the lightning attacks as her ability to create voids in the air made it impossible for the electricity to pass through those spaces, foiling the lighting strikes.

If that was the full set of Mages, Tala would have been tempted to simply stand in place, allowing her teammates to defend her as she lightly clutched the egg. Sadly for her team, there were others.

The earth and light Mages were dueling titans, working across the battlefield at cross purposes. The earth mage was using every spare moment to alter the terrain to the attackers’ advantage as well as send crushing attacks at the defenders. The light Archon, however, was keeping those spare moments to an absolute minimum, using her opponent’s ice and water to refract and redirect her light-quick harrying attacks.

It was only her efforts that kept the attackers on their toes and prevented them from solidifying a victory.

The earth Mage raised the sand, and other bits of earth, to deflect or intercept the light attacks, but the light Mage was an artist, often forcing the earth Archon to choose between letting his comrades be hit or knocking them aside himself.

She was the star of the show by a long stretch, but even their interwoven back and forth wasn’t the end of the chaos.

Rane pressed Aproa and Tala relentlessly.

Every attack from either side seemed to allow his defenses to move him exactly as he wanted, and it took both of the women to counter him, while Tala was hampered with the need to protect the egg.

It was brutal.

The air was so full of magic that Tala felt her eyes beginning to ache under the strain of her mage-sight. That, in turn, was an accompaniment to her head throbbing with pain.

She didn’t disable it, however, as she needed the split second’s advantage it gave against the few attacks that did reach her.

After what felt like days, Cazor called a halt. “Time!”

Spell-workings faded from the air, leaving a sopping slurry of sand behind.

The mage-hunter walked over to Tala and held out his hand.

Tala blinked and rubbed at her eyes, trying to clear the lingering fatigue from mage-sight use in such a inundated area and the ache in her head from processing all the information.

When Cazor cleared his throat, Tala jumped a little. Right!

She proudly presented him with the perfectly intact egg…Well, not perfectly.

The shell had cracked, but not deformed.

The Archons all groaned, the attackers because they’d hoped to press her enough to shatter the target, the defenders because it wasn’t perfectly intact.

Aproa laughed. “Does that mean it was a tie?”

Cazor shook his head. “I guess? We’ve never really had this happen before.” He gave Tala a searching look. “How did it happen?”

She glanced to one side for a moment, shrugging. She felt incredibly irritated and grouchy at her own mistake. “Well, I backhanded a block of ice with the hand holding the egg, and I guess the impact transferred through, just a bit.” She looked to her teammates and forced the appropriate reaction. “Sorry everyone. It was instinct.”

Everyone waved it off as fine. The point wasn’t really the egg, or winning or losing, it was to train them in varying situations.

In truth, she did feel somewhat bad, but mostly, she just felt irritable, and her head hurt. She didn’t remember taking even a glancing blow to the head, and her scripts should have taken care of it if she had. Still, there was no reason to whine about it, or take out her discomfort on others.

Cazor seemed to have a thought. “You know, I rule this as a win for the defenders. The target is banged up, but alive. They could get him healed in no time.”

Half the Archons let out whoops of victory, the others, groans of defeat.

True, winning wasn’t the point, but it was still gratifying.

*      *      *

They went through several more situational matches.

Some were more physical, like infection tag, where the Archon who was “it” just had to hit any of the others in any way, physically, and the contacted Mage would switch to the “it” team.

Those trying to escape were restricted to the use of non-lethal methods to keep them back.

Unsurprisingly, Rane dominated that one, easily remaining as the last survivor and staying such for long enough that the Mage Hunters called it a win. He did have a rather unfair advantage.

Some were more magical, like aura domination.

In that, each Archon sat three feet behind a post, equally spaced from the others in a ring.

Each post would light up with the color of the dominant aura in contact with it.

It was, in essence, an eleven-way contest of wills.

To her surprise, Tala struggled in that one. She was utterly unused to battling so many other wills in so many directions at once.

With regard to contests of aura and will: If she was used to tug-of-war, this was tackle-tag.

Still, she learned, and the game-like setting helped her enjoy it more than she might have if she had attempted to train the same skills on her own, if she even could.

The final thing they did that day was rotate through having each one of the Archons take a turn as the “rogue Mage.” The others had to work together to subdue the rogue without harming them. As makes sense, the rogue had no such restrictions.

To no ones’ surprise, Rane won as the rogue. What was a surprise, however, was that the rogue won every round. With the restriction of “non-harm” they were each able to hold their own well enough to force the containment group to hurt them in order to end the fight.

All in all, it was an amazingly fun afternoon of training.

I could have been doing this the whole time?

True, not every skill Tala wished to work on was practiced that afternoon, but every one that she did work on was much advanced by the exercises.

I’ll have to think of ways for the group to compete on the other skills I need to improve. The addition of new contests was encouraged. Each game they played had been added by one member or another of the group over the last years of on and off group training.

Everyone but Tala required the healer at some point during the day, and Tala actually received much more healing than the rest, even if hers was self-administered.

She did ask the healer to take a brief look at her when a building headache wouldn’t go away, but nothing was found to be amiss. So, Tala just bore through and guzzled water.

As the day wrapped up, Tala and Rane invited the others to join them for dinner, but each had other plans for the nightly meal. So, they all went their separate ways, agreeing to meet up again the next day.

Tala and Rane went and got cleaned up in private bath rooms, meeting up half an hour later.

She stood out of a stretch from against the wall as he came out, having finished a bit before him. “Let’s go see if Lyn wants to join us.”

He paused, then shrugged. “Sure.”

That decided; they turned to go, only to be stopped by Terry.

He flickered to Tala’s shoulder and bumped her cheek.

“What’s up, Terry?”

He flickered to the corner, curled up and let out a dramatic sigh, then returned to her shoulder and trilled.

Oh! “Getting bored, bud?”

He trilled again.

“Well, maybe we can have you join in?” Tala looked to Rane.

Rane hesitated once more, then grinned. “Let’s do it. I think he could add a lot to both the morning and evening training sessions, if the others are okay with his participation.”

Tala smiled back at Terry. “How does that sound?”

Terry squawked contentedly and curled back up.

That decided, Terry seemed much happier, and the three headed for Lyn and Tala’s home, Rane and Tala chatting about small things along the way.

When they got close, Tala once again marveled at the lack of evidence for the massive syphon’s foiled hunting ground as they walked beside the perfectly maintained park. Terry went so far as to flicker over to the spot that the syphon had stood and poke around with his nose.

Rane didn’t comment on Terry’s actions and as Tala thought about it, she realized that it really wasn’t out of character for Terry to flicker off to a random location for a moment.

Instances of passing curiosity? Or does he often sense things that I completely miss?

“Oh!” Rane’s exclamation pulled her out of her thoughts. “Someone went to investigate the ruin you opened up and we reported.”

“Really? What did it turn out to be? Did they say?”

He nodded. “Just an old storeroom from a cycle or two back. Still there was a small finder’s fee.” He gave a soft chuckle. “Though in this case it’s mainly a ‘thank you for not investigating yourselves’ fee.” He pulled out a gold coin and handed it to her.

“Really? That much just for finding a random old cache?”

Rane shrugged. “They want such things reported when found, rather than having random Mages delving into places like that and trying to scrap together enough remnants to make it worth the time. The professionals are safer, faster, and more efficient.”

Tala grunted. “Makes sense, I suppose.”

Terry flickered back to her shoulder, and she scratched his head before tossing some jerky.

“Well, thank you.” After a moment, she asked, “You got a part, too, right?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. We found it together, and that’s what we discussed.”

“Good.”

With that, their time was up; they had arrived; their walk was done.

Tala let them in, and they found Lyn reading.

“Do you just sit there, reading, when I’m not around?”

Lyn looked up. “Well, good evening to you, too.”

Tala grinned. “Evening, Lyn.”

Rane gave a shallow bow. “Good evening, Mistress Lyn.”

Lyn shook her head, placed a bookmark into her page, and set the book on a side table. “So, what’s up?”

“Dinner?” Tala put a playful hint to the word and was rewarded by an amused smile.

“Why not. Let’s go eat.”

It was a pleasant late-afternoon. The three of them ate slowly, though Tala much more quickly than her companions, and they talked of small things: Life in the city, new plays, new magelings, and so much else.

There were apparently a smattering of new mageling arrivals, those who had graduated in the weeks after Tala’s departure from the Academy and who had chosen Bandfast as a destination.

One had even joined the Caravan Guild as an apprentice clerk. So, there was a reasonable chance of them seeing the new arrival, given Lyn’s job and Tala’s breakfasts with Odera.

Oh, breakfast deal, how I will miss thee. Unless… She could always get the food, then have it for lunch? She groaned internally, her head was still aching, and it was making it hard to focus on such things.

Lyn mentioned offhandedly that the teleportation rooms were still in a stir from one or two arrivals coming in naked in the last few months, though it was apparently it had been intentional on the part of the magiling

Tala quickly changed the subject.

Rane suggested that they see the occasional play here in Bandfast, and Tala heartily agreed. They had been incredibly pleasant, effective diversions in Makinaven, and she saw no reason to forgo the mental breaks now that she was back in Bandfast.

Even so, it was still not quite evening when their meal drew to a close, and they stood to go.

Lyn stretched contentedly. “Didn’t you need to go to the Archive, Tala?”

“Yes, yes I did. Do you two want to come?”

The other two Archons exchanged a glance before grinning. “Of course!”

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