Guild Mage: Apprentice-Chapter 121 - 120. The First Changes You

It was a very difficult thing, Liv reflected, to make just enough noise to be noticed, while also giving the impression that you'd done so by accident.

She'd set her trap up alongside one wall of the cavernous room that contained the Tidal Generator, tucked away behind a bank of softly humming machines which created almost a tunnel or dead end. Now, she needed to lure Karis, the Antrian war-machine, into the snare. The noise of mechanical arms disconnecting pieces of the complicated machinery which filled the room, and lowering components down onto the metal floor, served to cover the soft scuffing of her boots, which meant that Liv had to put in a bit more of an effort.

To that end, she quietly crept out into the open, as if attempting to make her escape back out toward the shaft which led up to the surface. Liv really, really hoped that Karis would be intelligent enough to have watched for such an attempt, and it was all she could do to keep a smile off her face when she heard the clang of his armored feet come from the other side of the room.

"Trying to escape, girl?" The machine's voice echoed off the high ceiling and the bare floor. He lurched out from behind a bank of pipes, glass, and massive metal boxes, mana already glowing along the edge of his arm-blade.

Liv's boots nearly slipped on the floor as she threw herself back the way she'd come, scrambling around ancient machinery as she went. Karis' legs were longer than hers, and the war-machine showed no evidence of fatigue, despite the fighting the two of them had already done up on top of the reef. She, on the other hand, was already scratched, bruised, soaked and exhausted. If it weren't for her armor, Liv likely would have been far worse.

She skidded around the corner into her dead end, dropped to the ground, and slid down underneath a bank of machinery that was raised to the height of perhaps three hands off the floor. Liv barely got her entire body underneath before Karis came around the corner, and she held her breath, trying to keep her entire body motionless so as not to attract the Antrian's attention.

"Nowhere left to run, girl," the machine rumbled, striding past Liv on its way to the sculpture of herself she'd left behind, crouched in the shadowed corner of the dead-end, as if desperately flinching back from the face of death. Karis, flush with the thrill of finally cornering his prey, lunged forward and brought his blade down on the sculpture.

Liv only got a glimpse of what happened, tucked away beneath her hiding place, but she'd chosen that particular positioning for a reason. Years ago, in the alleys of Freeport, she'd discovered that she could sense lightning building in the clouds overhead, because of the way in which it rebounded off small crystals of ice. Since she'd learned Luc from Duchess Julianne, Liv had begun dealing with the lightning directly.

Which was how she'd been able to sense the storm-blast coiled and waiting in the bank of machines just behind the decoy she'd left. Why there was lightning stored in these ruins, beneath the bay, or how, Liv didn't know - only that it was there.

When Karis shattered the sculpture Liv had left in her own shape, the downstroke continued into the metal beyond, and the edge of mana cut through it easily as a good knife through tender meat. Lightning erupted around Karis, throwing the Antrian back and sending him skidding along the metal floor, scraping as he went.

Liv rolled out from under her hiding place, and with a thought, summoned a blade of ice in her left hand. Like with the adamant ice technique, once she'd cast silently for the first time, she had a feel for it.

Karis twitched, tiny blue-white arcs crackling across the surface of his armor, and wheezed out a few halting words. "Tricky girl."

Standing above his broken armor, the chest plating blackened and shattered to reveal the brain beneath, Liv felt a sense of having been here before. When she'd put the tip of her sword to Princess Milisant's throat, and demanded the girl's surrender. A dozen other duels or sparring matches, when her opponent had admitted their defeat, and the rules had brought an end to the struggle.

There was no judge this time, neither Master Jurien nor one of his journeymen to give her permission to step away. Liv remembered the moment when Merek Sherard held her in an armbar, and she waited for him to let her go. He'd broken the rules, and hurt her. Now, there were no rules, and Karis would kill her if she allowed him to.

Nevertheless, Liv tried to think whether she'd ever actually killed a person before - because, despite his armored shell, it was clear that Karis had once been someone like her. In the alleys of Freeport, she'd called lightning down from the sky in a desperate attempt to stop those men with hammers from breaking down her defenses. She hadn't even been able to see the results clearly. Had some of them died? Probably, but Liv wasn't certain.

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and set the tip of her blade to the glass jar that surrounded Karis' brain. Liv let her wand hang from its leather thing, and wrapped her other hand around the hilt, as well.

"I'm your first, aren't I?" Karis rumbled. Smoke rose from his inner workings, scorched not once but twice with lightning, now, and soaked with sea-water in between. Liv wondered whether he'd simply die on his own, if she walked away. But if she was wrong, he'd do a lot worse than break her arm.

"Yes," she admitted.

"Changes you," the Antrian war-machine told her. "And you don't forget it. I'll see you in your dreams, little girl."

With a wordless cry, Liv thrust the sword down with the entire weight of her body, slight though it was, and the strength of both arms. The blade of adamant ice shattered the glass, letting stinking liquid pour out through the cracks, and then sank into the pulsing brain beneath like a butcher's knife into raw meat. The armored form twitched once more, and then lay still.

Liv stumbled back, leaving the sword sticking up from Karis' shattered chest, turned to one side, and threw up all over the metal floor.

A cry echoed through the chamber. "Liv!" She heard the shouting, recognized the voices, both of them. She wiped her mouth with the back of one hand, then called back.

"Over here."

When Wren and Jurian came around the corner, Liv had sat down a few feet away from the stinking puddle of her last meal, and clutched her knees to her chest with both arms. For some reason, she couldn't stop trembling.

"Are you hurt?" Wren asked, then paused when she saw the armored form stretched out on the floor.

"Is that –" Jurian stepped forward, leaning down over Karis to peer into the wreck of his chest cavity.

"He said his god had given him eternal life," Liv mumbled. Her voice sounded very distant, as if someone else was talking. "I think he was like us. I don't know if he was human, or Elden, or one of the Great Bats, but… alive. Do you think all the machines that come out of the foundry are alive, too? Triss would have said something, wouldn't she?" Dimly, she became aware that she was rambling on, but couldn't find the motivation to stop herself.

"Different when it's a person, and not a mana-beast, isn't it?" Wren said, and sat down next to Liv, slipping one arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. Liv nodded.

"What happened up on shore?" she asked, after a moment.

"We drove them off," Jurian said. "Hurt, but not killed. They fled back through the waystone. Do you know what he was looking for, here?"

"Mana capacitors," Liv said. "Whatever that is." She shook her head. "He said we were savages rolling around in the mud, and – looking at all this?" She waved a hand around at the humming machines that filled the enormous room. "He was right. He did something to it - detached the pieces he wanted. Can you honestly say you have any idea how that will affect the rift?"

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Jurian looked over the machines that surrounded Liv's trap, reached out a hand, and then did not touch them. "No," he admitted. "A thousand years, and the magic of the old gods is still working down here, doing – something. Now that the ruins are open, we can study them. Perhaps, with time, we can understand what he did. But right now, I know that we've denied Ractia what she wanted. And that is something."

Wren shook her head. "I doubt whatever was here is unique," she said. "It may have been the easiest rift to get something from, but this just means she'll strike somewhere else. We slowed her down, and Liv cost her someone it'll be hard to replace, though."

"Do you know what she wants?" Liv asked.

Wren shook her head. "I was never on the inside," she admitted. "My father was, but I don't think she ever really trusted me." The huntress shrugged. "Turns out she was right not to."

"Let's get you out of here, Liv," Jurian said. "The waystone's quiet. The school is safe. We can deal with this place later."

Liv allowed Wren to help her up to her feet, but she couldn't help but look back over the vast room and its humming machines before they left. "There's too much we don't understand," Liv said. "They say there's ruins at the bottom of the rifts, but this?" She waved her hand to indicate the banks of machinery. "This isn't a ruin. I don't know what it is, but there's nothing ruined about it. She's using these places - she wants to take things from them, and we don't even know what she's stealing. How can we ever beat her if we don't understand?"

"I lost my friends in a place like this," Jurian admitted. "There's a reason people don't come to them. I can already feel the effects of the mana." He raised a hand, and Liv could see that his veins were beginning to turn black.

"We can't keep ignoring this," Liv insisted. "I'm going to understand it. I'm going to learn what all this does, what it all means. We have to."

Together, the three of them walked to the shaft, and allowed a disc of shining blue mana to carry them up, out of the room where Karis' corpse lay.

☙

"I'm actually surprised this wasn't worse," Arjun commented, holding one of Liv's arms in his lap. With the mana-shield around the campus lowered, and the emergency ended, they'd been able to return to the infirmary for examinations.

"Eld are more resistant to the wild mana from rifts," Liv explained, suppressing a stab of guilt at the knowledge that she wasn't quite telling the truth. "And this wasn't even an eruption."

"Right, and this time you didn't guzzle mana directly from the source, either," Wren pointed out. Her arms were already bandaged, along with her broken ribs. Jurian had not required surgery, which didn't surprise Liv - he'd drained off most of the mana that had seeped into him into a shard of mana-stone kept in the infirmary for just this kind of use. Liv suspected that if she could get the new archmage to talk about it, she would find that he knew an approximation of the technique her father had taught her to survive a rift.

"She's healthy, then?" Jurian asked, and Arjun nodded.

"Bruises and scrapes, mostly," he said. "With her healing, nothing that will last more than a day or two, at most."

"Good." Jurian nodded. "Clear the room," he said, looking around at the other medical students. "The bodyguard can stay." Only once all of the other students had shuffled out, leaving Liv with Arjun and Wren, did the archmage continued.

"I have word from Archmagus Loredan," he explained. "There was an eruption outside of Freeport. It will delay the return of the other professors and our students, but with so many nobles and mages of the order in one place, I expect it will be easily dealt with. That's good news for us."

Arjun frowned. "Why is that?"

"Because it means I can get you out of here before they return," Jurian said. "Liv, you can't be here when Caspian Loredan gets back. We can't take the chance that someone will mention to him how there was a lightning strike in the middle of your fight out on the reef."

Liv opened her mouth. "Cel can be used to build a charge in clouds," she began, but Jurian held up his hand and shook his head.

"Don't even talk about it. You're going to be gone before anyone returns, and hopefully by the time you get back, everyone will have forgotten about it," Jurian declared. "Out of sight, out of mind, and the coronation of a new king is more interesting, anyway."

"Where am I going, then?" Liv asked. "North?"

"No, that would only look like you were running away," Jurian said. "After your help today, no one will blink twice when I pass you out of both Advanced Combat courses. Tonight, after dinner in the great hall, I'm going to announce there's been a call to the guild for aid, from Lendh ka Dakruim. That's true, by the way," he said, turning to Arjun. "Three eruptions in the east, and there may be more we don't have word of, yet."

"I will open emergency examinations tomorrow for any students who have a realistic chance of making journeyman," Jurian continued. "You will both sit for these examinations. As soon as they are complete, I will be sending a relief force of journeymen by waystone. Śrī Iyuz, you will go regardless of what rank in the guild you hold by the end of tomorrow, though I would prefer you were an apprentice, at least. You will be the liaison between our people and the locals."

"What if I don't pass?" Liv asked.

Jurian gave her a look like she remembered from Gretta, when she'd been caught stealing fresh cookies as a child. "You're going, one way or the other," he said. "I'd prefer not to have to lie about the results of your examinations, so don't disappoint me. When Archmagus Loredan returns, I will be able to truthfully tell him that I sent a group of journeymen to answer a call for aid from Lendh ka Dakruim. Whatever questions he might have for you will have to wait."

Liv nodded. "Thank you," she said. "It seems you're always protecting me."

"You aren't safe," Jurian warned her. "I've delayed things, certainly. And if we're lucky, by the time you return, all these eruptions and whatever the new king gets up to will occupy everyone's mind. But whatever Duchess Julianne may or may not have taught you, if the king or the archmagus begin asking questions, I'm not going to be able to stop them. You understand?"

"Yes." Liv swallowed. "I'll do my best on the examinations, Archmagus."

"Good." Jurian turned to head for the door out of the infirmary. "Go get cleaned up, and put on dry clothes. I expect to see you both at dinner in the great hall."

☙

As Jurian had, no doubt, planned, the announcement of the emergency examinations and the relief expedition to Lendh ka Dakruim distracted all of the other students from what had happened down on the beach.

Most of them, it turned out, weren't even aware that Liv had been involved, and Jurian didn't tell them. Arjun and Tephania knew, of course, and they'd told Professor Blackwood, but most of their peers – even the medical students in the infirmary – simply assumed that Liv had been doing something for the professors, somewhere out of sight, during the emergency. She did her best not to dissuade them of that assumption.

Despite – or perhaps because of – Archmagus Jurian's statement that he would lie about Liv's testing results if he had to, Liv spent the evening reviewing her notes on Guild Law and History, Beasts, and Enchanting, up on the landing of High Hall with Teph and Arjun, while Wren oiled her knives and waxed her bow. At least, part of the evening was spent in study.

Shortly after the ninth bell, Teph slammed her book down on the low table by the fireplace and glared at Liv. "Are we just going to pretend that none of that ever happened?" she said. Thora, who'd been bustling about refreshing the teapot in between packing Liv's things, jumped at the sudden noise.

Liv put her own book down rather more gently. "When anyone else is around, yes," she answered. "But we're all alone now, so if you have something to say," she shrugged.

"You just ran out to go fight," Teph said, her voice climbing in volume. "After we were all told to stay inside, you went out anyway, and – what? Fought beside the archmage?"

"Well, not beside him." Liv shrugged. "I saw an enemy had slipped by, and he was too busy to deal with it, so I did."

"You're ridiculous," Teph blurted out. "Is this honestly what your life was like before you came here? I knew you'd been in a rift, but I thought it was an emergency."

"It was," Liv said. "Both times."

Tephania shook her head. "You like this," she said, thrusting her finger in Liv's face. "It's exciting, or you have something to prove, or – I don't know. But you jump in even when you don't have to, when you could avoid it."

"That's what it is to be in the mages' guild," Liv pointed out. "We cull rifts, Teph. We fight monsters so that other people don't have to."

"Blood and shadow," Tephania cursed. "I've known Duke Falkenrath's court mage my entire life. You know how often he goes out to cull a rift? Once a decade, at most! When they need him to! He doesn't just jump on his horse and rush off, he teaches students!"

"I'm not going to be a court mage," Liv said.

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"You're going to be dead," Teph said. "If you keep acting like this. And I - I can't do this. I don't know why I'm even studying. I'm not going to go fight – whatever crawls out of those rifts." She stood up, stormed across the landing, and slammed the door shut behind her, leaving Liv and the others alone.