2.29: Contract
“They can get out without you, you know,” my reflection said.
“What?”
“The others. You looked worried. I know you’ve given up on escape, but you don’t need to worry about ...
2021-01-30 12:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Derin Edala posts
2.28: The Castle
We rested until Kylie felt up to casting again. Now that we were together our only time limit was our food and water supply, so an extra thirty minutes of sitting around wasn’t going to hurt anyt...
2021-01-23 12:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.27: Dangerous Information
We wandered through corridors long enough to get our bearings before once again turning inward, heading for the centre of the labyrinth. When we crossed the next strong current, thick with spells, ...
2021-01-16 11:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.26: Drowning Responsibility
We stepped off the last stone, safely onto the shore of the lake, and Max looked at me with something like awe in his expression. “How?” he asked. “How did you know the pattern? Where did you...
2021-01-09 11:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.25: The Garden of the Dead
I called for Kylie for a bit, although I knew it was useless, before making my way down the valley. Last time I’d climbed out, and had a conversation with the spellthing made of prophecies, and u...
2021-01-02 11:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.24: Into the Labyrinth
I explained mirror runes to Kylie. She nodded, unsurprised.
“Turn off your light,” she said, turning off her own. I obliged.
The cave around us wasn’t perfectly dark. With our tab...
2020-12-26 12:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.23: Walking the Path
“It’s a runic inscription,” I explained, starting to pace. “The whole school! Or the initiate area, at least, but we have to assume the rest of the school, too, right? We’ve still got wei...
2020-12-19 12:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post2.22: Secrets, Spells and Sigils
The only class we had on the day of the party was runecrafting, in the afternoon. Five of the most advanced students were absent. Four of them were probably at whatever celebrations Magistus and Ma...
2020-12-12 12:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post2.21: Friendly Conversation
My ankle didn’t even need treatment, which meant I ended up seeing Malas for absolutely no reason. Stupid ankle.
The time for the party neared, my next healing potion came out better, and o...
2020-12-05 11:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.20: Effigy
Mae leaned back against the tree trunk and looked up into the drizzling sky. “When I walked into the Pit, I found myself in… I don’t know if you’d call it a forest. A wooded area, certainly...
2020-11-28 06:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.19: Searching for a Gift
Very little input was required from me for the party, which was good, because I hadn’t been sleeping well.
At first I blamed being hot and itchy a lot of the time, which was unsurprising on...
2020-11-21 06:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.18: Poison Control
Trying not to look nervous, I sat on the rapidly cleared chair in Instruktanto Miratova’s papery chaos of an office while she switched on her incongruous little electric kettle.
“Tea?” ...
2020-11-14 04:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post2.17: Distraction
“I’d be liable to be offended, if I were real,” the spellthing told me, sipping its tea. “I left you such useful gifts, and you’re just ignoring them. Do you have any idea how difficult i...
2020-11-07 03:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post2.16: Party Planning
“The twins’ birthday is coming up in a month,” Kylie remarked offhand one morning, looking up from her history of prophecy book, as I finished my yoga exercises.
“That’s nice,” I ...
2020-10-31 03:39:38 +0000 UTC View Post2.15: Rite of Passage
It took Saina and me three more tries to get the healing potion right. We took it to Instruktanto Costa to assess (we weren’t stupid enough to test it ourselves), and she congratulated us on havi...
2020-10-24 07:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post2.14: Long Games
Our first attempt at a healing potion was an unmitigated disaster. This was probably largely because it was a complicated potion and, like cooking, potioncraft required a lot of practice to develop...
2020-10-17 07:04:11 +0000 UTC View Post2.13: Duty of Care
The book I’d borrowed turned out to be about the evolution of butterflies. The parts of it I could understand weren’t remotely interesting. It had some nice pictures, though. I tried to absorb ...
2020-10-10 03:46:15 +0000 UTC View Post2.12: Loose Ends
“Now that you all have some base knowledge of the holding rune,” Instruktanto Animus announced as he strode across the front of the classroom, “we can start practicing the structure, the lang...
2020-10-03 00:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post2.11: Debt and Balance
Fifteen minutes later, Max returned to the dorm, looking shaky. “She’s going to be fine,” he said, sinking into a chair in the shared part of our room while I put the kettle on.
“What...
2020-09-26 09:56:10 +0000 UTC View Post2.10: The Lepidopteran
“So there’s good news and bad news,” Kylie told me the next morning as we sat down to lunch.
“Why is that always the way of things?”
“Our coven – ”
“Coven?!” 2020-09-19 05:50:41 +0000 UTC View Post
2.09: Social Studies
Chelsea & Liss,
This place is amazing.
I told you about the Pit, right? A big spell trap where they make illusions for the Initiations? Wel...
2020-09-12 07:03:04 +0000 UTC View Post2.08: The Coven
“I’m surprised there isn’t some kind of magic potion for this,” I remarked to David, my new gender transition specialist, as he watched me carefully draw a testosterone shot into the needle...
2020-09-05 08:19:54 +0000 UTC View Post2.07: Pit Comp
I was still reeling over how easy it had been to get testosterone a full week later when Magista, triumphant over being accepted into the Amazons, took me to a pit comp. We didn’t go alone; both ...
2020-08-29 07:52:40 +0000 UTC View Post2.06: Politics Is Stupid
My potion book contained a full page and a half of biohazard warnings about potions containing human blood. Wear protection when handling other peoples’ blood, beware the dangers of open wounds, ...
2020-08-22 07:21:38 +0000 UTC View Post2.05: False Assumptions
“The map is wrong,” Max declared, apropos of nothing, as we headed to breakfast that morning.
“Um,” I said, “what?”
“The school map! I’ve been cross-referencing the actu...
2020-08-15 13:16:34 +0000 UTC View Post2.04: Twilight Hours
The next morning, I woke up in a cold sweat, heart thundering in my ears.
I lay still and silent for a bit, waiting to see if I’d shouted or screamed or anything and awoken the others… bu...
2020-08-08 09:31:19 +0000 UTC View Post2.03: Spell Literacy
My success with the Illuminus potion put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Of course I’d known, intellectually, that’d be doing some magic at mage school, but not being able to cast th...
2020-08-01 09:01:19 +0000 UTC View Post2.02: Simple Magic
Kylie froze, but I’d already shut the door behind her. Magista swept her more fully into the room, saying, “You’re fifteen! We thought we’d celebrate.”
“I never told any of you wh...
2020-07-25 06:51:30 +0000 UTC View Post2.01: Preparations
So the thing about fire is this: it’s bad.
As soon as the flames erupted, I grabbed the fire blanket from the kitchen wall and tossed it over the dish, but that did nothing for the globs of...
2020-07-18 10:27:28 +0000 UTC View Post1.82: Book 1 Epilogue
It was seven in the morning, Grenwich Mean Time, and I was sitting on my bed, pen poised over a blank piece of paper.
The bed was new. It was a lot like my old bed, but the déco...
2020-07-11 13:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post