Six days had passed, a meager three days remained for the third daughter. Her eyes had dulled, the paper seemed to have absorbed the bright light that usually glowed from her irises at some point in the many hours that she had sat in the library. Vakko had helped a lot in the hours she had spent with her. They had learned much theory, much feeling, she had learned exactly what it felt like to use magic, but she had not learned how to.
The Falorn girl was worried now. She had no magic and only three days to get some. Her mind kept jumping back to the Mage Students words. “You are alone in your test but you don’t have to do everything yourself.” She thought about any possible meaning behind it but came up with nothing all that helpful. She could have someone teach her, which she was trying, but so long as she still couldn’t learn that was meaningless. She could have someone conjure something magical which she would enter with, but it took strong magics to conjure a magical instrument, strong dark arts known only to the Dark Mortal clans in the larger of the two continents in the southern hemisphere. Vakko was a member of the Arcca. While the Arcca were strong mages, all of them, they were nature-mancers. They were peaceful so they learned only that which aided them to live. This said they had never been invaded. Their control over nature, though primarily peaceful did mean that they control the very continent, should a person invade then the entire continent, the birds, the beasts, the trees, even the grass itself would rise up and destroy them. This is also the reason they have never sought out other continents. The land must trust them for them to control it. Were they to move from their own soil they would be powerless.
But the plight of the Arcca was not Talyn’s problem, not right now anyway. She turned her attention away from the books, to her friend, pouring through a book entitled ‘Magical arts for Non-Magical hearts’ by Abigail Stringmatter.
“Maybe We’re going about this completely wrong.” The Princess muttered. Vakko looked up from the book, rubbing sleep from her young eyes. It had turned out that while Vakko looked at least three years Talyn’s junior she was actually twelve years her senior, though in the Arcca time scale this was irrelevant, she was a child to them. “I don’t know, maybe instead of looking for ways to bring out the potential I clearly don’t have...”
“Lady Falorn...” Vakko protested, but Talyn raised a hand, smiling passively.
“Talyn.” she said firmly. Vakko smiled and nodded.
“I’m sorry, I won’t forget again.” She agreed.
“It’s quite all right.” The Princess said, placing a hand on the elder girls upper arm. “As I was saying, perhaps instead of bringing out forgotten potential we need to be focussing on putting the potential in there.”
“Talyn, I’m sure that if we just...” She lifted a book and waved her hand at it a little. “Maybe worked a little harder... I’m SURE you have the power buried within you.”
“Well then it’s buried VERY deep.” Talyn said sarcastically. “Look, we have two choices. Go with an idea we haven’t tried yet, or go with an idea thats failed for six days. Go with what has been proven to be true or go with that which we hope is true.”
Vakko stared resolutely at Talyn for a few moments, there was question as to whether she would concede but eventually, after a few moments of the Arcca’s eyes darting back and forth across the princess’ face, as if she were reading lines of text printed upon her features, she sighed, slumping a little and admitting defeat. “Fine...” she said eying all of the books on the table, now thoroughly useless. “I’ll take these back, you go look for imbuing books.” She sighed and piled the six books on the table upon each other, turning and heading to the shelves.
Talyn’s smile faded. She may have gotten her way, but she didn’t like it. She felt like she was starting from scratch, and with only three days... 5,100 drops of water into the pool that the entire continent used to judge time. Drops of water fell into the pool at such regular intervals that for centuries they had told time by it. 1,700 drops a day and 15,300 a week, all counted at all times by magics carved into the pool by mages centuries earlier. |
