Chapter 2: - Discipline

  Exia was sat in a chair at the table; General Volkov had reorganised the study room. Once hanging on its walls were the revolutionary works of Fedor Kuznetsov, Arkadi Andreeva, and many other classics. Mother had loved them; it was what made the study one of her favourite parts in Bezdna palace to bring guests to.

  General Volkov had sold them all off, along with many other valuables in the palace. ‘Property of the state,’ he had said. Now, the study was just one of many rooms that seemed a shadow of its old self.

  In front of the room, the General had his back turned to him. There was no sound but that of chalk scratching against his black board. Exia had been sitting there in silence for several minutes, but he knew better than to complain. The past two weeks since his parents were murdered had taught him that this new Volkov did not take kindly to interruptions of any kind.

  Finally, the scribblings stopped and the man stepped aside. The diagram he’d drawn was one Exia recognised well, it was the Pyramid of God hierarchy.

  It was split into three distinct sections, each with symbols that depicted the gods that functioned on that tier. There were several at the bottom tier, few in the middle and only one at the top. The Elder God Zcigmagus.

  He was the King of all Mage Gods, and during the formation of Bessmertnyy, he had chosen the Vanfoster family as their disciples. That was why only they could be inducted into his sect of Magery and receive his gifts.

  And yet you didn’t protect my parents…

  “What do you understand by this?” General Volkov asked.

  Exia shrugged, glaring at the man. “It’s the hierarchy of Gods and Mages,” he replied.

  “Wrong. I see your education is worse than I had feared.” Volkov replied. “It is the hierarchy of Mage gods and Mage gods only. The Warriors have theirs, so do the Sorcerers and as well as the Shifters.”

  “They’re false gods.” Exia rolled his eyes.

  “To many of them, our gods are false,” Volkov sniffed.

  “Many of them are idiots,” Exia snapped.

  Volkov gave a non-commital shrug. “It is also not the hierarchy of Mages.”

  “It is.” Exia shot back, voice edged. He was speaking blasphemy now, and Exia would not let that stand, no matter what horrors the man might bring down upon him as punishment. “The Vanfosters are favoured by Zcigmagus, it is why only we conjure the Abyss, it is why we were ordained to rule Bessmertnyy, it is—”

  “It is why you ran our economy into the ground? It is why you locked our nation into a war with a militarily superior kingdom?” Volokov asked, looking at Exia as if he were a stain on his boot. “A war that, even after your deposition, we still fight?”

  Exia glared and the general found his lack of words satisfactory. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of white gloves. On its back was the symbol of the Mage, written in the tongue of the gods.

  “Your gloves, wear them.” Volkov threw them in front of him. “Now, I know the moment you do, you might entertain the notion of attempting to use them against me. Let me be as clear as day, King Exia.” He looked down at him, eyes hot, voice low. “If I get even the slightest inkling that you mean me any immediate harm, I will not hesitate to end the Vanfsoter line prematurely. Do you understand?”

  He was suddenly aware of the presence of Volkov’s gloves. He was of the Ninety-ninth magnitude, that placed him only one place away from the horizon, the sacred triple digit. It didn’t matter that the Mage God of Fire, Gnev, was two tiers below Zcigmagus, Exia was an ember compared to the raging inferno before him.

  “Do you understand?” Volkov asked again.

  Exia swallowed slowly and nodded.

  “Good.”

  Exia slid on his gloves and felt the arcane forces dance in the space between his fingers. It had felt like an eternity since he had last worn them. Weeks he’d spent resisting the urge in the back of his mind to touch the beyond. The longing, it was called, and all Mages had it. Exia knew better than to listen though; if he grasped the power of the gods without a conduit, then the best outcome he could hope for was life as an idiot.

  He had his gloves back now, though, and for a moment, things almost felt okay. He almost expected Mother to walk right in and ruffle his hair.

  But she was never going to do that again.

  He forced his mind to other things, in particular, his biography. The gods kept one of every Disciple, but a person could only view their own. Exia focused his mind and saw soft blue glyphs etched into the air like claw marks. The god tongues.

  All Mages had been taught to read them.

  ────────────────────────────

  [Discipline: Mage]

  [Sect: Abyssal]

  [Magnitude: Fifth]

  [Gifts of Zcigmagus:]

  ────────────────────────────

  [Hand of Zcigmagus - Spells]

  (Entropy)

  ────────────────────────────

  [Breath of Zcigmagus - Spells]

  (Unearned)

  ────────────────────────────

  [Shadow of Zcigmagus - Spells]

  (Unearned)

  ────────────────────────────

  He’d read that the colour around the scripts varied from Sect to sect and Discipline to Discipline, with each having their own shades. Exia didn’t know whether those were the colours of the gods themselves though, and he doubted anyone else knew either. Only those who had actually gazed upon the form of gods before could say; however the problem with being turned into a raving lunatic was that one often became an unreliable witness.

  Volkov set an object down in front of him. “Solve this puzzle cube,” He demanded.

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  “Why?” Exia asked.

  “Just solv—”

  Exia picked it up, shuffled it around and slammed it back down on the table. “There, done,” he growled.

  “Ten seconds.” Volkov raised an eyebrow. “Interesting, at your age I could do it in half the time.”

  “Bull. Shit,” Exia hissed.

  “It matters little. I meant solve it with the Hand of Zcigmagus, if I recall correctly, you are of the Fifth Magnitude, yes?” Volkov asked. “You should have earned it on your First.”

  Exia nodded. He held his palm out and cleared his mind of all distraction save from envisioning his Gift.

  I call on my Gift, the Hand of Zcigmagus.

  Dark blue swirls appeared in his palm, like gateways to nothingness. They were cold to the touch and ever so slightly disconcerting to look at. Out of each one emerged a tentacle, sapphire in colour and wriggling in the air.

  They were hard to control, constantly exerting their own will and fighting his. With his mind, Exia forced them into submission, better that than to let Volkov get one up on him.

  The General picked up the puzzle cube, shuffled it around and placed it back on the table. “You can start any time now.” He said.

  “I know.” Exia replied sharply. He wrapped the pair of tentacles around the cube, purchasing a grip and working on the puzzle. It felt like playing a flute with his toes, while upside down and underwater. Tedious, annoying, and hopelessly unintuitive.

  He tried, but periodically his focus would slip, causing a tentacle to move suddenly on its own and either shuffle the cube wrongly, or lose its grip on the thing entirely.

  “It has been five minutes now,” Volkov said, eyes on his watch. The bastard didn’t even have the decency to look smug, or even unimpressed; he just seemed completely content—as if he were witnessing an event that couldn’t have gone any other way. Like an apple falling under the effects of gravity.

  It was enough to send Exia over the edge.

  Fuck this!

  Entropy.

  The tentacles oozed a wet slimy sheen onto its surface, it melted the cube upon touching it, like a hot knife through butter,

  “That is a failure,” the General said, this time actually looking unimpressed.

  “Who cares?!” Exia snapped. With a tentacle, he flung the cube against the far wall. It came apart—the parts of it which had been reduced to globules stuck against the surface, while the solids shattered and clattered to the ground. “Magic isn’t meant to solve stupid puzzles, it’s a fucking weapon.”

  “It is a weapon.” Volkov agreed, arms behind his back. “And though Abyssal Mages may wield the most powerful of all weapons, you underestimate the value of a healthy combination of skill and self control. And that is what I shall teach you—”

  There was another phrase coming, one that Exia had been growing all-too familiar with over the past few weeks.

  “—For the good of the Republic.”

  Exia shoved the seventh slice of cake down his mouth with delight.

  “Is the noise required while you eat, Your Grace?” The Captain asked with an eyebrow raised in disapproval.

  “Required? Gods no, but it heightens the experience you see.” Exia replied, licking the frosting off his fingers while the train rocked steadily against the tracks, jostling Exia uncomfortably about in his seat.

  The Captain, from her expression, did not agree.

  “You know we could get there faster in one of those metal birds. What are they calling them? Ah, yes—aeroplanes.” He said. “But I just don’t trust them you see, all rickety and what not—can you believe they’re thinking of using them in the war?”

  “I trust the Republic has the people’s best interest at heart,” the Captain said blandly, as if reading from a recruitment poster.

  Exia rolled his eyes. “Well, your trust is quite misplaced, Captain Osin. I’ve looked at the blueprints, and those things need far more testing before they’re road ready—uhm, cloud ready?”

  The Captain nodded stiffly. “I see.”

  Exia raised an eyebrow. “You’re not one for much conversation are you?” He asked.

  “I like to keep to the particulars of the mission and not distract us.” She replied.

  “That’s fine. I can do enough distracting for the both of us.” Exia grinned. “Now, what is a Dragonian doing this far away from home, and as a Mage, no less? I hear people in the isles don’t even have Mages or Warriors—it’s all Wizards and Knights waging holy wars if I remember correctly.”

  If the red hair wouldn’t have given her foreign parentage away then the green eyes certainly would have. Something about the question seemed to strike a personal chord within the woman, for she responded with a half shrug rather than her typical stiffness. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been. It was my mother’s homeland, and she never talked about it.”

  “A shame.” Exia sighed. “There was a time when it and Bessmertnyy once waved the same banner.”

  Osin, raised an eyebrow, doubtful. But interested. “I find that very hard to believe, Your Highness, seeing as they are two and a half thousand kilometres apart.”

  “Oh no, really, really, really, long ago there was a Great Republic, spanned across continents.”

  The woman looked at him like one might a child, a small incredulous smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “You speak of Ohima. You believe the fairy tales?”

  “No, no.” Exia waved a hand and paused. “Well yes, but no.” He elaborated. “I don’t believe they were this paradise of equality and virtue, where no man hungered for food. Such a thing is simply not human nature, I do believe they were the group in their immediate environment with perhaps the most capability for conquest and the strongest inclination to use it. Volkov sort of diagrees, he thinks that the existence of the fairytale lets us strive to be better than we are.”

  The woman thought for a moment before answering. “Well, I believe there’s merit to such an idea.”

  Exia scoffed. “Of course you do—it’s such a soldiery thing to say. All schedules, and need-to-know, ranks and orders, and salutes, and blah and blah, and blah—and please use your authority to kill me if I ever become so fucking boring.” He made his fingers into the shape of a gun and fired it into his mouth to properly portray his feelings on the matter.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “My King, you disagree with striving to be better than we are.”

  Exia narrowed his eyes right back at her. “I believe that the perpetration of lies and propaganda about the goodness of humanity in the form of folktales and myths only really serves to distract us from confronting what we truly are: ravenous fucking animals begging for the opportunity to slit each other’s throat, and only occasionally being stopped by the rigorous systems put in place to ensure the politeness of society.”

  “I see,” the woman said, stiff and eyeing him with caution, as if he were some wild thing simply wearing the face of a human. Exia wasn’t offended, he was just more confused as to why she didn't regard everyone else on the train with such eyes. Well there is the fact that I’m the only Magnitude Seventy-nine Mage on this vessel.

  “But It matters little what I think, Captain,” He continued. “Of the two of us I’m not the one charged with managing one the most dangerous assets the Republic has in its arsenal.” He chuckled.

  Osin’s eyes flicked to her gloves and then to his own gloveless palms. He could practically see her mind simulating what might happen if they were to face off while both gloved. The sad fact was there’d be no doubting the winner even if everyone else aboard spontaneously decided to kill him at the same time. Exia imagined quite an annoying degree of flailing around on her part while he tore her apart limb from limb. Not that he had any intention to do any of that of course, such behaviour would be impolite, and the Mage King was nothing if not not polite.

  Exia waved a dismissive hand. “Oh relax Captain, I’m not going to kill you. I’d be instantly slaughtered by the Republic if I did such a thing.” Before she could form a reply, the train stopped with a long lurch. “Oh goody, we’re here.” He smiled.

  The woman seemed to have found herself suddenly forced out of a trance. She looked around for a moment and then nodded. “We are.” She echoed.

  Exia wiggled his fingers. “May I have my gloves?” he asked. “Seeing as we’re now in dangerous territory that is.”

  She hesitated, clearly resisting the urge to say no, but she was a soldier, always one to stick to their precious orders no matter the circumstances, and often against their own self-preservatory instincts.

  From her briefcase she pulled out a small metal box, undid the locks and handed the pair of gloves within it to him. Simple things, sleek cloth etched with delicate runes. Who would have suspected they held the power to tear down a building?

  Exia happily accepted the gloves and smiled at the tingle of energy that danced between his fingers the moment he wore them.

  It had been a while now, so he couldn’t resist the urge to call for his biography. The familiar script clawed into reality and etched itself onto its surface.

  ────────────────────────────

  [Discipline: Mage]

  [Sect: Abyssal]

  [Magnitude: Seventy-nine]

  [Gifts of Zcigmagus:]

  ────────────────────────────

  [Hand of Zcigmagus - Spells]

  (Entropy)

  (Barbed)

  (Shell)

  (Stun)

  (Fracture)

  ────────────────────────────

  [Breath of Zcigmagus - Spells]

  (Coat)

  (Stream)

  (Smite)

  (Chase)

  (Vortex)

  ────────────────────────────

  [Shadow of Zcigmagus - Spells]

  (Shroud)

  (Burst)

  (Drain)

  (Slow)

  ────────────────────────────

  Exia grinned. “Thank you Captain. Thank you very, very much.”