The cathedral slled like wax.
Fabrisse Kestovar slid through the side passage of the sanctum with the pace of soone who had been very late. The Sanctum of Emberrest, a towering crescent-shaped chamber big enough to house three lecture halls stacked on top of each other, served both as a cathedral and a ceremonial hall for one of the oldest mage orders, the Twelvefold Flas. Today, however, it was under the administration of the South Westris Branch of Unified Synod of Thaumaturgic Study, the academic arm of the Order.
The Grand Gathering had already started, which ant Fabrisse had arrived just in ti for the pageantry. He’d only ant to asure the stupenstone’s angular veins for five minutes . . . but apparently he’d been doing it for fifty-seven.
The event would always start with a row of archmagi in ceremonial robes taking turns demonstrating the true breadth of their talent: saying absolutely nothing with as much flourish as possible. Each speech was an elegant spiral of taphors, historical references, and words like ontological or apotheosis, all ultimately leading to the sa conclusion—magic was important, and so were they.
The latter part of the Gathering would co soon, simple rituals to test the student’s ‘resonance to the aether’. Last year, the upperclassn (which were actually Fabrisse’s last class, as he had to repeat the units again) got to perform ritualistic invocations to try and awaken an inert box. Fabrisse wasn’t sure if this year would feature more of the sa.
“Curses,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m going to miss the breakhour crumblecake again . . .” They only served the mingleberry glaze during Grand Gatherings, one of the few perks of studying in a holy-academic institution. Now so might ask, ‘what is a holy-academic institution?’, and they would be rightfully puzzled because Fabrisse had pondered the sa question. In the case of the South Westris branch of the Synod, it was a sanctified sprawl that functioned sowhere between a monastery, a university, and a lifelong magical probation.
Most initiates entered the Synod at age ten, robed and reverent. Their early training lasted five years and focused on core disciplines, emotional resonance calibration, and basic elental theory. Upon completion, they were inducted into formal spellwork as First-Circle Novitiates—though most students just called them ‘First-Years.’ The gifted ones graduated by eighteen, and beca an official mber of the Order of the Twelvefold Fla. The rest—those less aligned with fla or fate—might linger until twenty-one, still hoping the spark would catch.
Fabrisse would turn nineteen in a month. His spark had not so much caught as wandered off and filed for retirent.
He tugged his robes into sothing he deed sufficiently respectable and slipped into a column’s shadow just as Archmagus Murelien Draeth raised his arms in oration.
“. . . For it is not through force that the Reliquary shall yield, but through alignnt; of thought, of spirit; of sacrifice. That is the teaching of the teaching of Thaumarch Muradius, luminous shepherd of our era.” The Archmagus’ voice resonated with the authority that would’ve impressed Fabrisse if not for the fact he’d never once updated his speech. “Whose insight guides the Twelvefold Path, whose will shields the weak from false fla, whose wisdom brought forth the Era of Unified Doctrine.”
The young man kept his head low and angled his body behind a broad scry-pillar, half-obscured by incense haze and ceremonial banners, all cut into those impractical triangle shapes he’d never quite understood. From here, he could just make out the front row—all high-ranking magi in brocaded robes, each one still as a warded statue, apart from Archmagus Rolen, who was solemnly scratching his behind.
And there, of course, was ntor Lorvan.
Stern as ever, back ramrod straight, jaw set in the way it always was whenever Fabrisse did sothing predictable and mildly embarrassing. Which, judging by the tick in Lorvan’s left eyebrow, was approximately now.
Their eyes t across the sanctum. Fabrisse tried a tiny, apologetic smile. Lorvan did not return it.
“And so it is decreed by the Will of the Flamus,” ca the booming voice from the dais, “that only the Worthy may draw forth the knowledge sealed within the Astral Reliquary! Only the Devoted shall behold the glyphs of awakening!”
Fabrisse mouthed the words in perfect sync, not from piety but from sheer repetition. He’d heard variations of the sa ceremonial drivel chanted since he was ten. He could probably recite the baby version—the one apprentices had the misfortune of morizing—backwards while drunk. And, in fact, he once had. Word for word, with such precision it could have summoned Archmagus Rolen himself. Unfortunately, it happened to be during his confession to the girl of his dreams.
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She did not accept.
Sure; he may have failed magic and failed to sustain a healthy social life. But if there was one thing Fabrisse Kestovar had never failed, not once. It was Stealth. His self-taught brand of magic.
Fabrisse started executing the ‘Side-Slink of Moderate Dignity’ as he wiggled behind the crowd. He fully intended to slip into one of the outer rows before anyone—
A hand grabbed his sleeve.
“Where are you off to this ti?” Lorvan hissed, just quiet enough not to draw the dais’ attention. “Bumbling around collecting Stupenstone again?”
Fabrisse winced. “It’s called Silico-Dormant Obscura—”
“I read your notes, Kestovar. You call them Stupenstones.”
“That was a working title.”
Lorvan’s eyes narrowed into pale slits. “If you’re caught smuggling rock samples into the sanctum again, I will personally transmute your lunch rations into beet paste for the next Span of the Sundering.” A Span equated to roughly twenty years, because apparently Mage Orders couldn’t afford to count the days like the inept civilians.
It wasn’t like he wanted to ‘bumble’ around. At least not when he first joined the Synod. But years of academic stagnation had led to him no longer caring about his academic performance. It wasn’t like he would’ve learned much more had he paid attention in class.
Fabrisse tried to co up with sothing clever to say, but all he could co up with was, “Yes, ntor. No stone, totally empty-handed today.” He said, with both hands conspicuously behind his back. The satchel pressed against his side like it knew it was about to betray him.
“You’re telling that lump is not a stone.” Lorvan’s glare intensified as he stared at the bulging satchel underneath his robe.
“Yes, ntor.”
Stupenstone—formally classified by the Collegium of Geomantic Rarities as Silico-Dormant Obscura, Grade Theta—was a mineral so profoundly useless it had been removed from no fewer than three official textbooks by frustrated archivists who couldn’t find a single practical application for it.
It didn’t resonate with aether.
It didn’t store energy.
It didn’t glow, chi, float, scry, shimr, burst, or even hold a decent enchantnt longer than a soup spell.
It was also hideous—a lumpen, mauve-flecked stone that looked like soone had attempted to sculpt a toad from chewing gum and then abandoned the effort halfway through.
And yet.
Fabrisse Kestovar had a collection of no fewer than twenty-eight catalogued pieces and another six he refused to na until they ‘revealed their purpose.’ Fabrisse was, in a theoretical sense, a geomancer, of course apart from the fact he couldn’t perform geomancy. His resonance was so poor he couldn’t levitate a pebble, and his only published paper—“Stupenstone: A Case for Intentional Obscurity in Aether-Inert Geologies”—had been withdrawn from review after the editors realized he’d included a stanza in place of his thodology section (also because he had not yet been of age at the ti of publish, which he found utterly ridiculous).
Fabrisse offered a hopeful smile and pressed the satchel further inside his robe. “I’ve only brought a stoneless stone satchel today,” he whispered. It sounded ridiculous now that he’d said it out loud.
“Kestovar, you’re better than this. You showed much more desire to learn before. You know you might lose your grant next sester, right?” Lorvan said, voice lower now. Unfortunately, the fact stood that he had missed the point so many tis that his generous grant for supposed ‘potential apprentices’ had already run out, and his family would need to shell out actual money starting next sester.
Fabrisse replied, “I know. That’s why I’m specializing. There’s less competition in the Quiet Foundation of Stone. Also, you can’t collect different shades of fire, no?” It was a line he’d used before. People laughed when you made jokes about specialization. It kept them from asking why you were alone.
“There’s less competition because stone is rubbish,” Lorvan said.
Even among the magically inclined, Stone was considered a dead-end elent—resistant to manipulation, sluggish to respond to emotional stimuli, and prone to resonance decay faster than any other stable base. The only thing Stone was good for was as a stepping stone (no pun intended) to Crystal Thaumaturgy or tal Thaumaturgy, both of which were hybrid elents that had easier ways to attain.
Most working Stone Thaumaturges barely registered past a Class III Resonant Threshold—the magical equivalent of being able to warm a cobblestone with great effort and a headache. The legendary high watermark of the field, Professor Margenholt of the Quiet Foundation, had once reached Class VI. She was given an award, two grants, and promptly died of boredom while trying to commune with an uncut feldspar. For reaching a Class VI! A star student within the university system could be imdiately handed a Class IV upon graduation.
He was halfway to fidgeting with the satchel again when the Archmagus’s voice changed.
“This gathering, however,” Murelien Draeth said. His voice was suddenly devoid of pomp. “was not called simply to reaffirm our commitnt to the Reliquary.”
The crowd stilled. Rolen stopped scratching.
That wasn’t part of the script.
Draeth continued, “For the first ti in forty-seven years, the Eidralith has responded.”
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