"Wake up, boy."

It felt like swimming upward through dark molasses, only molasses was never filled with Wraiths dancing amongst Mage Globes. Alin groaned, hearing it a moment later as if from a distance.

"Up." The covers were ripped off him and his shoulder grabbed. "We've no time for this nonsense."

"Mnnhnguh." One of his eyes was pried open by a bony, soft-skinned hand, the light shining in immediately making it water. "Ngh." It seemed his body, if not his still-detached mind, remembered being shaken by the jaw yesterday at this point, since it struggled to sit up.

"Two minutes." The Scholar Mage let go and swept away, slamming the door behind him.

Today was the earliest he thought they'd ever been out, only a hint of grey to the eastern sky as they walked through a wildly painted side gate of Ostinhold. He was run through his paces and yelled at enough times that he stopped registering the count by the time the half-light had given way to full sun.

The Scholar Mage, for all the uncharitable things that Alin thought about him many times a day, had at least told Alin's mother they wouldn't miss the feast. (Of course, the very most uncharitable part of Alin's mind piped up, what Mage these days wouldn't take advantage of plentiful free food?...and then he had to shy away from the fact that 'their' situation was now his.) As the day wore on, however, the mental exercises and failed attempts at cohesive magic began to tip him from feeling stretched into a state of magical exhaustion, and the Scholar only seemed to grow increasingly frustrated and angry with him.

What point there could possibly be in getting angry, Alin didn't know, but at least the man had claimed this would be their last day. "One way or another," and Alin was too exhausted to ask any questions about the grimness he'd said it with.

Endless Folded walking, blindfolded or hearing taken away via spell or both. Pinpointing where they were on the Scholar's long-ruined map of the Waste, over and over, despite every misdirection and roundabout routing imaginable. His inner monologue had splintered into screaming hours ago now and the sun was just peaking.

Finally, the man stopped walking, reaching out to yank Alin to a halt when he'd continued blearily on. "We are done. I was forced to commit to this much, but no more." His hand dug in to Alin's shoulder. "You can feel a Ward, but cannot follow even the most basic Warding. You cannot See beyond an arm's length, you cannot Hear beyond two, you cannot use a single magical sense outside of this...location ability. You can conjure light but not cast fire. You can explain a Mage Globe but not use one, not even a flicker's change. You can recite the entire canon of both Novice and Prentice levels but cannot Fold a hair's width." The Scholar, face purple and voice ricocheting off the rocks around them, summed up: "You are useless as a Mage."

Alin had known it was bad, but this...

After twenty days of working to utter breakdown, turning himself inside out beyond what he'd ever thought he could tolerate—this...

"Your sole value outside of Blood status is as a Ladder Rat, and I assure you that I have never been more pleased to apply the second part of the term. If your magic were not so intractable to manipulation, I would think it was willful incompetence on your part, but there is not even that much spark in you. You are simply a waste of time and talent for any true Mage."

There was no sound in his mind. No feeling in his hands though they caught his fall, no tears in his yet unseeing eyes. After some time had passed—he had no way of knowing how much, and a sharp ache hit his chest, missing the one who would know—he felt himself hauled up and his arm stretched too hard across skinny shoulders. The man had been speaking—shouting?—here and there while Alin was listening to the flat silence where Magic should be singing through him. He wished he could do something so ordinary as cry.

Ladders would reach out and pull his magic in once the spell embedded in them was kindled; the only trick then was to regulate the flow, to offer resistance in the right balance. He could resist all day long.

He would never be able to create.

It was St. Agvir's Day, he muzzily recollected, bright colors on the people and decorations around him blurring in his inadequate sight as the Scholar Mage hauled him through the crowd. His feet were working enough to stumble instead of drag, now. There was still no sound.

The gate passed, then the courtyard. Silver flashed through the air and in his mind a vision of the Wood rose up, slick and pale, surrounded by light hearts and laughter. A stab of clean joy — "Cailet?" his mouth shaped, as they entered a dark room.

Icy water dropped over his head and sound came rushing back in the form of his own scream. The Scholar was talking, shouting, talking; a candle-flame appeared in front of him.

Then the Scholar Mage's face.

The eyes, bloodshot; pupils enormous from the dark even with the candle now lit and growing and growing and—

Images slid together into chaos: the smell-taste of what he knew-without-knowing was the sea, rushingcrashingwater, smoke-imbued wood, signsandsymbolsandcarvingsand...

Somewhere, sticky heat poured down his lips, his chin. He choked

and

fell

He didn't remember screaming but his throat was raw. He didn't remember reaching out, but Val was somehow just-there past the darkness and he could feel his ragepanicpain, Cailet was just-here in the darkness but out of reach, out of hearing. Then...gone, as Val's emotions crested to an overwhelming terror.

That was enough to snap him back into his body. Not for himself, but for Val, for Cailet. For love that transcended fear.

Thick grey all around, that particular shade of the Thirteenth hour in late summer.

"He'll wake when he's good and ready. I hope it's after that ass leaves, because I can't vouch for his safety if he says a single word wrong to Alin."

"Don't be foolish." Rustling. "Ah, there, do you think?..."

"His eyebrows, you're right." A broad hand placed gently on his shoulder, unmoving, the warmth seeping through to bring him closer, the grey giving way, moment by—

—moment. "Alin-O, light of my heart, wake the hell up."

Never one to disappoint Val, he did.