Sorcere was not a home to Val. It was a prison. A great and brooding structure filled with long halls and imposing rooms, a grim severity permeated every inch of the Academy. There was power and opulence to be found, even a dark beauty, but that was limited to the areas of the instructors. And, for the first time in her life thus far, the young drowess found herself surrounded by males at every turn. For a girl who had spent most of her time in the company of her mother and her sisters, Zekatar notwithstanding, it was unnerving.
The caution that they felt towards her was quickly fading into a violent animosity at the prodding of their teachers. Val spent much of her time alone in the library, her back firmly against a wall with several escape routes plotted even as she studied from books. As days stretched into weeks and then months, her awareness became a force unto its own-a perfect paranoia. She was always watching.
It was lonely to be one of the few females at the Academy, the others all distant figures that watched the world with sullen eyes. They were far from immune to the predations of the males around them, after all. Particularly the instructors, who seemed to thrill at the idea of any vulnerability to be exploited. After all, had they not been tortured for years themselves? It was a perverse dance that Val had done her best to avoid by being quiet, being absent, and being watchful.
But it was not a perfect strategy. Sometimes there were...complications.
"You're sitting in my spot, weakling," a rough voice said, jarring her out of her book. A lean, red-eyed male from House Agrach Dyrr loomed over her using his height to menacing effect. She could not recall his name but knew him from one of her classes. A wizard of moderate talent and surpassing arrogance-high enough on the food chain to be drunk on power, but not so high that he was above occasionally groveling for his survival.
Val had avoided the power plays by simply keeping her head down until she felt stronger, more practiced. Perhaps she might have avoided this one too, had she not spent the night before honing the art of binding.
The little trick that Malcanthet had shown her proved too tempting to resist. She knew she would need it to protect herself eventually and thought that mastery would lessen the effects. It did not. Now for hours afterward she would lie on the bed, feeling listless and nearly lifeless as the world turned gray and dull. To even feel real, things had to be more intense. She spiced her food heavily, bathed in hotter or colder water, found herself stroking fabric with her fingers just to anchor herself at all. But binding, channeling a demon into her body was absolutely euphoric. Its siren call was sometimes too strong to ignore and she found herself drawing upon it alone in the training gym, shredding enchanted manikins in her claws and imagining their screams. It frightened her, how powerful the urges were sometimes.
She had fallen into darker magics than even Sorcere taught its students. The only answers she had found were gleaned through hours of reading and sifting out details to be evaluated for accuracy.
And now, someone was interrupting her studies. The weary drowess could feel her already thin patience begin wear as she looked up at House Agrach Dyrr's noble son. "I suggest you find a different table," she said without a hint of malice, stifling a yawn with her fist.
His anger bloomed into full flower, tightening his fists and the muscles of his jaw. "And just who do you think you are?" he sneered. Other heads were beginning to turn their way.
Val didn't really want to fight him. After all, why should she care about a simple table? But the insulting idea that she simply drop everything just to please someone else... "I think I'm the person who was here first," she said simply. "Just be a good boy and walk away. We don't want this to get messy, do we?"
It was chilled and condescending, calculated to hit him in the primal instincts that coached the average male drow away from fighting a priestess. She'd heard Zesstra use the tone to great effect on many an occasion. And for a second, she thought it would work.
Until one of the other males who was watching shouted, "You going to take that, Baragh?"
She saw his hand twitch into a small series of gestures, his lips moving as he began a spell to retaliate. If he backed down in front of this audience, it'd make him seem cowardly and weak.
Val reacted without having to stop and think, slamming her knee up into the edge of the table so hard that it flipped up and over at him. His concentration was shattered and Baragh stumbled back. Instead of muttering, Val simply grabbed him as her hand glowed with a cold blue light of negative energy. The male cried out in pain as she drained the life force flowing through his body with a chill touch, then recoiled back as soon as she released him to nurse his arm.
His head jerked up and he snarled a spell viciously. In a flash of blinding light and ozone, a bolt of lightning arced at her and hit with vengeful effect. Val staggered back, blinking furiously as her eyes struggled to accommodate. The needles of pain in her limbs were strangely refreshing, like plunging into ice cold water. She felt something again instead of a gray limbo.
"What in the Demonweb...?" Baragh growled. The drowess was smiling at him almost like she relished the pain. That was not natural.
Val's fingers were already weaving a spell. She clenched her fist when it was finished and the bookshelf beside them creaked under the pressure of an invisible hand grasping. She hurled the whole shelf and all of its volumes at Baragh, smashing his body and sending him rolling backwards with broken bones. Cheers erupted from the others watching, less because they liked her and more because any violence was intoxicating to them.
He was hardly down for the count despite the contusions all over his body and even a few fractured bones. In his hand, a seed of flame sparked to life and he hurled it at her. It blossomed into a great ball of flame and searing heat.
Val reacted on instinct, curling her fingers down as if hooking them under something. With a silent word, she hurled upwards. The floor gave a thunderous crack and snapped up like a wall of stone. The fire struck it, singeing the stone, and then dissipated harmlessly. The now broken stone was allowed to fall back into place.
Baragh bared his teeth in a ferocious grin and directed a cone of freezing cold at her. The young drowess was not stupid-she threw herself out of the way. The ice burned her legs but she managed to get most of her body clear. Again, what once would have been pain was a thrilling connection to the real world.
All around them, students were scattering but watching the duel with rabid interest. Many shouted encouragement or taunting barbs that seemed to have little effect on the two combatants.
"Solaun, get her!" Baragh howled at his older friend, a hexblade that was lounging on the side.
"What, can't handle the little priestess reject?" Solaun jeered.
Val felt a stab of anger in the center of her chest at that. She hit the ground in a roll to avoid the male's next fireball and shot forward in a charge. Dark energy curled around her hands like black flames. She lashed out with a spell and seized the table behind Baragh and pulled viciously, slamming it into his back. The male crumpled.
Baragh was twitching but not dead when she walked over. "Are we finished now?" she said, leaning over him. "Because I don't want to be here when they see the bookcase."
"Yes," he breathed out painfully, eyes closed as he nursed cracked ribs. The male drow was startled when she grabbed his arm and wrenched him up without much thought to his condition. But even though it was agony, thoughts of vengeance were checked when he understood her purpose: she was getting him away from the scene of the crime so he wouldn't be punished...probably because she didn't want him squealing her responsibility to the first instructor who drove two fingers into one of his broken ribs.
Val didn't say anything until they were several halls away, dumping him unceremoniously into a vacant chair. "Now you're on your own," she said, knowing that to show further mercy would mean being seen as weak. It wasn't that she felt no empathy; she most certainly did after Zekatar had done a number on her own ribs a couple of times. But he had asked for it.
"Next time, you'll be the one hurting," Baragh promised through his grimace.
"I won't hold my breath," Val said, shrugging off his concerns. She strode out of the hallway back towards her rooms. Other students, all male, watched her as she passed by them. And she watched them back like a hawk, always ready. It was strange to have seen other students brutalized and beaten, yet remain untouched. She was never certain if she was lucky to have escaped such punishment. It seemed to isolate her more. But she was always ready for the other shoe to drop, as it were.
She made it to her room without incident, but was allowed only a few moments of quiet before the door opened. It was Master G'eldorl, his lips pursed into a thin line. "You have a visitor," he said bluntly before stepping aside to allow Zesstra in.
"I think that will be all, thank you," Zesstra said with a smile at the dour male. He took the hint and departed with a bow. The priestess strode in and shut the door behind her before turning her attention to her sister's shelf and the tomes on it. "Rites of the Spider Queen? The Demon Queen's Devotions? Church Protocol? My, Val, but you do have an interesting taste in literature."
"Lack of gift in divine magic is hardly an excuse for ignorance," Val said quietly. She was acutely aware that she was on dangerous ground. If Zesstra mistook her efforts to please the Matron as competition...
Zesstra smiled. "So eager to prove yourself even though you'll never be a priestess. I find your devotion admirable, even if it is childish. The Church will never accept you. And the Matron coddles you because you worship the ground she walks on. If she truly respected you, had hope for you, she would have let you out into the real world long before the Academy."
Val clenched her hands into fists. "Like you were?" she said evenly. "Allowed to remain home an extra year to be prepared enough for Arach-Tinilith, the Weapon Master's authority used to quash rivals, allowed to have first choice of every patrol...if I am coddled, then you were indulged in weakness."
Her eldest sister laughed and turned. "You think you can do better? Maybe you've even gotten the silly little idea that you can be Matron. You're an arcane caster, Val. You will never be allowed that kind of status. Not by the Church, not by the House."
"I don't give a damn about being Matron and you know that," Val shouted. Her anger was rising like a black tide, and with it came a terrible craving to embrace the demonic. She felt like she was going to be sick. What could a little hurt?But she refused to give in around anyone else. "Is it so wrong to not want to be under your shadow forever? Lirayne's? I can be strong enough to protect the House."
"The House?" Zesstra's laughter was like the tinkle of falling glass. "Goddess, you are like Mother. Obsessed with the wellfare of commoners, the perpetuation of an empty name. This is about power. Nothing else. Learn that, or you deserve the fate that will find you."
"The world is bigger than your self, Zesstra," Val snapped. She couldn't forget the softness around the Matron's eyes when she spoke of the House. More than that, there was purpose in working for something bigger, more important. The Church wanted nothing to do with her, so it was all she had. "Now leave me alone."
Zesstra gave her a sweeping bow. "As you wish, mage."
It was the end of the truce that had existed for Val's entire childhood.
