The sun Beat down on me from on high, glaring down from the firmament with a silent intensity. It honestly felt a little nice, as it warmed my aching limbs. My white shirt was stained with dirt and sweat, because as it turns out training is actually really difficult.
I wasn't even learning how to use a sword yet!
Instead I'd been running drills, doing squats, and other exercises that I was learning to despise in order to get up to what Sir Broadspin called 'Minimum fitness' before he started training me in anything else.
It got even worse! He had given me a meal plan, one the cooks weren't allowed to stray from!
All the wonderful sweets I'd been eating, cookies, and little cakes! All of it gone in an instant! I almost sobbed from the frustration bleeding into my body. Well not really, but I was feeling dramatic.
"Hmm." Before I could get too deep in my troubles I heard Sir Broadspin hum in a way I had learnt meant stay on the ground at your own risk.
So with a momentous heave I sat up, before pulling myself onto my achy feet. Everything from my calves to muscles I didn't even know Had creaked in protest, but I did succeed. Eventually.
Sir Broadspin just grunted in a way that expressed approval, before motioning to the next set. This time it was jumping jacks, and I could feel the tears well up in my eyes. I didn't, however, let them fall as I glared at the ground and started jumping.
I saw a smile form on the overly muscled man as he began marking off how many I'd done with his fingers. Really Sir Broadspin didn't seem to like talking for the most part, the only times he'd spoken to me had been explaining what we were going to be doing.
Other than that he corrected me by using his hands, and various grunts that varied from approval to complete disgust.
It is honestly amazing how much the man can express without so much as saying a word.
So the Old Lady who was supposed to be my magic tutor? She had kind of taken over All of my education.
As a result I was sitting in the usual side room that was meant to be a small parlor that had been set up for lessons instead. Apparently My Brothers tutors had done something similar with a room on the ground floor.
Regardless it was a comfy little place with a table and some very comfortable chairs -if slightly on the cheap side after my first magic lesson- room for the rolling chalkboard she'd gotten from somewhere and a slate for me to use.
There was a window with a fairly nice view of the grounds with a stray beam of light shining through, giving the room a homey feel.
That is despite the rather bland look the old woman was giving me. (She still hasn't introduced herself.)
We had just finished a quick overview on expected etiquette, having already gone through history as well as most of my other classes, and then we had started on my mathematics. It was supposed to be a check of my competency, a few questions I was supposed to answer and then a couple that would leave me stumped.
She obviously hadn't listened to my previous tutor, if she had bothered to talk to him at all. Then again he had been more than a little bit of a misogynist.
Regardless, I had answered the questions to the best of my ability and she had been staring at the test for about ten minutes now, her face going incredibly bland while she did so.
I could see her eyes twitching the more she read.
I hope she wasn't having a heart attack or something?
Smack a meaty thud made me jump only to see that she had slammed it down on the coffee table with enough force to make it creak. Her lips pressed in a thin line and fire pooled behind her flinty eyes as she seemed to process something.
"Moving On." Her voice steely and for a moment I could see blades of intention sharpening, baking with inherent heat before it faded away behind the veil. "Next, hmm lets see how you do with religion."
"Sorcier had a religion?" I asked with confusion bubbling in my voice, I thought Sorcier was a widely atheist nation. "Has a religion, and I suppose that answers that question." her voice exasperated, the fierceness retreating from her eyes.
"Well it's as good a place to start as any other." She decided to get up and stand by the chalkboard. "To start, Sorcier has had one major religious focus and several minor ones in the past six centuries. The Major religion is in fact still followed by a majority of Sorcier, and it is known as the Twelve Phases of the Church Of Twelve Faces." She said in a lecturing tone as she scratched the worse onto the chalkboard before making an annoyed sound at the last bit.
"A bit of Misnomer as there are more and less than twelve phases that are worshiped, but it works well enough. An example of a minor focus is the worship of the Three Stage Sun, and the Celestial Scales. However you likely won't have to deal with either beyond the very basics so I'll focus on the Twelve Phases." She wiped the chalk away with a strip of fabric, before writing 'Twelve Phases' at the top with a line under it.
"The Twelve Phases is a religion centered around the moon, with each phase having its own avatar. Each avatar represents certain aspects of reality, for example the avatar of the New Moon. "
"Sometimes referred to as the Empty Moon, she is the goddess of suffering, loneliness, punishment and a Patron to the despairing." She said in a factual voice, the words 'New Moon' were marked on the board under the previous with the words 'Suffering','Loneliness',Punishment' and despairing written under it in a smaller form.
"She is often depicted as a tall woman of a thin build with skin as black as obsidian sending out her lone hounds to hunt down the treacherous." The matronly woman paused. "However she is not viewed as an evil god, in fact many passages relate tales of her 'Leading those in despair to hope' as well as 'bringing company to the loneliest souls'."
'Huh that doesn't actually sound all that bad, kind of nice actually.' I thought scratching notes as small as I could make them on my slate.
"Those who follow her typically wear a token of barbed stone, in some way of representing loneliness that is hard to describe." She paused as if trying to think before shaking her head, fading blond hair slipping slightly out of the tight bun she wore it in. "To continue the religion is separated in three categories. True, Passing, and Hidden. The New Moon falls into the first category as of True, along with the full moon, and both first and and last quarter phases. Meanwhile All waxing and waning Phases gibbous or crescent, fall into the Passing category."
The scratch of chalk marked the room as she wrote the three categories on the board. "The waxing and waning Phases are special because they are all twins, or in some interpretations, quadruplets." She said scratching the words 'Twins/Quadruplets' under Passing. "For example the Waxing Crescents Are Typically viewed as young children, one a boy the other a girl, with white near silver skin. They together are the twin gods of Beginning, Childhood, Journeys, and Trust." She paused, hooking a finger into her mug of water before drinking greedily from it, in a messy manner that definitely didn't conform to the Etiquette she had quizzed me on just a short while ago.
I took her momentary pause to sort my thoughts on the matter but I could only Really think about the last category. "What about the Hidden Category? How can there be anymore if True and Passing already cover all the phases of the moon?" Curiosity jumbling my mind as I tried to figure out where this was going.
I could see a smile curl across the corner of her mouth as she finished her drink. Wiping her mouth with her hand in an over exaggerated show of impropriety.
"That is where things get interesting, you see each of the categories represent something. The True category represents the four directions as well as the four most common magics. With North being the Full moon and Water magic, South being the New Moon and Fire magic. The First Quarter is West and Earth magic, while the Last Quarter is Wind Magic and East."
She spoke at speed while I tried to keep up scratching my own bit of chalk against my slate, growing more energetic as she gestured about. A true smile on her face, and with a voice filled with sparkling joy.
"Passing however represents the passing of time, and the cycle of life. The Waxing Crescent is childhood, the Waxing Gibbous represents Early Maturity." She said writing a small diagram on the chalkboard. "The Waning Gibbous Is Late Maturity, and finally the Waning Crescent takes the role of both Elderly Life and Death."
"The Last category is different in that it represents both Emotions and Events, taking in a rather eclectic set of phases. Such as the Blue Moon, Super Moon, Harvest Moon, and finally the Blood Moon."
She turned my way brushing a bit of hair that had escaped her tight bun as she got even more energetic. "The Blue Moon Represents Hope, and The End of Strife, while the Super moon takes on Clarity and Calm Days, The Harvest Moon represents Growth and Satiety." She paused, noticing the Chalkboard was full, she took the same strip of fabric to wipe it off to make room.
"Ah, and finally we have the Blood Moon, representing the Ending of War and Tyrants, along with Tragedy. These traits bleed into the actual avatar and their domain in rather interesting ways." She finished, turning back around with a rather large grin on her face. "However I do Believe this is the end of my time today for the more academic subjects, So I will see you later today for more magic lessons! I will see if I can find any books on the subject of religion for you to study."
I Could do little but nod before the Elderly Teacher had already scampered out of the room on far too light feet.
Instead I forced down the slight irritation that came with trying to memorize so much, forcing myself to my feet. I tilted my head for a moment, I almost decided to take a nap, before thinking better of it and choosing to go with the library.
So after stretching a little to loosen up after sitting so long I made for the door, cracking it open to find Adeline standing Just to the side of the door patiently. I found the phantom of a smile on my face as I nodded her way.
She bowed as a customary greeting before slipping behind me to my right, clicking into place like a missing puzzle piece as I walked through the halls.
"Ugh" I moaned vaguely in pain, my head resting on a particularly large volume detailing the Worship of the Moon and its Phases. I could feel my head throbbing as I recalled the incredibly dull book.
It was very relevant to what I was looking for but I could practically feel the words of it scraping against my mind. It didn't help that this volume was apparently the original volume written and that looking too closely at the cover had me seeing it as the author was stabbed from behind. Blood marking the cover with two particularly large spots on the cover others might have mistaken for ink stains.
It certainly made reading it a more frustrating affair. Not helped that it was merely one volume among many I would have to read, if only to sate my own curiosity.
I shifted my head to look at the pile of books I had already marked off as rather useless. It was a sizable stack numbering somewhere in the twenties, and I new it would be growing soon. I might even add this one to the stack, sure it had useful information but the cost of obtaining it?
No, I slapped my face trying to shove away both my irritation and my growing need for sleep. That was another thing that I'd found, apparently training with Sir Broadspin could not only reduce my ridiculous amount of energy, but it also left me with only the barest amount of energy for the rest of the day.
Sure by the end of the day I had usually regained enough energy to do my nightly magic training (Have I mentioned just how much I hate that goddamn training dummy!), but depending on the day's activity I could be fine, or just barely staying awake until then.
As a result I was valiantly trying to stay awake, while reading one of the most boring books I'd ever heard of.
I could already feel it as my eyelids began to droop.
Thomas Anslief though himself something of a scholar, not truly one, not anymore. Now he was more a Teacher than anything in truth, but some part of him longed for the day before he had settled in this small town.
Once he had been an educated man of great renown, many knew his name, many still probably did. He like all the others trying to make their way through the twisting tides of academia, had been all but obsessed with learning. Trying to earn his own bit of silver, and maybe even a noble title through his research.
At one point he had been all but the most recognised man in his field, the man people went to when they had questions, from the bloody cult that once all but ruled their neighbors to the quiet worship of the far off Nation of Conquista, or even the desperate prayers of those who lived in the great desert.
When it had come to questions regarding the many religions that had lived in their world, He had been the man to talk to. But that had been a long time ago, when he had been younger, not even in his forties, before he had tired of the constant 'friendly' backstabbing all members of academia had shared.
It had been years since he had thought about those transient days, until only days ago when he had noticed one of his charges cracking like fine china. Maria Cambell had always been a bright girl, regardless of the near shunning the rest of the village treated her with.
She had always been at the top of her class, always wore a polite face regardless of what others said to her. In some regard he had found her a sterling example of a truly good person, she regularly helped injured, and could be found doing any and all work around her own family's small fields when she didn't have her face buried in a book to study.
In others she was perhaps the most unjustly treated person he had ever met. He had seen strangers spit on her as she walked by, her fellow classmates tripped her and laughed at her whenever she showed her face.
None of that had prepared him for the almost manic girl as she tried to explain what had been driving her spare. A simple failure to put an image to paper, to be able to realize what had been haunting her mind.
It was only after her description of what she had been trying to capture in paper that old memories surfaced in his mind. It had been an exact description of the Avatar of the Blood Moon, something made all the more curious when she hadn't even known what the twelve phases were.
So he had gone to his desk and dug about, before pulling out an old memento given to him. A small Red coin, a present from one of the remaining priests of the little known goddess.
Something told him it would serve the girl far more than it would himself, so he had given it to her in hopes it might banish her troubles.
When she had returned after the two day break, she seemed almost another person. She looked exactly the same, her hair still golden, her eyes still blue. Yet there had been an intensity to her, a flicker of white behind her eyes that had made him doubt and a smile so honest and confident yet looked as if made from broken glass and shattered stone.
It was so very different from the small polite smile she usually wore, and yet he couldn't say he'd ever seen anything that fit the girl so well. Like a piece of glass pressed back into place, fitting perfectly, but still made of sharp edges.
The coin dancing between her fingers had only made the image more bizarre, even as it made him curious in a way he hadn't been since he'd walked out of the ministries halls.