Eunice delicately placed the ointment jar back on one of the new wall shelves, then walked around Terezio's desk and turned to perch herself on its edge. It had, like the rest of the basement study room, been cleaned and organized, and now held stacked spells, theorems and studies sorted first by type, then into alphabetical order. The reason for the miraculous change was sitting on a pillow in the middle of the floor, copying a fragment of spell theory that had been written there. Fastidious to a fault, she would read a line of the spell calculations twice, copy it on to the parchment, check it twice against what was written on the floor, then erase the line from the floor. At that rate, the few lines that Eunice was sure would only take her fifteen minutes to copy had taken their current scribe three quarters of an hour.
"But you can't be more than fifty," the apprentice argued, continuing a conversation that her accomplice in tidying had been indulging, by occasionally offering clips and phrases, for nearly two hours.
"I am," the grey-haired mage replied matter-of-factly, even though she knew the comment had been an attempt at a compliment, "By fourteen years. And I look older than that."
Eunice shifted uncomfortably, her code of politeness strictly forbidding her to agree with the woman on the floor. She looked around the room as if she didn't know exactly what was in it, trying desperately to think of something positive to say. "Well, if not a potion... well... maybe a spell, then? Wish?"
"No. Its divine equivalent- miracle- would have a better chance, and that only if I had believed in any deity at all," came the sour reply. "But I don't, which leaves most practitioners' potential divine force below the efficacy threshold of the potential defense. Contrary to the current teachings, there are considerable psionic ramifications to a target's incredulity."
"Wait, why would there be an active potential defense?" Eunice asked, forgetting her discomfort. "The cleric wouldn't be attacking you, so why should his or her efficacy threshold calculation have to include a potential defense?"
"He or she would have to calculate their efficacy threshold against the opposing 'will' of natural entropy, with or without the psionic modifier, depending on the target," Trizelle answered, looking up from her copying work, which was nearly complete. "If the target's own will force were the default opposing force, all healing mages would run the risk of permanent psychic damage upon the attempt to heal themselves."
"Most clerics I know are a bit... unstable," Eunice laughed, peeking over at Trizelle's impeccable, angular script handwriting.
"We all have our moments," the older mage agreed, looking up at Eunice at last. "Be careful; spell work like this has a way of leaving its mark on people."
"Oh," Eunice said, backing up immediately as though she'd been yelled at. Trizelle noted the reaction, but made no outward sign of her perception of it.
"Trizzi, are you still in the playroom?" Druce called from upstairs.
"Playroom?" Eunice whispered, amazed.
Trizelle merely scoffed as she gingerly rose from the floor. "Follow me directly or close this door tightly as soon as I leave."
"Yes, Lady- Master Ranclyffe," the apprentice said in a hushed voice, dropping her hands before her and folding them as she was accustomed to doing for Terezio.
Trizelle left briskly, allowing her eyes to sweep the area as soon as she crossed through the doorway. There was no movement from the study behind her, and the court mage of Urmlaspyr sighed inwardly at the rigid- and in her opinion, wholly unnecessary- class-and-rank respect that was rammed so deeply into Cormyrean hearts.
That reminds me- I'll likely have to retrain Gimago when I get back.
Firming her lips into the thin line that was more comfortable on her face than any form of smile, she gathered the wide skirt of her dress and began to carefully ascend the steps.
Eunice listened to the interspersed whispers and light thuds that indicated that Trizelle was pulling her pain-wracked lower limbs up the stairs. She turned, slowly and distractedly, thinking on the curt answers to her queries concerning what healing methodologies could possibly restore elasticity to the rapidly decaying joints and muscles, as she cast a glance at the remaining spell calculations on the floor. When she finally moved to the door to as Trizelle had asked, however, she found Dresan, arms crossed, leaning in the door frame with a smirk on his face. For a moment, all Eunice could think of was the way she'd locked him in with the Drow trickster upstairs.
"You understand that writing, don't you?" Dresan asked teasingly, as though he already knew the answer. "The way you look at it- I can tell it speaks to you."
Eunice stared at the man blankly, aghast at being caught. "I- I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Lord Hawke," she finally managed with a dry throat and trembling lips.
"I am neither Battlemage Ranclyffe nor Master Ranclyffe," Dresan reminded her, moving into Terezio's study and closing the door behind him. He watched, pleased, as Eunice's face lost a bit of its color the instant the stairwell was blocked from her view. "And I don't intend to tell them, so there's no need to fear. I seek the equal distribution of magical knowledge to all practitioners of those arts, and I say that nothing stands between you and the understanding of that spell but your own trepidation."
"My Lord Hawke, I'm just a divination apprentice," Eunice smiled carefully as she backed up a pace. "I cannot understand that writing at all; I have no art with neither it nor anything like it. I pray you forgive my ignorance."
Dresan chuckled, a warm, burbling sound that seemed unlike a sound of actual pleasure. It struck Eunice more as a derisive jab, as a sound that someone might offer to someone who was weak or mentally infirm.
" 'Just a divination apprentice.' " The mouse brown haired mage strode calmly into the room and turned toward the half-copied spell that remained on the floor. "You cannot deny that the work calls to your curiosity; I saw you directly disobey what Master Ranclyffe commanded you. Nothing burst into flame when you did it, but something worse happened."
" 'Worse'...?"
Eunice turned her head slightly, confused at what precisely was different in the man before her. The temptation to simply touch him with a spell so that she could know for sure began to eat at her. Dresan, with a smile still playing on his lips, invited her to step toward him with an open hand, and although her gut screamed at how strangely dangerous it seemed, she reached out and stepped closer to him to take it. At once, the mouse brown haired mage slid behind her with the grace of a feline creature, guiding her down to the place where the spell work lay unattended.
"Isn't it funny?" he mused, leaning his cheek on her upper arm briefly. "Isn't it simply amazing how Terezio himself pokes at the gates of the Hells, but somehow imagines that he is right when he forbids others from doing the same? Why do you think that is?"
The apprentice looked at Dresan as though she'd never seen him before. "I don't know," she replied with a shrug that was intended to get his hands off her. Although it didn't physically work, the intention behind it did, and the man moved slightly to his right.
"I think it's to prevent being discovered," he offered. "What year are you?"
"I don't go by years," Eunice admitted. "I'm not really a war wizard; I'm a trade student. When I return home, I'm supposed to bring the teachings back, to teach the rest of my classmates as a journeyman."
"A trade student," Dresan nodded thoughtfully. "I wonder how Battlemage Ranclyffe would take it if you were to tell him that you realized his calculations were, quite simply put, wrong."
Eunice thought back to the public denial of the existence of Shadow Children, but fought hard to keep her face as plain as it had been before. "I would never-"
"And why not? If you had written a spell like this, wouldn't he correct you? And he would expect you to respect him enough to heed his words- now, why doesn't that work both ways?"
Eunice couldn't think of a single thing to say, and was left staring at Dresan with the look of a deer caught by surprise in a thicket.
"You are a talented, intelligent spell worker, I know. It is because of this that I trust you to decipher this spell work for me."
"I appreciate your faith, but I don't believe I can help you," the apprentice argued, shifting a bit so that there was more space between herself and Dresan. "This seems to me to be some kind of conjuration spell, and I-"
"You know more about it than that," Dresan soothed. "Of all people to tell lies- you must think you're the only divination mage in the land."
Eunice bit the backs of her lips. "Yes, I was curious about it, and yes, I believe I understand it- some of it. I think. But Battlemage Ranclyffe has never taught me anything like this; he's actually warned me away from the study of the fundamentals of conjuration and infernal spell work."
"Is that because he does not wish those fundamentals known, or because he himself does not know them?" Dresan smiled. "Or worse- could it be both?"
The young woman shook her head. "I can't tell from this. It seems a bit... demanding, the way it's written. There's... no way anyone could come up with this much potential will energy. And... these modifiers... this isn't divine spell writing format, so actually, the will purchase is probably undervalued, too." The strange feeling that Dresan was not quite himself persisted, and she struggled valiantly to at least obey one thing she'd been told by her teaching mage. "Master Ranclyffe was copying it; she would know-"
"Calling back that soon-to-be lich is cheating," Dresan teased. "Think for yourself, Eunice. That's the only way to true knowledge, and with that knowledge will come freedom."
"But freedom from what?" Eunice reasoned. "I'm not bound."
"Not physically, that's true enough," Dresan laughed. "Funny thing, isn't it, what happened to Trizelle? She did tell you why she suffers from bone, ligament and muscle decay, correct?"
"No," Eunice replied, crossing her arms. "I don't know if it's my business, anyway."
"Oh, it is. You see, Terezio- the great Battlemage Ranclyffe, rather- found that his daughter was talented, as you are, with infernal forces. And he, jealous of her gift, abandoned to none other than Shade itself, whose mages- in trade for teaching her wondrous spells and theories of magic- inflicted all sorts of wickedness upon her. The damage is progressive- and necrotic."
"Gods give her strength," the apprentice whimpered in spite of herself, wondering precisely how much pain the woman to whom she'd spoken was used to feeling on any given day.
"You say better than she, who lost her faith in the divine years ago, in the experimentation holding cells of Thultanthar," Dresan sighed, sounding genuinely mournful. Eunice turned her face to him briefly, and he very gently smoothed her cheeks. "You must take up your own learning now. I tell you not to harm you, but to save you. You don't know, and likely can't even imagine, what it was like to be raised by what is left of that woman."
The divination apprentice remembered the halting, awkward conversation with the terse mage. With trembling in her spirit, she finally allowed the barest whisper of a spell to escape her, and was satisfied to sense nothing foreboding.
"Ah, Eunice, come forward into your power," Dresan smiled encouragingly. "Pretending at docility, you still clearly disobey the command of both crown and mentor by casting your spells without giving their subjects due notice. I ask only that you reach toward your own good. In doing so, shall anyone be harmed?"
"You would; yes," a female voice called from the doorway. Eunice instantly peered over Dresan's shoulder to see his mother, leveling a non-plussed glower at the back of her son. "That is an elite class, multi-school, tenth rank spell theorem, according to the College. The banishing element requires a three to one ratio of potential arcane will force against the targeted creature's potential arcane will defense with infernal modifier. However, the practitioner must both initiate and sustain the binding element of the spell with a potential arcane will force that rises in a pure two to one relationship with the opposing will force of the creature being targeted, including both the infernal and the psionic force modifiers."
"That... that's impossible," Eunice breathed, squinting at Trizelle incredulously. "That's physically impossible. Where does the additional arcane will force come from?"
"Watch, and perceive," the older woman said simply, walking slowly over to Dresan, who stood and turned to face her.
"You merely delay the inevitable," he said in a tender, loving voice.
"Break possession," Trizelle replied in a fierce whisper, suddenly reaching out the first two fingers of her right hand to touch Dresan directly in the center of his head. "Bind."
Dresan's eyes promptly rolled up in his head, and Eunice quickly popped up to catch his falling body against her chest as he fell backward. All color drained from his face instantly, and a cold sweat broke out over his entire body. When the apprentice diviner looked up to comment on it, the words were stopped cold in her mouth by the sight of a beautiful, dark haired woman with radiant honey-brown eyes. Her right hand, lush and pink, formed a claw of force where a ball of unfathomably dark magic energy spun like a globe. Eunice could spy a small, but resplendent white palace, which spun suspended within it.
"Return to Argent," the woman demanded, crushing both the globe of energy and the image trapped within it in her grasp.
"And there," a flatteringly sweet voice crooned, "I will eagerly await you."
A tide of energy burst out from the woman's closed hand, sending a shock wave from that epicenter throughout the entire house. Eunice pressed her eyes shut and let go of Dresan to cover her face momentarily. Dresan fell to the floor, covering his own face quite by accident. Druce, who had come down the stairs to see why Trizelle had returned to Terezio's study, caught sight of her daughter as she should look at a mere sixty four years, and stared in shock until the shock wave reached her too. It soaked into her bones and rattled there as though it would stun her heart into stillness.
For a few moments, there was neither sound nor movement from any of the direct witnesses to Trizelle's work. The mage herself, looking around herself at them, repressed the urge to scream, even though she knew none of them would hear her do it. When the apprentice mage began stirring first, like a blind, freshly born rodent of some sort, Trizelle raised an interested eyebrow, then restored herself to stony indifference.
"Master Ranclyffe?" Eunice managed, not quite able to hear herself yet. She coughed twice, then tried again. "Master Ranclyffe?"
"Mother?" Dresan groaned from the floor, not moving at all. "I know you're standing there."
It was so like his lazy responses every time she would appear in his room to wake him up for classes in his youth that Trizelle rolled her eyes more out of habit than actual annoyance.
Eunice, hearing no response to either call, opened her eyes. There, with her creased eyes closed and her worn hands clasped before her, stood a completely dispassionate Trizelle. Not a single strand of her grey hair seemed out of place since the time Eunice had last seen her, just a few minutes before; there was no flush of effort in her cheeks nor was there any trembling excitement from the expended magical energy. Nothing betrayed the fact that just moments ago, she performed what had seemed to the apprentice diviner like an impossible spell.
Trizelle opened her eyes and raised one grey eyebrow at the apprentice.
In the silence that reigned in Terezio's study, Druce stepped inside to look at her daughter.
"What- what's happened?" Dresan asked, terror stealing into his chest like cold water. He scrambled to sit up and away from Eunice, who didn't move a single inch. "What did I do?"
"Trizelle, answer people when they speak to you," Druce managed, her voice made small even though it was reproving. "Is your son alright? Are you?"
"The composite efficacy threshold is very high," Trizelle prompted, looking calmly at Eunice. "Why?"
For a few moments, Eunice stared at Trizelle, utterly astounded at her ability to so quickly transform from a masterful active spell worker to a mere teacher. "It shouldn't have worked at all- not for an arcanist. The purchase is... much too..."
"Practitioners of divine magic can make lower will purchases against the opposing defense, yes," Trizelle admitted, "but arcanists merely need compensate for not having a extraplanar modifier in their calculations. In order to do that, I added an element."
"You added an element?" Eunice shot back. "The spell even as written isn't possible-"
"It is possible, because you just saw it done," the court mage of Urmlaspyr replied quietly. "I added an absorption component to the initial binding spell. I wouldn't suggest it for most other practitioners, however, as the absorption of hostile energy does inflict damage."
In the silence that followed, Trizelle opened her hand and brought it across her body as though she were wiping a table or a dish. Before her, the remaining writing on the floor disappeared, as did all the writing on the scroll. Eunice bit her lips as she watched everything melt away.
"Did you pay attention to the dissertations on pact magic from Battlemage Ranclyffe?"
"He was... distracted... a few times by the demands of the armed guard around here, but... yes," Dresan admitted. "His opinions about warlocks are... rather strong."
"I am going home," Trizelle said firmly. "I suggest you prepare to follow."
Druce put a hand on her daughter's arm, which elicited a wince from which Trizelle was slow to recover. For the first time, Eunice realized that it probably hurt the court mage of Urmlaspyr to be touched, and wondered how the woman could possibly get any melee class spell work done.
"I intend to see Urmlaspyr, if I am spared and the summer comes. I want to visit all the temples, buy a good handmade tapestry, and go to the middle of that dark quarter. And most of all, daughter, I want to sit in the back of one of your classes again. With your father, of course, so he can explain things to me quietly."
Trizelle turned her head toward her mother, but looked down at the floor as though she were not capable of telling where precisely she was. "I'll talk to Jindranae."
All three of the occupants of the room watched Trizelle break away from her mother and walk resolutely toward the stairwell. As she ascended, Druce turned her attentions to the gaping apprentice.
"Eunice, go home. I think you've been through enough for the day."
Without a word, the healthy woman curtsied, then nearly fled the room. In her wake, Druce walked over to the door to the study and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Come on; you were told to prepare your things."
Dresan turned, looked at the paper- which seemed out of place now, on a completely clean floor- then sighed as he walked past Druce and out of the door. As he walked up the stairs, a self-satisfied chuckle seemed to echo up to his ears from behind him. Gritting his teeth and pursing his lips, the Tiefling pushed himself up the steps toward the light of day.
"By all means, run, my son. Run as far from me as you can, for as long as you can. But I will get what I desire. All in good time."
Behind him, Druce looked down at her arm, which suddenly pulsed with more pain than usual. She frowned as she remembered the last time she had felt it do the same thing, deciding within herself to talk to her husband about it as soon as he arrived home.
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