An important note about the University of Sorcery at Harramschall:
While the University is greatly appreciative of its property within the city, it does not receive any funds from city taxes, nor does it provide any specific services in exchange for operating within the city of Harramschall.
The city and the Univeristy may choose to cooperate in the future, but currently hold no obligations toward each other. As a student, you will not be granted residential rights for rooming on campus, unless you are already a resident of the city. Conversely, the city may not subject you to specific laws and ordinances meant for governing residents.
The University also has its own security and enforcement protocols. If you choose to enroll at the University, we recommend thoroughly reviewing the “Know Your Rights” pamphlet provided on your first day.
Remember: Students are not required to surrender spells or components to the City Guard unless the student has been convicted of a crime within the city boundaries.
Somewhere nearby, someone screamed.
Brex jolted awake as if from a nightmare.
He wasn’t entirely sure he was asleep, or what happened directly previous to that exact moment. He felt like he had just been focused on something else, lost in his own thoughts maybe, and he had to run through a mental checklist to guarantee his own survival.
He was laying face down on a cold, damp floor made of wood. The air was brisk and sharply cool around his skin. He could feel his arms and legs, and they seemed free of obstructions. He could breathe without coughing.
With a groan, Brex pulled himself to his hands and knees, looking at his surroundings.
An abandoned shack, cleaved in two by a metal post that fell onto it from somewhere above. Or maybe it came loose from nearby and just fell into this unlucky building. The shack was undoubtedly ruined beyond repair, and the entire second floor had buckled and fallen in on the first, with a gaping hole in the roof.
And it was in that particular moment that Brex remembered everything that lead up to it.
“Red!” he called out. “Liam!”
Where were they standing when the post fell through the shack? He had his hands on the wall and the last he saw, they were behind him…Dread creeped into his stomach when he mapped their last known locations directly under the floor that collapsed.
“Brex!” Liam called back. “Are you all right?”
There was a veritable wall of debris between Brex and Liam. “I-I think I’m well enough. What about you? Is Red there?”
“Red’s fine, I think,” Liam said, his voice shaking. “He got knocked over and passed out, but it wasn’t too hard. He’s breathing, and his heart’s beating as it ought to. Nearly lost my good arm but it came down on the other side. Guess you could call that lucky. But we’re walled off. As long as nothing else falls on us, we’re good.”
Brex’s heart, which he noticed had been racing, slowed ever so slightly at the news.
“What about the dwarf?” Liam asked. “Where did she go?”
That’s right. He had been in the middle of getting arrested. It had become an afterthought.
Where did Captain Karna go?
His eyes followed the debris along the post. No blood, no obvious trace of her. But it fell undoubtedly where she had been standing behind Brex. Or, where Brex thought she’d been standing. It happened so quickly, he couldn’t be sure of anything.
He crept along the post, glancing under it.
There laid Captain Karna. Eyes closed, breathing slowly. It seemed like most of the post’s weight was on the crumbling walls of the shack, since it had a fair amount of clearance. But if that foundation buckled at all, she’d be crushed.
She was probably knocked unconscious by the impact of the post. They could just escape, as long as she stayed that way.
And then, again, somewhere nearby, someone screamed.
Brex picked himself up and ran to the doorway, looking at the street outside. Lightning had struck several of the buildings and sparked fires, with people gathering outside and watching it all burn. The rain had stopped, but the wind was blowing embers to neighboring buildings and spreading the blaze. Natural chaos was beginning to spread and there would never be a better time to make a run for it.
Brex pulled himself back inside when city guardsmen ran past the shack to help with the rescue effort. More screams and wails. They were running around like senseless animals to whatever made the most noise. Directionless.
Brex bit his lip, looking back at Karna, still laying. Still breathing. Still in danger of that post.
I save her, maybe she wakes up. Maybe she gets mad. Maybe she just arrests me and Red and Liam are left alone.
Or maybe I save her and she sees what’s happening and helps. And then she arrests me anyway.
He swallowed back an anxious shiver. Or maybe I just leave her there. Maybe she wakes up on her own and saves herself. Maybe the foundation breaks and she dies. No one would know but me.
His mind flooded with images and emotions that he couldn’t stop himself from feeling. Karna’s fate in a constant state of flux, Brex never knowing what happened to her. Brex holding the secret inside him for years, then finally confessing, and everyone around him losing respect. Formless, faceless people in an uncertain future and yet it stung in his present so much, turning his stomach into knots. He’d never be able to truly claim responsibility or fully shirk it without knowing for sure.
“Brex?” Liam called. “You didn’t leave, did you? Is she gone?”
“I’m here,” Brex said, not realizing he was holding his breath until he spoke. “I’m just…overwhelmed.”
“No kidding.”
And then, for entirely selfish reasons, Brex found himself performing what some would call a selfless act.
I’m going to regret this.
“She’s under the post,” Brex said. “I’m pulling her out.”
As he crouched down by her legs and dragged Karna out from under the post, Liam protested. “Are you sure? Maybe we should…” He dropped the sentence, trying to avoid saying what Brex had already thought.
As an insult to Brex’s gamble, fate saw fit to wake Karna up as he set her legs back down. She grunted for a few seconds before a rumbling came from under the post. She opened her eyes and the foundation crumbled, the post laying flat against the floor, crushing the spot where she’d just been.
It startled her, but she put the situation together quickly, turning and narrowing her eyes at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Brex thinned his lips and glanced through a gap in the walls created by the fallling post, a building across the street already ablaze. “Disaster relief.” He turned back to her. “Can you walk?”
The question surprised her. She tried to stand up, but buckled and fell on her back, grunting in pain. “My sh-shoulder…and ankle…”
Brex knelt beside her. “Give me your good arm.”
She glared at him. “What are you trying to pull here?”
“These people are running around without a decent leader. You need a strong back and a working pair of legs.” He stretched out his hand. “And I’m trying not to be a complete piece of shit in an emergency.”
She left his hand waiting for a few seconds, then reached out and let him pull her up onto his back. He glanced toward the wall of debris that Liam and Red were behind and finally locked eyes with the other orc hiding silently behind the fractured pieces of furniture and flooring. He gave a quick nod, and Liam’s obscured face returned one.
Brex hunched forward to keep Karna from slipping off and jogged out of the shack.
“Keep a firm grip on my arm,” Karna said. “I can’t hold onto anything with the other.”
They kept silent and Brex jogged toward a burning building. Plumes of smoke rose into the sky, blocking out the moon and stars just as they were starting to pierce the twilight. Flames licked the sides of the building, heat bursting in waves from each of its three stories. Two city guards stood outside, warning bystanders to stay away. Karna nudged Brex, pointing toward them. Reluctantly, he approached.
“Jameson! Tiller!” Karna barked, making Brex wince. “Give me a report.”
The two guards stood up and saluted, not even questioning why the Captain was riding an orc’s back. One of them spouted an update at him and Karna. “The building has been evacuated except for a man on the second floor who went in to fetch his daughter.”
“Where is she?”
“With her mother. He dropped her into the mother’s arms from a window on the second floor. We haven’t seen him since. It’s too dangerous to enter without sorcerers assisting with a water spell.”
“Are they on the way?” Karna asked.
“We don’t know, ma’am. We’ve sent word for their help, but without confirmation they’ve received it.”
“You have a handaxe, don’t you? Give it to the orc.”
The guard looked taken aback. “E-excuse me, ma’am?”
“Give the orc your axe, we’re going to clear a path.”
The guard’s eyes flashed from the building to Karna to Brex, then took the one-handed axe from his side and offered it to Brex. He slid his fingers around the base and gripped it tight as Karna nudged him toward the building’s front door.
“You good with an axe, Brexothuruk?”
Brex bit his lip. “Good enough, I hope. This is my first time going into a building with so much…fire.”
“I had a close friend who used to do this. She taught me a few tricks,” Karna said. Brex detected a slight quiver in her voice. “I need you to clear the way to the second floor to that father. Hopefully, the stairs are in good shape. Use the axe on any doors you find.”
“Should I set you down here, or–“
“No,” she interrupted. “Keep hold on me. Just try not to hit my head on anything.”
Then, with a nervous swallow, Brex stepped inside.
The interior was a hundred times more intense than what he felt outside, and fire was crawling on every wall and ceiling. Gray smoke stung his eyes and forced a cough out of him. The room he stood in clearly used to be a living room, with tables and chairs disintigrating by the minute. There was a staircase in the back that looked to be made of stone, luckily. Less fortunate, there was a firm wooden door leaking smoke from the top and bottom at the end of the staircase.
“Duck when you can. Try not to breath smoke,” Karna said, then coughed.
As if it were that simple. Still, Brex pulled his shirt up over his nose and brandished the axe, slowly making his way to the staircase and up each step. At the top, he gave a few good swings of the axe until the door buckled. Grabbing the less-than-stable railing, he gave it a kick, and the wooden debris of the door slid backward.
The smoke was thicker on the second floor, and Karna whispered for him to crouch down as much as he could, which meant moving even slower. They had entered a hallway, and the door closest to the window on the far side of the building from them was the only one that looked open. The others were already covered in flames.
Brex did his best not to cough and keep Karna held tight against him, but his grip was starting to falter and he let out a few ragged breaths. When they reached the open door, they found a human man curled up in a fetal position next to a jammed window. A pile of debris that was probably once a child’s crib separated them.
Brex swung the axe again, turning the crib into little more than splinters and chunks in a few moments. He set the axe down, reached over and touched the man’s neck, feeling a slow pulse. But he was unconscious.
“I can’t carry you both out of here,” Brex said before coughing again. The air was less oppresive in this room. There might have been a draft somewhere.
You could leave her here, something within him whispered. You could take the father back and try to save her later. And if the building falls, it’s not your fault.
But he shoved that voice into the deepest recess of his mind. He wouldn’t allow such talk now.
Smoke was beginning to fill the room.
“Get the window open,” Karna said. “I’ll signal the guards to bring a landing pad.”
Brex tried to open it, but it refused to budge. “It’s stuck!”
“You have an axe!”
“R-right.” Brex set Karna down, picked up the axe, and heaved the iron at the glass. The frame buckled and glittering fractures burst away from him, fallling to the ground outside. A rush of wind blew into the room, then seemed to pull the fires from the hallway toward him. Kneeling by the window, he looked down and saw two figures in red and gold dart inside the building.
“Get down!” Karna screamed at him. Brex saw a roaring beast of flame and heat charge forward, pulled toward him by a backdraft. The tips of the flames seemed to kiss his palm as he covered his face, then pulled back, like they had become shy.
A few seconds passed, and Brex let his hand drop.
The fires had been reined in, cycling through colors like no flame he’d ever seen before. Some simply bent in on themselves, falling to the ground as they became clear, cold and wet. Puddles that would turn immediately to steam. Steam that mixed with the smoke and floated out the window.
The temperature rapidly cooled and Brex looked over at Karna.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
She glanced down, melancholy. “Sorcery,” she said with a sigh.
Brex didn’t even know how to parse what he saw. A pure transformation of one raw element to another. The books he’d read had never even touched the concept. And yet, here it was, happening all around him. The blackened walls behind the fires were beginning to reveal themselves as the emergency slowly diminished. The danger grew smaller and his immediate future began to loom before him again.
“You’re going to run,” Karna said, as though she could sense where his mind was racing. “But I’ll find you again.”
“I know,” Brex said.
“You have to face trial for what you did.”
Brex winced. “I know,” he repeated. “But I have to finish something before I can show you the truth.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
Brex looked back out to the charred hallway. “Maybe just a little, after all this.” He thinned his lips, tone growing ever somber. “I may not have a clan anymore, but I still have my word.”
He looked out the window. There were at least four other buildings still ablaze. And here he was, on the verge of getting arrested again.
“The people of this city need you now far more than a dead man does, Captain,” Brex said.
He could see her lips turn into a half-snarl, but she didn’t speak for another moment.
“Swear to me that the next time I see you, you will surrender.”
Brex gave it thought.
“Swear to me,” she said again.
He cringed. “Fine. Fine, when you find me again, I promise I’ll surrender.”
Footsteps came up the stairs toward the back of the hallway. Smoke still lingered in the air, but there was a chill.
Brex could only remember what happened after that as a blur. A pair of sorcerers, though dressed much less formally than those he’d met earlier, helped him, Karna, and the unconscious father exit the building. At some point, Brex had remembered to pick up the axe, and drifted behind the others. When they exited the building, a small crowd gathering around each of pair of sorcerer and injured party. Karna started barking orders at the guards who were lingering around the building. In the midst of it all, Brex just calmly walked away from the scene, back toward where Liam and Red were waiting.
For once, nothing had changed since Brex had left.
The dingy shack still had a corner filled with debris and a pole bisecting the foundation.
“Red? Liam?” Brex called out.
“Still here!” Liam’s voice came back. Brex saw some movement from behind the impromptu barricade.
“Green thing!” Red said with a cheer.
“Stand back, all right?”
Brex made quick work of the debris separating them with the axe he’d taken from the guard, and at last, he saw the pair of them in full again. They shared a moment of reunion, hugging each other with the kind of assurance that only comes from shouldering a trial together. After a moment, Brex realized it was the first time any of them had embraced each other like this.
After the relief faded, they found themselves trying to figure out what to do until sunrise.
“I think I know a much sturdier place to stay for the night around here,” Liam said. “We’re not far from the docks as it is. Going back to Elaina’s would land us in trouble for sure. Might as well huddle up somewhere for the rest of the night.”
Red and Brex both agreed.
As they left the shack that nearly killed Karna, Brex felt a slight warmth in his heart when he saw that many of the fires he’d passed before were out and buildings had been evacuated. He could never say for sure that it was Karna’s influence that helped, but he wanted to believe it.
Out along the horizon, sheets of rain fell into the ocean, and whatever reprieve the eye of the storm had granted them was about to expire. Liam spotted some shelter in the form of an old stone house that had already seen better days. Peering through the windows, they confirmed that it had recently been abandoned, and snuck inside to protect themselves for the rest of the night.
Brex suggested that Red should disrobe if they were going to sleep, so they wouldn’t have to worry about his one good set of clothes ripping if a sunbeam happened to fall on him in the morning.
Brex felt a chill, hearing the torrents fall outside the house. It didn’t take long for Red to curl up on an old rug to his relative comfort and fall asleep. Brex couldn’t stop himself from wandering through the house, through what had certainly been a kitchen, a living room, then a dining room, then up the stairs to see a bedroom and a bathroom. Liam had disappeared somewhere deeper into the house.
In the dark, lit only by ambient moonlight, Brex could still make out furniture and decorations half-worn in frequent use or with fabric eaten by moths. Closets and hallways were nearly pitch-black with no windows to light them.
A chill crept down his spine, and Brex began to wonder if this was going to be another trap.
His mind reeled. Liam had been too friendly, too accomodating. He’d taken advantage of Brex’s attachment to him as an orc. He’d gained his trust and now…now he was up to something. He was going to use Brex just like Wallach wanted to.
Brex fumbled with his ring, trying to put on his cutting spell as quick as he could while sneaking his way downstairs.
At first, his greatest fear seemed to be confirmed: Liam’s silhouette was by a window next to the front door, just at the bottom of the stairs. But lightning struck, and revealed what Liam was really doing.
He gazed out the window, holding something in his hand.
It looked like a brightly colored ball, but he held it with a weight that made him think it wasn’t for throwing or hitting like brambleball.
Adrenaline pushing through him, Brex tried to quiet his own mind and spoke to the other orc. “Liam?”
He sniffled in reply, screwing up his face. “I was wrong,” he said, choking back tears with his voice.
“Wrong about what?”
“About coming back here. I thought I could hide it.”
Brex paused, then pieced it all together in a fraction of a moment. “You…lived here?”
“It’s not the house that gets me,” Liam said. “It’s the yard.” He sighed, then turned to Brex, holding up the ball. “Used to love playing trucco with Elaina. This was always my color.” He chuckled. “Red, because she always picked green first. She doesn’t even like green. I think she just picked it so I wouldn’t have it.“
The fear slowly flushed from Brex’s body as he saw Liam’s emotions take over.
“We played in the front yard,” Liam said. “Because Mama kept a garden in the back. She was busy, but she always made time to cook dinner with fresh vegetables every once in a while.” He swallowed again. “Elaina and I…we haven’t played in a long time. We put the trucco set away, because we were too old to play. And after their ship didn’t come back…we just stopped spending time here.”
“This house…it’s yours?” Brex asked.
Liam nodded. “We don’t want to sell it. Can’t.” He put the ball down on the windowsill, and Brex saw a circle of dust where it must have recently been sitting. “We’d have to go through everything, sell or throw it all away. We can’t do it.” He sniffled again. “Better to have this place as a memorial to the good times times that were than to try and hide them all.”
Brex couldn’t quite relate. A place as a memorial, but not a grave? When he was so used to being able to pack up and move to some new settlement with the rest of the clan, buying and selling a building in one place seemed so quaint.
“You must think I’m so weak,” Liam said. “Getting emotional like this twice in one day.”
Brex nearly gasped. “What? No. That’s…silly.” He let out a weak chuff of a laugh. “Why would I think you weak for feeling this way?”
“Because you’re an orc from the mesa. You’ve trained hard and fought nature. Tamed a lion. You can use an axe.”
Brex let out a more honest laugh and stepped forward, carefully reaching over and pulling Liam against him. The second time they’d embraced. “I think you’re confusing me with Relgor.” He smiled. “I’m as weak as you think you are.”
Liam leaned into him, and stuttered out a few breaths of melancholic sorrow. Then, in a few short moments, he seemed to put himself back together.
“Can I come with you?” Liam asked.
This shook Brex. “What? How do you mean?”
“To Goronich,” Liam said. “I just…I’m so tired of staying here. In Haramschall. I want to go with you and see something bigger, something more. I’ve lived here my whole life and all it does is make me teary now. Elaina’s shop is going well enough, and everyone’s sick of me. And I just thought I’d ask.”
Brex never thought it’d be up to him. With the way he and Elaina behaved in her shop, Brex thought Liam was just going to decide to come along or not. In the clan, if things didn’t concern him, decisions were made without his input. If they did, he could offer some reasoning, petition the elders and give testimony, but the final decision was up to them. Even during the rites, that was him choosing to start a life outside the clan itself, a mutual parting of the ways.
But Liam was asking to decide for him. No. He was asking for permission, giving the decision to Brex. He saw Brex as the authority in this journey.
How many summers had Liam seen? What kind of experience did he have? Brex assumed that Liam would have more summers than him, but after watching the day play out, he couldn’t say for sure.
And then Brex asked himself a question that felt like a punch to his gut: Would Liam be a benefit or a burden?
The answer played out in his mind, the memory of huddling in the smoke-filled bedroom with Karna and the unconscious father next to him, except they’d been replaced with Red and Liam. Red crouched in the corner, injured. Liam laying on the ground. Fire creeping closer and closer and Brex not knowing what to do. There were no sorcerers from the city coming to save them this time. He didn’t know the spell to transmute the flames to water, to turn them back on themselves and save the three of them.
This time, they burned.
“No,” Brex said. “I don’t think I can protect you.”
“Oh,” Liam said, adding nothing more. This tore at Brex the most, because he didn’t know whether Liam took his reasoning as the truth or just a convenient lie.
“We’ll be coming back,” Brex said. “With the loquela wood. And if we don’t…well, then you know why I didn’t want you to come with us.”
“I understand,” Liam said before sniffling. Brex forgot he had been crying. “I think I’d like to try and get some sleep.”
Brex nodded. “Sure.” He watched Liam return to the living room, where Red was laying. He must have caught a moonbeam, because Red had already shifted back to the lion-shape. All that fur would hopefully keep things warm and comfortable, provided he didn’t mind Brex and Liam using him as a pillow.
But while Liam went to get comfortable, Brex stood in his place and looked out the window. He didn’t think his fears unfounded, but he saw so much comfort in Liam’s similarities to himself, he couldn’t risk putting him in danger.
His very presence seemed to mock Brex, as if the Guardians themselves were whispering in his ear: You are not special. You are not the only orc without parents. You are not the only sorcerer around, much less the greatest.
But if he thought Liam was destined to fall if he came along with them, then what hope did Brex himself have? What guarantee did he have that his ship would return to Harramschall?
None, he realized.
He picked up the trucco ball. It was heavier than he expected, but not a strain on his arm. He didn’t know how to play, but maybe someday he could learn.
That was the only constant left in his life. If he didn’t know, he could learn.
A chill slid down Karna’s neck as a westerly wind blew through Harramschall. She stood at the Harramschall docks with her arm in a sling, assessing the dangers ahead.
The storm had passed. Damages had been mitigated and prevented when possible. Few had been injured, as far as she understood, and even fewer had died. Response to the emergency had been a success, as far as anyone could call it that.
But with the storm out of the way, she had unresolved business with an orc. Unresolved business. It ate at her insides to think of it that way. But he had saved her life, helped her. Cooperated where he could. It conflicted with the scheming murderer that she had constructed out of the facts following Wallach’s death.
There’s a reasonable explanation for this, he’d said. A bullshit line if there ever was one. It’s the kind of thing a cheating lover would say when you found them in bed with your best friend. And besides, murder is a perfectly reasonable explanation to begin with.
Footsteps came closer from behind her.
“The clerk says two orcs bought tickets to Goronich this morning,” Tiv said, clutching her arms to her sides and rubbing for warmth. “One had an outfit full of pockets and the other had red hair with no tusks.”
“That matches their description,” Karna said.
“The next ship leaves in the evening,” Tiv said.
There were cheaper tickets and shorter trips if they were looking for a quick escape. Why lock yourself into a trip to Goronich?
I have to finish something before I can show you the truth.
“We’re going after him, aren’t we?” Tiv asked before shivering again.
Karna said nothing.
“I’ll start packing,” Tiv said before turning and walking off.
Karna watched a clipper sail out into the horizon, the ocean placid as a sheet. Her gaze narrowed.
Brexothuruk, son of Grotuk, formerly of Clan Ironheart. I will play your game. But make no mistake, I will find the truth, and if Justice condemns you, I will make sure you meet a swift end.
Copyright © 2019 E. Michael Chase, All Rights Reserved
Key art by @taoren
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the reader. It is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes without written consent from the author.
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