Fate’s Pawn

Miles shook him out of his reverie. He hadn't heard Dominic's call to come back. The tree's presence emmenated a calm that Raziel could never have achieved on his own. Every time he reached out to it with his mind, he felt like a log in a slow river, drifting lazily with neither a destination in mind nor a desire to have one. If Raziel had been on his own, he might have stayed there the whole day.

The group crowded and sat down in more or less the same spots as they had earlier. Dominic was already back at his root seat when they arrived, if he'd ever left it at all. Miyo counted the students as they came and, once she was satisfied that they were all present, moved to Dominic's side again.

"So, anyone care to share some observations?" Dominic asked. There was an uncertain moment of silence. Harlan, a boy sitting a row or so ahead of Raziel, raised his hand.

"Go."

"You said to listen to it," Harlan said, his words tinted oddly by his western accent, something that elongated the vowels. "But I.... it's weird, but it had almost a taste to it?"

"And what would you say it tasted like?"

"That's not the right word exactly, but it was bitter? But not in a bad way. It was a strong flavor, but not overpowering."

Dominic nodded to himself almost as much as to Harlan. He pointed to Ada, a younger girl who sat near the back of the group.

"Ada, how did you experience it?"

Everyone turned to look at the small girl who was clearly embarrassed by the sudden attention. She squirmed in her spot for a moment before speaking to the ground.

"I don't know. It was like a pressure, I guess? Like there was a giant hand on the top of my head, not like, actively pressing down, but still really heavy."

The girl fell silent then, looking like she was sure she'd given the wrong answer. Dominic nodded, just as he had with Harlan and turned to look at Raziel next.

"Your turn, Raz."

Raziel leaned back and considered for a second before his mouth opened and words spluttered out almost without his permission.

"It was... It was like a great, big... stillness?" he said, feeling silly as soon as he said it. But Dominic nodded along with his words.

"Miles," he said, "you know the name of this phenomena, right?"

"Thaumaturgic synesthesia," Miles answered at once.

"Correct. Every person senses magic in their own way. While saying it is unique to each individual might be going a bit far, there is usually a significant degree of variation between any two people extending their mental senses towards any given source of magic. I, for example, sense magic in terms of musical notes. Miyo?" he asked, turning to her.

"Words," she provided. He nodded and continued.

"Even two people who experience magic through the same 'sense'," he said, using air quotes, "might not experience something even vaguely similar within that same sense. Harlan, what to you tastes bitter might be sweet to another. What puts pressure on Hob might uplift someone else. What Raziel feels as stillness might be motion to another person. And just to make things even more confusing, you might not sense the same source the same way from one day to the next. It is all a matter of deciphering why your mind experiences different sources in different ways, because that will help you to begin to understand what you can do with the magic."

The next few hours were spent on exercises intended to stretch their senses. Beginner students were paired with someone more advanced. Dominic or Miyo would place a weak enchantment on one stone in a pile and the students took turns finding it.

They paired Raziel with Miles. That was great. If there was a chance to make the plan work, he'd need to be near Miles and, preferably, Roland. Raziel wasn't any good at the exercise, which only emphasized how good Miles was. It wasn't long before Raziel resorted to just guessing which of the stones was enchanted. He could get a very slight sense of magic from all of them at once, but while each individual stone had its own "signal," it all sort of muddled together. It was sort of like trying to pick out one individual voice with thirty people all talking at him at once. If they were all whispering. Underwater.

Miles, by contrast, didn't even need to close his eyes. Instead he would look at the pile, turn his head, and then reach in and pluck out the enchanted stone. He was only wrong a couple of times, and when he was, he instantly realized his mistake and would get the stone on his second pull.

"How are you doing that?" Raziel asked after he guessed wrong six times in a row, only for Miles to pull the stone out without even looking at the pile.

"There's no trick to it. I was as bad at it as you are when I started," Miles said. There was no arrogance in his words; it wasn't an insult. It was clear he was simply stating a fact.

"What changed for you?"

"I got better," Miles said, obviously a little confused by the question.

"No, I mean, how?"

"Oh. Hours and hours of practice. Like I said, there's no trick. At least not for me. I just kept trying until I got better at it."

Raziel sighed. He'd been afraid of that. He didn't like practicing things he wasn't good at. It was slow, boring work. But if that's all there was to do....

He turned back to the pile and closed his eyes again. He controlled his breathing, let his mind extend toward the rocks. He pushed at it, trying to discern where the faint feeling of intended magic was coming from. There was a specific dull buzzing he felt there in amongst the gentler hum of the other stones. It seemed to be coming from somewhere near the bottom of the pile, on the side opposite from where Raziel sat. He opened his eyes and tried to hold the state of mind where he could sense the magic, but it faded quickly from him. His hand closed on one of the rocks just after the sense was completely gone from him. He held it up and...

"Nope. You were close though," Miles said, picking up a different rock and holding it up. A bendy little mark appeared on Miles' stone. Raziel growled in frustration and motioned for Miles to put it back in the pile and mix the stones up again.

After three more failed attempts, Raziel was done. He stood and crossed his arms, looking at the stones with disdain. Miles looked at him with surprise.

"Come on. I need to take a break. Move around a little."

The two of them moved away from their pile and meandered among the other students. A few seemed to be having as much trouble as Raziel was, and a few were getting it right about as often as Miles. Most, however, were somewhere in the middle.

They walked around, observing, saying little. It made Raziel feel better to see so many others having similar difficulties. That calmed him some, but mostly it was the movement that helped him.

After a couple of minutes, they had wandered to where Roland sat practicing with Keira near the edge of the clearing. Instead of stones like most people had, they were practicing with a pile of sticks, though the idea was the same. Both of them sat perfectly still considering the pile, Keira with her typical, rigidly perfect posture. Roland seemed more relaxed, though that might have been because Keira looked almost rigid in her focus.

Roland reached for the pile first, though Keira went to grab at it less than a second later. Keira's hand came back with a stick first, but Roland's stick was the right one. Keira stared at the stick in his hand with a face that held calm, but Raziel still saw that her hand was clenched very tight on her own, incorrect choice. Roland said nothing. He just put his stick back into the pile and reached out for Keira's. She relinquished it, first hesitating and then thrusting it at him too quickly. Only then did she seem to notice Raziel and Miles watching them.

"What?" she said, her frustration clear in her voice.

"You're too tense," Raziel said.

Keira bristled instantly at the words, but Raziel stayed calm under her glare. After a moment, she closed her eyes and let a breath out through her nose.

"Yeah, well. Some things can't be helped," she said, turning back to the pile.

Raziel thought for a moment, then he moved towards Roland and twitched his head in a gesture that said, "Move?" Roland gave Raziel a considering look before getting slowly to his feet and giving an inviting wave. Raziel sat and looked at the pile of sticks, trying his best to ignore the glare that had returned to Keira's face.

He closed his eyes and breathed, putting his mind into that place where he could sense the magic. That part at least was getting noticeably easier with repetition. It no longer took him minutes to achieve the required state of mind, but mere seconds. The sticks were different from the stones, more connected to the forest but also dead in a way that the stones weren't. The stones had never been alive but in the sticks Raziel could feel, faintly, something like an echo; the absence of life. The enchantment on the stick in the pile wasn't inscribed like the one on the stone. Instead, it filled that absence and that was easier to look for.

Sitting across from Keira was different from Miles as well. He wasn't sure if it was something specific about Keira or if it was because they were both searching the sticks at the same time, but he had a much more distinct feeling of her presence.

Raziel searched the pile for what felt like a very long time, but Keira didn't make a move for the sticks. Then he moved to adjust his seat and her hand jumped towards the pile. By the time she realized he hadn't been reaching out, her own hand was halfway to the pile. Raziel grinned at her. She didn't return it.

Raziel watched her, waiting until she had regained her focus and then casually flicked a hand towards the pile before bringing it up to scratch his nose. Again she jumped, this time lunging to grab at something on the side of the pile but again she stopped, her glare even stronger. The next time he moved she only twitched, ignoring him to focus on the pile. He could tell where she was looking though and focused his own senses on the same place in the pile. After only a little while, he thought he had it.

Half an instant before his own hand moved, Keira's shot out and tugged a stick from the pile. She held it up waiting to see if the mark would appear on the stick, but Raziel knew she'd been right. Sure enough, the little white mark appeared on the stick. She grinned at him, triumphant and proud. He smiled himself and acknowledged her victory with a nod. Then he motioned for her to put it back in the pile.

The second round he backed off the grabs for the pile, not wanting her to get used to the trick. Instead, he waited until she was ready to strike and as soon as she moved he shouted and snatched up a stick at random. She hesitated, watching his stick to see if it would change but it didn't and he knew it wouldn't. He was busy searching the pile while she was distracted. After a couple of seconds he tossed the stick away.

"Whoops, I meant this one," he said, picking up a different stick. He could tell by the sour look on her face that it was the one she'd been about to pick. It was the right one.

They went back and forth like that for a while. Gradually, though, Keira started to win more and more as Raziel's tricks started to have less effect. It wasn't long before she was grabbing the stick every time after only a minute or so of looking.

"Well, looks like I lose," he said, leaning back on his hands. Miles was giving Raziel a suspicious look, though Raziel had no idea why.

Keira opened her mouth to reply, but as she did there was a noise from out in the woods. They all turned to look, and Raziel could hear Hoeru shouting something. Raziel, Miles, and Roland all looked at each other. That was the signal.

Hoeru was supposed to cause some kind of commotion, a distraction. While everyone was busy watching whatever he was doing, the three of them would sneak off. Miles would lead them in the direction of the fort. Hoeru would join them soon after. It wasn't a fool proof plan, but it needed flexibility to have any chance of working.

Roland looked into the woods, his brows knitted together in concern. Raziel felt it too. There was a genuine note of alarm in Hoeru's voice. Miles caught Raziel's eye, and he could almost hear the bespectacled boy thinking. Hoeru wasn't a very good actor. Other groups were turning to see what was happening as Dominic and Miyo started moving quickly towards the source of the sound.

Then Hoeru burst out of the woods, panic glinting in his eyes.

"Gremlins!" he shouted, throwing his hands trying to get people to move.

No one did. They just looked at each other, everyone waiting for someone else to make the first move. Then Hoeru roared.

"Run!"

That got everyone moving. And just in time.