(Resumed) Solstice

[Emmett]

Physical Fitness was indeed a hell unto itself on Monday.

It was a running day, and I knew I was going at best half pace, and every step was full of hurt.

"Sinclair!" Larsen shouted, "What's with you? Why so slow all of a sudden?!"

"Really bad day yesterday, Ser!" I wheezed out, "I'm not giving up though!"

"You haven't seen a bad day till you've seen combat, freshie; hustle hustle!"

What he didn't know was I had seen combat before, and I wasn't talking about the Nightmare either.

I didn't want to argue so I just pushed myself farther.

After lapping me for about the fifth time now, Ansel slowed to keep pace with me on the other side of the barracks. "Hey, what happened to ya Em?!"

"Got slammed into walls..."

"Shit, were you at the Student Center yesterday?!" Ansel's voice betrayed alarm  and he didn't bother to speed back up.

"You too Bauer?!" the PT instructor shouted.

"Ser! Em is injured and I request you back off!"

"You think you have time to care-"

"I'm taking the demerit and making sure I still have a rival at the end of the week!" Ansel interrupted the instructor, "Ser!"

"Stay after class, maggot!"

"Aye Ser!" Ansel turned back to me. "We'll talk later, aight? Let's just take it easy for now; I probably have a thousand pushups waiting for me."

I smiled, and we had taken a slow day that day. I felt bad for Ansel getting in trouble, but I really didn't ask to be checked. Still, I was glad he was there.

Eventually the cooldown was called and we had gone to the baths. I groaned, and had slipped into my tub head first. I scrambled to get my head back above water and my muscles screamed.

After spending a little bit hissing and aching with my eyes closed, A sensation seeped into me, cool like mint yet warm like a heating pad. I slowly opened my eyes to find the water glowing a a soft sky blue around me.

"Steady Sinclair," Ser Larsen's voice commanded softly from my right, "I'm aspecting the water to Light to speed your recovery. You really did take a beating. The hells did you do?"

"Forgot it was Enday, got thrown into a door by Ser Lienne, and punched out two more walls trying to rescue my Squad from my error," I said, with perhaps not nearly as much urgency as I had intended to put in.

"I heard about that," Larsen said, "You're fucking lucky no one died. Quite a few got hurt and I ended up being called in to treat 'em. The centre's also closed for repairs, with escorts required to go to the Library."

"Yeah," I said, "Ser Lienne went really easy on me with the punishment."

"I don't think so, kid." Ser Larsen said. "Lienne's vicious. She probably did something subtle, like make you financially responsible for repairs."

I nodded.

"That's not mercy, soldier." I heard him stand up, and the water's diminished. "Godspeed, Sinclair. See you at MMA."

I was just so relaxed I didn't care about him showing up as the MMA teacher this Monday.

Oh yeah, I also did badly on the exam in Spell Circles. I might have forgotten to study yesterday.

After passing back the exams, Feylance scrawled a formula onto the board: h360h(2st0[a])

Oh right, the extra credit. Sadly I couldn't do much about it now, especially with that 28/48 I got back on the exam paper.

"This formula is used with permission of Scion Abraham of House Adams," he said, "It is the Spell Circle he used for the Entrance Examination." Feylance drew two almost-circles right next to each other. In the outer ring he drew two Hagalaz runes. In the inner circle was inscribed a left-right compass rose, with an Ansuz rune in the centre.

Now that I had taken some classes in the subject, I understood exactly how the spell worked: The Ansuz rune pulled Æther from the environs, and was itself sustained by the caster. The distorted-rhombus was actually a digram directing and focusing the collected energy into the Hagalaz runes which condensed the Æther into projectiles.

It terrified me.

"Remember boys," Feylance warned, "Once you inscribe a Circle, that's it: it embeds its mark into your spirit permanently. And girls - This Spell Circle is worse than useless in your hands. If you carve it yourself, it warps all of your spellcasting forever, and if you use one pre-drawn, well, it will use all of your Æther to fuel the 'hailstones' and you will overdraw and likely die from the exploding Magick."

Wait. What? Worse than useless for women? I raised my hand.

"Yes, Mr. Sinclair?"

I nodded. "I have a question to make sure I understand, and another about something you just said."

"Proceed."

"Is the reason this Circle ends with a woman passing out because the Ansuz rune pulls Æther from the same source powering the Circle?"

"That is correct. And your second question?"

"At risk of demerit I ask this: I noticed you said Spell Circles warp a woman's spellcasting forever. When I was late on Wednesday you mentioned obvious reasons for women being more endangered in borrowing, but this is about inscribing. May I ask what this new danger is?"

My Squad's Sponsor nodded. "Ah yes, you would be wary of unexplained danger after yesterday. Very well. You have no doubt seen masculine Magi, and Ser Lienne, draw Spell Circles using their Magick. This is because our Circles are embedded into our souls. For masculine casters, this creates an instinct to pull the energy in such as to invoke it. A man can still cast normally, but they must resist the pull when doing so. Women have no such option: for them, the very act of casting powers any Circle they have traced unto themselves. means a woman with a Spell Circle is forever limited to spells permitted by that Circle."

This... was important information, and I was thankful I knew Magick considered me a woman, maleness be damned. I didn't want to share that just yet, so I simply thanked the instructor.

"Your next homework is of course to study for the quiz on Wednesday, which will be identical to what you just took. On Friday you will be tested on the full runic alphabet, so study for that as well. Class dismissed."

I stood up, gathered my things, and left. I suspected the Eihwaz "Death" Rune would be very important to me in my future. I made another note find myself a non-Magus buddy to help draw my Circles later, when I knew enough to be actually smart. There was always Jessica, but she was a non-starter, for-

Pinned Down
Forceful Kiss

-reasons I should not have to explain. I shivered: didn't have one of those in a while. I'd have to redouble my resolve.

I made my way to the East Outer Ring, to the communal field where our Magickal Martial Arts class took place. Grace and Samael were waving to me.

Wait. Grace? Patrick glaring daggers was to be expected, but Grace was pissed at me for fucking up on Enday. What gave?

She walked up to approach me and held out her hand. "You seem better."

I blinked.

Grace retracted her hand. "You seem apprehensive."

My voice betrayed a soft hint of outrage. "You told me I fucked up and asked what the hell I was thinking when I asked that favor of you yesterday. Of course I'm wary."

Grace stepped back. "That wasn't why I was pissed at you in the conference room Emmett."

I blinked. "W-when you asked me what I was thinking-"

She shook her head. "I wasn't talking about the Nightmare." She turned around and took a step back to the squad. "Meet me after class, alright?"

I shrugged. I still got the feeling I shouldn't, but last time I accepted I learned something critical about myself. "Alright."

As Grace left, Ansel approached. "Heard Ser Larsen put some healing on ya. You're looking spirited, so that's good. Oh, speaking of!"

We fell in, and Ser Larsen took the field. "Battle Frenzy! War Fever! Desperation Station! Fight Or Flight! These four names describe the same phenomenon, and it is absolutely critical that any Magus seeking to defend the Arcane Colleges knows and plans around it! Can anyone tell me what it is?"

Ansel raised his hand.

"Yes, Mr. Bauer!"

"Also known as the zone, it's an enhanced state of mental awareness and spiritual harmony. Those within the zone are sharper, stronger, faster, than normal, and a Magus within the zone is said to be invincible."

Ser Larsen smirked. "Incorrect, but not unhelpful. What Mr. Bauer describes is not Battle Frenzy but rather Still Mind. Still Mind is an intense state of awareness, and those with such a mind are unshackled by their fear. However, that fear is still present!" He squatted into a stance, siphoned Æther into his fist, and punched toward us.

A sharp chill went through my spine. My breath quickened. Many shivered, squirmed, and a couple even stood up.

"What you have just felt is fear for your life! A much lower dose than you would experience for real but fear all the same! It is this fear that drives the body and spirit to surpass their limits at the cost of the mind! It is called Fight Or Flight because at novice levels of training, a Magus will either charge forward blindly into the problem, or run the fuck away from it! In either case, their physical and Magickal abilities are amplified greatly, but their finesse is shot to the hells! Michaels!"

"Ser!" Samael shouted.

"What is the secret to not screwing yourself over when every muscle in your body is twitchy and some etsy's about to punk your brains out?!"

"Basics, Ser!"

"Solid!" Larsen snapped his body into a brief array of fighting stances, his robe cracking the air. "Back To Basics! Discipline and training remove responsibility from the mind, and let the body take the heat! Boys, this is why every man and Lienne draw Spell Circles! Spell Circles think for you! Those women not batshit enough to be named Provost of Combat instead drill simple maneuvers that they can execute while pissing their skirts, and laugh in the face of any manly man stupid enough to take dominion!" The PT instructor took three steps back and held his arm straight up.

"Dominion?" Patrick asked.

"Pay attention Em," Ansel said, "This is gonna be good. You're immune to this by the way."

I filtered Æther into my eyes, and witnessed energy from all directions pulling into Ser Larsen's outstretched arm. Before I had completed a breath, a torrential blaze roared into the sky, expanding and slamming down in all directions, locking up the floating Æther in the air and snapping links of Magick into the instructor's hands and wrists.

I dismissed my Æthervision and saw a haze of azure throughout the field, a globe surrounding us all.

"This is Ætheric Dominion!" Larsen shouted. "I'm doing Unattuned, which can be defeated by any Element, but any man trying Raw Magick is shit out of luck so long as I will it! Go ahead and try boys! Women you can try too, but your Magick works anyway!"

And true to his word, the men in our class found themselves unable to cast Raw Magick, though several could bust out Elemental Magick rather easily. The women, though, were completely unfazed by the giant spell our teacher wrought upon the class.

"Some of you have discovered that Unattuned Dominion doesn't stop your Elements. Your bigger ones would be slowed down, but if I were looking to shut that noise down, I'd bring out Water Dominion! That would freeze out you Water boys and make the others a pain in the arse for the rest of you, but that puts a lot of heat on my vessel and I wouldn't hold it for long!"

So that trouble the men were having in this... Dominion....

Made sense. According to Magick, I was a woman. Magick was wrong, of course: I was a man who just happened to cast differently. But I was willing to exploit this little error if it gave me an advantage.

Why did I feel uneasy in my own skin then, thinking about it all?

The field of Azure faded away. Larsen blurred into a pencil-straight standing position. "We're not here for that today, however! Square up, and focus your sparring on basics! In a real fight, your complicated show-off firework shows mean jack and shit!"

Ansel tapped my shoulder, and waved for me to follow.

"Emmett!" Grace called, "You're a speaker, not a painter!" She paired herself up with one of the other students, not giving me a chance to respond.

I took a stance before my friendly opponent and bowed.

"Take it you asked her to confirm what I told ya?" Ansel asked.

"Having a second opinion helped things," I said, "I also did the experiment earlier, and I..."

"No need to apologize." Ansel patted my shoulder twice before stepping back to resume his stance. "You just learned something major about yourself. If it were me, I'd be scared shitless that I was being emasculated somehow."

Manhood and Masculinity, seized away, just like that. The thought was rather terrifying. And yet, a small part of me wondered if I'd even be all that hurt by it.

"You were right, is the point," I said. "Between you, Grace, and the what you asked me to try, you were right."

"Alright, let's get to it." Ansel crossed his arms, and snapped them outwards, azure wings forming and condensing to two dense fields similar to what he'd thrown at the obelisk for his Entrance Exam. "The speaking not painting thing? She's right. Most of us men claw our Magick into or out of the sky. You? You breathe life unto wonder."

I nodded and took my own stance. I drew a slow breath in, watching Ansel, and imagining the power of Magick flowing through my veins, ready to be released at a moment's notice.

"Let's see what you got Em!" Ansel threw one of his twin comets right in front of my feet.

I jumped back on instinct, and the spell detonated right where it landed. Aside from the dirt and dust, a wave of force kicked me about a meter or two away. Grunting, I stumbled about and barely held my position.

"Awakening Comet!" Ansel called, and pulled his right arm back, spell primed and ready to go.

He was going to hit me. He was going to hit me full force.

Could I even survive that?

No, he wouldn't cast a lethal one at me. Patrick, maybe, but Ansel?

He punched forward. I felt that chill up my spine. The same chill Larsen presented, and, in a split second of recollection, a jitter and alertness similar to back when I was punching holes in walls.

Battle Frenzy. Fight or Flight.
I wasn't going to let my Squad down.
I wasn't going to let my teachers down.
I sure as fuck wasn't going to let Ansel down.

Stand and fight. Focus.

His spell released, a lateral rain to smash my lungs in.

I crossed my arms before my chest, like Ansel had done. I drew the mental image of me blocking his strike head-on, and the ghostly wind returned, flowing through me in all directions. I saw my own azure glow again.

Jessica-

Shut up. She's not important.

What was important was stepping forward, and meeting Ansel's strike with my own.

I lifted foot and kicked off the ground, approaching what was now more than halfway toward me. I focused forward, and threw my hands out in an effort to block Ansel's spell with my own.

Comet crashed in, slowed against my spell... 

And slammed into my chest, launching me several tens of meters away anyway. I  hit the dirt below me and wheezed, having the air kicked out of me once again. What was it, three times in two days now?

I heard clapping in front of me. Slow, but loud. Was... Was Ansel.... No. He couldn't be mocking me right now-

A few other students joined in. Including Patrick, but with his jeers, I knew he was fake.

Ansel, however: "You did really good for your first actual attempt, Em."

"Sinclair, you are a glutton for punishment," Larsen called out from my left, out of my view, "And Bauer! If you're gonna beat the shit out of him every day till he's blue as a deviant in Red Flare, at least take him out to dinner!"

The class howled in laughter, and while I still found it difficult to breathe, my cheeks flushed a little bit.

What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I blushing when I just got the wind knocked out of me?!

Never mind that. I climbed back up, air eventually returning, and I staggered back into position. 

For some reason, half the class paused to watch me. I was hurting, but there was this smile that wouldn't go away.

Ansel sported his own too, and it was wonderful. "I'll go a little lighter this time, but looks like you're ready for Round 2."