Chapter B3C42 - The First to Fall

Chapter B3C42 - The First to Fall

No matter what he did, the cold always managed to find Poranus Hean. It crept under his door frame no matter how he covered the gaps. It swirled down his neck, no matter how tightly he wound his scarf. Despite the thick, woollen gloves that he wore, his fingers still shook with it.

In all his life, from downtown in Havercroft as a youth, living above his mother’s dress shop, to his first post in the north, the magister had never experienced such a persistent and insidious chill. Any attempt to flee or protect oneself against the frost only seemed to invigorate it. He was slowly becoming convinced the climate in this gods-forsaken place was alive, tormenting him for its own amusement. No magister had set foot this far from Kenmor in over a hundred years. Perhaps the land itself had grown to reject his kind.

Poranus rubbed his arms and scowled. If Cragwhistle didn’t want him, then the damn place would have to get over it. In a fit of pique, he’d committed himself to this posting, so now he was stuck with it for another six months, minimum.

“Lutin! Get in here, you miserable worm!” the magister bellowed.

There was a timid knock at the door.

“Did you call for me, magister Poranus?”

“Obviously I did!” he roared. “The walls are as thin as a caterpillar's anus, don’t pretend you didn’t hear me!”

“And h-how may I serve you today?” that soft voice stammered from behind the door.

Poranus felt his eyes might boggle out of his head with rage. He tried to modulate his tone, but sounded as if he were being strangled around the neck.

“Get. In. Here. Lutin,” he gargled.

“E-excuse me,” came the reply as the door slowly creaked open and the thin-faced manservant poked his nose through the gap. When he surmised that the magister was somewhat calm, he relaxed a little and entered fully, standing straight, his hands clasped before his midsection.

The way he shifted his feet ever so slightly from side to side, with an air that nobody could see him, reminded Poranus of nothing so much as a mouse. It infuriated him.

“I’m cold,” he ground out. “Fetch more wood for the fire, and I want to see that oaf Ortan in here before the hour is done.”

Having dealt with the servant without resorting to threats of maiming or losing his temper, Poranus was quite satisfied and sat behind his desk, intending to see to his papers.

Cringing in the doorway, Lutin, like an unwelcome fart, remained.

“I’m ever so sorry, magister,” he said, almost whining, “but the villagers insisted they have given you more than double the normal household share of firewood. There is precious little to be had, and it isn’t yet winter, so they are extremely reluctant to let people have too much.”

The mage slammed his hand down on the table, his expression twisted with rage.

There came a soft knock at the door and Poranus grunted, lowering his gaze back to his paperwork.

“Come in, Lutin. Throw it straight on the fire and then get out. I’m busy.”

Frequency and intensity of kin attacks on the walls seemed to be almost stable, and the reports from observing the rift itself suggested that it wasn’t growing much anymore. If equilibrium had already been achieved, then that was a good thing. The province was stretched to produce enough slayers as it was. They were running out of grist for the mill, so to speak. For now, Cragwhistle would serve as an ideal training ground for weaker teams before they would be sent to more established rifts.

He scratched a few notes into his official records as the figure of Lutin entered the chamber and moved toward the fireplace.

For the most part, the boar-like kin carried only the weakest grade of cores and little in the way of useful components, but the ice-creatures were better. Considering how weak they were, they tended to hold low-eight to low-three cores, which were worth a decent amount for bronze teams. The Empire’s hunger for cores was insatiable, and apparently, a few teams had begun to see signs of crystalised magick in some of the caves higher up the mountain, which could also prove profitable.

Suddenly, Poranus reeled as something battered into his mind. He fell to the side, papers flying as his hands jerked and twisted against his will.

He snarled.

“You think I didn’t know you were there? That worm Lutin always shuffles his feet.”

The magister fought to bring his body upright, pushing back against the weight that sought to smother his thoughts. He glared at the cloaked figure across the room, one hand extended towards the desk.

At last, someone had acted directly against him.

With a rictus grin twisting his features, Poranus slowly forced himself to standing, pushing back against the pressure, gaining ground millimetre by millimetre.

“You and I, are going to have, a long conversation, after this,” he ground out, straining with every fibre of his mind.

The cloaked figure watched him, seemingly unperturbed that he was losing the battle of wills.

A fool, then. Trying to dominate the mind of a magister? Poranus and his brothers were the masters of that game.

Something blurred in the doorway, and he barely had time to recognise the flash of steel in the dim light before pain erupted in his hand. With horror, Poranus glanced down to see three fingers had been severed from his right hand, rings still glittering on the lost digits.

The weight on his mind suddenly doubled, and the magister felt himself begin to buckle under the pressure.

“A little harder, without the ring, isn’t it?” the cloaked figure said quietly. The hand tightened into a fist. “Let’s see how strong that Will really is.”