Deathbringer

CHAPTER 4

Magical Abilities class was a pleasant surprise after Hand-To-Hand Combat. The classroom was a pleasantly decorated room at the top of the building, where the attic would've been. There were all sorts of objects around the room that might be used to aid magic. Beatrix eyed a carved wooden staff speculatively. She wondered what she could possibly learn in this class, seeing as she was only a human.

Instructor Bleiryn seemed fairly laid back compared to Maalik. Hopefully that meant he would go easy on her.

He seemed to be inspecting them as they passed him and took their seats. He provided a running commentary as he did so. "Troll." He noted. "Hm. Not too bad, I suppose, though that does limit the magic you'll be able to channel and learn. Werewolf. Humph. Vampire." Here, he grimaced, as though being a vampire was something revolting. Helen glowered at him in response. If Beatrix had been on the receiving end of that look, she would have been running in the opposite direction. "In you go, in you go. Valkyrie. Harpy." He snorted. "Pixie." Here, his face lit up as though Christmas had come early. "Excellent. It will be worth my while, teaching you. You already know the basics of magic, I suppose?" Laurel nodded. "Excellent, excellent." He glanced at Beatrix. "Ah. A human?" He grinned down at her with sharp teeth. "I'll be interested to see what skills you have to bring to my class."

Beatrix stared. "I don't have any skills. I'm not magic like everyone else."

"Nonsense, all the recruits have skills. That's why the Deathbringer chose you." He winked. "Don't worry, we'll find out soon enough what skill you have." He ushered the rest of the students in—"Centaur, ifrit, mermaid."—and shut the door behind them.

He turned to them. "This is a class which you will all thrive in, in different ways." He looked pointedly at Beatrix. "I'm not here to teach you one particular way to perform magic; you each have your own strengths, to be developed and nurtured in their own ways. I'm only here to guide you, not to teach you."

Fenris huffed. "I'm a werewolf. What magic am I supposed to learn, exactly? It's not like I'm a faerie."

"You're a werewolf, yes," Admitted Bleiryn. "So you may not be able to use the same sources of magic as a pixie. But you do have your own skills. You can turn into a wolf! Think about how you could use that to your advantage, once you learn to control your transformations! You may not have magic, precisely, but you have a magical ability, and that's what this class is about."

"She doesn't." Fenris nodded in Beatrix's direction. "What magic could a human perform?"

"An ordinary human won't be able to do magic, quite right." Bleiryn agreed. "But the people of Rumelt are quite special. They produce the finest of witches and warlocks—no one quite knows why—and they each have a different power: Nature magic, Divination, Necromancy, Elemental magic and Astrological magic." Bleiryn smiled at Beatrix. "I'll be quite interested to see which one you possess. We'll start testing you at once."

True to his word, Bleiryn set about testing Beatrix for magic. He dragged her around the room, alternately handing her different objects and providing a running commentary which Beatrix mostly didn't understand.

"Of course," He mused. "It's entirely possible that you possess more than one magic. A lot of witches with the power of divination also have the power to call on the planets to help them with this. And of course, nature magic is really just a subsection of elemental magic, if you think about it."

"So how will you know which one I have?" Beatrix puffed as she hurried to keep up with him. He strode around the room, lifting objects here and there, handing some to her while setting others back down with a shake of his head.

"We'll see." He said gleefully. "Nobody knows. Everybody displays their magic differently for the first time. That's what makes it so intriguing." He shrugged. "We'll see." He said again.

For the rest of the lesson, he tested her with the elements. Water first. He formed a ball of it.

"I'm going to hand this to you." He went to pass it to her. The second it passed from his hands to hers, it splashed out of shape and splattered onto her feet.

Bleiryn didn't seem at all surprised. "Well, I wasn't expecting to get the right power first time." He said with another shrug. "What next, I wonder..." He tapped his chin and stared into the distance, no doubt thinking up the next challenge to test her magic ability. He didn't seem to notice the water seeping out of Beatrix's shoes and forming into a ball.

She stared at the liquid sphere now hovering about her feet. She could feel the pull of it in her mind. If she concentrated, she could move it around. She focused on bringing it higher, towards her hands. When Bleiryn turned back to her, ready to deliver her next challenge, she was holding the sphere and grinning.

"Oh well done!" He smiled. Everything seemed to please Bleiryn. Beatrix was willing to bet she could burn down the classroom and he'd simply congratulate her on mastering the fire element. "Oh that's wonderful! An elementalist, eh? Brilliant! I wonder what else you can do?"

Laurel grinned at her from across the room. She also had a sphere of water in her hand. "This is going to be so much fun."

And she lobbed the ball at Beatrix.

                                                                                                 ***

"I still can't believe you did that."

They were sopping wet, heading back to the dormitory. Fenris looked disgruntled. At one point, he'd been caught in the middle of the water fight and had ended up soaked from head to toe. He was pointedly ignoring both of them.

Laurel grinned at her. "You enjoyed it though."

"I did not."

"Oh really?" Laurel said. "So that wasn't you then, laughing and throwing water around?"

"Absolutely not."

Laurel snorted.

Laurel was still infectiously excitable as they got ready for bed that evening. At one point, she ran around with Beatrix's pillow, holding it above her head.

"That's cheating." Beatrix panted. "You know I'm not as tall as you."

Laurel laughed. Then she lobbed the pillow across the room. "Jereon, catch!"

The centaur caught it easily and Beatrix sighed in defeat. Jereon was easily the tallest person in the room, thanks to the combination of stallion and human.

Luckily, he threw it onwards. "Oma!"

Beatrix ran to intercept it, but the Valkyrie snatched it from the air and soared above her head. She tossed it to Illara the harpy, who was fluttering on the other side of the room.

The game continued for several minutes, until Fenris made the mistake of throwing it to Rakash, who glanced at it in thinly veiled disgust as it flew past his head. Beatrix made her move and grabbed it before any of the others could get hold of it again. She flopped onto her bed and wedged it firmly behind her head. "I win!"

Laurel laughed. "Don't worry, this isn't over." She said sweetly.

Lying in bed that night, Beatrix sighed contentedly. All her life, she'd been warned about the Deathbringer. Everybody in Rumelt knew how dangerous he was. And now here she was, having fun with the other recruits on her first day in the Shadowland.

It made her wonder. Who was the Deathbringer, really? Why was everybody afraid of him? She'd been here a day and all she'd experienced was happiness and friendship. She was really beginning to enjoy herself. For the first time in her life, she felt happy and content.

Maybe this was where she was meant to be all along.