Darkness has Fallen (Elf World Saga Book 2)

by Matthew Pequegnat

  “Ahrg! Enough of that,” Kayla stretched painfully; she was still suffering the effects of this morning’s final exam in Senior level Shielding! She had stood naked, so she could not hide any magic charm or talisman, in the center of a great dark room whose center was brightly illuminated by a blinding white light. In the darkness surroundings her, four or maybe five professors circled, each a Master of a school of magic. Minutes went by and then suddenly bolts of magic exploded against her shield, fire bolts, earth darts, ice crystals, steam spikes, and electric bolts, from all sides even the floor but none had gotten through… Not until near the end of the test, after an hour of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water Magic, they had gotten a priestess… The Spirit Magic did not come as an angry bolt, but as the gentlest breeze that drifted toward her unseen and unnoticed. Kayla shield was attuned to attacks from the elemental magic and most of her power was directed there, but fortunately for her she had maintained some protection against divine spells or otherwise she would have certainly failed the test.

  Only part of the wicked spell effect hit her, but it dropped her to her knees as intensely blinding bolts of pleasure shot like an electrical charge through her body. She threw out her hands wide to force power into her shields, her chest heaved in an attempted to drag in more air, her flesh felt on fire as sweat poured from her skin,…but somehow she had kept up her shield as a flurry of magical attacks struck at her, she even somehow had the ability the direct more power to the defenses against divine magic. All the while her physical body lay on the stone floor locked in a fit of powerful muscle spasms. Then lights in the hall came on signaling the test was over, but she lay there gasping, back arched painfully, right leg kicking out spasmodically, arms outstretched as if nailed to the floor. But her shields remained up, she had passed.

  The door to the room opened and Kayla’s best friend at the Keep, and roommate Sasha Romminas flounced into the room and plopped down on the other feather bed. Sasha was hyper energetic most of the time and now was no exception; perky was perhaps the best adjective to use to describe her. Just above the shoulder super dark red hair, thick and bouncy, pale skin, and lively unusual grayish-amber color eyes. Before coming to Twilight Keep, Sasha had been a former acolyte in the Order of the Consort Lunesti Estel, that she had left when she married an officer who was currently on duty on the Nardak border, and then last year she started showing signs of elemental magical talent, and like Kalya much later than was normal, but in Sasha's case the talent was likely not noticed earlier do to the minor divine magic ability she gained as an acolyte of the holy order.

  “Tell me you are going with me to the Emperor’s birthday celebration next week,” Sasha pleaded. “It won’t be any fun without you… Besides who will keep me out of trouble if you’re not there.” Sasha peeled with laughter, “It’s been months since I have been with my husband and I’m super frisky if you know what I mean!”

  Kayla gave her a deadpan look, “Yes, I have a fair idea…”

  “Don’t get me wrong Kayla, I enjoy the all female ‘festivities’ this tower is so well known for, it just does not fully scratch my itch, and all this casting has me full of Xe… and as my husband is rather old fashioned about marriage, so a chaperone for me is most needed!”

  “I don’t know Sasha, ever since I got engaged to Myst, the Emperor has… made me uncomfortable…”

  Sasha went over to her wardrobe, flung open the doors and started inspecting her outfits… “Posh, remember I’m from Saverne, and we have never been that fond of the Sundragon’s, even less trusting of them than the rest of the Everaux and that’s saying something, but a grand party is a grand party... So if you agree to go with me, I’ll agree to avoid the Palace entirely... well at least the great throne room.” Sasha teased, “We could just do the Fernzian Embassy party or the Porto Vennia Embassy ball…”

  Kayla rolled her eyes, “If you go to a Moon Elf bacchanalia, it will take more than just little me to chaperone you, maybe a dozen High Inquisitors and a dragon or two…”

  Sasha was now striping out of her second magnificent outfit, “I can’t afford to hire any dragons…hum” she picked out a sky blue silk piece and held it up before her, turning in front of the wall mirror. “No, that won’t do… Maybe the silver one, what do you think?”

  “I think, whatever you pick, you won’t have it on very long…”

  “Blah, you may be right… Say where are you going?”

  Kayla had stripped off her robe and pulled a silk cord out from her wardrobe and started pulling back her hair into a ponytail of light spun gold.

  “I have a class in a couple hours, so if I’m going to get in a workout this morning…”

  Sasha hurriedly stuffed her pile of clothes away and grabbed a hair tie, “Wait up, wait up, I’ll join you…, grace you with my exquisite presence!”

  Both girls broke into laughter as Kayla walked out of their room to the landing of their floor. In the middle was a ten foot hole in the floor, Sasha caught up to her and took her hand just as Kayla stepped off into space… And together they slowly sank through the ‘air’. The north half of the column of Air Magic went down, the south side went up, not too fast but not terribly slow either. The trick was always looking the right direction so as not to step out into someone going your way.

  Sasha immediately started playing, spinning around in the near weightlessness. Kayla simply closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her long mane of golden hair tickling her back. The air column was enjoyable, like all the other first year students they both never seemed to get tired of the ride.

  “Negative three,” called Sasha, as their stop came up.

  Kayla opened her eyes and stepped onto the landing. Three levels underground was a huge barrel vaulted room of pale marble veined in pink. Three great crystal and gold chandeliers flooded the room with magical pale light. Various exercise equipment were set in groupings to one side, on another a large area designed for gymnastics, and where Kayla was headed a massive lap pool. Her beloved grandmother had teased her as a child that Kayla was part Sea Nymph for her ability and love of swimming.

  “I’m going to hit the tumbling floor and the Gauntlet,” Sasha told her, “enjoy swimming back and forth… and forth and back.”

  Kayla laughed, “Try not to fall off the Gauntlet again, maybe finish the obstacle course this time…” She looked over at the course that appeared to her to have been designed as a practical joke, how anyone every made it all the way through the jumps and climbs and swings…

  “Posh, you take all the fun out of it Kayla… You only had to heal me that once!”

  Suddenly, out of the marble column near her, the stone seemed to bulge out and form into a crude semblance of a face, “Thermobarics class has been canceled for today, Thermobarics class has been canceled for today!” Then it faded back into the marble as suddenly as it had appeared.

  “Well, looks like there is no rush for you now Kayla, if only my noon ‘Properties of Water’ gets cancelled also…

  Kayla posed at the side of the pool, “speaking of water…” and she dove in with a splash.

  ~

  Back in her room, Kayla kicked off the black satin slippers then shrugged off the back terrycloth robe she had put on in the locker room by the underground pool. Sasha had come back up earlier to change for her class and now it was Kayla’s turn to get ready. She opened her wardrobe to decide what to wear, with the temperatures barely reaching the fifties now, dressing warm was the thing, but that made it so much harder… She would happily go thru life naked, but as liberal as elves are with nudity, they still made some clothing required in polite society, well unless bathing or doing sports. “A conspiracy of the clothing industry,” she laughed to herself.

  She toweled her hair standing there trying to decide, then threw the damp towel into the hamper, it would magically make its way to the laundry and then washed, back to the pool area. She picked up the robe and slippers and tossed them in as well. How the enchantment knew what c
lothes were hers and what belong to the Tower or someone else? She could tell, it was some Air Magic trick… but besides that she had no idea?

  She sat on the end of her bed with a pair of smoky black silk stockings, she would start with them and see what jumped out at her. She put her toes of her right foot into the stocking and slowly worked the material up her foot, over her ankle, working to keep the solid black back line strait. So far so good as she pulled it up over her knee and up her thigh rotating the material with each pull to keep it lined up. Repeating the process with her left leg, that one that always seemed to be harder to keep the line straight but she accomplished it and slid black lace garters in place to keep them up.

  She checked the seams in the full length mirror, yes the left was was slightly crooked, she fixed it. Then wandered back to the wardrobe as the stockings by themselves probably would not do...

  A mid thigh jacquard skirt in a dark slate grey with silver grey leaf pattern, a cropped white linen and lace dress shirt, and a cropped riding jacket that matched to skirt. Pulling on a pair of below the knee black riding boots she was ready to go and grab lunch before her next class. Before heading out she checked herself in the mirror once again, “I wonder if Myst would like me with one of the pierced belly button jewelry rings that are fashionable now… Hum, no I think my belly is pretty enough without one.”

  Kayla sat picking at her late lunch in the Great Feast Hall, idly looking at all the detritus of magic the packed the dark wood walls and hung from the ceiling rafters. The ancient banners, old artifacts, and antique magical devices that all appeared to have been on display for many millennia of unused obsolescence. She figured that not all was as it seemed, if you used magical sight or even worse cast a detect magic spell, then the result would be blinding, as everything in the room was magic, even the silverware and the long two hundred seat table she sat at. But knowing how the Masters of the Tower thought, and the wiley old Grand Master Zerros Kelaborn, she was reasonably sure that some of what was scattered about, was indeed useful powerful magical devices, simply hidden in plain sight.

  The hall was mostly empty, it could sit six hundred students, but at this end of lunch a dozen elves were scattered about, most eating alone, noses stuck in books or silverware holding open scrolls of learning. Even with the lack of dinners, the three great fireplaces blazed high, maybe to compensate for the lack of body heat being generated in this great long open space. Whatever the reason Kayla was grateful for the warmth, she hated being cold, and for an elf she seemed to have very little protection from that element, very little indeed.

  It would not be hard for her fiancé to convince her to move to the warm blue coast of the Sun Sea, where frost was rare and it only snowed about every ten years or so… It was Avandar for her, the Elven heaven! It had been about eight months since she had been there at Myst’s old family castle, and she missed it. Certainly being here next to Palantar was wonderful, the beautiful capital city, so vibrant and magically alive..., but it was best when shared with a lover, and in the warmer half of the year!

  She pushed back her bowl of Onion soup only half finished but grabbed a hunk of fresh buttered bread before it magically disappeared, to take with her, she needed to eat frequently when using Fire Magic, but sighed, she was just not in the mood today, and so headed to her next class. ‘Basic Principles of Earth Magic’, she had tried to skip taking it, certainly the time in the desert of Kush being tutored by Myst, Zarra, and Moss Blackforge, she smiled to herself..., and of course good Mister Thomas Farthing and little Willow her gnome friends, that would have covered everything this class would… Secretly she missed the excitement of that adventure, and Myst, she missed him more than she could bare, an ache that never went away, love could be terrible when separated.

  Out in the hall a dozen very young looking elves stood waiting before a padlocked and bound heavy oak door. She frowned at it and then simply walked through it, as it was just an illusion, and onto the top of a mountain covered in white clouds, diffused golden sunlight filled a white marble circle of benches that surrounded a marble podium with a backdrop of ruined classical columns, a pair of goldfinches flittered about a purple flowering Jacaranda Tree…

  “What the heck, I must be in the wrong classroom, this much silly heavy illusion, must be for an ‘Intro to Air Magic’, not Earth Magic…” she thought ruefully.

  The dozen or so other students had followed her in and were trying to figure out where to sit, obviously they had all just arrived at Twilight Keep, ten females and three males, none could be much over twenty, and she noticed only three males? “They usually try for a more even split, but if this was indicative of the makeup of incoming students, those males would be in very high demand, not that males were not already in short supply…”

  She looked closer at the group of young mages in training. She sat back and crossed her legs, enjoying the feel of the silk stockings as her legs rubbed together.

  “Hum, and one of those young males is extremely cute… I wouldn't mind a taste of that myself…” She sighed to herself, “sometimes it was so hard to be good!” But she had lots of practice at that, being a senior officer in the foreign service these last twenty years, had forced her to temper her passions.

  The Professor walked in Silvas Sorrent, she silently groaned, one of her least favorite Professors, he tended to drone on and on about things inconsequential, usually about himself, and the old goat while being well past seven hundred winters he still actively hit on the students, both males and females he was an equal opportunity opportunist.

  Kayla was only half listening to the lecture on ‘Xe’, the residue that Earth Magic users build up within themselves when actively casting magic. She had a good idea why Sorrent was starting with ‘Xe’ as the topic…

  He had of course barely touched on the magical residue side effects of the three other elemental magics. Kayla who could also use Fire Magic equally as well as she could Earth Magic and knew very well the side effect from using Fire Magic, it was called ‘Fa’ and caused hunger and thirst sometimes ravenously so, she had unpleasantly discovered early on when she found herself trying to eat a whole duck. Water Magic the effect was ‘Lo’ and caused heightened wanderlust a need to get away and explore and discover new things… Kayla thought it was Air Magic that had the worse side effects, ‘Au’ left the caster a heightened need for thrill seeking, gambling or feats of danger and risk, she thought that was a bad and possibly painful or even deadly magical side effect!

  She smiled, ‘Xe’ as far as she was concerned, is actually a healthy life benefit.... and then thinking twice added ruefully to herself, “Well when you have someone around to share it… self gratification or playing with other females just did not work anywhere as good as a male, not for me, not even close!”

  Kayla brought her attention back to the lecture, Sorrent had been excitedly lecturing on the reasons and theories about the causations of Xe from Earth Magic for a good twenty minutes, “We measure the build up in the body in Xe Units, and in Elves, passive accumulation in the body is normal two units per day, for Nymphs it closer to five units, and with well say Humans it’s only a half unit.”

  “An abundance of Xe leads to mental as well as physical stress on the caster, this usually manifest at levels above four Xe Units; anxiety, irritability, insomnia, headaches, and even nausea…, does anyone know how this is effectively dealt with,” he asked?

  “Exercise,” Kayla answered in a deadpan monotone…

  “Well, yes, vigorous exercise can help to reduce levels of accumulation.”

  “Meditation, diet, yoga…” Kayla supplied.

  “Yes, those are all effective techniques, but by far the most effective way to remove Xe from the body,” Sorrent went on.

  “Sex,” Kayla answered stealing his revelation, “as Xe primarly effects the libedo of the subject…”

  “Ah, yes Miss Morningstar, that is correct…”

  “Ambassador…” Kayla interrupted.


  Sorrent looked perplexed, so she provided, “Ambassador Morningstar, or you may use Your Excellency, not Miss.”

  “Yes, yes of course… Where was I.”

  “You were explaining to these first years about sex…”

  Giggles broke out around the room.

  “Hum yes, ah and an indicator,” he went on trying to get back control of the topic, “that we who practice Earth Magic have the most powerful of the elemental magic schools is…”

  Kayla jumped in, “That only Earth Magic, of all the types of magic, builds up significant levels of magical residue in those with only the innate non-active magical ability, such as in other non mage Elves and Nymphs, and even in the least magical of all the Earth Magic races the humans. All of whom find extended periods of abstinence difficult or impossible to achieve… and so, you’ll be happy to provide after-class private instruction for anyone who need extra help?”

  “And it’s not like everyone of them don’t already know this as they have dealt with it to some extent since puberty…” She thought to herself.

  The giggles around the class had changed to outright laughter.

  Sorrent stunned, visibly tried to recover..., gave up and told the class, “Well that will be all for today, dismissed.”

  Kayla left smiling, “That went better than I would have hoped, as we are out early, I’ll call that a win.”

  ~

  Chapter 6

  Myst stood on the quay watching the sloop ferry pull away from the dock. Across the short span of water Kayla stood looking at him, she looked strangely sad to him, but then he probably had the same look, being parted from her now, even for a few days was melancholy. She softly waved to him; he held his hand up to her in farewell.