by Colt, K. J.
“Who invented it?” the woman asked, looking intrigued.
“Well, Augusta and I did, actually,” Blaise admitted. “She’s my former fiancée. We are what you would call sorcerers—those who have the aptitude for the study of magic. Augusta created a magical object called the Interpreter Stone, and I came up with a simpler magical language to go along with it. So now, instead of reciting a difficult verbal spell, a sorcerer can use the simpler language to write his spell on cards and feed it to the stone.”
She blinked. “I see.”
“Our work was supposed to change society for the better,” Blaise continued, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Or at least that’s what I had hoped. I thought an easier way to do magic would enable more people to do it, but it didn’t turn out that way. The powerful sorcerer class got even more powerful—and even more averse to sharing their knowledge with the common people.”
“Is that bad?” she asked, regarding him with her clear blue gaze.
“It depends on whom you ask,” Blaise said, thinking of Augusta’s casual disregard for the peasants. “I think it’s terrible, but I’m in the minority. Most sorcerers like the status quo. They have wealth and power, and they don’t mind that their subjects live in abject poverty.”
“But you do,” she said perceptively.
“I do,” Blaise confirmed. “And when I left the Sorcerer Council a year ago, I decided to do something about it. You see, I wanted to create a magical object that would understand our normal spoken language—an object that anyone could use. This way, a regular person could do magic. They would just say what they needed, and the object would make it happen.”
Her eyes widened, and Blaise could see the dawning comprehension on her face. “Are you saying—?”
“Yes,” he said, staring at her. “I believe I succeeded in creating that object. I think you are the result of my work.”
They sat there in silence for a few moments.
“I must have the wrong understanding of the word ‘object’,” she finally said.
“You probably don’t. The chair you sit on is a regular object. If you’ll look out the window, you’ll see a chaise in the yard. That’s a magical object; it can fly. Objects are inanimate. I expected you to be something like a talking mirror, but you are something else entirely.”
She frowned a little. “If you created me, does that mean you are my father?”
“No,” Blaise denied immediately, everything inside him rejecting that idea. “I am most certainly not your father.” Somehow it was important to make sure she did not think of him that way. Look at where my mind is going again, he chided himself.
She continued looking confused, so Blaise tried to explain further. “I think it might make more sense to say that I created the basic design for an intelligence—and made sure it had some knowledge to build on—but from there, you must have created yourself.”
He could see a spark of recognition in her gaze. Something about that statement resonated with her, so she had to know more than it seemed at first.
“Can you tell me anything about yourself?” Blaise asked, studying the beautiful creature in front of him. “For starters, what do you call yourself?”
“I don’t call myself anything,” she said. “What do you call yourself?”
“I am Blaise, son of Dasbraw. You would just call me Blaise.”
“Blaise,” she said slowly, as though tasting his name. Her voice was soft and sensual, innocently seductive. It made Blaise painfully aware that it had been two years since he had been this close to a woman.
“Yes, that’s right,” he managed to say calmly. “And we should come up with a name for you as well.”
“Do you have any ideas?” she asked curiously.
“Well, my grandmother’s name was Galina. Would you like to honor my family by taking her name? You can be Galina, daughter of the Spell Realm. I would call you ‘Gala’ for short.” The indomitable old lady had been nothing like the girl sitting in front of him, yet something about the bright intelligence on this woman’s face reminded him of her. He smiled fondly at the memories.
“Gala,” she tried saying. He could see that she liked it because she smiled back at him, showing even white teeth. The smile lit her entire face, making her glow.
“Yes.” Blaise couldn’t tear his eyes away from her luminous beauty. “Gala. It suits you.”
“Gala,” she repeated softly. “Gala. Yes, I agree. It does suit me. But you said that I am daughter of the Spell Realm. Is that my mother or father?” She gave him a hopeful look.
Blaise shook his head. “Not in the traditional sense, no. The Spell Realm is where you developed into what you are now. Do you know anything about the place?” He paused, looking at his unexpected creation. “In general, how much do you recall before you showed up here, on the floor of my study?”
CHAPTER TWO
Augusta
AUGUSTA SLID OUT OF BED and smiled seductively at her lover, enjoying the heated gleam in his eyes as she bent down to pick up her magenta-colored dress from the floor. The beautifully made garment had only one small rip in it—nothing that she wouldn’t be able to fix with a simple verbal spell. Her clothes rarely survived her visits to Barson’s house intact; if there was one thing she enjoyed about the leader of the Sorcerer Guard, it was the rough, urgent hunger with which he always greeted her arrival.
“Is it already time to go?” he asked, propping himself up on one elbow to watch her get dressed.
“Aren’t your men waiting for you?” Augusta wriggled into the dress and reached up to gather her long brown hair into a smooth knot at the back of her neck.
“Let them wait.” He sounded arrogant, as usual. Augusta liked that about Barson—the unshakable confidence that permeated everything he did. He might not be a sorcerer, but he wielded quite a bit of power as the leader of the elite military force that kept law and order in their society.
“The rebels won’t wait, though,” Augusta reminded him. “We need to intercept them before they get any closer to Turingrad.”
“We?” His thick eyebrows arched in surprise. With his short dark hair and olive-toned skin, he was one of the most attractive men she knew—with the possible exception of her former fiancé.
No, don’t think about Blaise now. “Oh yes,” Augusta said nonchalantly. “Did I forget to mention that I’m coming with you?”
Barson sat up in bed, the muscles in his large frame flexing and rippling with each movement. “You know you did,” he growled, but Augusta could tell he was pleased with this development. He had been trying to get her to spend more time with him, to get their relationship out in the open, and Augusta thought it might be time to start giving in a little.
After her painful breakup with Blaise two years ago, all she’d wanted was an uncomplicated affair—an arrangement of mutual desire and nothing more. Her eight-year relationship with Blaise had ended six months before their wedding was to take place, and at the time, she didn’t know if she would ever be able to trust another man again. She’d thought that all she needed was a bed companion, a warm body to make her forget the emptiness within—and she’d chosen the Captain of the Guard for that role.
To her surprise, what started off as a simple dalliance grew and evolved. Over time, Augusta found herself both liking and admiring her new lover. He was not an intellectual, like Blaise, but he was quite intelligent in his own way—and she found that she enjoyed his company outside of the bedroom as well. As a result, when she’d heard about the rebellion in the north, she decided it was the perfect opportunity to witness Barson in action, doing what he did best—protecting their way of life and keeping the peasants in check.
Getting up, he pulled on his armor and turned to face her. “Did the Council ask you to come with us?”
“No,” Augusta reassured him. “I’m coming of my own initiative.” It would be an insult to the Guard if the Council thought them incapable of quelling a minor uprising and
asked her to aid them. She was accompanying them solely because she wanted to spend some time with Barson—and because she wanted to see the rebels crushed like the vermin they were.
“In that case,” he said, his dark eyes glittering with anticipation, “let’s go.”
Augusta rode beside Barson, feeling the rhythmic movements of the horse beneath her. She could see the curious looks she was getting from the other soldiers, but she didn’t care. As a sorceress of the Council, she was used to the attention; she even craved it on some level.
It was strange riding an actual living horse. She had gotten used to the flying chaise—her recent invention that had revolutionized travel for sorcerers—and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone somewhere the old-fashioned way. The only reason why she was doing so now was because Barson refused to get on the chaise with her while on duty, and she didn’t want to hover in the air above the guards all by herself.
“How many rebels are there?” she asked Barson, surprised that there were only about fifty men accompanying them.
“Ganir said there were about three hundred,” Barson replied, and Augusta wrinkled her nose at the mention of the Council Leader’s name. Ganir appeared to have his spies everywhere these days. Under the guise of protecting the Council, the old sorcerer seemed to be growing more and more powerful every day, a development that bothered Augusta. She had always gotten a sense that the old man didn’t like her, and she didn’t want to think about what could happen if he decided to turn on her for any reason.
Bringing her attention back to the subject at hand, she gave Barson a questioning look. “And you took only fifty guards?”
He chuckled. “Only fifty? That’s probably twenty too many. Any one of my men is worth at least ten of these peasants.” Then he added, more seriously, “Besides, given the unrest everywhere, I thought it best not to leave Turingrad and the Tower unprotected without a good reason—and believe me, three hundred peasants are not a good reason.”
Augusta grinned at him, again charmed by his arrogance. “Right, of course. Plus you’ve got me.” Sorcerers rarely used their magic against the common population, but they could certainly do so, particularly if they were in danger. Augusta had no doubt that she could subdue all the rebels singlehandedly, but that wasn’t her job. That’s what the soldiers were for.
This little rebellion, like so many others in the past couple of years, was no doubt motivated by the drought. It was an unfortunate occurrence, and Augusta could understand the peasants’ unhappiness with ruined crops and high food prices—but that didn’t make it acceptable for them to march on Turingrad like Ganir claimed they were doing.
The north of Koldun—where these rebels were coming from—was particularly hard-hit. Augusta’s own territory was further south, but even her subjects were grumbling about the lack of food. They wouldn’t dare do any rioting, of course, but Augusta was not oblivious to the fact that they were unhappy. For almost two years, the rain had been sparse, and grain was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Augusta did her best to purchase whatever grain was available and send it to her people, but the ungrateful wretches still complained.
“Who’s ruling over the territory of the rebels? Is it Jandison or Moriner?” she asked, wondering which sorcerer couldn’t control his own peasants.
“Jandison.”
Jandison. Well, that explained it, Augusta thought. Despite his advanced age and position on the Council, Jandison was considered to be something of a weakling. He was good at teleportation (admittedly, a useful skill) and not much else. How he had ended up on the Council—a ruling body consisting of the most powerful sorcerers—Augusta would never understand.
“Some of his peasants ran off to the mountains,” Barson said, looking annoyed with the situation. “And some decided to riot. It’s a mess over there.”
“To the mountains?” Augusta couldn’t suppress her shock. The mountains surrounded the land of Koldun, serving as a natural barrier against the fierce storms that raged beyond them. Only the most intrepid explorers ever ventured out there, given the unpredictable weather and proximity to the dangerous ocean. And these peasants actually went there?
“Yes,” Barson confirmed. “At least twenty of them from Jandison’s northernmost village fled there.”
“They must be suicidal,” Augusta said, shaking her head. “Who in their right mind would do something like that?”
“Someone desperate and hungry, I would imagine.” Her lover gave her an ironic look. “You don’t know hunger, do you?”
“No,” Augusta admitted. Most sorcerers only ate for pleasure; spells to sustain the body’s energy were simple to do—and were one of the first things parents taught their children. Augusta had mastered those spells at the age of ten, and she’d never felt hungry since.
Barson smiled in response and reached over to squeeze her knee with his large callused hand.
CHAPTER THREE
Gala
GALA STARED AT THE TALL, broad-shouldered man who was her creator, trying to figure out the best way to answer his question. She found it difficult to focus, her senses overwhelmed by being here, in this place Blaise called the Physical Realm. Her body was reacting to the different stimuli in strange and unpredictable ways, her mind attempting to process all the images, sounds, and smells so she could understand everything.
One particularly strong distraction was Blaise himself. She couldn’t stop looking at him because he was unlike anything she had seen before. Something about the angular symmetry of his face appealed to her, resonating with her in a way she didn’t fully comprehend. She liked everything about it, from the blue color of his eyes to the darkness of the stubble shadowing his firm jaw. She wondered if it would be acceptable to reach out and touch his hair—those short, almost-black locks that looked so different from her own pale strands.
First, though, she wanted to answer his question. Concentrating, she thought back to before, to what had happened prior to her experiencing reality for the first time. “I remember realizing that I exist,” she said slowly, trying to put into words the strange sensations at the beginning.
“You mean you existed for a time without realizing it?” he asked, his dark eyebrows coming together slightly. Gala thought that expression likely meant confusion because her own eyebrows did the same thing when she didn’t understand something.
“It’s like there were two ways I existed,” she tried to explain. “One way would just happen. This went on longer. When I say I realized that I exist—that’s when this other part of me first realized that I am me. These parts are not separate; in fact, they are the same thing. There is a strange looping arrangement between the two parts that I don’t fully understand and don’t know how to put into words—”
“I think I do understand,” he said, leaning forward and staring at her intently. “You became self-aware. At first, you existed on a subconscious level, and then, at some critical threshold, you achieved a conscious state of being.” He appeared excited, Gala thought, somehow finding the right word to describe her creator’s emotional state.
“What is the difference between a conscious and a subconscious state?” she asked, hungering for more information.
“In a human being, the subconscious parts of the mind are in charge of things like breathing or the heart beating,” he said, his eyes gleaming brightly. “When I run, my subconscious figures out the complex trajectories of how my limbs move. Some sorcerers also think dreams form in that part of our minds.”
“I am not a human being,” Gala said, looking at him. That much she knew now. She was something different, and she needed to learn what that something was.
He smiled—an expression that made his face even more fascinating to her. “No,” he said softly, “you’re not. But you definitely seem like one to me.”
“But that was not your intention, right?”
“Right,” he confirmed. “However, the parts of you that I designed are based on how I theorized
human minds might work. Lenard the Great is the one who first discovered the conscious-subconscious dynamic, and I’ve always been fascinated by his work. I’ve done spells on people that gave me insight into their states of being, and that was my framework for you. Additionally, I had some help from Lenard’s writings. The spell that created you was supposed to make an interconnected structure of nodes—nodes that can learn. Billions and billions of nodes in the Spell Realm, all magically connected together—”
How interesting, Gala thought, observing the way his face became more animated as he spoke.
“And then, once I performed the spell,” he continued, “I sent dozens of Life Captures to the Spell Realm, as many Life Captures as I could get my hands on—”
“Life Captures?” The term didn’t make sense to Gala.
Blaise nodded, his expression darkening for some reason. “Yes. Life Captures are an example of a magical object. A sorcerer named Ganir recently invented these things. It’s a little hard to explain what they are. Basically, when you take a Life Capture, you see what someone else saw, you smell what they smelled, and you think you are them for the duration of the spell. You have to experience it to truly understand.”
“I think I do understand,” Gala said, thinking back to the strange experiences she’d had prior to coming here. “This probably explains my visions.”
“Your visions?”
“I think I saw glimpses of the Physical Realm,” Gala told him, “and it was like I was in them.” The memories were not pleasant; for the longest time, she’d felt lost, not knowing that she was living other people’s lives.
“Of course.” His eyes widened with understanding. “I should’ve realized that once your mind was sufficiently developed, you would simply experience the Life Captures like we do—except that you had never been in the real world and probably had no idea what was happening to you. I’m sorry about that. It must’ve been terribly confusing for you.”
