Decurser - A new WIP in the making
Hey there, travelers!
Since last week my uni semester goes on without mercy, so my focus kindda got divided between Shackles of the Storm, our first and nearly publishable book, and medical stuff I need to study. Since you can put the pantser in school, but can't put school in the pantser, this resulted in a wondorous side-effect: a new WIP. Yeah, yeah, I know.
This one is yet to be attached with a genre, but the basic premise is as follows:
Magic is real, and its contageous. From time immemorial curses ravaged humanity, magical occurences took their toll on the populace, giving birth to a new craft. From shamans to wisemen, the Decursers were made official, studying and curing any magical malice plagueing mankind. Since then their tools evolved, along with their teaching methods.
As for the plot, here's a synopsis I just made up as I wrote this:
Yesterday, Sotirios was just an Apprentice. He studied omens of curses, learned about demons and terrific practices to eventually combat them as a full-fledged Decurser. As of today, he's an Adept, taking to the fields and experiencing them with his own eyes and senses only his kind possesses. Eventually the fieldwork turns into a deadly war against a raging calamity, a Curse so potent it threatens the very end of mankind.
Basically, imagine Grey's Anatomy + The Magicians in a fictive fantasy land based on hellenistic greek culture (as an homage to Hyppocrates and the followers of Asclepios). I was really fascinated by the harsh reality the popular hospital dramas portray, about the interns helplessness, the importance of a good mentor and the things no university can teach. As I am nearing a similar state of life, I thought I let my own experiences inspire me, and put a fantasy twist on it to make it even more interesting.
After all that rambling, if you're interested, here's a short excerpt from the very beginning:
An Adept
“Sotirios Khuenaten, was it?”
“Yes, Magister.” My voice was breaking up, but I cleared my throat and tried to relax my shoulders. Keep calm, Tir. It’s just a test.
“Interesting, “ the Magister said. “Mixed ancestry?”
“Yes. My father was imhotish.”
“Can you speak the language? Just out of curiosity.”
I hated these small-talks. We both know why I was here and I would have bet everything that he could see the nervous flashes in my aura, yet the Magister took time to further elevate the tension.
“A few words, not much. I never knew anything besides Asclepia,” I said.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind my intrusiveness?”
It was a fruitless apology. I was so dumbstruck by the sheer pressure on my shoulders that I would have agreed to whatever the Magister wanted.
“Twenty-three.”
“That’s quite old for a third level Apprentice. What happened?”
“Started my apprenticeship in Apolion, but slipped. Then again while transfering here.”
I instinctively shrugged my shoulder. The Magister didn’t like it, given from the prickly look he gave me.
“I see. Are you prepared for your Elevation?”
“I’d like to think I am, Magister,” I replied, trying to sound confident.
These tests were pure lottery. Some Magisters appreciated humility, others treated it as a weakness and ate you alive if you hesitated. The trick was balancing confidence with shyness, giving off an air that you knew what you had to but still accepted the fact that it was barely anything compared to them.
“We shall see,” the Magister said. “Can you tell me the three source of curses?”
I licked my lips for a moment. We started off easy enough.
“Curses are either natural or artificial. The latter occurs when a magically sensitive person willingly or accidentally rips a tear into the Anima lines, while the former is… being exposed to improper and… uh… contradicting Anima effects.”
I stopped for a moment, looking at the Magister for confirmation. In all honesty, we called it “dipping into the wrong soup”, but that wasn’t a proper term. Not for this test, at least.
“And the third? The other natural cause?”
“That would be demons. Immaterial creatures only observable by special methods, like that of--”
“Tell me of Bael,” the Magister said, interrupting my speech. I hated that, it always threw me off balance and made me lose my footing.
“Bael… is a demon known for the Baelfire,” I said, stuttering. “In some regions he’s known as Ba’al or Beelzebub, he is a calamity demon of Caim’s family…”
“How do you recognise Baelfire?”
I almost snorted. All these rapid questions, one after the other, always just when I got accustomed to the first, completely shattered my well thought-out battle plan. I just stood there wide-eyed, scrolling through endless lines of text in my memory, looking for something but it always slipped out of my grip.
“Apprentice. How do you recognise the omens of Baelfire?” the Magister repeated.
Come on, Tir. Just calm down. You need to get through this.
I took a deep breath. If he wasn’t interested in whole answers, touching every unnecessary detail they shoved down my throat in lectures, so be it. Down to three word phrases it was.
“Overnight fissures appearing on the afflicted person’s skin,” I said, holding up a finger, then raising another one with every other answer. “Increasing internal temperature, agitated discoloration of one’s aura and, after six days, spontaneous combustion leading to death.”
The Magister nodded.
“How would you describe the discoloration?”
“As I said, it’s agitated. Baelfire feeds off a vicious cycle of awakening rage and consuming it, growing stronger and waking even more rage.”
“What about the color?”
I cracked a faint smile, but quickly washed it off my face. This old geezer thought he could catch me off-guard.
“Aura discolorations cannot be described by colors, as they aren’t seen with the eyes. Doing so is an automatic fail during the first level Elevation, Magister.”
The Magister leant back in his chair and threaded his fingers together. They all did that, they thought it made them look respectable.
“That’s why they failed you at Apolion, Apprentice?”
It struck me. I felt my stomach churl from anger. My jaw became tense and my heart beat more rapidly, but I clenched my fist and swallowed the insult.
“It wasn’t, Magister.”
“So what was it?”
“I had a disagreement with my lecturer about what counts as common knowledge for any would-be Decurser.”
The Magister leant forward again, smelling blood in the water like a shark, and put his hands down on the table. I shouldn’t have said that.
“So, you’re the kind that refuses to learn what isn’t in your interest, huh?”
“I was, Magister. I’ve learnt my lesson.”
“A Decurser should know everything, Sotirios. Everything. Mankind is the pinnacle of nature, and deserves respect from those who seek to treat it.”
I just shunned my eyes and exhaled, bearing the berate. I’ve heard it half a dozen times in the past three days only, and I was getting sick of it. Or damned, to keep in character.
The Magister rose up, walked around the table and passed the six feet distance between us.
“You’ve said nothing I should fail you for, so I won’t. You’re an Adept now. You’ll set out and see things for yourself. Baelfire, ythiosis, sundarkening, every last horrible affliction in the scrolls. Do you think you’re ready for it?”
“I’ve learned about these, Magister. Read all the scrolls, some more than once and I think it’s time I looked the enemy in the eye.”
The Magister didn’t answer, just stared at me for a while. I caught glimpses of his aura vibrating around him, like an otherworldly outline, spiking and brimming with emotions. He wasn’t pleased. But he wasn’t disappointed either, which was a good enough start.
“Fine then. Let’s call it a Dawning Pass. But when you meet with proper Decursers, keep your wits to yourself.”
He turned around and sat on the table, scribbling something inside a heavy book. Dawning. Not Stellar, but better than Eclipsing. It will do, after I calmed down.
“Are there anything else, Magister?”
“No,” he said, shutting the book with a loud bang. “Send in the next.”
The door to the test chamber closed behind me, and the soft click pushed all my remaining strength out. I was exhausted, filled with rage and an unfamiliar sourness, so I passed through the loose crowd of other Apprentices--no, just Apprentices; there was no other anymore--without a word, immediately leaning over the balcony railing. It was a pleasant day, like every test day, but nobody cared about the weather. Pupils didn’t need storms to feel down.
My breath was a bit shallow, so I closed my eyes and concentrated on nothing but the wind tossing my cloak. The bronze chain rattled in my neck - for the last time, actually. My next cloak will have silver clasps with asclepian letters engraved into each link. Five letters. Adept.
“Hey,” someone shouted from the side. The voice belonged to Erios, which was impossible, since he Elevated yesterday. No sensible man would have stayed at the Campus for a day, just to wait for a friend.
Yet, when I opened my eyes, there he was.
“Good to see you, Tir. Just out of the chamber?”
“Yeah.” I tried to smile, but even that was too tiring. “Fuck, I’m worn out.”
“I can see that. Your aura is like an urcheon. How did it go?”
I looked away, elbowing on the railing. “I passed. Dawning.”
“Hey, Dawning’s not bad,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Nobody gets a Stellar anyways. Dawning’s perfectly fine.”
“What did you get?” I asked, turning around.
“Meridian, but it doesn’t matter,” he said, trying to brush the subject off. As if I would let him.
“You got a Meridian Pass? And you only tell me now?”
Passes didn’t really matter outside the Campus, but for us, it was everything. It was a bit tricky to compare them, but taking a few basic rules into the equation--like the same Pass meant different things from different Magisters--it has drawn out the hierarchy we lived in.
“As I said, it doesn’t matter,” Erios said with a shrug. “Nobody will ask you that on the field.”
“Yeah, because they don’t need to. If you’re in Elys, you’re Stellar in at least three branches.”
“So they say,” Erios said, shrugging again. For someone this hard-working, he was the most humble Apprentice--Adept, damn it--I have ever met. “Where do you think you’ll end up?”
“Now that you say… I’ve never thought about it. I’ll just pick from the list, I guess. You?”
Erios leant against the railing sideways and looked down onto the garden. A couple of pupils ran around the pebbled pathways, carrying enormous masses of scrolls and newer printed books. Sometimes it was hard to accept the time that separated us from them. To accept I was no longer on my first level, like them.
“I’m thinking Theia,” Erios said. “You should come too.”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard Theia can be merciless. Besides, don’t I need a special something paper to be allowed there?”
“Yes, but it’s quite easy to do.”
“It’s a hassle, Erios. I’m too tired.”
I slipped down beside the railing, showing no mercy to the expensive silken trousers I was wearing. They did their job for today. I’ll fix them up for next time.
“You’re a brilliant Decurser, Tir,” Erios said looking at me. It felt somehow judgemental, even though those words clearly praised me.
“Really? I thought I’m a Dawning Adept.”
“You are, because you refuse to work for more. That’s what Dawning means.”
I looked up, raising an eyebrow at him, trying to figure out if he meant it for real.
“Your mood is serpentine today, did you know?”
Erios sighed and gave up. “Don’t mind me. Congratulations on your Elevation. I hope we run into each other sometimes, before the field.”
And with that, he turned around and walked away, leaving me to my thoughts. I let my head drop into my palm. Was he right? Did I refuse to work, and that’s what pulled me down into mediocrity?
“Damn you,” I mumbled. “It’s too early for questions like that.”
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