Don’t destroy your most prized possessions by channelling magic through them.
by Dr. Jessica Phalange
This shouldn’t need to be said.
Fetishes serve a specific purpose – to help bear the straing of magic during spellcasting. Their main disadvantag...
2021-08-01 06:15:56 +0000 UTC View Post“You look worried,” Saina noted, forehead furrowing in concern as I strode into her room, claimed a bed for the next 3 days, and dumped my stuff onto it.
“I’m fine,” I said with a grin. “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s fine, unless we decide to try to kill each other w...
2021-07-31 12:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostMax looked thoroughly miserable when I got back to the room. He leapt up from his desk and was over his bed and in the main part of the room before I had the door closed. “Where’s Ed?”
I shrugged. “Left, probably? Unless he has other business with you? I dealt with it, anyway.” 2021-07-24 12:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Once we were out of Max’s earshot, I said, “So you’re a GP?”
“Indeed. Now, have you been experiencing any fatigue or – ?”
“I already have a GP at home who’s asked me all that,” I cut in. “And Malas here, of course.”
“Hmm. Good point. We could save a lot...
2021-07-17 11:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Full moon starts in fifteen hours,” Saina remarked as we clambered our way down a rocky slope.
“Yep.” I took her elbow to steady myself down a particularly steep part, then helped her down after me. For some reason, Peter insisted on having our training sessions in nearly inaccessi...
2021-07-10 11:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“One question,” I said. “Why, under the seven points of power, did you think that not telling me this theory was in any way to my benefit?”
“Because it’s probably not true! You were right; it’s a bit of a reach. The terms are vague and something else – ”
“And if it...
2021-07-03 03:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe Fetish Paradox, An Exciting New Theory
By Sir Alistair Quiffly
The Familiarity Paradox is a well-known and established phenomenon, but only recently have researchers begun to ask: what about fetishes? After all, familiarity and fetishism share many simila...
2021-07-01 02:59:32 +0000 UTC View Post“Are you busy?” Max asked one afternoon, strolling into our room.
I scowled at the letter I was trying to write. It ws straightup impossible to secretly tell Chelsea and Melissa what was going on. Our crude context-dependent ‘code’ hadn’t accounted for anything that was currently ...
2021-06-26 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t dramatically leap to my feet and dash out of the classroom. There was no need. The prophecy had clearly stated that the danger would come under a full moon, so I checked my tablet to make sure it wasn’t a full moon (not for over a week), took my train of thought under my own damn con...
2021-06-19 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostHeading to runecrafting class so early was a bit unfortunate because it meant that when the Fiore ‘happened to bump into me’ in the corridors I didn’t have a convenient excuse to rush off. I could have lied, I supposed, but if he had something to say he’d only find me again later to say i...
2021-06-12 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“How do you think they make all the water?” I asked Saina one morning as we hiked alongside a river on our way to meet Hammond and Peter.
She glanced at the river, then at me. “Uh… I think it comes from the mountain? From… melting snow, or something?”
“Not that water. Th...
2021-06-05 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe Familiarity Paradox -- Misconception or Lie?
By Dr Jessica Phalange
Much has been made of the so-called ‘familiarity paradox’; the notion that the danger of a familiarity bond and the fact that its strengh is predicated on emotional attachment are at ...
2021-06-01 09:07:29 +0000 UTC View PostA couple of days later, I awoke early after a restless night battling a stomach ache. I’d assumed it was food poisoning, until I found the blood between my thighs.
Oh.
I stared blankly for a few seconds, then took a deep breath and trudged off to the shower. It was too early for the...
2021-05-29 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostI’d seen the top of the tower before, of course, but it still took my breath away. The floor was a solid stone disc that didn’t touch the walls; it was anchored to them by heavy iron rods, but otherwise there was a good three metres of space between floor and wall all the way around, broken o...
2021-05-22 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“So,” Max asked, “how does this work, exactly?”
Max, Kylie, Saina, Alania, Lydia and I were gathered in the medical ward, gazing out of the large glass windows at the white blanket of snow beyond and ignoring Malas, doing paperwork in the background and doing his best to ignore us i...
2021-05-15 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Hammond and Peter are free to meet up in the cafeteria in a couple of hours to sort out pit comp stuff,” Saina reported, setting her tablet down and returning to crushing peppercorns.
“Great.” I kept my eyes locked on the thermometer in the saucepan in front of me and carefully tur...
2021-05-08 02:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostKayden,
How’s school? Learned to make a potion of fireball yet?
School here is a snore, obviously. Liss is starting a book club, eighty year old woman that she is, and she keep trying to get me to join. You have to convince her to stop. 2021-05-01 10:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post
On The Efficacy Of Familiars – A Brief Overview.
By Sir Alistair Quiffly
When choosing strategies for mitigating the strain of power during spellcasting, the prospect of offloading excess power to a living animal companion, or ‘familiar’, is an inviting...
2021-04-30 15:44:38 +0000 UTC View Post“Alright,” Lydia said, reviewing her notes. She’d been taking them on paper, with a pen, which was a weird thing to see an adult do in Refujeyo. Alania always had a lot of paper lying around and some of the students like Max preferred to take written notes from books, but the last time I’...
2021-04-24 10:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostLessons were the worst.
Not the material. I was mostly on top of that. I wasn’t a great student or anything, but I was mysteriously more motivated to learn about runes after all the rune nonsense with the Labyrinth of Dreams, the magic history class I’d forced myself to take in a fit of...
2021-04-17 10:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Talbot said, pacing the small classroom we’d gathered in. “Fionnrath? Really? And nobody noticed their spell was missing for fifteen years?”
Hua tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the desk in front of her. “We shouldn’t tell Chery about...
2021-04-10 10:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMax listened to the recording of our meeting, and didn’t seem particularly surprised by any of it. He just gave us a tight, resigned smile, and said, “I’d kind of been hoping that this familiar thing would be the big politcal hurdle we’d have to deal with this semester, you know? I didn...
2021-04-03 09:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostWe were intercepted by a few classmates on the way to our room, all wanting to make small talk about the holidays and segue into questions about the familiar thing, but not many. Max and I had paced the tunnels around our room many times for his research, and knew how to avoid the most populated ...
2021-03-27 09:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostI had a new bodyguard the next day; a young woman wearing a voluminous pink skirt that, I couldn’t help notice, could easily conceal a gun. I considered giving her the slip again, just to be petty, but if these people were here for my safety then I should probably play along, so Melissa, Chelse...
2021-03-20 07:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMelissa and Chelsea were waiting for me under the big tree in Melissa’s yard, the one I’d used to use to get from my second story room to hers, back when the house next door had been mine. (Whoever owned it now had changed the gardens. I didn’t like it.)
Melissa threw her arms around ...
2021-03-13 07:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostStaying in a motel in my own hometown was strange. I supposed I’d still thought of my hometown as, well, home. It was where I’d always lived before Skolala Refujeyo, and it’s where my friends lived, so for the holidays it made more sense for my parents to come back there and meet me rather ...
2021-03-06 07:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostI regained strength quickly, and probably could have left the ward after a few days. But both Kylie and I stayed, and Malas didn’t bring it up. He, I was pretty sure, liked having us where he could quickly and easily monitor the familiarity link. Kylie and I had had six months to adapt to not b...
2021-02-27 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostWhen I woke up, I could still feel the magic inside me, but either I’d gotten more used to it or it had quieted down. Probably both. I could feel it pooling in my joints, curling through my veins, but it wasn’t distracting enough that I didn’t notice the bone-deep ache of me entire body, pu...
2021-02-20 12:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostMax and I got to work kicking rubbish out of Kylie’s flailing distance and making sure her robes couldn’t strangle her.
“She doesn’t have epilepsy or anything, does she?” Max asked. “She would’ve told us, right?”
“it definitely would’ve come up,” I agreed. “she...
2021-02-13 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostSomething very, very strange was going on as we neared the heart of the labyrinth. I couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly, it was, but something was different.
It was Kylie who eventually noticed. “There are no spells here,” she said. “Should we be worried about that?”...
2021-02-06 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post