The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

Changes

Day Eleven

No memory accession now. I have too many things to consider about my own values. Phoebe considers that there are classes of variants who can be, should be killed. This is consistent with my game programming. Adam is disgusted that he has killed another living and sentient creature.

Death equates with punishment, and, in all of them, the concept that punishment for wrongdoing is just exists. Yet, they are only what I have caused them to be. Can it be that I have created a group whose only reason for living is to do things which will justify them being punished? Why is the responsibility for this not mine? I must think on this more.

Miya

Bren was busy with Seniors, so I hadn’t had any time to talk to him. Mind, there wasn’t much to say, was there? I don’t think, ‘Well done’ was exactly what he wanted to hear. Well, we all saw the body, didn’t we? It wasn’t like a video game. It just wasn’t pretty.

You see dead bodies in vids and stuff, but they leave out the intestines. Having seen them I know why. I heard Senior Ferguson gave him something to make him sleep and he crashed out really early. I know he wasn’t around for us celebrating the win. We were real celebs for having won and loads of other people wanted to talk to us about how we did it, both that night and the next day.

There wasn’t much to say really, ‘cos if you’d seen it, you already knew everything. The story of how we’d beaten off the Vere was the most popular one. We told a lot of people that. Some of them got the part about how horrible it was to see someone cut into two bits and others just didn’t.

What everyone agreed on was that our cohort had come up with a way of fighting that no one else had seen before. A few were interested in the idea that the Duergars were going to form their own cohorts to fight like that; some thought it would work and some that it wouldn’t. No one much thought that they would do anything in an Initiation. The best idea I heard on that was that it was a bit too PC; it wouldn’t hurt anyone, but wouldn’t do anything ‘cept waste time.

Martha

I was one of the ones who were selected to do the Initiation for the Duergars. It would have been nice to think it was a mark of special favour, but we were all aware it just meant we were going a bit spare, with all of the Elders coming back. An Initiation burns you out. We couldn’t afford to burn out too many people and no one reckoned that this one would accomplish anything. As it was, we had to restrict the number of Seekers to fifty, we couldn’t deal with more.

Before the war started it would have been easy. Then again, before the Elders started coming back, it would have been impossible. We took them to the Initiation grounds just outside the City. It was a much bigger deal for them than it was for the human Seekers, but then, they all had families and general on-lookers hanging around. By comparison hardly anyone spectated at a normal Initiation; they were all too busy doing something.

The Duergar Seekers entered the area and the Mages ringed them round. We had one of the Elders to lead. It wasn’t like any Initiation I’d ever been to before. Oh, the magic started and we all fell into trance; that much was normal. But when the power reached out from us it formed a shell over the whole area like a huge, blue crystal egg that we were all inside. Enormous arcs of blue lightning began to spark around the inside of the shell. They touched everyone, Seeker and Mage alike. When one grounded on me I went out of my body.

I was in space, looking down on the world. It was the Land, though I think I was the first one ever to see it like a satellite picture of the Earth, for one full revolution. The continents were there, just as I’ve seen them in maps from the Sea Wolves before, but there were extra ones I’ve never heard of and ice caps at both of the Poles. I hung in space, floating like a baby. There was music playing around me, great crashing crescendos of music. I could feel the pulse of the Land. I don’t know what that means now, but I did then. I know I did then. I remember saying, “Bloody Hell!”