บท 21: Surprise Surprise
Bedona had caught Moswen just as he was heading out a little after dawn, and said he would return soon when she tried to stop him. With Moswen leaving for Migiran, she didn't want to be alone with Tristan with the previous day's episode still fresh on her mind, but didn't voice her concern. Afraid of the young boy, she didn't want to look weak in front of Moswen. She stroked the fire and gazed at Tristan, still fast asleep.
Using her time she washed and ate the leftover from the previous day.
She spread her senses through the sands on the beach, failing to produce nothing but a few tiny columns around. Her range wasn't anything impressive nor was her power. By all accounts she was an average sorceress. And despite that she had never felt so outclassed before. Moswen hadn't done anything overtly impressive but the intricate display of his spells showed her enough that she needed to measure up.
Even her guild, in all four towers, she doubted there would be many that could match Moswen in raw magical prowess. Of course she had nothing solid to base this on but just a gut feeling. The sand shifted beside her, the grains rolling one over the other to gather in four tiny mounds, as her mind recalled the previous day. She looked at them, concentrated on them to feel the shapes and guide them.
With a fiddly hand movement, Bedona raised the four mounds together, dividing her attention to all four of them simultaneously. The mounds took the spaces of a straight hollow pipe, a spiraling rod, a fat short platform, and a plain old slightly tilted bar of sand. The four towers of Sharak in its simplest form. A little more push and her control slipped. Dividing her mind four ways had her sweating. She gritted her teeth and went to the next step. Slowly, tiny details emerged on each of the mounds. Bedona had only ever been inside of her own tower, the pipe here, but she had visited and seen the others from outside. She formed the gates; each had at least two entrances at their bases. She built daises under them, lifting them slightly, and tiny stairs that went along those gates. The adjacent pillars, the patterns of the windows slowly carved themselves on the tiny sand towers.
The bar suddenly started to dismantle. Bedona had carved the windows too deep, the dry sand was unable to hold its weight and began to crumble. She shifted a lane of attention from the pipe to the crashing down bar, and before she knew it, the pipe collapsed down to the ground.
Moments later all fours towers dropped back down into mounds of sand. Ironically, the shortest one vaguely looked anything like its intended shape.
Bedona sighed; at least she did a bit more today than in her secret drilling in Roqsar. Practicing magic freely, in the open was not as easy as she had thought. Bedona's skills were rusted. Unable to use concentrated spells on Moswen earlier during their first encounter made sense now.
"Beautiful!"
Tristan had woken up sometime during her exercise. His wide eyes were on the mounds of sand, full of admiration. Bedona smiled to herself.
"When did you wake up? Are you hungry?" She asked holding her knife, ready to cut him a slice of the covered piece of eel with a cloth near the fire. Tristan shook his head and looked at her, a different kind of hunger in his eyes.
"Was that magic? Are you a wizard too?"
Bedona laughed, short and from her heart, it had been a while since she heard such an innocent question.
"No, I am just a student. I am learning under Moswen." Seeing his confused expression she added with another chuckle. "The big man, you remember? From yesterday?"
Moswen hadn't answered had request before leaving, but Bedona thought it wasn't going to hurt anyone if she let Tristan think that he had. Maybe having Tristan convinced of her talent help her case with Moswen. He did seem to care about the boy, Bedona concluded.
"Moswen? Huh! Reminds me of…Nowsem." Tristan muttered to himself but loud enough for her to hear. Apparently the boy's thought took the same turn as hers when she first heard the name.
"He is a wizard? But he looks nothing like one."
Tristan sounded genuinely confused, enough that he didn't care about the offense in the query he had made.
"Master Moswen is a master wizard, of course he would be different than your average one."
Bedona said with much pride coating her words and it seemed to work on him. Tristan nodded, satisfied and eyed her again, hunger laced with adoration returning to his gaze.
"What else can you do? What are you learning?"
The next moment Tristan crawled on all fours and stopped and kneeles beside her, his face sticking forward to her just like an eager puppy. It shocked Bedona and she almost pulled away but forgave the young boy for his curiosity on what might have been his first sighting of magic.
"I can do this." Bedona said forming small sprinkles of light particles around her hand. "And this." She flicked the tip of her index and tapped onto his forehead sending a mild shock through his body. It was not strong, if anything it was like a mild tickle.
"Do it again." Tristan said in a childlike giggle. Strange seeing it in a boy his age, (Bedona had guessed he was nearing his score by the firmed muscles in his shoulders, but looked like he was still in his mid-teens) but she ignored it and tapped her finger on him again.
"Again!"
Tristan said a bit high pitched, like someone else was speaking through him.
Bedona paused, looking at him with concern. The change in his voice texture had shocked her.
"Tristan? Are you feeling alright?"
"I said again!"
Tristan repeated his words, voice returning to normal but still hitched.
Confused, Bedona hesitatingly tapped her finger again and sent the shock up his arm.
"Ha ha ha; I knew it! Do it again."
Bedona sensed the same tone, the same, shrill voice from the day before that had sent a chill down her spine, no different today. She rolled back, kicking her limbs in quick reflex alone to get her away from the boy. She stood up a few feet away from him and looked down at Tristan. He was kneeling, leaning to his left with his head cocked completely to the same side. His eyes were closed and he wore a grin so wide it threatened to split his face.
"First Moswen and now you, I almost can't believe my luck." Tristan uttered softly, sounding bewildered and slowly got on his feet in an eerily elegant movement, in what looked like a weightless dancer's flow. All this while his head remained angled in the same position and eyes closed; his grin too remained albeit a little smaller.
Bedona remained speechless, taking a step back for each of Tristan's steps forward toward her. She was trembling to her soul, her focus slipping away the moment she tried to gather it.
"It was you in the forest that day. Thieving, manipulating," Tristan paused and straightened his head so that his closed eyes would face her directly, "Murdering." He whispered, grinning wider at Bedona's involuntary flinch.
"I…don't know what you mean." Bedona barely voiced her answer with her trembling lips. But she knew the truth and it looked like 'Tristan' did too as he laughed. A full bellied deep laughter to the sky.
"No need trying. I would know that disgusting magic anywhere."
In spite of her fear, his insult still managed to sting her deeply. Bedona frowned and tried twice as harder to focus herself, to blast him where he stood.
"I ought to remove you before you spread your filth more."
Immediately later, Bedona blacked out for a second. One moment she was standing and facing Tristan, and the next she laid on the ground looking up at his insulting grin. Her arms remained to her side, unmoving, and she began to feel a pinprick of pain inflicted into them. She couldn't turn and see, her head was held tight by the boy's sudden monstrous strength.
"I will make sure you go screaming." Tristan whispered and his ever present grin turned even more sinister and then the burning started, first the side of her head and then the surrounding areas from there. Bedona bit on her tongue to hold off her screaming but an unexpected explosion above her sent Tristan flying over Bedona and lodge over to her right. Tristan skidded and slipped but ultimately managed to stand on his feet as he was pushed about twenty feet away.
"You came too soon Mosei."
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