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What? That whole mess? Fine! I promised, but I didn’t expect you’d ask about that.
Yes, it does still make me embarrassed. And angry. A bit. But I’m over it all, and…. Yeah, I should probably talk about it.
Okay, this starts during that crazy bit when we were…. When I was…. trying to get everyone to fight our way out of the Scholomance as one big alliance. Day after day Orion and I would be leading bigger and bigger parties of seniors through the gym course from hell. And we were getting better at it. Co-ordination, practise, acts of rapidly repaid altruism, Liesel doing her damn debriefs and analyses…
But anyway, we were days into that, and trying to work out how to bring the Chinese enclaves on board, and one evening Chloe popped up at my door with that expression, the one that brings to mind “puppy has peed on the carpet”. Yeah. And so, as I remember it, the conversation went:
“El, nobody’s hurt or in danger or anything, but you should probably come and see this”
Remember that Orion was still hanging around us at that stage ready to hare off after any mal he could.
(Ah, he’s changed so much. Heh. Anyway….)
“Chloe, what the hell?”
“El, you might find this funny or horrible or whatever, but you should probably see this before the next run, or you’ll blow a vein.”
So I followed her down, leaving Orion to snooze like a lanky lion across a sofa, to the entrance to the gym. And she showed me The Mural.
Oh my Goddess I remember that thing FAR too well. It stretched about five meters across a wall, and three meters up alongside the tall doors of the gym. And I just stared at the damn thing. And read the rhyme. And felt my blood pressure rise in what was either a furious fit or the biggest blush in recorded history, or maybe both.
“Chloe….” I said, trying to keep a lid on it. “Did you do this?”
“El! No! This is really not my style at all, and you’d go crazy, and Orion would….”
“Oh, he’d find it a bit cool and wander off….” But she was right, I’d seen her work, and she paints in a sort of art nouveau style, wheras this was more…. Angular? Aggressive? And it was hidden under a gentle distraction spell that would stop most folk noticing it much. “How did you find out about this?”
“Someone I knew came by asking to borrow my fixative resin supply, for an alchemical shield on paintings? And they took all I had, so I was wondering a little, and put a tiny trace on it, and…. They’d used it on this….”
“Who did this Chloe?”
“I don’t think I should tell you. You’ll just go and shout at them, and…. They’re trying to help.”
I spluttered a while, and tried to get my breath back. I turned and glared at the gym doors. I’d been doing a lot of that recently, anyway.
“Look, El, not all of us can throw a lot of power into combat spells or even useful potions, and…. This person… is good at painting. And imbueing paintings with spells. And this is inspirational, and the spell built into it…”
“I can TELL what that spell does!” I didn’t tell her that it was because it was a close cousin to one of the several mind-control spells I had acquirred in there, as easily as breathing, over the years. I took a deep breath, and had another look at The Mural.
(You’re going to make me describe it, aren’t you…. Aaargh…. )
There were a lot of figures in it. It was a big crowd scene, really. All of us there, all the American and European and quite a lot of the other seniors, packed into a crowd scene. I mean there must have been 300 figures in it. All charging dynamically forwards, spells and artefacts and shields in hand. A valiant and courageous army of combat wizards. I picked out Alfie holding up a shield, and Magnus, and Chloe herself, and Aadhya rocking out on her lute, and…. Yeah, loads of us recognisable. It was, technically, very good. It had Orion, a tad larger than life, at the front, charging out with that predatory grin on his face, his sword of liquid light glowing in hand. I …. was fine with that. What got me was ME and the rhyme. There was me, at the back of the crowd, floating waist high above those before me, arms outstretched, glowing eyes and hands and ripples of power spreading out above us all… Looking back, I can see it was more of a “go forth my minions” sort of look. But I remember thinking that it should have been subtitled “Go forth my maddened thralls, and die in my name!”
(Look, I have completely gotten over how I look when fully empowered. I don’t even think “Behold your Dark Goddess!” if I catch sight of myself in something. Don’t ask Orion, he’s biased.)
And then there was the rhyme, making it all abundantly clear.
(Must I? You’re a terror.)
“Orion Brightsword leads attack,
El Darkfire has our back,
United class of Seventeen,
Victorious, the Galadhrim!”
Yes, the elves in Lord of the Rings. Galadriels followers. That mural had cast most of the seniors as an army under my patronage… and command. It was a good spell. It was a song of unity and courage and fellowship, and that was fine. And it placed everyone in it under my command and control, however gently. Oh, and Orions. If he even noticed. But I did. Having seen it, every damn senior, walking past The Mural, with themselves in it, would be affected by it. Would have consented to it. I could feel them now, like a handful of strands of cobweb around a finger, hundreds of powerful young minds in gossamer leashes…. I could snap them with a tug, or sever them with a thought…. Or pour power into them and bind them all to my will.
(Yeah, now you get it. Just what I needed. A new and interesting form of temptation.)
I explained this all to Chloe, who turned very pale. And I could see her weighing various things in her head, and then she stepped forwards and hugged me. And I froze.
(I have got better at accepting hugs. I have! Don’t give me that look!)
And she said “I believe in you El.” Soppy great spoilt little enclaver that she was. “I trust you NOT to do that, to grab us all by the mind and drag us along.”
Well she was right. I wasn’t going to do that. But I could. And I now knew that I could. That it was an option. Which was not a nice feeling, but it had plenty of company in that. In the Scholomance. In that last year…
(Yeah. Yeah, it’s very different now. We did good there.)
So I asked Chloe, as I prised her off and steered us back to the dorms, how the hell that mural got up there. And she was chattering about transferred and expanded paintings as a copying technique, and reduced lifespan mitigated by the fixative resin, and we’d managed to calm down by the time we got back done to the senior dorms, and I asked her not to tell anyone else about it. The others had plenty of other things to worry about, even if “El goes mad and mindwipes everyone” wasn’t already on their list.
(What? Yes I told them later. Um. Much later. I told Aadhya last year? Stop that.)
But I didn’t use that connection. And of course, a week or two later I ended up going and kicking the graduation door halls, and we stopped doing the gym runs, and it all turned out very different. And you know that story.
(Yes, I did. Once. Dammit. Yes, it is the end of the story, but… Yes, I still cringe. Very well. Last bit.)
It was when I marched into the enclave war in Portugal. Decked out in the family gold, having kicked my way into the estate in Sintra, filled with enclavers throwing everything at each other, and that was just the gardens.
So there I was, wandering those damn winding paths, sucking up the power from every spell being aimed at me, and I realised that those little cobweb connections to my fellow recent graduates were humming gently with the amount of power being thrown around.
I was able, in a moment, to sort through them and find that a large chunk of them were nearby. As in, in there with me.
(Yes, because recent Scholomance graduates are traditionally hair-trigger lethal combat mages in top condition, because otherwise they don’t graduate. We’ve discussed this.)
And I remember thinking, I just need to gather them. Just get a few good friends to stand here with me. So I took that bundle of cobweb strands, and let slip most of them. And the rest, those nearby, I sent a surge of power down, not to tighten or strengthen the leash, but to burn it away, and in doing so, sending a mental slap and a message. And I’d jumped into doing that before realising this needed some sort of invocation, and I had no time for subtle, so….
(Stop it! I CAN do subtle! Mass summons in a firefight is never going to be subtle! Aaaargh!)
So I threw back my head and called out in voice and mind and power “Galadhrim! To me!”
(Yes, I know. Yes, I KNOW. Stop it! No don’t you dare!)
And yes, it worked. The spellfire dropped by a LOT, and folk started scrambling across the hex-wrought terrain towards me. I remember the first one was Tomas, from the Argentinian enclave. Because he came running, and slid to a halt, at one bloody knee, at my feet. And looked up at me, ash all down one side of his face, and declaimed “My life is yours, milady!”
It’s not as if he’d hung around Orion too long or anything. And while I gawped he stood up and said “Seriously El, I owe you my life.”
To which I recall, in a moment of poise and eloquence going “wut?” I was also getting over what I’d just bellowed.
“El, you jumped into a damn maw-mouth to save me. I remember all too well, even if you don’t.”
Yeah, and that memory grounded me heavily. That last push through the gates. The maw-mouth that was… part of London? “Yes, Tomas, that was… a very busy day. Thank you.”
(I have mastered British understatement, I say. Mastered it. Yes, he reminds me of that in a Christmas card, every year.)
And after Tomas came several other recent graduates, and some more people I recognised, and THEIR friends, until I’d brought the garden warfare to a screaming halt. And then I took my little band and we broke into the cavern by the Scholomance gates. The one and only time I led the Galadhrim. A command I was given in dangerous error, used once lightly, and then dropped with relief.
(No, you may not name any other group as that. And that’s the end of that story. Now you tell one…)