The Bar Pit Exam

A soft Breeze brushes past, and even behind her mask she feels it on her face. The streets are alight with activity, shops full and lush with the labors of the Beast Folk, whom thanks to her desires she must count herself In common.

Her little daughter in tow, just old enough to play amongst her own sort.

Sima, unlike her little Mayetwain, was not so unambiguously a beast. Her nose and face were only just within acceptable proportions amongst the Mages with whom she’d trained. Her ears though, set low, large and pointed were something of notice even before her desires got the better of her.

Sima, unlike her still too young daughter, had been embittered in her life.

“Mama!” Mayetwain says. “Mamma!” though at the repetition she responds.

“Yes love?”

“That nice lady gave me a sweet!” she said pointing to the lady who’d handed the candy off. A horned woman with sharp eyes.

“Oh, how lovely!” Sima says, checking it for the little feliform, happy that her girl was being treated well. Kind people existed everywhere, but not always for beasts and not always without caveats. Seeing that she could hand it back to her daughter she walked up to the shop woman who’d offered the candy.

“Oh greetings! You must be the kit’s mama, how’ve you been?”

“Well I believe.”

“Good, good.” She says, “I’ve been rather curious about you, you keep busy, and you're seen often, but it’s hard to get a read on you asides from your kit’s openness. I know you're from a more magically inclined place.”

“I was. Though I’m not certain why the practice is seen as suspicious here.” Given what Sima knew about the beasts and magic, it seemed an odd thing to reject. Given what she knew about the beastlands recent history, it wasn’t too confusing in reality. It was simply polite to say so.

“Well, considering the nature of enchantments? It's easier to ban it all outright without competent mage’s on our side.”

“Competent?”

“Well, magework can’t be that unlike other skill sets. It's not plain power, it's an understanding of it that defines competence in just about anything right?”

“I suppose so.” Sima agreed for the most part, though like any skill learned without the power to actually use, it left the skill untested and damnably useless. Especially with magic. A person might have a perfect memory of every rune in the book and their interactions, but drawing it up for another to use? It was a haphazard method, but it was all you had if you had no power of your own.

Her day went on, and her home as of now was not so far away, nor so different from the cells in the magelinds, so even as it was late she could get home with little trouble. Though Mayetwain would likely manage even in much lower light conditions.

Looking out their window to the sky, it became obvious that some great strangeness was happening in the usually temperate sky, a bright light cut through like clouds, then shriveled up just before morning light. Something of its shape had happened years before, and decades before that, and it always followed that some great catastrophe would fall upon the land.

She wondered at that moment what shape would the next catastrophe be in?

Her dreams move her in the nights moving forwards, memories from before this safer place, this land of beasts, even as an outsider she is safe. As an outsider she could be of use. But how can she make it so?

Her daughter wakes and of course looks up as well, it was some years before her birth that the last great split occurred in the sky, and the last more than a century before that. It’s been said before rather vaguely that the beasts followed these signs politically, given that the advancements and pitfalls of the beastlands track in turn with these events.

She smiles at the memory, as mixed as it was and since she’s spoken of it before her daughter asks, “If it is so, then what will happen next?”

And despite being rather groggy and a little unsure, Sima thinks to answer, “I don’t know. I hope it's something good.” As such their days go on, her Mayetwain still a mite too small for more complicated schooling, her days needed to be rather short, Sima taking her extra hours to study the legalities of the beastlands beyond her tenuous circumstances.

Her daughter doesn’t think much of the books, as due to the nature of her eyes she was likely too far-sighted to read comfortably. Sima had been concerned about this at one point, but the midwives in the beastlands offer more options for assistance than in the magelands. She’d known Feliforms in the magelands, that was afterall how she fell pregnant when she did. There were methods of shortening their vision, cruel little rooms meant to forcefully bind eyes into a reading ready shape, but it was still the rare Feliform that could read even after that without a headache.

Even her lover, for all his natural power, could not see anything clearly if placed close to his face, and the attempt to focus strained him terribly. Though reading was a rarely useful skill for Feliforms even in the beastlands there were plenty of works dictated by them and scribed rather more honestly than she could imagine being acceptable in the magelands.

Had she done similarly for her love, the act would’ve seemed ostentatious and strictly dishonest simply for its cross purposes with the going propaganda, let alone her personal affections for the man.

It was one of the few areas regarding magic with little gap in the libraries she had access to, as the common traits of Feliforms, magical inclinations, and what was sometimes dubbed unfair-luck, were absolutely useful domestically and militaristically.

Reliable rune-work was treated with substantially more suspicion, as while they were served with mention the source texts were, she found usually inaccessible to her. It was at that point she started reading up on the legal records on the subject, finding the rather reliable link between the prejudices she found familiar and the excessive countermeasures which she now saw as a foothold.

It was some moments within this realisation that a breeze broke forth and she rather concerningly realized that Mayetwain, likely completely bored by Sima’s research, had wandered away. She asked after her whereabouts from the librarian before finding her nerves and how apparently silently she’d snuck past any other gaze.

She went rather mad on her search now that her plans were certain. It took longer than she’d have liked before she found a nook where she could hear a child reading.

The child was unmistakably the ideal of the magelands, at least in her face. All the other non-beastial forms, the people who took up ranks here seemed ill-formed, ugly, or simply unhealthy. This one, as plain was her visage, was healthy. In a way that she did not expect to see in the beastlands.

The vision is so incongruous that the fact her daughter was the only one listening was somehow surprising.

Her little girl for her part was lying in a sunbathed fashion looking indirectly at the older girl, though her ears were certainly pert and alert in a similar fashion she’d seen flashes of from her lover. Her ears twitch, and she turns towards Sima and scrabbles up from her lounging, “Mama, you’re here!”

“Of course I am, I couldn’t exactly leave you here.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No. You at least stayed in the building.”

“Ah. This is my friend Alilaih! She’s reading for me!”

“Oh? That’s rather kind. It’s nice to meet you Alilaih.”

“Certainly!”, The older girl says. Staring rather embarrassingly at her mask, before asking, “are you Simavirta the mage?”

“Yes. Wherever did you learn my name?”

“Well father speaks of mageland refugees often, you were a rather rare sight.”

“That’s rather unexpected.”

“I suppose it would be, but mages of your type are rather rare. It would be foolish not to think after you. There is also the matter of your loyalties.”

“My loyalties?”

“You’ve been rather earnest, but you seem to hold little ambition aside from your kin until now. This isn’t a problem, hearts need to heal of course.”

“I see. Is my behavior concerning here as well?”

“Not especially. Actually, I was wondering if you would like to take the Garredov?”

“The Garredov?”

“It is the minimum requirement for becoming a politician in the beastlands. For gaining the right to write and interpret laws.”

“Yes I’ve heard of it before. Why exactly would I qualify?”

“Well, on a basic level anyone could qualify. But you are an educated person with real links to the beastlands. There’s utility in that.”

“My lover wasn’t born here.”

“But he was of the stock, and well. It’s rare that the beastfolk aren’t treated worse when far away.”

“It’s strange to hear such words from such a kind face.”

“I suppose it is. Still. It’s something to think about.” Alilaih pointed out, Sima said her goodbyes and the mother daughter pair left the building. Mayetwain had much to say about her new friend, apparently the girl was not only blindingly intelligent and interesting, but she’d apparently been born only a little while before the last major celestial-slash, and might’ve been something like a prophet, though her daughter did not place the word yet.

Sima wasn’t certain, but that was the shape of spirit she’d described. It wouldn’t be long before she’d see the girl again, rather habitually speaking with Mayetwain and leading the girl around in relative safety.

One day, Alilaih was called out to the town hall which of course she asked Sima to go with her. Feeling that her placement there would be advantageous. The scene before her was disturbing to say the least. The high door through which the secret-most-chamber was placed was wide open, revealing a short circular stairway up towards a great pit ill-suited to be anything but a torture room.

A body, familiar to her as that of a beast bled, arranged by the steps awaiting care from a professional.

Another sat by him, more even, chimeric in features, and larger than most was a skull-faced beast, piebald was the term, wide eared in a fashion familiar to herself though as expressive as a voice. As her lover.

But more familiar still as the face of the shepherd. The beast who bewitched Kings and warlords to the cause of advancing beastkind.

Alilaih was allowed passage into this room, while Sima did not desire to enter far too aware of the devotions of the space. The little girl walked straight up to the piebald man, offering her arms in concern she could only imagine as that of a child to her papa. Alilaih with her kind face comforting the master of all beasts.

Her father. Mosis Opensky.

As such her being there was an intrusion. But she could not exactly leave without being dismissed, and the piebald man looked to her, “ah, Simavirta. You’ve been well.” he said too pleasantly having apparently slashed a man to near death.

“I am.”

“You’ve studied a great many things in your time”

“Yes I have.”

“I’ve heard you're interested in the Garredov.”

“Certainly.” Sima says looking at the stairway and the pit which it surrounds. And pointedly not at the body. It was rather well known what the risk was to fool hardy measures, lies were possible but the price was swift.

“The season after next. That, I can offer you. Until then, hold dear all you know now.”

“I’ll keep my attention on the texts available to me.”

“Good. I hope you can be honest. Simavirta.” And as such he picked himself up, notably taller than most men Sima had known yet slim cut, if a figure could be as such. Sima backed away as a nurse walked past to care for the wounded, Mosis and Alilaih left the space at leisure and Sima could not help a stone-like pause in her movements.

Suddenly her abstract desire to settle here looked bleak, and yet she was certain that it was all she could do. The days whittle away, and she builds a rotation of friends who would care for Mayetwain in the coming season. Three months she would be away, in the pit with the master of beasts, she would be questioned, and she would be tested, and she would only know what shape it took once she was lowered in.

And so the day of she isn’t ready but she goes anyway.

Finally sunk she looked up at the frescos on the ceiling which, distance blurred, before a cover was applied and they were trapped in darkness.

“Is this meant to feel like a jar?” she asked her fellow prisoner of Garredov, to wit he said nothing, and she went on. “I suppose it is a jar, in a sense. Though it lacks wax.”

She can feel his eyes in the darkness, and with what little light is offered betwixt the slats in the cover leave his face in bold relief. And with the recognition she smiles and asks, “May I make a light for you? To guide our way?”

When he smiles back she sees a spark in her hands, and his face made sharp by shadows as the darkness was sliced through. A fire of sorts, made from a rune drawn by her own hand onto a wooden block and fed by her daughter’s newest joy.

He makes no remark upon the sight, but she is not less emboldened by this, and so she asks, “What way shall we go?”

This is the question which starts her trial.

“Anyway you like.”

“Well that’s hardly an answer.”

“It’s really the only answer.”

“How annoying. I won’t get away with only the jargon will I?”

He smiles at her and they find will to ramble on as the paths hidden by the very earth around the city center are revealed to her the light ever-present upon request. Catacombs of catacombs, labyrinth of labyrinths, a week they wander together in the darkness until it could at once be said he knew her as well as the paths made there.

In the darkness where there was little noise, she was trapped. And suddenly as if beheld only by the ghost of her love, he is a stranger. She at once knew who he was as a general, as the master of beasts, and still worse it was as if no word used for him was accurate. A leader which leads nothing, nothing which is everything. And she is angry, because long before the spell which ruined her, there was a Feliform whose eyes had been ruined by a nation that hated him, and a Liliaform mage who… She should be honest, should she not?

“There was a battle four years ago.” She starts, and he knows because it was common to him. Simavirta had been a mage in use against them, and her love, before he died, had been her source.

Used up, blood and soul. Ignorant to what she carried, blind in grief, she tried to bring him back. It was botched, and it was wrong, and how lucky she was not to die. Unfairly her Mayetwain. “I was banished for it.” she says. And she feels the fire try to flick out.

Just you try little flame, just try.

“I wonder, did you choose that battle? Those lawmakers, those lawyers and soldiers? Is this not your nation?” coldhearted she thinks, herself, her keeper, her once enemies.

Could they not have listened all those years before? Taken a fair thought against their cruel illusions? Could they not have loved their tame few and let it be?

Alone in the dark, she feels it. His hand in hers. Where fire once was, where her love once was, led like a child even as she’s fallen down.

“Did you?” He offers, “Did you choose the battle?”

She doesn’t answer, but she finds the block and relights their path. How has anyone died here? She thinks

The days went on, and her ideas spilled as easily as her memory had, and soon they were discussing uses for her skills. Jobs that her history and education could make use of, things that centuries of war had made otherwise impossible to recover.

It was her niche, the space she could be of most use, and he’d offered thought of it in the first month down here. And yet she knew it would be a hard sell outside this place. She said so frankly, and they kept going around the idea only stopping to feed themselves and reconvene on the softest of subjects.

She’d shared too much of her dear lover with Mosis, and he, his lovers in turn, ancient as he was, there’d been many. Children too that he’d kept an eye on for his shorter lived companions, though his Alilaih was still the only one he’d adopted so summarily.

By the end of her season every thought she could’ve had had spilled, and she was none the worse for wear, though she found herself rather light sensitive for a while after.

It was really no certainty that she’d take office, that required civilian support, but the facts were in evidence regarding her retention of bestial law. Moreover the trust she offered in her walking the path for so long was itself seen positively.

Walking through the market finally in the light she was more certain of her choices than she’d ever been, and more certain that she could live honestly for once, rather than hiding everything she felt good about and waiting for it all to die.