#2. NABRAS KAHN

Nabras was practically skipping down the street with joy, her hands uncontrollable as she danced down the street. The light inside her was so elevating she felt like she was barely holding onto the ground. Gravity had little hold on her now, she had just received the best news in the world.

She was going to Yearma Academy.

It was almost unbelievable. “A Kahn, going to Yearma.” She couldn’t stop the smile the spread across her face then, so tight that her cheeks felt like they might snap off. She was running now, she had to tell her mother, her father. Her cat!

She tore down the alley next to her house, skidded around the corner and stopped out front. Her parents were standing there with their friend Kulmo. Nabras didn’t know how to feel about the man, his eyes were always shaded by the thick eyebrows above them, and he spoke to her so little that as far as she knew, she was nothing more than floor decoration in his eyes.

Kulmo turned and looked at her. She caught a brief glimpse of his blueish orbs before they entered shadow. “Hmmm,” he said. “Nabras.” He turned to her parents, nodded politely and turned away, slowly walking down the street from the house.

Her parents turned. Her mother, Lila, was a lot like Nabras. Thin, long black hair, an easy smile. Nabras never felt uncomfortable there. It was similar with her father, Kyden, but he was the exact opposite from them with his wide chest and stoic expression.

They both wore a blank expression as their gaze fell upon her. Lila spoke first, asking “Did you come home from the testing early?”

Nabras nodded, unable to contain her mirth. “I did. I passed. I passed!”

They both nodded, unsurprised. It was her father who asked the important question. “Where did you test into?”

She couldn’t contain herself any longer and lunged at them to embrace them, saying, “They are sending me to Yearma!”

The hug was cut short as her father pulled her back to hold her at arms length. His face was a contorted mess of expressions, half a smile, half a grimace, tinged with a strange mixture of shock. Her mother wore an expression of guilt, grief…. was it jealousy Nabras saw?

“Yearma?” her father asked.

The tone of his voice was so starkly different to the emotions within her that she couldn’t help but laugh. “What is so serious? Yearma Academy is the best there is. It is the only place that will help me become a Maker!”

Her parents exchanged a glance, relaxed themselves, and embraced her together. After a short moment, they both pulled away, looking at her with mixed expressions.

Lila spoke. “Yearma… I guess you caught us both surprised.”

Kyden nodded. “I expected Uthmari, or maybe Pollas. But Yearma…”

Nabras couldn’t help but feel there was still an air of negativity around her revelation. She crossed her arms, frowning. “What do you two have against Yearma?”

Lila shook her head, hands coming up defensively. “Its not like that-“

Kyden was obviously not in agreement, cutting off his wife. “Yearma produces heretics. Many there claim that Arkanite makes us weak, wishing to go back to the Crimson Era.”

Lila slapped her husband on the arm, silencing him. She gave him a stern expression before looking back to Nabras. “There are Magus there who… think like those from the ancient days.”

Nabras, quick to anger, was already frowning. “I am not a child who is going to be made-“

Kyden slashed the air with a hand, stopping her. “It is not you I fear, but those around you. You could be the most capable person there and still get caught up in a spell that someone else can’t control because they decided to smuggle in a chip of Red Mysterium to experiment with.”

Nabras groaned. It was such an old argument that she didn’t know if was even still relevant. She locked eyes with her father. “You make an argument without logical weight. You agreed, you both agreed to let me become a Magus. You both agreed to let me attend an Academy.” She pointed at her father aggressively. “You told me to always follow my word, or do not speak them.” She took a step forward, finger pointed at his throat. “Are you making a liar of yourself, old man?”

For a long moment they stared at one another before Kyden’s face broke out into a huge grin. He took her up into a tight hug, saying, “I should never fear for a woman who contains the Kahn flame within her.”

They walked inside, now sharing in the general sense of joy that Nabras was exuding in abundance. Despite their efforts, she could tell that they were both perturbed by her assignment. As subtle as the two of them could be at times, Nabras decided that they both were terrible at hiding their feelings.

That night, Kyden came to Nabras’s room to wish her goodnight. She was already tucked into bed, reading a tome titled “The Articulation of Mana: Insights into Magical Architecture and Mechanics”. He came and sat at the edge of her bed, pointing to the leather cover.

“To think you can contain all this in your head,” he remarked.

She smiled, closing the tome and placing it on her bedside table. “I remember the important stuff. Its more useful to know which page to find the information rather than everything on the page.”

He ran a finger along the embossing on the spine. “What if you are without your book?”

She smiled, reaching out a hand to rest it on his arm. “Like I said, I remember the important stuff.”

He chuckled, hands coming to rest in his lap. For a moment he had the demeanor of a child, of someone who didn’t know how to deal with what lie before them. It was funny to Nabras that he, of all people, wouldn’t know how to face a problem.

She did him the kindness of speaking first. “You’re worried.”

He nodded. “You’ve lived in Tasos your whole life. Our realm, its a peaceful one. There are some out there that are not so peaceful.” He took a deep breath, then sighed. “You are going to Rackaman, a strange realm. It is a place I do not understand, so I fear for what you may experience there.”

She shook her head, tightening her grip on his arm. “You fear even the wonderous things I will see?”

He nodded. “And also the vastly terrible things.” He sighed again, this one containing a weight of dread in it. “I am not a Magus. I cannot comprehend what you will see. In this way, I have not been able to prepare you.”

She laid back, looking up at his face. “Do you fear the Leylines?” He shook his head. “The Portal?” Again, he shook his head. “Then what?”

For a long moment they sat in silence as Kyden wrestled with himself. She could see it in the play of movement over his face, each feeling trying to break free from his iron-hard grip.

Finally, he said, “I fear that when you finally learn the size of this spectacular world, how complicated it is, how intriguing, how chaotic… I fear that you will forget the lesser things.”

She let his words settle, felt her heart turning over. Tears came to her eye and she sat up and embraced her father, clinging to him tight. “Never,” she said.

Nabras couldn’t help but feel the immediateness of all of this. In a short period of time, barely two weeks, she would be traveling a Leyline to another realm. She would be integrating herself into the world of magic and spells, in the shaping of reality.

In a short time, she would be leaving everything she ever knew behind.

She hugged her father tighter, letting him go only after he did. He was mollified for now, at least, and the small grin on his face was enough to let her know that things would be okay.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Kalfis wrestled within the bag on her back. For a moment she felt confusion, but then only the claws digging into her shoulder from within.

She cried out in pain, drawing the eyes of the others at the station. She disengaged the angry cat from her back and tried to avoid the gazes that watched her then. She grabbed the bag, bringing it up to her face. From within she heard Kalfis’s low growl, and then claws reapeared in the fabric.

“For a natural predator, you have little patience,” she said, admonishing the angry creature. In her head, she felt a Perturbance, magical currents from other beings.

Kalfis, it seemed, was not pleased with Nabras.

After a tense moment, the claws slowly removed themselves from the fabric, followed by a soft mewling. Nabras smiled, knowing she had cowed Kalfis for a little while. “Its only a little longer, be patient.” She decided to risk it and slipped a hand into the bag, giving the cat a gentle and reaffirming pet. She relaxed as she felt a soft purring fill him, and then a gentle lick on her finger.

She gingerly replaced the bag onto her shoulder before continuing.

She was in Billus, the city nearest her village. It was the only place in her realm with a Leyline Portal, and where she must go in order to travel to Yearma. Her farewells to her parents had been brief, yet she knew that in only a few months time she would be allowed to enter the Leyline Portal and return to Tasos. That goodbye was not permanent.

She was presently walking down a main avenue, the wide street filled with people on their way to an uncountable number of unknown places. As she moved among them, she felt herself as their equal, another counterpart of anonymity going somewhere from somewhere. As one among the crowd, she was a question unasked, and unanswered. By the time she came upon the Leyline Portal at the heart of the city, she was nothing more than a blank canvas on which her future would be painted.

The portal was underwhelming. She had seen paintings of it, and had been told of its grandeur. But now, standing before it, it seemed only a faint ring of light suspended in the air. It wasn’t so big, or so grand.

For a second she felt doubt. “Is all magic like this?” But she pushed the thought away. She could see it in her head now, a woman walking through flames and summoning darkness.

“Ankara,” she thought, and a shiver covered her body. Her hairs stood on end and she felt like she as on the precipice of such power.

She stood there under the Leyline Portal, dozens of others there waiting to transit. One of the Transit Guards, a man dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit trimmed in black, held up a glowing white wand, the carved wooden handle siting elegantly in his fingers. Another guard joined him, and then one more. The three of them held up their hands and their wands began to glow brighter and brighter.

Nabras’s gaze moved upward, and her heart began to pulse harder. The faint red circle of the portal had begun to turn, the color shifting to a bright white. It grew larger, thickening, the inner form of it roiling and tearing in on itself. The space within the ring began to warp, the image of the sky beyond it twisting and flexing until a great rip of darkness opened with the perimeter of the ring, accompanied by a thundering roar. The world began to flicker around her and she felt her stomach begin to turn. On her back, Kalfis clawed into her but she didn’t feel it. She couldn’t see anything but the ring, its pulsing, shifting power filling the space around her.

And then it was nothing but formless color. A surge of energy and a spackling of white, starry lights across her vision.

And then she slammed into her next life with the force of a counterweight cut from a crane. A momentary, sickening sense of weightlessness that ended with her landing on the platform hard on her rear.

For a moment she sat there, her lungs heaving with the suddenness of it all. Despite the distintncess of each moment, the transit had felt… timeless. It could have been a moment or ten centuries and she would not be able to tell.

A firm hand clapped on her shoulder. “First transit, eh? Don’t worry, we always get a few fallers.” She looked up, saw one of the Transit Guards from earlier. He quickly lifted her up, dodged away as Kalfis attacked the wall of her bag nearest him. He chuckled. “Not many that have cats.”

She felt heat rush to her face. “I am so sorry about that. He isn’t usually so…”

“Fiesty?” he asked, smiling. She nodded. He motioned above them, to the ring in its inactive state. “If I didn’t know what this thing was and I went through it, I’d be angry too.”

That was when she started to look around her. The scenery was so drastically different she couldn’t help the wide smile that took over face. The boorish, grayscale buildings of Bullis had disappeared. In their place stood magnificent towers of marble, capped in tiles of reds and blues and greens. Far above, there were machines flying in the sky, and people sitting in them as the pilots. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, the city was by far more magnificent than the Leyline Portal.

This was Yearma. Nabras was home.

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