Just a Bystander

Chapter 18: Cracks

The rest of the week passed without as much 'excitement' as I feared. There were no further ground-shattering revelations in our lessons about the nature of arcanophany and the world, nor did Ambrose drop any dire pronouncements. After that one incident in the dorm and our subsequent session in the duelling chamber, he seemed largely content to simply go back to the patterns of behaviour we had established before I found out he was the Chosen One.

We had a Principles of Advanced Arcanophany tutorial in our smaller groups, and at first, I had been more than a little intimidated to find out that Reeves would be taking my group (while Jerric was turning green with envy). Thankfully, Reeves was quite different in the setting of a smaller group. We were all pleasantly surprised to find that he was a very patient and methodical instructor as he helmed a discussion on the philosophy behind arcanophany itself, and I left the class with a better appreciation of the field as a whole even though we hadn't touched on any technical aspects of arcanophany.

The school week ended with our first practical session in Advanced Glyphs, where we were tasked with deconstructing a commercial artefact into its constituent glyph sequences. After what we had learnt so far, we were aware that it could be a highly dangerous endeavour, and attempting something as fiendishly difficult as that after only one lesson on theory, and on the first week of school, seemed absurd. But when Celwyn produced a wall clock, there was an audible sigh of relief from almost everyone. It did prove surprisingly challenging since there were plenty of advanced glyphs being used and we weren't completely familiar with the expanded vocabulary, but together the class managed to break it down and identify every sequence and function. It was amazing how much arcanophany went into such a common household artefact.

Before I knew it, I was facing my first weekend in the Academy.

"Do you guys have anything planned?" Ambrose asked.

It was nine in the morning on Saturday. Everyone was seated at the table, getting ready to tuck into a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and buttered toast (proudly prepared by Devon), except for Kevan who was still asleep. I noticed Lynus quietly setting a portion aside for his brother and placing a cover over it.

Jerric looked curiously at Ambrose. "You've got something in mind?"

"I was thinking we get started on learning how to resist Reeves' compulsion," he replied earnestly.

There was a palpable shift in the mood. Devon froze for a moment, then tried to cover it by noisily resuming his meal. Lynus let out a soft huff. Jerric raised his eyebrows, looking perturbed. Ambrose's face fell at this almost-universal negative response.

"We've got to do it eventually," I said slowly, looking around at the others. "And we'll all make sure that we don't have a repeat of what happened that day."

"Do you think Kevan will be okay with it?" Jerric asked Lynus, looking worried.

Lynus didn't reply immediately. He looked like he was choosing his words with great care. "He'll be on board. But we'll all need to be very upfront about what to expect. And we need to set some rules for everyone to follow about how this practice is going to go."

Ambrose nodded. "It's not a parlour trick. Jerric pointed out that there are serious ethical issues here. We're learning it because we have to, and we'll make sure that we don't abuse it, especially on each other."

There were cautious nods around the table. It was a bit of a pity how the topic had put such a damper over the morning because Devon's cooking was excellent. Unfortunately, the rest of breakfast passed in complete silence as everyone darkly contemplated what we were going to do later that day.

Kevan woke an hour later and was taken aside by Lynus. I sensed some tension as the two of them spoke in hushed tones in the room, although they left the door open, but when Lynus came out and spotted me he gave a thumbs up and a small smile.

It was a quarter to twelve when the rest of us found ourselves back in a duelling chamber, standing in a loose circle in the centre. This time, we weren't able to secure the largest one since it had already been booked. A glance at the reservation book revealed that many of the chambers had been taken up. It seemed that the rest of the student body got plenty of use out of them over the weekend too.

"So, after Caden and I experimented, it's clear that this compulsion thing can be really... damaging," Ambrose said, apparently struggling to find an appropriate word to cover the consequences.

Kevan snorted.

"So it's clear we need some boundaries so we can protect each other," Ambrose continued, choosing not to remark on the sense of hostility emanating from Kevan. "Let's talk about what these boundaries should be."

"The compulsion should be something small and harmless," Devon volunteered immediately. "Like standing up, like what Reeves did to us."

There were nods all around.

"Thanks, Devon," Ambrose said. "Case in point, later that day Caden and I tried to make the other person run, and Caden got a little hurt when he fell to his knees. So let's keep it really small."

"On that note," Jerric added, "we should announce our intention first. It's not realistic since Reeves isn't going to tell us what he's going to do, but since this is just practice we should give each other some adjustment time."

More nods all around.

"The person who's the target should have final say over what the compulsion is." This time it was Kevan who spoke. I was surprised to hear him sounding so calm and composed. He seemed to have reined himself in a little more and was now looking focused, not angry.

There was agreement from the rest. After a pause, when no one volunteered anything else, Ambrose went through them again. "So small compulsions only, announce the intent beforehand, and give the target the final say over the type of compulsion. We can add more as we go along, if necessary."

Once again, I found myself marvelling at how Ambrose had suddenly become so at-ease, casually taking command of the space and organising us as if it was second nature to him. He was a very different person in ordinary social settings, where he seldom spoke and only volunteered his opinion in a very tentative manner. Here, he was confident, precise, authoritative.

It made me wonder if the Prophecy had altered his personality, which was a rather sad thought. Who was the real Ambrose? What kind of person might he have been had it never sunk its claws into him? And what was it like to be him? Did he even know how differently he behaved in these new contexts? If he did know, was he okay with it?

"Alright, Caden," Ambrose said, turning to me. "Why don't you talk us through how you actually perform a compulsion on someone else?"

"Hmm?" I was rudely snapped out of my thoughts by the sudden request. "Uhh, is that something I can just tell them, or is it one of those things that should be figured out by someone on their own?"

"This one's safe."

"Okay... give me a moment." I took a breath and organised my thoughts. "So Reeves told us on that first day that there's a link between auric and ambient arcana, and with enough focus and discipline, we can shape both types of arcana with our will alone. He said that ambient arcana is both channel and source."

"Yes, that's why his compulsion is glyphless," Jerric nodded. "So how do you get the ambient arcana to become a channel?"

"That's where the commonality comes in," I explained. "We have to realise that the way we control our auric arcana can also be used, in a certain fashion, to control the ambient arcana. When you will a change to happen within your auric arcana, you can will that same change in the ambient arcana when your auric arcana interacts with it."

"So we just... wish really, really hard?" Devon asked blankly.

"No," Ambrose said patiently. "Devon, form a small ball using your auric arcana. No glyphs."

Devon complied, and we all watched as some arcana leeched out of his upturned palm, pooling slightly before it coalesced into a ghostly ball.

"How did you make that happen, exactly?" Ambrose probed.

"I just... want it to happen. I expect it to happen because that's what I want," Devon said, trying to put the idea into words.

"That's exactly it," I said, forming a ball of my own. "The way we shape our auric arcana, almost subconsciously now, is something we had to build up to when we were kids. We've got to refine that control over our auric arcana, and realise it can be used to influence the ambient arcana in a very similar way."

The ball in my hand floated upwards, grew a little in size as it drew in ambient arcana and coloured it blue, then slowly sank back towards my hand.

"I think I get it," Jerric said, watching my visual demonstration. "You invest your auric arcana with your intent, your compulsion. Then you also add in the intent for the auric arcana to transfer that compulsion to the ambient arcana. That's where the connection is made."

I nodded, realising that he had captured the essence of what I meant. I hadn't known how to explain that you also needed to include the intent to propagate in your auric arcana before you injected it into the ambient arcana. It was something that had simply formed wordlessly in my head at that moment when I had tried to pry the secrets out of Ambrose.

"Yes, you've explained it quite clearly," I said approvingly.

Now that everyone had the idea, it was down to the actual application of it. We all settled on aiming for getting the other person to sit down, and then paired off with our roommates to try and get it to work. Ambrose and I had decided not to attempt shielding yet, so once we had successfully gotten each other to sit involuntarily, we went around helping the rest.

After ten minutes, Jerric was the first to succeed, and Devon sat down with an unhappy thump. He tried to talk Devon through the process, but Jerric's technical explanations were causing the frown lines on Devon's forehead to deepen.

"Dev, remember when you cooked the eggs this morning?" I asked, coming up to the pair of them.

"What about the eggs?" he asked a bit grumpily. "I know they were a bit overdone, okay? You wanna talk about my cooking now?"

"No, actually I thought they were perfect," I laughed. "I'm trying an analogy here. Maybe it'll help. You had to toss some butter in the pan first, right?"

"Right," he said, slightly mollified.

"The compulsion to sit is the solid slab of butter. The heated pan is the ambient arcana. So you toss it in, and you focus on getting the compulsion to melt into the ambient arcana, just like how the butter melts into the pan."

He shot me a dubious look but decided to humour me. A moment later, Jerric and I found ourselves seated on the floor next to a very elated Devon.

"Thanks, Caden! That made it click."

"Happy to help," I grinned. Devon's enthusiasm was rather infectious.

While I had been occupied with Jerric and Devon, the twins had successfully made each other sit and were already trying to move on to subtler compulsions, but apparently with little success.

"It's harder when you want something smaller," Lynus said as the rest of us came over.

"What do you mean?" Ambrose asked, looking very interested.

"Sitting and standing are big actions, so the compulsion is pretty strong somehow. But try getting the other person to scratch their nose."

"May I?" I asked, turning to Ambrose. He nodded. Meanwhile, Devon had resigned himself to being Jerric's guinea pig first.

The mechanism of sending out a compulsion was pretty familiar to me by now, so I focused on forming the compulsion itself. When I tried to get Ambrose to spill his secrets, I had simply copied the impulse to confide that I had experienced before. For the impulse to flee, I had copied that after being on the receiving end of it. Even the impulse to sit we had just used was something I had adapted by simply reversing the impulse to stand that Reeves had used on us. I hadn't ever come up with something original.

I found that it was hard for me to even form the compulsion to scratch a nose. After five minutes, I wasn't the only one making frustrated sounds. When it was clear that it wasn't that easy to do, we had all abandoned turn-taking and were trying to see who could force someone to scratch their noses first.

"See what I mean?" Lynus said, sounding irritable. Kevan looked equally annoyed.

"Why is this harder than sitting or standing?" Devon grumbled.

Ambrose and Jerric had almost identical looks on their faces as they turned their minds to the problem. I recognised the look it was probably the same one I had on my own face now. The rest did seem to be looking at the three of us rather expectantly.

A bigger impulse seemed easier. Somehow getting someone to spill the secrets was more manageable than getting someone to scratch their nose. Why? It didn't make sense. If anything, the former should have been harder.

"Emotion," Jerric said suddenly. "It's emotion. Even the sitting and standing compulsion involves emotion. Think about it. What do you feel when you sit or stand by compulsion?"

Lightbulbs were coming on over all our heads as we identified a moment of irrational panic connected with the impulse to quickly sit or stand. We had copied that root from Reeves' usage on us.

"The compulsion isn't an action alone," Jerric concluded. "It's tied to an emotion that serves as the driver. We can't use compulsions without involving a core of emotion."

It made sense. The impulse to confide wasn't as simple as demanding that someone talk. It was tapping on a deep-seated human need to share, to be known. The impulse to flee was obvious a perceived threat would elicit a response of fear. And for the neutral actions like standing or sitting, Reeves had used irrational panic as a placeholder emotion that had worked well in the context of our first class. Now, though, it was a little out of place.

"This stuff's a lot more complex than I expected," Ambrose admitted. "This is why it's good for us to practice as a group."

"So emotion is the core," Kevan said, turning to the rest of us with a strange look on his face.

"Kev!" Lynus looked alarmed and seemed to be about to tackle Kevan to the ground.

He raised his hands placatingly. "Hey, I proposed a boundary, right? The target gets the final say over what the compulsion is.'

"And?" Lynus asked warily.

"Will you all let me use a compulsion on you, without me revealing what it is?"

His question was met with a very tense silence. Kevan had schooled his expression into something unreadable now, and it was impossible to tell what he was getting at. Even Lynus looked completely clueless. We traded questioning glances.

"If you promise it won't cause any harm..." Jerric said tentatively.

"What, are we really allowing this?" Devon asked, sounding a little hysterical.

"If you say no, I won't do it on you," Kevan replied almost monotonously. I wondered how he could be so confident about only affecting selected people in the vicinity. Lynus hesitated for a moment more, then nodded at his brother.

It was almost instinctive I turned to Ambrose to take my cue from him. He caught my eye and nodded almost imperceptibly. I let out a sigh. "Okay, Kevan."

"We trust you," Ambrose said simply.

Everyone turned to Devon, who was still wavering. He threw one last beseeching gaze at Jerric, then steeled himself and nodded wordlessly.

In the next instant, Kevan engulfed us with a compulsion so strong that I was on my knees before I even realised it.

We were all crying.