particular, fiddling with the helmet so I could wipe the sweat off my forehead. Pity this simulator didn’t come with custom settings so I couldn’t make a virtual copy of Aric appear and punch it in the face.
I launched another battle sequence before the adrenaline wore off. The Academy’s training had prepared me to fight human opponents, and I’d learned how to break a person long before I’d needed to use it in real life. Striking first was second nature. But magic was a different story. I wanted to go up against a magic-wielder, but there was no option for that here. Not even advanced Klathican tech could simulate something so exact and yet so unpredictable. But now I was going to be spending time on Aglaia, I needed every advantage I could get. Even after what happened. If I’d made an effort to research magic rather than avoiding it, maybe I’d have been able to stop the Campbells before they’d tried to use Ada to blow up Central.
No. I couldn’t afford to be blindsided like that again.
***
Aglaia was going to drive me freaking insane.
The inaugural meeting had been going on for three hours, and so far there’d been five threats of bodily harm and seven high-volume centaur arguments. I expected someone to flip the table over next. There was little the Alliance could do, so we’d been stuck in the role of spectators for the past two days. The council told Raj and me we had to be there because if we left the centaurs to it and they solved the leadership issue, the first thing they’d do was complain that the Alliance hadn’t deigned to show up. And if the situation went bad, we had to be the first to know. I got the impression we Ambassadors were there to act as bodyguards to the council if the centaurs did decide to flip the table over.
Nothing quite so interesting happened the first two days. Once I’d memorised the names and titles of the council members from the various worlds, I joined Raj in playing solitaire on my communicator under the table. By the look of it, half the new Ambassadors had the same idea. But by the second day, I had the distinct impression one of the Aglaian mages was watching me.
The mages sat in a line, serious-faced and robed according to status. At first, I figured the guy was staring at me in disapproval for screwing around on my communicator instead of at least looking like I was paying attention. He was probably twenty years older than me, and had the tanned skin and sharp ears of an Aglaian. His pale grey eyes were ringed with black, noticeable even across the room, because he was definitely staring at me. Like the other council members, he wore a ceremonial robe, blue, which represented a lower rank. I’d never seen the mages use magic, of course—no one would risk it in front of the centaurs.
Still, curiosity got the better of me after two days sitting in the wood-panelled room with a bunch of stuffy old council members and argumentative centaurs. I hung back after the meeting, watching the mage out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, he approached me, skirting the wooden table. The council hall lay on the brink of centaur territory, so its simple features were in keeping with the centaurs’ liking for everything to be close to natural as possible–in contrast to the humans, whose technologies and magical enhancements dominated everything.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I asked, in Aglaian.
“Perhaps. You’re a magic-wielder, aren’t you? It’s in the eyes.”
It is? I’d never thought about it that way before. The image of Ada rose in the forefront of my mind–specifically, her blinding white eyes with dark circles around the pupils as she’d unleashed her final attack. They’d taken her lenses out for a reason. Perhaps it was linked to her power.
Perhaps that explained why I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look in the mirror for months after the experiment. I’d put it down to the fear of seeing another person entirely
I launched another battle sequence before the adrenaline wore off. The Academy’s training had prepared me to fight human opponents, and I’d learned how to break a person long before I’d needed to use it in real life. Striking first was second nature. But magic was a different story. I wanted to go up against a magic-wielder, but there was no option for that here. Not even advanced Klathican tech could simulate something so exact and yet so unpredictable. But now I was going to be spending time on Aglaia, I needed every advantage I could get. Even after what happened. If I’d made an effort to research magic rather than avoiding it, maybe I’d have been able to stop the Campbells before they’d tried to use Ada to blow up Central.
No. I couldn’t afford to be blindsided like that again.
***
Aglaia was going to drive me freaking insane.
The inaugural meeting had been going on for three hours, and so far there’d been five threats of bodily harm and seven high-volume centaur arguments. I expected someone to flip the table over next. There was little the Alliance could do, so we’d been stuck in the role of spectators for the past two days. The council told Raj and me we had to be there because if we left the centaurs to it and they solved the leadership issue, the first thing they’d do was complain that the Alliance hadn’t deigned to show up. And if the situation went bad, we had to be the first to know. I got the impression we Ambassadors were there to act as bodyguards to the council if the centaurs did decide to flip the table over.
Nothing quite so interesting happened the first two days. Once I’d memorised the names and titles of the council members from the various worlds, I joined Raj in playing solitaire on my communicator under the table. By the look of it, half the new Ambassadors had the same idea. But by the second day, I had the distinct impression one of the Aglaian mages was watching me.
The mages sat in a line, serious-faced and robed according to status. At first, I figured the guy was staring at me in disapproval for screwing around on my communicator instead of at least looking like I was paying attention. He was probably twenty years older than me, and had the tanned skin and sharp ears of an Aglaian. His pale grey eyes were ringed with black, noticeable even across the room, because he was definitely staring at me. Like the other council members, he wore a ceremonial robe, blue, which represented a lower rank. I’d never seen the mages use magic, of course—no one would risk it in front of the centaurs.
Still, curiosity got the better of me after two days sitting in the wood-panelled room with a bunch of stuffy old council members and argumentative centaurs. I hung back after the meeting, watching the mage out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, he approached me, skirting the wooden table. The council hall lay on the brink of centaur territory, so its simple features were in keeping with the centaurs’ liking for everything to be close to natural as possible–in contrast to the humans, whose technologies and magical enhancements dominated everything.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I asked, in Aglaian.
“Perhaps. You’re a magic-wielder, aren’t you? It’s in the eyes.”
It is? I’d never thought about it that way before. The image of Ada rose in the forefront of my mind–specifically, her blinding white eyes with dark circles around the pupils as she’d unleashed her final attack. They’d taken her lenses out for a reason. Perhaps it was linked to her power.
Perhaps that explained why I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look in the mirror for months after the experiment. I’d put it down to the fear of seeing another person entirely
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