Isekai Veteran: Heretic

Cover: A bothersome princess poses with her book.

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The Age of Discovery has begun, and it has enemies.

Taylor DeLanion, the young and impetuous Lector of Spiritual Arts at Nexus, is training the strongest practitioners seen in generations. His plan to import otherworldly science and technology is spawning new industries, while printing presses spread the new ideas across Tenobre. Everything is going according to plan.

Or it was, until a Unity Church official arrives to inspect the school. Their message is clear: a powerful faction in the church refuses to acknowledge Taylor's students, no matter how good they are. As if all that weren't enough, a troublesome princess has taken an interest in Nexus and its famous founder.

While the Nexus students prove their worth in Lavradio's civil war, the church that doesn't want them slips into a crisis of its own making. Soon, the Unity will be too weak to protect the faithful. When that happens, Taylor won't have many options if he wants to save civilization.

It's a choice that will cost him everything.

Book Details
ReleaseNov 15, 2023
AuthorCJ Holmes
Pages398
Print ISBN979-8-9871735-5-8
EBook ISBN979-8-9871735-4-1
Excerpt

Lector Phillip

East Downs, Lavradio

"Don't help them so much." James reached out and grabbed Taylor's shoulder, holding him back.

James' arms were a tapestry of colorful tattoos, filled with twining monsters that moved with his considerable muscles. He was very proud of his body and his body art, and used any excuse to bare his torso. Yesterday he had his shirt off to enjoy the rain. Today he had his shirt off to keep it from getting muddy. Tomorrow he would have it off to enjoy the breeze or whatever other excuse he could think of. He never tired of showing off his beast trait: rippling muscles any man would envy.

"I hate sitting back here doing nothing," Taylor whispered to the big man, "what if someone gets hurt?" It was Taylor's habit to be the one doing the protecting. Watching and doing nothing from a distance was driving him crazy.

James gave the boy a look that was at once exasperated and pitying. "If they get hurt then they'll learn not to get hurt next time. You should have more faith in them."

Taylor DeLanion was smaller and younger than James, with brindled brown hair and silver eyes. He was barely in his teens, but he was Lector of Spiritual Arts at the DeLanion School of Math, Scripture, and Music. By a twist of circumstances, he was also known by his working name Phillip the Younger and, occasionally, Outlander. He was a master practitioner of the Spiritual Arts, and he watched his pupils (all of them older than himself) with apprehension as they fought their first monsters.

Lots of people knew he had been summoned from another world, and that fact was used to explain his extreme ability with the arts. Taylor hadn't told anyone, not even his followers, that the real reason for his abilities was many decades of experience: this was his twelfth world and thirteenth life. He was an old mind in a young body.

Three of Taylor's students, candidate disciples of the Unity Church, stood together surrounded by fighters called bulwarks. The candidates' job was to enhance the bulwarks' defensive and offensive abilities, heal injuries, and otherwise use the arts to make them effective. The bulwarks' job was to do most of the fighting and protect the disciples. Together they formed a powerful unit called a cadre. It was early spring, a wet part of the year, and there wasn't an inch of the cadre's bodies not caked or splattered in muck. They could hardly be told apart except by beast traits: a tail, animal ears, spines, whiskers, or some other blessing distinguishing one brown silhouette from another.

They were hunting skitterline, three meter long segmented arthropods with lots and lots of legs. The bugs outnumbered the cadre by two to one. Their bite was poisonous, and their mouths could easily sever a hand. James was right that even a horde of skitterline twice as large would have had a hard time killing a properly enhanced disciple or their bulwark. As far as monsters went they weren't very large, just very long and disgusting. They were also stupid. Here in the farmlands east of Lavradio's capital they were the most common monster to be found. As the fight progressed, sections of giant centipede got trampled into the mud, their twitching legs and dead buggy faces protruding from the churned ground.

While Lector Taylor taught the arts, Lector James taught bulwark tactics at the DeLanion school. These particular bulwarks were not dedicated followers of the disciples, but soldiers and peacekeepers borrowed from the city who volunteered to train with the students. As such they were mostly older than the candidates, and quite a few of them had combat experience. Having fighters on hand who were trained to support disciples was a major asset to the church and the city alike.

Bronze flashed, blood sprayed, and more segments of bugs dropped into the mud. The more skitterline were killed, the more skitterline showed up to dine on the remains. The lead disciple decided it would be easier to fight if they weren't standing on top of an attractive food source, and signaled that the formation should move. The cadre stepped back in time, calling out the steps.

The maneuver went well enough, until it didn't. One of the bulwark slipped and fell in the ichor-drenched mud.

"Don't help," said James, squeezing Taylor's shoulder before he could move. No normal person could hold Taylor in place, but today James was acting as Taylor's guard so he had been enhanced by Taylor personally. Accordingly, his strength was especially monstrous today. If Taylor hadn't also been blessed with protection the little squeeze would have pulverized his shoulder.

Two skitterline swarmed the fallen bulwark, but their bites couldn't penetrate the enhanced armor. Nobody panicked. The other soldiers closed ranks while one of the disciples (it was impossible to be sure which) yanked the prone man to the center and crushed the centipedes' heads with his hands. He then stood the man up to resume his place.

Pulling the formation back had been a good idea. The skitterline writhed together in a feeding frenzy of one big wriggling mound, devouring their freshly killed relatives. The cadre was able to surround the mass and cut it into pieces. Once everything was dead, they looked to their instructors.

"Well, cadre leader, what next?" quizzed Lector James. He continued to hold the smaller Taylor in place.

"Track them back to their burrows," answered Hypha, who was acting as the leader of the hunt. "There could be more in the dens. It's too early in the year for eggs, but we should check."

"Fine. Don't let us keep you!"

The students broke apart to trace the incoming tracks, each accompanied by their protection team. Candidate Thalia's bulwark were peacekeepers by trade, while Candidate Montague (Minty to his friends) had city guards who were former soldiers.

The two lectors followed behind them at a distance.

"See? They did just fine. You, on the other hand, get poor marks." James finally let go of Taylor's shoulder.

"What did I do?"

"You tried to do their work for them."

"I was worried, that's all." Taylor tried not to sound like he was pouting, but his pubescent voice made that difficult. "They've only been at this for half a year. They could get killed."

"Phillip, when are you going to get it through your head?" scolded James, "Your kids are way better than Enclave's useless idiots. A mountain of little crawlies wouldn't be enough to scratch them. You could anoint these three as full disciples today, and nobody could say they lacked anything. And you have a dozen more who'll be just as good soon."

It would normally be funny that James called the other students Taylor's 'kids', when they were mostly older than him. But the thought of turning them loose in the world made his insides clench. Most of his students had only recently learned to read. Their progress in both scripture and the Spiritual Arts had been shockingly fast, and he wasn't sure what accounted for it, but the fact remained they were newly literate in a world that would try to take advantage of them and their power. How could he just turn them loose in the world?

"I feel responsible. That's all."

"You were responsible, back when they didn't know anything. Now that they're strong you have to let go a little, or else they'll never grow up. Stop. Hovering."

They watched in silence for a minute as one of the disciples re-shaped the ground, moving the earth with his spirit to make a hole more than two meters deep to expose a burrow. Taylor's breath caught as he recognized the waking of something far worse than the typical monster: one imbued with the curse of darkness. Such creatures were not only much larger than the typical monster but were also surrounded with an aura of darkness, tougher armor, and were poisonous to the touch. The giant centipedes were already poisonous enough, but the monster that was waking now could kill a gurantor with a thimble's worth of poison.

The students felt it too, and calls of "Light!" rang out. Each of the practitioners carried a Fragment of Sun in a clever wooden cylinder that acted like a lantern, strapped to their bodies. All they had to do was twist the ends to expose the coruscating light within. The fragments were holy relics and the best way to counter cursed darkness. Taylor had been the first disciple in living memory to make one, and in time he expected his students would be able to make their own.

Three points of light shone out as the cadre converged on the burrow, just in time to meet four meters of skitterline rising to tower above the cadre. That was only half of the monster. The other half was still underground. There was no hesitation by the fighters: bound together in one purpose by Benediction, fortified with Protection, strengthened by Might, protected by Proof Against Poison, illuminated by fragments, and equipped with enhanced weapons and armor, how could they fail? When the skitterline struck the center of the formation one fighter took the brunt of the attack on his shield and was gripped by the forelegs, which were unable to pierce him but sprayed him with poison. The other fighters in the center attacked the base of the antenna with spears to destroy the delicate sensory organs while those on the wings closed in and thrust their spears in between the upper and lower armor plates, aiming for the main nerve stem.

The center fighter was thrown clear but he left his shield wedged in the monster's grip. Bronze-tipped spears drove at the tiny brain, cutting into it again and again while the beast was busy trying to either crush or drop the shield. Those few moments were enough for the attacks to take effect: the front segments fell onto the ground while the remaining several meters of arthropod kept trying to run away, dragging the now-useless front section with it. The nervous system of creatures like skitterline weren't as centralized as in mammals, so the body could keep running for a while after the brain was dead. The cadre had to chase down the wayward body, shear off enough legs to immobilize it, then finish it off by cutting it to pieces. They called out to each other as they worked, joyful in their task that kept people safe.

When they were finished, they looked at Taylor for praise.

"It's not done until you check all the burrows!" he shouted. Celebrating early was an invitation for disaster. The three students resumed their tracking, bulwarks ever watchful.

James released Taylor's arm. "How does that compare to your first time against a cursed monster?"

"Honestly," he sighed, "there's nothing to compare. I had no proper bulwark, no armor, and no fragment. My first time was a circus. A lot of people nearly died."

"See? They're good. We don't need you running around playing mendicant any more, and you can stop being a mother hen. We need you thinking about the future. Someone has to decide what happens next and … what's wrong with you?"

Taylor was infamously transparent, and he had turned his face away from the tattooed man. The freest, happiest weeks of his life had been spent on the road with his three followers acting as bulwark. They had fought monsters, healed masses of people, eaten whatever they could forage from the countryside, and sometimes frozen their butts off. It had been everything he had hoped. It was unthinkable that a winter was all he would ever have. How was he supposed to let that go, so soon after being anointed?

"There's nothing wrong with me," said Taylor in a cold voice. "I just think that it's too soon to give up on adventuring for the entire rest of my life."

James crossed his arms. "I didn't mean you should never adventure again. It's just not your most important work."

"I accept your apology."

"I wasn't apologizing," said James, who was miffed at the implication that he had been unfair.

"You sounded sorry to me," observed Taylor, "it was very genuine."

"You've gotten bratty."

"Says the man who doesn't own a shirt. Don't you get cold? Or embarrassed?"

James laughed, and struck a pose with his arms akimbo. "Never! I'm protected by natural charm."

"Let's test that theory. I'll remove your prayers," Taylor said with a wicked smile, "and we can find a skitterline to bite you. It'll be fun. For me."

"Brat! Charisma doesn't protect against poison."

"Then let's find out what it does protect against. We could test fire, blades, and crushing damage. Oh," exclaimed Taylor, "and we should drop you from a great height, too. And add drowning to the list. Let's find out how effective your natural charm really is! This could take a while. Are you free tomorrow?"

"Fiendish boy! What cabal anointed you?"

"The rebellious kind. Why do you think Her Holiness put us in Lavradio?"

They both laughed wryly at that. Leadership had a habit of assigning unwanted personnel to Lavradio. Anyone who was smooth-skinned, lacked connections, or crossed the wrong people tended to end up here. There wasn't a reason to dump them in Lavradio specifically, as far as Taylor could tell, it was just habit.

The Unity Church almost never anointed disciples who weren't descended from one of the so-called first families. Practitioners without a pedigree were anointed as healers, and had access to only a subset of the Book of Prayers. Church Leadership, embodied as the Council of Guardians, were all first family scions whose careers had ascended through the priest/prelate/leadership track instead of the practitioner/dean track. All of which meant it was impossible for someone to rise to the top positions in the church without a pedigree, and Leadership seldom looked beyond the first families for practitioners or guardians.

As far as Taylor and his supporters were concerned, that tradition was a dangerous waste of talent at a time when monster attacks were rising sharply. Compounding the problem was the disciples' attitude: only a minority of them were fielded anywhere useful while the rest stayed in Enclave, either too old or too privileged to do any field work. That work was getting harder, and disciples were dying faster than they were being anointed. Fewer than three dozen remained in the church, and of those only ten were fielded in all of Tenobre.

Meanwhile, the DeLanion school had twenty-two young candidates who were training in the spiritual arts (this world's name for magic) using techniques Taylor had gathered in a dozen lifetimes across a dozen worlds. In spite of their obvious excellence, there was little chance of getting them anointed until the church woke up to its long-term problems. But that task was Her Holiness's problem, not Taylor's.

"What's the word out of Sand Castle?" asked James.

Taylor scowled. "Not good. Sulpiono hired mercenaries to be his bulwark because nobody would join him, and they ran off as soon as the monster's darkness touched them. He couldn't even summon a light before the thing ate him. We still don't know what it is because nobody has seen it. He should have taken one of my fragments when I offered it."

"Why didn't he?"

"He said it was a fake," laughed Taylor, "because it was too flashy." The loss of a disciple shouldn't have been a laughing matter, but in the two minutes Taylor had spent with the man he had acquired an intense dislike for him. He was a disciple with infinite entitlement but no works to his name, and therefore not a real loss. A disciple without works was just a priest without a congregation.

James didn't laugh along with him. "I don't like saying it about a disciple, but maybe it's good that he died. It might force the deans and the guardians to recognize how dangerous the world is now."

As of today the three students they were observing had more real experience than Sulpiono had accumulated in fifteen years as a disciple. They would be the ones to save Tenobre from the coming storms, not the lace-draped disciples of Enclave.

Mobeen Library, Nexus

Guardian Maia had to admit it was a nice meeting room even by Enclave standards. Rector Mika had given them a tour of the DeLanion School of Math, Scripture, and Music ending in the long third-floor room with polished wooden floors and plastered walls. A long meeting table and chairs took up the bulk of the floor. The startling thing about the room was an entire side of it was transparent, and had a view of the breezeway three stories below. Above her arched the twin skyways that joined the building's garret to that of its neighbor: she could see students crossing the nearest one, taking the short route between the top floors of the two buildings. As seen from the street, the whole structure formed an arch of triumph, with a statue of Disciple "Sacred Blade" Mobeen in the center of the courtyard below.

The last time she was in Girona, Maia had come to investigate Taylor's murder. Her gurantor train had been attacked on the journey and Mobeen had died, right in front of her. She couldn't think of the famous monster hunting disciple, or his former student, without imagining the great man's nearly-headless corpse lying in front of her. She had escaped Mobeen's fate by only a centimeter or two when the ballista bolt that kill him grazed her and tore away one side of her face. The healers had fixed her up so well that there wasn't even a trace of a scar, but her face sometimes itched when she remembered Mobeen.

Maia discovered she didn't like standing too close to the massive windows and stepped away, out of fear she might fall right out of the building.

It wasn't just a meeting room, it was also a museum of technical accomplishments. Or maybe, thought Maia, it was better to think of the display as trophies. Odd items were mounted on the wall opposite the massive window. A new kind of firebrick, palm-sized panes of glass in different colors, ingots of mobeen alloy, iron and other metals she didn't recognize, several samples of paper, the first printed copy of scripture, an array of soaps, a template for making atlatl and throwing darts. The most astonishing items in the collection were a youngmeter that measured spirit, a gem that could store the holy power used in prayers, and a round looking glass that reflected spiritual light as visible light.

Instead of jota, which was the normal drink of choice on the east side of the continent, the school served them a black tea. As a member of Leadership she was accustomed to such fine things. What intrigued her was the service. Instead of stoneware or the less common metal dishes used by the wealthy, her tea was served in cups made of glass. Glass was normally opaque and colored to look like lapis or other precious stone, or it was studded with occlusions from the melting process. This glass was startlingly clear, and came in a variety of jewel-like colors. On the table in front of her was a row of small bowls offering a selection of fruits and herbs to add to her tea. Each was made of thick glass faceted like huge gems. Spoons and tongs rounded out the service, made of a metal so light that she could barely feel them in her hand. The pieces were all unadorned but exquisitely shaped.

Maia knew a few kings who would pay purses of gold for such a tea service, but the woman on her right was going out of her way to pretend to be unimpressed. Dean Katerina and Guardian Maia were both members of the Karolo family, descended from the first disciples in scripture. Not only were they related but they looked alike, with the same round faces and light brown skin graced with yellow ripples. They even dressed alike, in sturdy walking dresses made of rare monster hide, softened until they were pliable as wool then tooled with intricate patterns. But whereas the older Guardian Maia had been attentive during the tour of Nexus and in awe of the tea service (an emotion she kept entirely to herself) the young Katerina scoffed at everything, heckled the choir during their practice, scowled at the tea, and had been so insufferably rude to their host that Rector Mika had taken to ignoring Katerina as much as possible. Maia had only brought two more people with her for the tour: her own secretary Sister Suzanna and Katerina's lead bulwark Zenobis, a thin fellow whose pinched face made him unlikeable. He always looked like he was about to kill something.

Their various regalia marked their respective ranks. Guardian Maia wore a silk stole embroidered in silver, adorned with tiny beads of amethyst. Her seven-pointed star, the holy symbol of Olyon worshipers everywhere, was likewise made of silver and hung from a chain around her neck. Rector Mika, as a priest and follower of Disciple Phillip, wore a less grandiose stole embroidered in blue and a star made of bronze. Disciple Katerina's stole was embroidered in green, and her star was carved from wood pinned to her chest. At her belt she wore a long poniard of shaped stone.

Disciples like Katerina wielded enormous power in the form of prayers. The wooden holy symbol and inexpensive green embroidery on their stoles was a reminder of their status: powerful independents who were meant to aid others, not rule over them. Most disciples kept a small entourage of intensely loyal followers and fighters, and lived off a stipend from the church plus any additional offerings given by the people they helped. They were lauded as the champions of the church, but in fact only a minority of them worked in the outside world. Most of them stayed in Enclave. It was their right to take the church's support, since their blood was the source of the Spiritual Arts passed down from scriptural times.

During her tour of Nexus, Maia had been shown training rooms where new disciple candidates practiced their arts in front of full-length mirrors that reflected spirit. Their spiritual light, invisible to most people, was shown to them in minute detail. According to the rector, this aided their training greatly. The Unity Church had nothing like that in their School of Spiritual Arts at Enclave. Maia wasn't one herself, but she understood new practitioners had to feel their way blindly at first, only learning to sense and control their own spirit after many years of practice. Here at Nexus students learned to sense spirit as the first step in their education. After a few weeks practicing in front of the glass they graduated to performing their exercises without it, having learned to sense their own spirit from watching themselves in the mirror.

Even the city's healers, considered second-class practitioners compared to disciples, had further honed their abilities in Nexus's practice rooms. Three of the Girona healers had advanced so much they petitioned the church to be retrained as disciples, claiming they had been shunted into careers as mere healers because the Enclave's school had failed to train them properly. First family disciples like Katerina didn't like training outsiders, and almost always failed them on purpose to push them down to the healer ranks or out of the school entirely. Maia had only recently come to learn that fact. The first families had jealously guarded their little secret by claiming outsiders didn't have enough talent to be disciples. Now that Lavradio had an entire school of candidates who, according to what she had seen today, exceeded apprentice level after only a season of study, Maia had to seriously reconsider the Enclave school's management. The school in Lavradio was only intended to be a training ground for prospective candidates who would be sent on to the Enclave's school for training. Instead, the students here were quickly outstripping the Enclave.

"Where is our Missing Disciple?" asked Maia archly.

The rector squeezed a slice of something citrusy into his tea. "I sent a message when you arrived, so Disciple Phillip should return soon. He took some candidates hunting. Skitterline have been overrunning the east downs, so he's making the most of the opportunity."

Dean Katerina tried on one of her nastier smirks. "If he can't even be here for Leadership you have to wonder about the boy's priorities."

"As your visit was unscheduled," responded Mika with a gentle smile, "you can hardly fault him for tending to his normal duties. We were told nothing of your visit, and practitioners need constant training. As you well know."

Maia doubted that Katerina knew that at all. Few candidates at the Enclave's school chose to take up weaponry in a serious way, leaving that end of the business to their bulwarks. If a disciple needed to fight personally, then they depended on their enhancements to see them through. The stone knife that Katerina wore was probably toughened and enhanced using the spiritual arts, and it could be used as a weapon, but it was mostly symbolic.

"Good afternoon everyone, I'm Disciple Phillip" said Taylor striding into the room, giving his disciple name. "I hope you weren't too bored while waiting. I had candidates out in the downs, hunting."

He stood across from them, put one hand over his heart, and bowed his head slightly in the fashion of the Enclave. "We meet in the light."

The correct response from Dean Katerina should have been, "Let's walk as brothers," but she looked away instead.

"I see Rector Mika has made you comfortable." The boy known variously as Taylor DeLanion or Disciple Phillip the Younger took a seat at the head of the table. He was taller than she expected, with striking silver eyes glimmering from behind his purple lenses and brindled brown hair. His long brigandine coat was bright blue, set off by a pattern of brass rivets that kept the interior scales of armor in place. A wide belt of leather with pouches attached to it kept small items close at hand as well as a bronze sword hilted in black monster bone. His stole of office was a fine wool embroidered in green, like Katerina's, and his star was carved from a pale wood.

"We missed each other by just days the last time you were here. I enjoyed your report on my murder." A young man with a scalp of orange and black quills, just into his adulthood, drafted behind Taylor and served him tea. "Thank you for doing such an excellent job."

"After all that hard work I'm almost disappointed you're alive. There were multiple witnesses who swore they handled your corpse."

"They did do a thorough job on me," Taylor responded darkly. He took a cut half of the same citrus Mika had used and squeezed it in his fist over his teacup. "Did you have any trouble on the road?"

"Not this time."

Taylor raised his cup. "To Mobeen the Sacred Blade, the best hunter of his age."

Mobeen had been a great disciple, and his loss was keenly felt every time they had to allocate another brother or sister to take up part of his work. The man had traveled fast and hunted monsters at a furious rate. His replacements weren't nearly so keen or as capable.

Maia, her secretary Susana, and the bulwark Zenobis all raised their cups. "To Sacred Blade," they said together, and drank. Dean Katerina abstained with a frown.

Maia went straight to the reasons for her visit. "I'm here to review the accounting for Nexus. Her Holiness exempted you from tithing your income to Enclave in exchange for teaching candidates and funding research. It's not that we don't trust you, but someone has to verify the facts."

"We will fully support your audit," Taylor assured her. "I'll introduce you to the accountant, and they'll show you where all the records are kept."

"Thank you. Not everyone is so cooperative. My second aim is to supervise the practitioners during the campaign against Nurr, and ensure everyone abides by the Rules of Neutral Assistance."

"You're going to be here for a while, then. I doubt the king will move his army until well into spring, and the campaign itself could go well into the summer. We'll be sending our best candidates as assistants to the healers. We've already taught them about neutral assistance, and they understand the rules. We'll abide by them unless," he stressed, "Duke Frenzio does something to change the status quo."

Katerina huffed. "What could he possibly do against the Unity?"

"He's done plenty so far," countered the boy, turning his purple lenses on Katerina. "He's killed two disciples, and he came very close to killing a guardian. He nearly burnt down the capital city, and thereby hastened Matrix Lucia's death. He has no qualms about poisoning children. If he thinks attacking a field hospital gives him the edge he needs to win, he'll do it. And he'll be effective. He has a plan for dealing with us, I promise."

"You're just scared because he beat you." Katerina looked pleased about it.

"He didn't just beat me. He did it without putting himself at risk, nearly got Lavradio severed from the church, and he was paid handsomely for it. Along the way he sacrificed a good friend to further his goals. He's ruthless and resourceful. That's why I'm scared of him. He did not pick this fight without having a way to win."

Maia helped herself to the bowl of berries, dropping three into her cup and topping it with fresh tea. "Is this about your theory he has ancient weapons?"

"We know he's taken many of his people into Sesimbra Canyon, and practically abandoned the rest of Nurr. It makes sense that he found an ancient underground city. Has Leadership given any thought to releasing information about the ancients? It would be helpful if we knew what he might throw at us."

"We have considered the idea," said Maia, "and rejected it. We didn't spend centuries suppressing ancient arts only to change course and promulgate them now."

"I suppose it's pointless to argue if you've already debated it," grumbled Taylor. "Are you planning to be at the field hospital? And if so, did you bring armor?"

"I am," said the guardian, "and no I did not."

"We can have some prepared for you," offered Taylor.

Katerina looked incredulous. "Do you think you can buy a guardian with your cheap trash?"

"It's only a loan, so no." Taylor told them. "I don't think it's right for a guardian to end up with less protection than our students. They'll all be armored."

"You can't guarantee her safety, in a hospital, many kilometers from the front, surrounded by your bulwarks and students?"

"It'll be a war zone, a place even less predictable than a monster hunt. Armor is prudent, much like the audit of our finances."

"She doesn't need your castoffs," sneered the dean.

Taylor was beginning to sound impatient. "Hardly. It'll be brand-new tirun scale."

Maia considered the disciple's brigandine. Some of the rivets were a slightly different color, and the monster leather was scarred in several places. If the bronze scales on the inside really were tirun and were in as good a shape as the outside, then it was a sound piece of equipment that had been well-used and expertly maintained. Not unlike what Mobeen used to wear.

"I'll accept it, with thanks," said Maia, as much to head off the bickering as because she felt a need for it.

"You aren't going to protect her in Nurr?" Taylor asked Katerina.

"I have other duties to attend to in Enclave. I'll be leaving in two days, after I finish my report on your facilities and training."

Rector Mika looked at Katerina in surprise. "You've only just arrived and received the tour. A day isn't enough time to review the school."

"Oh, I've seen everything I need to see. However, I have some questions."

Sister Suzanna continued to take notes, but acquired a new board for the dean's topics.

"First, how old are you? You're terribly young to bear so much responsibility."

"Supposedly I was almost twelve years old when I was summoned, but that was just a guess," replied Taylor. "I was a foundling in my homeworld, and the orphanage that took me in kept poor records. People in Emristar age faster than in Tenobre, and Tenobre has much longer years. It's easier to stop trying to count years, and just focus on what I can do."

"Interesting. So you have no clue to your parentage, at all?"

"Not at all."

Katerina looked very smug about her newest discovery.

"Perhaps that is where your penchant for gambling comes from. You inherited it from your birth parents."

Taylor was lost. "What gambling? I can't remember the last time I placed a bet."

"You have set up an entire room for playing cards."

"You mean Monster Hunt? That's a teaching tool to help students memorize monster abilities and practice their math. The scenarios are all based on real encounters, so they can learn field tactics."

"And you think playing games will help them fight real monsters." Katerina's expression dripped with doubt.

"If it teaches them tactics, then yes."

The dean wrote things on her slate. Probably nasty things.

"The next question is about your library. You're very proud of your collection of Mobeen's writings. However did you acquire them?" She asked the question like he might have purchased them in some shady deal in a back alleyway.

Taylor took a few seconds to organize his thoughts, which he occupied by sipping his tea.

"Everyone knew Mobeen wasn't first family by blood," he began, "but was adopted into the Donglar family. After he died, his personal librarian tried to get Enclave's library to accept his works, but they said there wasn't room for anything from such an unworthy author. Then the estate assessors came by, and they didn't even bother to list his works as part of the man's estate. They thought his reports were literal trash. We merely picked up what everyone else discarded, and put it to use."

"You do that often, don't you? Pick up trash and try to turn it into something useful?"

"I don't deal in trash. I find undervalued assets and put them to good use."

"Like your servant there? He's from the slums, isn't he? In fact, aren't all your students from the slums?"

"Many of them are, but not all. At Nexus we value ability and character more than lineage or wealth."

"And, they will do anything for the boy who promised them a better life. No matter how impractical that dream might be."

"I teach them to follow the tenets and protect people."

"But they are still your 'assets', are they not? They owe you a tremendous debt. You can dispose of them as you see fit and they would not complain. They would do anything you asked."

"I don't deny they have some personal loyalty to me, but I teach them to be loyal to Olyon and the four tenets above all else."

"Let's discuss how you teach them," she said, with concern. "Is it true you share spirit with them? Even the girls and the very young?"

"Of course." Taylor was puzzled about her new line of questioning. "It requires some trust between practitioners, but it's the best way to impart techniques that are hard to explain in words."

"That's not all it can impart. Lovers share spirit as a way of heightening their bond. A powerful spirit can overwhelm a weaker one and bend the other to its will. Are you aware people say you're running a sex cult?"

Laughter bubbled up from Taylor chest. "No! I've never heard that."

Then he removed something from one of his pouches and put it firmly it on the table: a cylinder of wood. He twisted the top, and light began to spill out of the device: silver-blue and alive. The boy wasn't smiling any more.

"Tell me the truth. Did you really hear that rumor, or are you starting it yourself?"

Katerina eyed the light with contempt. "It's quite wide-spread." Her face was instantly cast in shadow, wide-eyed in fear as she realized what it was.

"You made it do that! Stop it!"

The shadow persisted.

"Put that away! I'm here to do an unbiased assessment, not play parlor games with the arts."

The shadow only became darker.

"I don't need a fragment to tell me that's a lie," Taylor countered wryly. "Why not try again?"

"As if it matters! Your sewer rats will never foul the streets of Enclave, not if I have anything to say about it!"

The light returned to normal. "That was honest," observed Taylor calmly. He sounded relieved, now that her true intent was revealed. "Shall we continue this interview in the Light? It's uncomfortable not being able to lie, but sometimes it's educational."

The dean was trapped, opening and closing her mouth like a landed fish as the aura on her side of the table shifted from dark to light to dark again. The responses she considered were deemed lies before they even left her mouth.

"I think I know what you're doing here," Taylor said thoughtfully. "You take a look around, find facts that you can twist into nasty stories, and then spread the stories to discredit Nexus. If you can get enough people outside of Nexus repeating the lies, even the Nexus students will begin to doubt their own experiences here. Eventually you'll believe the lies yourself, making the deception complete."

Dean Katerina fumed for a moment, then stood to leave. "This interview is over." She swanned out the door, with her bulwark on her heels.

"She had more questions, too," said a relieved Maia. "But you should realize by now that everything you do here is under scrutiny. You should try to think more strategically. Your little book The Nature of Light has been called blasphemy by some. There's talk of calling a Vote of Censure. Antagonizing a dean doesn't help your cause."

Taylor sat and thought about her words, reluctant to reply when the fragment was active. There were two reasons for his hesitation. First, the bar for 'lie' was very low in its presence and he often found he had to rephrase things until they were perfectly true. Second, it was hard to find anything honest to say that didn't amount to 'so what?'.

"I fear for Tenobre, if Enclave can't face simple facts without throwing fits." There, that was honest.

"Can I have one of those?" asked Maia. "And maybe one of those hand-sized spirit mirrors? They would be so useful to me."

Taylor didn't consider her request, not even for a second. "I won't be sending any more gifts to Enclave. It'll just bring me trouble. No more books, or tools, or anything." He closed the lamp and stowed it in one of his pouches. "See? I can think strategically."

With Dean Katerina out of the picture there wasn't much business left between Nexus and Guardian Maia, other than to schedule a fitting for her armor. She was soon gone from the premises.

As soon as the door was shut behind Guardian Maia, Taylor asked, "what is a Vote of Censure, and why do I care about it?" He didn't like that this new thing had been sprung on him that he had never heard of.

"It's a ritual that hasn't been used in decades," said the rector sourly. "If two-thirds of all the living disciples get together and vote against you, they can read the Censure of Heretics. It's a prayer that un-anoints a practitioner. The heretic can't use the arts and is forbidden to perform priestly ceremonies."

"They kick you out of the church," Taylor summarized. "Excommunication."

"They call it being defrocked." Mika's expression grew even more dour. "There's more to it than that. The last time Censure was used was to remove disciples who wouldn't read the Vow of Obedience. In addition to following the tenets, the practitioner swears to obey Leadership. The Council of Guardians used their coteries of obedient disciples to extract huge sums of money from the realms. Healer services were auctioned off to the highest bidders, palaces were built using disciple labor, civil wars were settled by renting cadres like mercenaries. Practitioners died from fighting and overwork. Many refused to read Obedience, and were Censured as punishment. Most of them went into hiding afterwards, afraid Leadership would have them killed to prevent them from exposing secrets. Some of them probably were killed. We never knew where all the money went."

Rector Mika's eyes wandered the room, watching some long-ago scene that he didn't share with Taylor.

"Then came Juca DeSintra," prompted the younger man. He knew the woman was an infamous disciple, and the timing sounded about right, but he had never heard the full story.

"Right. Juca." The priest drained his tea. "She was always a monster, even before she was given a disciple's power. For a while she was their favorite tool. Efficient. Utterly remorseless. But, she got fed up with being told who to kill and which cities to burn, and with handing over all the money to leaders in Enclave who risked nothing. Her talent was extreme, a little like yours. She was able to resist Obedience and Censure and march an army to Unity City. The battle that ended her cost thousands of lives and many disciples.

"After that battle, the hierarch commanded all practitioners to either be released from their Vows or defrocked. Records were purged, and deans were forbidden to teach about those events. Even the Luminous Histories were 'cleaned' of hundreds of entries, in every copy, to hide what the church had done. To outsiders it was just another episode of the Unity overreaching, but those of us on the inside spent decades trying to rebuild the practitioner corps. For a little while it was even possible to bring in outside blood as disciples, if you laundered their origins with adoption. The truth is, we never fully recovered."

Taylor thought of his short time in Enclave, and how empty it had seemed. An all-hands meeting of practitioners and students only filled the assembly hall to about one-third full.

"Garsharp and one other dean are the very last disciples of that generation. There's a handful of old healers who remember, and some priests like myself. Now we have this young generation of practitioners who think they're clever, reviving those old prayers. They have no idea they're forging their own chains. They have no clue how this ends."

Thoughtspace

Taylor emptied his mind of everything except the face of Leila, one of his former teachers. She had tried to instruct him in the divination prayers but had had limited success. The sole exception was Finding, a short-range prayer used mainly to locate lost children. If he could reach Sister Leila with Speak on the Wind it would show her he had grown as a disciple. If he couldn't, then she wouldn't be any the wiser.

It was hard to focus because he kept thinking of his three most senior students, running their mounts at a quick pace down the highway, jubilant in their victory. The nine bulwark behind them were just as pleased, if somewhat more muted by their maturity. Then he would think about the church, and their insane insistence on ignoring their talents. Frustration might have had something to do with his distraction, too. He had been practicing the prayer for a month but so far he had only managed to contact someone he could visibly see.

"Phillip to Leila," he murmured to himself, trying to drag his mind back on task, "can you hear me Leila?" He imagined the two of them sitting in his private office together. He remembered the smell of her fur warmed by the sun as she taught him how to separate poisonous plants from the ones good to eat. "Helo-o-o-o Leila."

"Taylor?" Her voice came to him as if she were in the room with him. An image of her popped into his mind, a long lean build that could run a hundred kilometers or slip between shadows. "Or should I call you Phillip now?"

He tamped down on his excitement at his success, as if it were only natural he could master Speak on the Wind. "Things happened, and now I go by both names. Is this a good time to talk?"

"I can take the time. I heard about your school. How is it going?"

"Mostly good. The teaching part is easy enough, and the kids are learning fast. Mika and James say we could apprentice some of them right now. Everything else is a headache. And I really wish Matrix Lucia hadn't named the school after me. It's awkward.

"But I didn't reach out to complain. I wanted to know how you're doing and what the monster situation is like in the southwest."

"And show off that you've finally learned Speak on the Wind?"

"Finally," admitted her former student. "I actually learned it from one my students who has a real knack for the divinations. He annoyed me one day, so I made him teach me as punishment."

"Have you tried reaching for Dean Garsharp yet? Getting his attention is like beating a brick wall."

"Not yet. I figured you'd be easier to contact. Have you spoken to him?"

"Not lately. Like I said, he's hard to reach."

"I'll try him next. How are things in Hyskos?"

"Monsters here are bigger than a few years ago, and there's more of them." Taylor got a brief glimpse of a massive bird, pinions dressed in bright yellow feathers and big enough to carry off houses, surrounded by a storm. "I've asked Enclave for reinforcements, but they don't respond. Either Enclave isn't getting my reports or they're burying them intentionally. Neither is a good sign."

"Agreed. I think something ugly is happening in Enclave. I just had a very unpleasant conversation with a dean sent here to review our teaching methods. Have you ever met a Katerina Karolo?"

"Oh, I know her all right. She's a few years behind me. I used to catch her bullying the healer candidates who weren't from first families. She's a nasty piece of work."

"Well, she's a dean now. I think her report is already written and she was just looking for anything she can reframe as dirt. I checked the Luminous Histories, and there's nothing on her except her anointment and an apprenticeship. No other works at all."

Leila's thoughts arrived with a strong taste of scorn attached. "Don't underestimate her skills as a healer and diviner. She has a reputation for doing discrete work for nobles for big pay. Apparently her tithes amount to a lot of gold every year. It's probably why they promoted her to dean, so she can charge even more money. It suits her: she's always been a kiss-up."

"I think I was too dismissive of their politics when I was there over the winter," mused Taylor. "I was counting on Her Holiness to protect us until the disciples realized how much they need us, but now I feel like that was naive. It's worse than an overweening belief in the first family bloodlines. There's real contempt for everyone else. It's as if the rest of the world could die off, and that would be a blessing."

"The youngest ones are the worst," agreed Leila. "They wouldn't heal a scratch to save your life unless you paid them in silver. The old guard seem a lot more friendly with outsiders. Some of the middle generation are insiders through adoption, you know. You'd be surprised at how adamant they are about supporting their adoptive families."

"No, I get it." Taylor thought of his followers and students he had pulled from the slums. They were dedicated to him in a way someone born to a wealthier background might never be.

None of the news today was good for the Nexus candidates. More than half the disciples at Enclave had looked down at Taylor to begin with, and now Dean Katerina was about to write a nasty report about his school. They might, maybe, allow his students to be healers. But that wouldn't help Tenobre's long-term monster problem, or be fair to the young people he was training. All those months practicing with weapons, sitting in front of mirrors, and memorizing prayers. Plenty of them had had to learn to read! And now it could all go to waste.

"Taylor, I'm sorry," said Leila. Some of his emotions must have leaked through their connection. "Your students deserve better."

"They do, Leila. But we're not finished yet. We're still a long way from being finished." Then he remembered something. "Hey, you ever heard of a Vote of Censure?"

"It doesn't ring a bell. It isn't a cryptic prayer, is it?"

"I don't think you can find it anywhere in scripture. If you get ahold of Dean Garsharp before I do, please ask him about it. I'm curious what he says."

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