The Arcanist's Visage [A little excerpt of a story]

[fatchicken 22]

 

The Arcanist's Visage

 

"Ah, Lady Certando!” Orico's smile spread so wide that it bunched his round cheeks into two ruddy cushions. He held out a set of stodgy fingers and invited Emilia to take a seat on the opposite side of his desk. She obliged. The scholar, still standing, shuffled papers to no end. “Um, yes, well…” He stammered with a coarse and nasal voice that denied him any real grace, lowering himself meanwhile. The chair groaned in protest. Emilia always wondered why he became so fitful in her presence – The way he shifted in his seat, one would think he had been stricken with a terrible case of piles. Was it her family legacy, a miasma upon the city, which troubled him? Or was it her demeanour? A meticulously composed conduct made only more imposing by her fetching, albeit ashen visage.

Notwithstanding, she rather liked the stodgy badger before her. He was a good, simple man; he cared for his students, he studied with diligence and enjoyed a jug of port at the end of each evening. It didn’t take a keen mind to see that he had never aspired to be anything great. But he was okay with that, and so was the world. Emilia stifled a roll of the eyes as he again looked to his papers for courage.
“Ahem. Yes, it’s just a routine check you see. Just have to – Ah – Ensure we run a clean house." He coughed into a fist. 

Clean house? She turned the words over in her mind. Surely he couldn’t mean to check her documentation. Everyone in this academy knew to which notorious heritage she pertained. Am I in trouble? No, she concluded, she hadn’t done anything to sully the rules of the academy.Is it my family? Does he suspect me of... In that instant, the woman’s question was answered. The doorknob to her right began to rumble. The door swung inwards. 

Standing in the blabbering Scholar’s private study was a towering sculpture of a man. His jaw – Wrapped in a colourless beard - was impossibly angled, as was his crooked nose. Unkempt hair of a dull and matte grey fell over his shoulders and half way down his back. His torso was broad and barrel chested, his arms so lean one could be mistaken for thinking they had been chiselled from marble. Emilia could see all this, for his upper-half was draped only in a series of intricate tattoos, the same colour as his mane, like wisps of gloomy sky that danced down his body in a cascade of filigree patterns. They flowed all the way to his navel before being suddenly cut off by the waistband of his kilt. Similarly drab in colour, the plain cloth flowed freely to his bare feet.

The hair on Emilia’s neck stood to attention – And it was for none of these striking features that she stiffened. It was his eyes, or lack thereof, that perturbed her. Around the back of his head and beneath his brows travelled a fold of grey cloth. He fixed his sightless gaze upon Emilia and said nothing. Ah. She found her inward voice oddly calm. So that’s why Orico was so restless. The daunting man before Lady Certando was none other than one of the High-Arcanist’s visages. ‘His soldiers and his servants’ commonfolk spouted in dimly lit taverns from tongues wet with watered-down ale. They had been hand-picked by the Arcanist, trained and taught the ways of higher powers. It was said he bestowed upon them gifts of knowledge, of power. It was said that they can run for hours on end, that they could overpower a man twice their size, that they could best any knight with nothing more than their quarterstaff. Some even claimed that their magic enabled them to commune with the Six Divines, and that mortal chatter had become so dull in comparison that they ceased to speak.

Emilia did not care for rumours, she cared for facts, and what she knew was that the Visages of the High-Arcanist had at least one definitive trait: The ability to see warlocks wherever they roamed. She swallowed the spit in her mouth only to find that she was barren. The Visage reached up, slipped a set of fingers beneath his veil, and lifted it.

His gaping sockets, scarred and icy and deeper than night itself, bore into Emilia. The Lady of Certando - renowned for her charm, wit and steel - froze as if the heart of winter had swallowed her. One might say they traded gazes for some time then, but one would be wrong, for she gave nothing in return. She merely remained in supplication as those chasms lorded over her. She knew then the stories were false: There was nothing godly in these men.

The visage grunted, secured his blindfold, and retreated into the other room. Emilia panted immediately, as only then did she realise she had failed to draw breath. She shot a burning glare at Orico, who had hoped to sink so far into his seat as to be invisible.
“It’s j-just procedure, My lady. He cleared you, my dear, you should be ha—“ The scholar abruptly choked his words down upon seeing Emilia rise from her chair.
“Good day, sir.” She declared thunderously, storming out the door.

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by fatchicken