Mark of the Fool
Chapter 597: The Spark

The spark filled Selina with an unusual sensation of warmth. A feeling that arose within her core, unlike any warmth she’d encountered before. It felt as though something had been stirred up within her…surprising her, making her gasp.

‘What is this?’ she wondered, as the spark pulsed. ‘It feels like…a small flame…like embers burning…but where is it? What is it?’

Frowning, she looked away from Queen Ishtar and pulled her brother’s sleeve. “I’m going to ask Shiani if she wants to come eat with us, okay?”

“Sure, that sounds great,” Alex said.

She turned away, but he caught her shoulder, holding her attention.

He was looking down at her with a gaze that seemed to pierce her, like he was looking right through her. “You alright?”

“Y-yes, I’m fine,” she said quietly.

Before he could ask any more, she slipped free of his grip, glad to get away so easily. It surprised her—since she knew how strong he was—how smoothly she’d managed to do it, but maybe he hadn’t tried to keep her there for fear of embarrassing her by asking her a bunch of questions in front of everyone else.

“Alright, if you need to talk about anything, I’m right here,” he leaned down, speaking softly.

Selina nodded, keeping her face neutral and turning away before an expression of worry could betray her.

Heading toward Shiani, she pushed through the crowd, thinking about that strange spark she’d been feeling. It was still there, still pulling her toward the queen even as she walked away from her.

‘What is it…’ she wondered.

She remembered something.

“When you’re learning how to use Forceball,” Alex had said, one quiet evening in the laboratory in the basement of the bakery. “You want to feel around inside yourself and find your mana. Knowing how to do that’ll be real useful for all spells, but you’re really going to need it for controlling Forceball: mana manipulation’s key for directing it. And the first thing you need to know when you’re manipulating mana is how to find your mana pool. First, check this out—”

Alex had placed his hand on her back and carefully instructed her over the next several nights. At first, her mana pool was hard to find, it was like trying to pick up a needle in a massive, dark room.

But her brother was always there, slowly guiding her with his words, an encouraging voice in the darkness.

And in time, Selina had found that needle.

“Wow!” she’d cried one evening, looking up at her brother with wide eyes. “I feel something…it feels warm…and kinda tingly.”

“You’ve got it!” He’d patted her shoulder, he was all smiles. “And you found it a lot faster than I ever did. I guess that’s what happens when you have a teacher as smart, brilliant, clever, strong and devilishly good looking as I am—”

“Please don’t ruin this, Alex,” Selina had begged him.

“Right, right! Well what you want to do next—oh, I wish I had a painting or something to save this moment forev—oh by the Traveller!”

“What? What is it?” She’d asked.

“Don’t move. Just dooon’t move. Stay right there.”

Alex had taken the Traveller’s artefact, pointed it at the two of them, then clicked a button and the small machine had made a noise. The grin on his face as he stared at the artefact’s screen spread from ear to ear.

“Well, well…” he’d said. “This looks even better than I imagi—”

“Alex!” Selina had reminded him she was still there and not moving. “The mana’s getting harder to feel!”

“Oh no, sorry sorry! Here, it’s—”

Her brother had guided her through searching out her mana pool, learning where it was found in her soul, and how to know when it was full, and when it was empty. She’d been so excited that she’d wanted to just start casting spells right away, but Alex wasn’t ready for her to try casting on her own, at least not yet.

But, she was allowed to practise locating her mana on her own.

She walked slowly as she approached Shiani, accidentally bumping into someone’s bag as she walked past them while focused on reaching deep within herself.

“Sorry!” she apologised, dividing her attention between finding her mana and watching where she was going.

She centred her thoughts, and found her mana, feeling its tingling warmth rooted in her soul, like a ball of heat. And within her mana pool, she found the spark, it was pulling her back toward the queen.

Selina frowned, her eyes flew wide.

‘I think I know what it is…I think it has something to do with my mana. The spark feels hot now. Maybe it’s my fire affinity? …I wonder how the queen got that burn scar…I wonder if she has some hidden fire magic too? But wouldn’t that make her afraid of fire because she got burned? Hmmmm or maybe she’s got a fire affin—’

“Selina!” a happy voice called from ahead.

The girl left those thoughts, bringing her focus back to her surroundings where a smiling Shiani was waving at her.

“I haven’t seen you since the opening ceremony of the Games.” The fire mage gave her a hug. Did you see your brother and the others win the Great Land Hunt?” she laughed.

“I sure did,” Selina said, keeping her concerns from her face. “Maybe we can talk about that over lunch? Are you doing anything?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet, some of my friends are going to a restaurant in town and I was thinking about joining them,” Shiani said.

“Maybe come with us instead…it’s going to be a really good lunch.”

“Oh?” Shiani cocked her head.

“Yeah,” Selina said, remembering the food at Khalik’s parents’ villa. “Really good.”

“Selina, you were not lying!” Shiani exclaimed. “This food is amazing.”

King Aksuma let out a deep laugh. “I must give the chef your compliments…since I think he might be a little too busy to come out of his kitchen to appreciate your kind words.”

He gave a sidelong glance down toward the end of the long table that was set up in the villa’s dining hall, where a certain giant sharkman was inhaling food as though it would be the last morsels that he—or anyone in the world—ever ate.

“Food’s good.” Grimloch said, scooping up a trio of swordfish steaks and dropping them in his mouth like he was snacking on grapes. “Not the best I’ve had but good. Pretty hard for food to be bad anyway.”

Khalik cleared his throat. “I believe what Grimloch meant to say is—”

“Food’s good. Not the best I’ve had but good. Pretty hard for food to be bad anyway,” Grimloch repeated, his black, doll-like eyes falling on Khalik. He swallowed loudly. “Crowd gets loud during events, but that shouldn’t have made you deaf.”

Kybasstarted nodding.

In every corner of the room, plain clothed guards tensed, eyeing the giant sharkman with daggers in their eyes.

Grimloch cared about as much as a giant bull would about some buzzing flies on his back.

His reaction seemed to make Khalik cringe as much as it seemed to amuse King Aksuma. The queen, however, was pointedly ignoring the enormous sharkman. Their initial meeting had been soured by Grimloch simply responding to her many conversational questions about himself, his friends, and his victories with little more than shrugs, grunts and questions about when the food would be ready.

Isolde, Khalik, Theresa, Shiani, Alex and even Thundar tried to smooth the situation, but the sharkman was having none of it. Selina even heard the minotaur whispering to the prince.

“Hey, your parents aren’t the executing type, are they?” Thundar had said softly.

Khalik had merely returned a pained smile beneath dead eyes. “We will find out, I suppose.”

“Welcome to try.” Grimloch had rumbled, his sharp ears—honed through life enforcement—easily picking up their words.

“Try what?” King Aksuma had asked.

“The food!” Khalik said quickly—almost desperately—as he’d guided the conversation away from a potential international incident.

Luckily for him, at that moment, servants had entered the dining hall with platters of steaming delicacies, and Grimloch’s mouth had become too busy to offhandedly offend any monarchs.

Now the entire table was relaxed, tucking into their meals while an entire cart of fruit tarts from the Roth Family bakery waited at the side of the chamber, kept warm by magical hotplates bearing symbols for fire magic.

Selina’s eyes had rested there for a time.

Fire Magic.

Sparks.

Affinities.

That spark in her mana pool had not faded, leaving her with growing questions.

She glanced at Queen Ishtar, who was deep in conversation with Shiani about the food, the events and the younger woman’s studies. The queen seemed very interested as she and Shiani discussed her advanced curriculum in fire magic courses, and how they resonated with her peoples’ teachings.

Selina was quiet, still not trusting herself to speak while trying to piece together what the feeling within her was.

At her side, her brother told a story.

“What is a ‘flimflam’?” King Aksuma asked, sipping a goblet of honey coloured tej. The drink was a kind of mead, and Alex had been very clear that Selina was not to try any of the alcoholic beverage ‘for at least a dozen years’.

“Flimflam apparently means ‘deceptive nonsense’.” Alex was saying in a merry tone, pouring back his goblet of tej. A number of cups of the delightful drink had been emptied by him and Theresa as they celebrated their victory in the Great Land Hunt. “My business partner was telling me this story about a scammer who came to Generasi a while back to do what scammers do…scam people.”

“A ‘scammer’, hm?” Aksuma’s face turned cold. “We jail scammers in Tekezash. For a very, very long time.”

“Well apparently, this one got away with murder. And by ‘murder’, I mean ‘scams’, not actually murder,” he said. “Turn of phrase—”

“I do believe he understands,” Isolde said quickly.

The young noblewoman shot Theresa a quick glare: the huntress was red in the face, giggling at her boyfriend’s comments. There was no help coming from her.

“Yeah, right, right. Got it. Understand completely,” Alex said, saluting Isolde as though he was a Thameish soldier.

“Ugh!” his cabal mate rolled her eyes.

But King Aksuma simply chuckled. “It is good to see that Khalik has made such easy going friends. Come, continue your story.”

“Right, so this guy tried to—” Alex told the story of the man who’d come to town to convince the wizards of Generasi that he’d changed the fireball spell so utterly, that even a young child could cast it.

He went into detail about how the man had fooled dozens of wizards through a mix of lies, showmanship, and alchemy.

Selina was almost disappointed to hear that; the idea of a fireball spell that was easy enough for a child to cast set off a yearning inside her that she’d only just begun to explore.

‘No!’ she scolded herself. ‘I only want to learn fire magic so I can use it to make cold out of fire…probably. At least I could use it to put out other fires, like Alex did at that windmill.’

But even as she thought the words, she knew deep inside, a part of her…was interested in fire for different reasons.

‘No, don’t think about that,’ she thought. ‘You wouldn’t hug the Ravener…so you shouldn’t think about hugging the thing that killed mum and da—’

Her train of thought ground to a halt when she noticed something.

King Aksuma had grown quiet, throwing glances at his wife.

Actually, much of the room was quiet.

Shiani and Queen Ishtar had stopped talking, and both had turned and were listening to Alex tell his story.

Selina flinched at the expression of utter fury that now covered the queen’s face. It was so stark, that it actually frightened her. The intensity blazing from her demeanour made it seem like she was ready to choke someone; at times, she’d seen a similar expression on Alex’s face when he talked about the Ravener or Zonon-In.

Her brother trailed off, looking at the queen. “Er, I’m sorry…did I say something to offend?”

“You said nothing problematic. The offence does not lie with you,” Queen Ishtar said. “Finish your story.”

Alex threw a look at Khalik, who subtly nodded.

Her brother shrugged. “Well, there’s not much more to it, unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be. The flimflammer got away with his scam, taking off into the Generasi countryside before anyone could grab him. According to Toraka, he was never caught.”

“Ah, that is indeed an unpleasant ending,” King Aksuma said. “I’m sure many in the city would have liked to see such a man captured and rightfully jailed. Such schemes seem victimless, but in fact, they cause real harm. When I was a boy, a famine devastated Tekezash due to drought, and though my father had several archwizards call for rain, the weather changes were temporary. The drought persisted.”

He frowned. “Then came the merchants, bringing their supposed miracles from the east to offer my country a ‘miracle crop’. They said this crop would grow at any elevation, in any weather, and need little, if any water. In desperation, many villages traded everything they had for these marchants’ seeds. And, the crop grew…but unfortunately, though the plant was hardy, it was also poisonous. And, also quite predatory: the reason for its hardiness was because it was a plant monster. They grew quickly, killed many, and took us the better part of a decade to rid ourselves of their infestation. Such a scam claimed many lives.”

“And worse,” the queen’s voice was like ice. “This man…this creature, used his trickery around the subject of fire. Fire is a precious thing. A very precious thing.”

Finally, Selina couldn’t take it any more. “Why do you say that?” she had to know. “Why do you think it’s so precious?”

The queen looked down at her in surprise. “Because fire is a part of all of us.”

She pointed at her scar. “It is certainly a part of me.”

Across the table, Khalik looked at his mother with worry.

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