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Janatheil loved and hated parties.

He loved good food, commotion, throngs of people, music, action, and color. He loved excitement, new sights and activity, new opportunities for exploration and trouble-making.
He hated dressing for the occasion. Hated tight clothes, buttons, pins and lace. Hated too many buckles and stiff boots and having his hair brushed meticulously. Hated sitting still and being told to stand straight and keep his chin up and his shoulders back and his mouth closed. Hated: “Act like a gentleman, Janatheil. You are an Orehian, not a farmer’s hand.”

Don’t scuff your boots.

Don’t muss your hair.

Stop plucking at your clothes.

Keep your eyes forward.

Smile when you greet someone, but not too much.

Standing in a pew several isles back from the front of the ‘action,’ Janatheil shifted his weight. Restless. Energized. Alert. It was a dawn mating ceremony marking the union of some notably distant relative of his — whose actual ties to his bloodline he couldn’t begin to guess at — to another noble of ‘impressive’ rank, none of which had any bearing on his actual interest in the proceedings. Glimmering lights. Magic. Elaborate setup. Ridiculously over-intricate garb on the part of both the man and woman taking part in the ceremony. Too much detail, pomp, and fuss. What did it matter in the end?

Janatheil had yet to figure it out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

At thirteen, he knew well enough that he wanted others in his life, certainly. Preferably many others. Friends and romances. Boys and girls were exciting, and he was of a mind not to be choosy — steal kisses and adventures, explore, have fun and see where it all lead — but to be mated to someone? Tied down, forever and always from “this dawn until our last”—no. Jana wanted nothing to do with permanence and shackles and grand ceremonies, official exchangings of names and being boxed into houses…

And even if he did find someone he wanted to deal with for an extended period of time, he saw no reason why he’d need a ceremony to make it official. He didn’t need anyone’s approval for that. He—

Fingers touched his shoulder, and Jana’s eyes flicked up and over to where his sister’s gaze met his meaningfully. She notched her head towards the front, where the ceremony was occurring. ‘Try to pay attention?’ her eyes said. She tapped the side of his boot for emphasis, urging him to close his legs and straighten his posture.

Jana gave bored, drawn huff of an exhale. “I hate parties—”

“Jana,” his sister hissed beneath her breath, giving him a meaningful Look.

No talking, right right. “Is it at least almost ove—?”

Her fingers flicked, coiled and pinched, and with it, he felt a clutch in his throat, a magical funnelling which temporarily muted the last of his sentence. He gave her a sharp, duly aggrieved look which was met with a similarly stiff shut-down expression.

‘Behave,’ her expression demanded, and — pouting — he obliged. For now.

Perhaps next time, he would work out how to rig the ceremony with miniature, colorful explosives. That would be entertaining.

Word Count: 577

“No. No, no…no.”

Janatheil eyed the selection, his gaze already bored and attention wandering as he was lead through the establishment, past rows upon rows of intricate weapons. Bows of various shapes and sizes. Long blades, rapiers, a cutlass, daggers. A bladed boomerang, a massive range of maces and wicked looking axes. The finest of all those that specialized in imprinted weapons and bonding magic. Or, so they alleged. Several blades had already been passed to him personally, and he could feel the energy therein when he held them in his grip, but none of it was right.

He moved alongside his aunt — a warrior herself, though she rarely fought — since neither of his parents had taken a fighter’s path or knew anything of weaponry other than magic. And he knew he would not be a mage. His parents were healers, but Janatheil knew well before this point that he wanted something else for his own life, and most expected him to take a blade, as many in his line had before him. It helped, of course, that it was also what he was most familiar with, and he expected that for himself too, but so far, the results were not promising.

Their guide rambled on, listing the names of the crafters and the magic wielders who had poured their work into each weapon that he focussed on, as though names and some unspoken implication of prestige were supposed to make the weapon any more of the right fit for Jana.

“—and this, for the young master Orehian, is—”

“No, none of them,” Janatheil said. “None of them are right.”

“Janatheil—” his aunt cautioned.

“Something else,” Jana cut in, ignoring her tone entirely. “I want something different…” His gaze flit sidelong, lingering on a shut door at the back of the display room, behind the front desk. For some reason, his attention pinned itself there, oddly rooted for longer than he could explain. “Back there. What’s back there?”

The weaponmaster serving as their guide frowned, his look distinctly unsettled for a moment before he shook his head. “Nothing, young master. It is a display room. There is nothing for sale there, and certainly nothing of quality—”

“I want to see it.”

The weaponmaster’s expression twitched. A familiar look. The war between the desire to snap at him for his behavior torn by the knowledge that he was noble and well above rank with more than enough money in the family bank that the person did not want to snap, however tempted they might be. “Young master…” The tone was, predictably, forcibly civil. “If you would prefer something else, we—”

Jana gave up, eyes darting over to climb the nearby display wall instead. His attention hooked on a large, intricate and heavy looking axe at the far top of the selection. “That one.” He pointed. “Take that one down.”

The weaponmaster paused, visibly startled by the abrupt change of pace. As the words sank in, though, he looked relieved, smiling despite the obvious awkwardness of attaining the weapon in question. “Yes, of course, young master. Just one moment, and I will have it down for you. That is Blackrun’s blade, a fine piece of work from—”

Jana stopped listening, watching instead as the weaponmaster moved to go fetch a ladder and bring it towards the wall. His aunt’s eyes narrowed on him, too familiar with his antics to expect anything less than a ploy. Flashing her a grin, Jana pressed a finger to his lips. She shook her head. He took a step back, keeping his feet quiet as the weaponmaster began to climb, still talking.

One step. Two.

His eyes darted to the main counter. Three steps, four. He used a flit of his wings to keep a quick dash light on the ground and nearly soundless, dipping and snatching a small ring of keys from a hook on the counter’s inner side and thumbing as if on instinct to a large, brassy one, cold to the touch. It fit. He turned, and door opened.

If there was commotion in his wake, he paid it no mind, his attention already locked on exactly what he wanted and booted footsteps drawing him to it as surely as on a train rail. The weapon was at the back of the room, the surrounding area coated in dust but it, somehow, immaculate, as though even dust were afraid to settle too near. It looked, on first glance, like some combination between a staff and a mace, the grip long — as tall as he was, or taller still — and each end weighted with a vicious multi-bladed hammer end. He reached out, fingertips brushing the grip just as door cracked back open and footsteps pounded in.

“Boy, don’t—”

Energy rippled up under Jana’s skin. It climbed, making his hair stand on end in a wave, and for a moment he felt — adrift — multiple senses of self meshing into him as though, in a single instant, he was not simply Janatheil Orehian but also two other persons. Strangers, who laughed in his mind. The sound echoed, harsh and cutting, but then petering away again.

“Janatheil.”

He jerked, yanked back into the present by his aunt’s hand on his shoulder and he blinked, shaking his head. “Aunt Lorei…”

“Child…what is this?”

Janatheil glanced down to what he was holding. Two maces, serrated and resized so that they fit in his grasp, shrunken down from the original full size of the staff they had been bound together in previously. “My weapons,” he said. “They are Oba and Yana. The twins.”

“A barbarian,” his aunt noted. “You…are sure?”

“Yes.”

And he was.

Word Count: 962

“No, you don’t unders—I didn’t do it, I just—it wasn’t me—”

Janatheil frowned, rubbing at his shoulder as he started through the archway, down the marbled halls and towards the steps leading up to the lady Aevah Avi’s meeting chambers. The eye of every guard felt like it was on him. Sizing him up. Judging him. As though they could see what he had done and were watching, just waiting for him to mess up again—

He pushed the thought away.

He knew it wasn’t the case, after all. The incident had been hushed immediately, as much as it could be hushed. His parents had seen to that. An accident. A fluke, from a young barbarian. Forgivable, surely. He just needed time and space, and perhaps to stretch his wings a little. That’s what they said.

“…but he can’t stay here…”

“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here — I’m almost adept — you can’t make me leave now! I—”

“We can arrange something, maybe. But better that we put space between you and this as soon as possible…”

Janatheil knew better.

He knew he was of too high of a rank to be officially banished as young as he was, particularly on a first ‘offense’ — no matter how he argued that it hadn’t been his fault — but he also knew that that was in effect, what this was. Banishment. Temporary, but still banishment, and to Aisko of all places. His family had arranged, after some finagling, to get him a meeting with Lady Avi before his departing ship so that he could at least progress officially to the rank of adept beforehand, but it felt like a cheap token.

He didn’t want to travel to Aisko. On his own, later, perhaps, but not now. Not like this…

Janatheil frowned, boots echoing hollowly as he made his way up the winding staircase towards the level where he would find their great lady. The guards before her chamber, recognizing his family sigil, flipped only briefly through their papers before nodding him in and opening the door. Janatheil, in spite of himself, despite knowing exactly what he was walking into, still felt his pulse stutter, attention locked on likely the loveliest face in all of Magesc. He wondered if there was a soul who walked through the door and wasn’t at least momentarily enraptured.

Likely not a single teenage boy in Serenia, if he had to guess.

She had the pleasant effect, at least, of making him forget — temporarily — quite literally everything else. Then, she cleared her throat, smiling and arching her eyebrows with patient expectancy. Janatheil felt his lips respond, stretching into a habitual grin — if not quite so relaxed and easy as was his usual habit — before he dipped, by sheer force of countless repetition and muscle memory, into a smooth bow.

“My lady.”

“Young master Orehian, yes?” She touched her fingers to her desk, trailing the tips lightly along its surface as though reading something there before glancing again to him. “It seems not so very long ago that your sister stood before me.”

“Ten years, perhaps, my lady,” Jana said, stepping up and reaching for the orbs he intended to present her with.

“You have gotten yourself into a spot of trouble.”

Janatheil stilled, hesitating. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ — ‘It won’t happen again.’ — ‘Nothing major.’ All of these flit through his mind as options, but none felt appropriate. “Nothing I cannot make up for in time, my lady. Much as I might wish it were otherwise, I am not perfect.”

Her eyes swept over the two kiandri orbs he placed, gently, on her desk, and then rose to meet his stare. “No. Few of us are. See to it that you do make up for it, Master Orehian,” she said. “I should hope to see you here again, in time.”

A flush, despite all his best intentions, crawled up Jana’s face, warming his cheeks as he dipped into another bow, flashed her a last, fleeting smile, and made his retreat. All in all, he thought as he stepped from her chambers and down the steps on the path towards his exile, he couldn’t have asked for much of a better send off.

Word Count: 757