Of Wolves and Witches (WHF Wizard Quest)

The first thing you realise when you wake is just how badly your head hurts. A dull throbbing ache radiates out from your cranium and all the way down your spine, like an exceptionally small dwarf with a pickaxe is tapping away just behind your eyes. That would explain why you can't see anything other than a series of indistinct blurs, but does nothing for the coarse heat beneath your hands. Is that… sand? Why are you lying on sand?

With a groan you roll over, feeling your stomach flip and start crawling its way up your throat in rebellion. The heat is everywhere, a reassuring constant from which you slowly draw the strength to stand, and from there you have but to look around for a moment to catch the silvery gleam of water in the distance. The mere sight of it brings the harsh burning of your throat into sharp relief, thirst running rusted nails across your tongue, and with all the grace of the living dead you stumble across eternity and fall face-down by the shore. Clumsy, desperate efforts gather glittering moisture in your hands, and with a half-formed prayer you lower your head and drink.

The second the water touches your lips it vanishes, soaking into skin and bone as easily as sand, and the cool progression as it sweeps through your body brings not only relief but clarity as well. The headache disappears, your vision sharpens, and the frantic mess of disparate thoughts clunking around inside your skull are replaced by true awareness at last. Blinking, in shock, you look around.

The skies are clean and blue in a way they never are above the Empire, marked only by the blazing light of a sun at least thrice the size of the one you know. What land you can see is hidden beneath endless miles of sand, great dunes and rolling valleys of burning gold that stretch out to the distant horizon, and only the small oasis at your back serves to break the monotony of the terrain. Here silken banners hang between a dozen foreign trees, great strips of vibrant colour brought together to form an elegant compound around a pool of silvery water, and when you see the tent on the far side the bottom of your stomach seems to fall away.

"Ulric preserve me…"

There is a woman sitting outside the tent, though in truth the term hardly suits. Her hair is the bright white of a fresh-forged blade, her skin so black she seems more an absent void hung motionless in the air, and what you would otherwise call eyes or perhaps tattoos are in truth streams of liquid fire that burn eternal and absent source. Nothing human could look like that, and as that thought sinks in so too does the realisation of just how incredibly, unavoidably fucked you are.

"If I have offered any offense to you, knowing or otherwise, I apologise without reservation," you say, bowing lower than you ever have before, lower than you would bow to the actual Emperor, because this is a Djinn and you are in her sanctuary and you will be polite or you will cease to be anything at all, "my senses deserted me, and I can only beg your forgiveness."

"If you had offered offence," the Djinn replies, her voice as sweet as honey and cloying as the smoke that chokes your lungs, "you would not be here."

Well, that's a sentence that could be taken in far more ways than you are evenly remotely comfortable with, but you know better than to seek clarification. No two texts you have read agree on anything more than the broadest of generalities when it comes to the Djinn, especially not the capriciously malevolent Ifrit, but their propensity to see humour in tormenting those who think themselves cunning is an unsettlingly common theme.

"If I am not here to apologise," you say carefully, deferentially, only just about daring to look at your potential executioner directly, "then might I ask why I am here?"

The Djinn dissolves, abandoning all pretense of humanoid form for a drifting cloud of smoke and embers, and flows across the surface of the water towards you. You force yourself to stand very still, not flinching or backing away even when the cloud becomes a woman once again, roughly your height but floating half a foot above the ground and far, far too close for comfort.

"You are here, little one, because you intrigue me," she says, taking your jaw in one elegant hand and peering into your eyes from barely a foot away. She smells of dry grass and incense, and it is a physical effort not to lean into that hand as it caresses your face.

You may have a problem.

"I am, uh," you stammer, unable to look away, painfully aware of those burning eyes and the suggestion of curves so evidently within arms reach, "fl...flattered, of course, but… um… details would be, ah, appreciated?"

The other hand comes up, trailing a path along your stomach and breasts that causes your mouth to work soundlessly. Does she know what she is doing to you? Do Djinn even have the concepts for this sort of thing? Such questions have never seemed even half as urgent before today as they do now, and it takes you a moment to realise where her hand has stopped - just above the wolf-fang amulet that you wear around your neck.

"You are fundamentally fire, as we are," the Djinn says, her lips moving slowly in ways seemingly unconnected to the words she speaks, "yet you honour the god of winter cold. The contrast marks you, a contradiction in your soul. I would know why."

Ok. Ok, Erika, keep it together. The words run in a circle around your head, but at least the question helps you focus. Your faith is something true and dear to you, and this would not be the first time you have taken solace in focus on the divine. True, the trials assailing you are considerably more pleasant this time around, but… no, focus.

"There isn't much to tell," you say, as calmly as you can manage given the circumstances, "my life was saved by a priest that He sent, and I honour him for it. He has walked by my side ever since."

The Djinn seems to consider this for a moment, and though she tilts her head in thought her hair does not follow suit, remaining rigidly still as though painted across her skin by some celestial brush.

"No," she says at last, "I know obligation, I understand duty, and there is more to you than that. You are not marked as if by a burden, but rather… you enjoy it? The contradiction brings you pleasure?"

"Well," you say, because you are an idiot, "what is life without a little fun?"

Oh gods preserve you, gods protect you, gods keep your idiot mouth shut why did you say that, you truly do have a death wish…

"I see," the Djinn says, releasing you and stepping back. You think that she is smiling, but you have no idea if that is a good thing or a sign of some incipient disaster. "I thank you for the answers. You may depart."

There is a portal in the air, a swirling vortex of orange sparks surrounding a glimpse of home, and taking the implicit dismissal for what it is you swallow your words and step towards it. Only on the threshold, half a step from the College grounds, do you pause and look back.

The Djinn is watching you, one lock of golden white hair twisted playfully in her hand, and the sight of her smile is enough to compel one last question from lips that have yet to learn their lesson.

"Will I see you again?" You ask, feeling like a foolish teenager the second the words leave your lips.

"Perhaps," the Ifrit laughs, the sound of burning wood turned to merriment by your audacity, "if you remain worthy of my interest, little spark."

You nod, and being less than completely foolish, decide not to press your luck any further. Stepping through the portal is the same as passing through any other door, and once you are safely beyond it seals itself behind you with nary a whisper. You hesitate there, in the corridor, then let out a long breath and lean on the nearest wall for support.

You have no idea what just happened, but on balance, you are glad that it did.

Still, with the haze of alcohol cleared from your mind and more immediate distractions no longer quite so pressing, you can at last turn your thoughts back to what your master discussed with you during… well, what you suspect is only a small fraction of the night that you actually recall. You are to be entered into the trials necessary to become a Magister, and that means you need to head to the archives, and once there begin thinking about what your demonstration of knowledge will be.

You won't stand for anything less than the spectacular.

Article:

A vote on what Erika wishes to research as proof of her skill and knowledge will be forthcoming, once I have fully assembled the options. However, while the stereotypical wizard performs their research in serene isolation up a tower in the far wilderness, a student at the College has no such luxury. Friends, allies and rivals will all take an interest whenever you do something interesting, and Erika is no exception.

Listed below are five options for people that Erika knows from her peer group. One of them is her friend, someone that she genuinely enjoys spending time with. Two are her rivals, people that seem duty-bound to antagonise her at every opportunity.

Which is which?

• Thecia de la Rochelle, the daughter of the Bretonnian Ambassador, and hence one of the few magical children in that land to escape the grasping claim of the Fey. A dignified, idealistic woman with a love for daring-do and chivalrous adventures.
• Rolanda Hohmann, a blacksmith's daughter with a legendary disdain for anything insufficiently material. Her absolute faith in Sigmar seems to largely take the form of a religious devotion to smashing things with a hammer.
• Astrid von Behr, born of nobility so high you think her blood might actually be blue. Insufferably vain, garbed in armour of withering disdain for approximately everything, and tragically possessed of the skill necessary to back it all up.
• Chalina, of no last name and unclear heritage stemming from somewhere in Tilea. Once a humble street rat, until her burgeoning magical talent caught the eye of a wealthy patron, and now a devotee of the arts in all their forms… including, most notably, swordplay.
• Heidrun, a 'Nordlander' who actually hails from rather further north. An almost perfect example of a fish out of metaphorical water in Altdorf, if said fish carried a battleaxe and was willing to use it at the slightest provocation.

Choose THREE of the above, in the following format:

[ ] [FRIEND] [Choose One]
[ ] [RIVAL] [Choose One]
[ ] [RIVAL] [Choose One]