Lucian’s stomach fluttered once he reached Vera’s cabin. He hesitated only a moment before knocking. He stood there for at least a minute and almost left before the door slid open. Inside, Vera sat on the corner of her bed, seeming to have just come out of meditation.

  “Yes?”

  “Could we talk?”

  After a moment, she gave a slow, regal nod. Lucian stepped inside, entering a space as large as his cabin, but with only one queen-sized bed. A wide viewport looked upon the inner band of the Milky Way, a glowing stream of starlight. His stomach sank as he stepped forward, as if gravity itself had doubled.

  The air within was warm, almost balmy, laced with the aroma of incense. A leather-bound journal and an ink pen sat on a nearby desk next to several small books, but other than that, there were no articles that might have given a clue about who she was.

  “How might I be of service?” she asked. “I presume you are ready to continue your lessons.”

  Lucian wasn’t sure where to start. “We discussed this last time, about how I would have to make a choice.”

  Her eyebrows arched as if she suspected what was coming. “Oh? Well, say what you came to say.”

  “I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I agreed to learn from you, but not to be your student.”

  Her dark eyes turned cold. “I do not make a practice of teaching those who are not my pupils. I have chosen you to be my student, to let you in on secrets many mages would kill to discover. More than that, I fear we do not have a choice in the matter. The Manifold has marked you, and if the Transcends get a hold of you, it could prove disastrous.”

  She stated her opinion with a boldness that took him aback. He would have to answer very carefully.

  “I’m . . . honored by that. You know far more than I could ever learn on my own.”

  She watched him as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Then what is the issue?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess I don’t know as much about you as I would like, despite our last conversation. Your motives, your plans. I still don’t know why you want to train me at all. You say it’s because I’m marked, but I don’t even know what that means, or what’s expected of me. It’s only fair that you tell me.”

  “I see. Well, I can’t fault you for that.” She sat straighter on the bed. “But I’m afraid you will have to take a lot of what I say on faith. I wish I knew the future, for you and me. But the truth is, the Manifold works its fate upon us all. Despite our inclinations, the fate of mages is written in the stars. It is far easier to accept that fate than to fight against it.”

  She was speaking in riddles again. “What do you mean? That it’s my fate to train with you or something?”

  “The Manifold has revealed some of your future to me. And in the future, you are my student. Now, mages have a traditional type of mentorship that is between Master and Psion. The Psion helps the Master in her errands and undertakings, while in exchange, the Master teaches the Psion everything she knows. The conclusion seems obvious. The Manifold meant for us to meet each other aboard this ship. I am meant to teach you, and you are meant to learn from me. You are to be my Psion.”

  Lucian couldn’t help but notice her wording. She had said that as if it were a statement of fact, not a hypothetical.

  “How do you know this? Magic?”

  She gave a slow nod. “Prophecy is a tricky subject, prone to misinterpretation. I am not immune to that. But prophecy has its uses. I don’t know why, but I see this eventuality between us. It cannot be any other way, in my mind.” Vera shrugged. “Of course, I cannot force you to do something against your will.” She gave a small, cunning smile. “But the Manifold can. And will.”

  “I don’t buy that. I hardly even know you, so why would I become your student on just faith? To be honest, your past concerns me. You say you’ve changed, but how can I know that for sure?”

  “My former involvement with the Starsea Mages is a closed chapter of my life,” Vera said. “Like the Starsea Mages, however, I still wish to stop the fraying, though by a different means. I have a new lead I’m pursuing, a lead that will take me to Halia. You are right to question me, and I understand your reticence. Skepticism is healthy. For that reason, I encourage you to allow silence and solitude to be your guide, where the Manifold and its will can be sensed by the astute mage. But if you want more practical reasons for why you should be my Psion, then they are as follows. I can train you to use the Manifold better than any mage in the galaxy, including the Transcends of the Volsung Academy. I can teach you to stream its power efficiently and purely, to keep the fraying at bay. And my final reason—I believe that this is your calling, too. And if you refuse this call, the results could be disastrous. Not just for you, but for the galaxy.” She shrugged, the gesture seeming anticlimactic in the face of her bold prediction. “Let’s just say this may be your one chance to do something great with your life. Only once have I felt a fate so marked as yours . . .”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Lucian couldn’t help but be curious. “Whose?”

  Vera was silent for a long time, her expression darkening with some foul memory.

  “That is a tragedy, perhaps, for another day,” she said. “When you’re ready. When you’ve agreed to take the harder path, the path that will no doubt be your truth, your training with me will begin in earnest. If you will continue to Volsung, you will soon learn that the Manifold is not something to be denied forever.”

  Lucian was quiet as he thought about her words. His calling? He’d barely gotten around to accepting he was a mage, and now he had to accept he was some hero or something, fated to stop the fraying.

  He didn’t buy it.

  “That’s not my calling,” Lucian said. “I’m just trying to survive here. And your vagueness about everything just makes me think you’re hiding something. I’m not a hero, and I never will be.”

  Vera smiled. “Hero? I never said that. I said you are marked and have a greater part to play. Hero, villain, it doesn’t matter. But the last thing you can choose to be is nothing at all, Lucian. Perhaps that reckoning will not visit you today, or even a month from now. But someday, it will. As someone I once knew very well said, if you stick your head in the sand, you’re liable to be bitten in the ass.”

  Lucian’s eyes widened at the use of profanity, which seemed out of character for her. But it demonstrated just how serious Vera was about her ideas.

  “As such, since you are still unready,” she went on, “I will reserve my lessons on deeper magical theory, lessons you will not learn until you become a Talent of the Volsung Academy—a process that will take years. You are still a child, in attitude and beliefs. You think deeply of yourself and little of the wider universe. But you should be thinking more deeply of the universe and lightly of yourself.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Her gaze intensified upon him. “It’s time you ended your self-pity, Lucian, and began to look outward at bigger things. The universe doesn’t care for your self-misery, and that outlook avails you nothing. Rise, and become who you were meant to be.”

  “Which is?”

  She leaned forward. “If you have to ask that, then you're not yet ready.”

  Lucian found himself stunned. Yes, every word she’d said was true, at least about him. He knew he would learn a lot by going with her and traveling to many interesting places. But the mere idea of it was unimaginable at the moment, whether Vera saw it in the future or not.

  If he got to decide who he was, as she said, then the choice was his.

  “Go on to Volsung, if you feel you truly must,” Vera went on. “But mark my words. The Manifold means you for something much more. Accepting that fate will be easier than resisting it. Sometimes, whatever seems sane and logical on the surface is anything but. Remember what I told you last time: seek silence, and listen for the Manifold. Let its truth direct you; let it hone and sharpen you. It will reveal the right path. I would encourage you to—”

  “—meditate and think about it?”

  She nodded. “We have about a week left on the voyage. You’ve grown, even if you haven’t felt it. But you’re not there yet. Something tells me that Dirk and his ilk will no longer prove any difficulty for you. You have risen above the likes of him and have become stronger through force of will. It is but one tiny step on the path to your strength as a mage. Whatever your future, you must stand strong and face it without running. The Manifold has placed a rare opportunity before you. It would be a shame to walk away from destiny, to go down another path that could bring you to ruin, and perhaps even others, if only because another has sown doubts in your mind.”

  Lucian knew she was talking about Emma, or at least had guessed at her influence over him. It made him feel protective of her. “We don’t need to bring her into this.”

  Vera shrugged. “It is strange that three mages should board the same liner to Volsung. It almost sounds like the opening line of a bad joke. Perhaps I underestimated her role in this, but I see that her words have made an impact on you, as my words have. It’s up to you to decide through whom the Manifold speaks.” Her attention turned from him as she gazed out the cabin viewport. “Go. Think about what I’ve said. And let me know your decision soon.”

  He went to the door, her voice stopping him before he stepped through.

  “One last thing.”

  He turned to look at her. She regarded him coolly.

  “Just because I can see your future through the Manifold doesn’t mean that future can’t change. You can still make the wrong decisions. You can still die because of those decisions.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because Lucian . . . your fate does not lie on the surface of Volsung. It could be that you must go there to fulfill a greater purpose, one which is hidden from me. Only time will tell.”

  Lucian watched her for a moment, fighting the anxious twist in his stomach. If Vera could do one thing, it was to make him doubt himself to the core.

  “I’ll let you know soon.”