The General's Legacy

Chapter Four: Developing Talent (final part 2)

The book now open on the desk at pages near the middle displayed symbols that swam and danced as Pragius accessed that minor magic that forced them into order. Their meaning now deeper, darker, more determined and wondrous than ever before.
Hours passed and he thought he understood the connections, the ways to make the reversals and shape the energies to do the impossible. He spoke the new sounds that cannot be called words and concentrated on the resulting sensations.
His reverie slowly broke - buzz, tap, buzz tap tap, buzz, tap. A dung fly too ignorant to comprehend the nature of glass repeatedly failed its futile attempt to fly back to the daylight.
A light which played beautiful tricks with the fly's fat body casting blue-green hues of its back as it beat itself on the invisible barrier.

Pragius lost patience with the distraction, stood and flicked his hand making contact with the fly. His mind suddenly swirled with a brand new sensation that raised his heart rate and shot adrenaline through his veins. The rush was short lived but lasted longer than the life of the unfortunate fly now lying legs up on the book.
Weird beyond words.
Pragius was wary of touching the fly again but no longer wanted it cluttering up the cryptic text in the book.
"Buzz off," he said aloud.
The dead fly lacked understanding and brain function to make its body move.
'People are so strange sometimes to expect sentient behaviour from inanimate objects.' Pragius smiled to himself.
He didn't know where it came from, but the will for something else new filled his mind.
"Buzz off and find a dung pile to rest on." Pragius poured magic behind the words. His body reacted with a twisting stress in his chest and pain in the brain from the new path this magic took.

The fly flipped over on the book. Pausing only for a heartbeat it took off and navigated a path out the window and into the sunny day.
Pragius lost sight of it, but it flew above the rooftops of Tranmure and took a course south. It passed over the flour mill and the wool mill by the river. Over the river dockyard where the melody of cowbells could be heard the fly headed towards the docile beasts meditating on their cud. The fly came to rest on a dung pile and never moved again.

The book permitted Pragius a night's sleep. After all, he had done so well and needed recovery time after the shock.

*

"Still steady growth in demand for finished metal goods to Ephire, weak demand in Cavail." One of Duce Edens now infamous monologues dully droned on. As before he was decked out in something considered the latest summer fashion, sitting alert and stuffed full of his own self-importance.
"I fear without a solution to the problem of reliably navigating a direct sea course, the cost will remain prohibitive for most. It is taking too long to go via Rubera's coastline. The bean pods brought back don't seem to last well on the long trip. It makes for a rich man's drink when it gets here and I'm told the best flavours are lost."

"Faster boats?" offered Pragius with impatience in his tone.
The book was free from the bondage of night calling out in his mind.

"A faster ship is usually a ship that carries less and, therefore, inefficient in a different respect.
Duce's voice reeked of condescension cooked up by his pathetic intellect. Or was that smell the stench of fresh sweat from Majoran sat the other side of him? His forehead certainly had a shine. A shine that shifted position as the man's head nodded down with his eyes following to take in more facts from his notebook before popping up to look out from under those dark eyebrows peppered with grey hairs.
Pragius somehow missed the transition from Duce's trade talk to the agony of Majoran's mining accountancy. Lacking even the little entertainment offered by a freshly waxed table Pragius looked elsewhere in the room for distraction and found Carn.
'Why does that man bother to turn up to council sessions if all he is ever going to do is stare out of that window?'
Pragius ranted silently to himself.
The King asked questions, the answers thieves stealing time from Pragius's precious live span treasure chest. The contents of which he swore to himself would reach exhaustion before this meeting ended.
'End? Who are we kidding, it never ends it just starts up all over again one month from now. I'll be doing this until my dying day.'