He went over to his backpack and packed some clothes and things for a trip. “I don’t know who to trust or who to go to,” he mused out loud. Then he smiled. “I know for sure that Aeron dislikes me but cares about Alyss, so he will do something about all of this if I tell him.” He stopped and picked up a different chain from his desk. It had been given to him by his adoptive sister for Christmas last year after she’d complained that his normal necklace, the birth necklace he’d never told her the importance of, was ugly and gave him a new one shaped like a wing. He smiled and put it on. She was right, it was far prettier than the one his parents had given him as an infant before they’d sent him off. It was also a better connection to the family he had now.
He breathed in deeply, to prepare mentally, then used his power to cast himself onto a road in another realm, another region, and into a new quest of his own design.
Darien hadn’t really told the transport spell where to take him, just that he wanted to be taken away. The power surged and ended up landing him in the Shadeworld, where he was rapidly pacing along on the Great Road North through the Pallid Race’s Realm of Shades and moving through an offshoot called the Southern pass. All of a sudden a howl echoed off the tree trunks. Glowing eyes and shadowy forms sprouted up along the trunk, and a band of werewolves sprung out from their hiding places to surround him completely.
He groaned at the sight of them, but knew it would do no good to try to run or hide at this point. As they closed in he quickly sat down in the middle of a clearing only a few paces ahead. “If you want to talk to me, please sit. If you want to fight, some other arrangements will obviously have to be made,” he challenged.
They easily surrounded him in the small clearing. They emerged, a mass of tanned men with lupine eyes and carrying wolf pelts.
They quickly surrounded him and peeled off their wolf pelts to reveal their growling humanoid faces. “So you skin your own kind,” the boy prodded them. “Wouldn’t expect better from animal types like you.”
“Stupid human,” a man with a raspy voice and golden pelt growled at him, “Have your wizard elders taught you nothing?” Darien scowled at repeated diatribe against his elders even as his ears turned red at the reminder of how little he knew. “You think we change our forms at the magic shift? These are our own furs,” he pointed at his hide, “ Same as this is my own skin,” then gestured at his naked torso and rough linen slacks. The other wolves muttered among themselves about this ignorant outsider and shared dark looks.
A young man in the back yipped. “We could store our fur in some space between spaces that we could access on the original, but this space has been cut off from us in the Shadeworld.” Those surrounding him converged on him, and the bodies pressing down on him served to silence him.
“Will the Alpha allow such insolence,” Darien asked curiously.
“He is young,” that man responded. “If he must speak out, it is good that he does so honestly,”? this with great affection. “You would do well to learn from that,” he jibbed at the listening wizard.
“Besides, your people waste skins and meats in your magic rituals as even the strongest of your kind is too weak to enact any significant spell through your own power, so we will hear no more ridicule from one of the weakest of your race, ribbonless.” The others outright guffawed at this jab at his stature, as it was well known even the lowest rank of wizard had trims of his status on his uniformed robes and the boy’s clothes were conspicuously bare.
Another wolf cut in, muttering, “He is a ribbonless, so I`m not sure he even counts as a wizard.” Those surrounding him laughed, silencing only when their elder glared at them for their conduct. Darien himself blushed as well. In the Domed City, the wizards all wore robes to denote their ranks. Yellow robes denoted scribes, green showed a military man or strategist, blue represented a burocrat, silver represented a government official, brown a merchant of some sort. The majority of the scribes, however, had red scholar robes. Ribbons trimmed the ends of these garments on the sleeves as well as the hem to show how advanced the bearer was in the social hierarchy. Though children were generally raised by their witch mothers for the first five or so years of their lives, any male children would be sent off to the domed city for an apprenticeship once they turned six.
“I’m not- look here, I’m not even in my robes right now!” The boy protested the barbs but it made no difference. They all knew any ranked wizards would work the trims into their clothes in some form or another even if they were in casual duds or undercover in some other peoples’ territory. Those who were not chosen as an apprentice to any man in the society would not receive even the minimal apprentice trim. These were the janitors, the scut workers. Only children below apprenticeship age or failures would be barred from sporting any trims, and children that
