Liobrenda the Temple Novice

Dancing candlelight illuminated Liobrenda’s small, unassuming cell. They gave enough light to see beyond one’s own nose, but too little to read properly. Therefore, the novice had to bend very low over the book. It was terribly uncomfortable, but curiosity overcame the discomfort.

An unusual tome ended up in the hands of Liobranda quite by accident. It’s funny to say, the girl literally found him under a bush, walking through the night garden. The next day, rumors spread among the templars that a thief had been caught and executed during the night after breaking into the Magister’s artifact vault. It was also said that not all of the stolen valuables were found with the robber. Liobrenda, although she was just a novice, immediately realized what exactly the brothers had not found … but decided to keep the book with her. She wrapped the cover with an old rag to make the tome look like an old book from the Tartus library, and began to read.

Reading was not easy. The words written in familiar letters turned out to be essentially abracadabra and formed into hard-to-understand phrases – either prayers, or just verses. Sometimes there were graphs and diagrams accompanied by strange symbols, but the novice simply ignored them, too complicated.

The first iccident with the book occurred a couple of weeks after the discovery. The hype around the stolen artifacts subsided, and Liobrenda began to get out with the grimoire into the street. Still, reading in sunlight was much more convenient than reading by candlelight. In the courtyard of the fortress at that time there were only a couple of monks who arranged a running competition. The novice looked at one of them, a stately dark-haired guy, and her lips at that time repeated one of the incomprehensible “prayers”. The monks ran, the dark-haired one was clearly lagging behind, Liobrenda became agitated, the repeated verse became more emotional, faster … and then the guy accelerated. He accelerated so much that he overtook his opponent in a couple of moments. In surprise, the novice stopped reciting the text, the monk ran more slowly, and then completely fell, tripping over a stone. He sat for a long time, examining his legs, trying to understand what it was. And the culprit of the incident was already running along the corridors of the Tartus fortress, clutching a book to her chest, the value of which she had just realized.

After this incident, Liobrenda began to experiment.

First of all, she decided to find out the scope of that spell, because it could not be anything other than a spell. Through trials, the novice found out that the acceleration effect does not affect several people at once, it passes rather quickly and cannot bypass the limits of the human body. Speeding up herself by looking in the mirror while casting the spell also failed, much to the chagrin of the girl.

But the acceleration helped a lot in battles with the pagans. Saying the formula and swinging the sword at the same time was not very handy, so the templar increasingly remained in the back ranks during skirmishes with enemies, speeding up her brothers from the order.

Then came the turn of other spells. Alas, if the acceleration always worked, then the rest did not work as smoothly. Some simply did not act, no matter how hard Liobrenda tried to put all the emotions and will into reading. Some worked differently each time. Perhaps the text needed to be supported by some actions. Perhaps the missing pieces of the puzzle were hidden in the blueprints and drawings. But no matter how much the novice struggled to decipher them, she did not achieve at least any noticeable success.

But Liobrenda was not only curious, but also stubborn. And now she practically ran her nose over the lines of incomprehensible words, then looked up from the book and traced with chalk on the floor one of the diagrams that accompanied the spell. When the complex drawing was ready, the girl stepped into the center of the diagram and began to read the corresponding “prayer”. At first nothing happened, but then the flames of the candles became… no, not smaller, the flames remained the same size, but gave less and less light. A minute later, most of the cell was shrouded in darkness, and this darkness was clearly not from Emrys.

When incomprehensible mutterings began to be heard from the darkness, Liobrenda broke down and erased part of the drawing with her foot. The cell immediately returned to its usual state. It seems that it is worth confessing to the Magister in an unusual find, he does not seem to condemn the study of artifacts. And one can lie about the way in which the book ended up with the novice. Like, look what I bought from a very strange visiting merchant.
With such thoughts, Liobrenda retired to her cell, took the book under her arm, and went to ask for an audience.