They could feel her feet hitting the ground.

She was walking normally, but they could feel her footsteps.

The ground was trembling before her.

The unique sensation shut them up as she walked into the rough tent that Isadora had whipped up to hold nearly a hundred young men and maybe a dozen older ones. Those who were married and working the land were not really looking to start something like this, while most of the career warriors were elsewhere, with those remaining behind either teaching the younger men or just home visiting before they were off to their jobs. The local laird had no interest in the doings of non-Casters, and they'd been pretty circumspect keeping this on the down low and among their kin.

Word would get out eventually of what she was going to talk about.

"I am Sama Rantha." She didn't say any more, leaving that matter to Miklan McMikal to do for her before she even got here. Striding through the crowd as if she owned it, even the brawniest and bravest of them got out of her way before she touched them. "Before we begin, I will be dividing you into three groups.

"Group one, go stand with Chekwort there," she said, pointing to the big Mountaineer Lupinal, brawny enough to impress the beefy locals. "Group two goes and stands with Miklan. Group three, outside with Isadora. There is nothing for you in here."

Without further ado, she grabbed the forehead of the nearest man, hauling him closer without effort, staring into his eyes and fairly pinning him in place.

"Group two, with Miklan." With no effort, he was sent stumbling in the Mick's direction.

A bigger fellow with half a head on her was grabbed, jerked down to her level with a casualness that utterly defied the fact he should have just hauled back and taken her up off her feet. "Group two, with Miklan." He was shoved off as easily as the smaller man had been.

A younger man was hauled close, scruffy bearded, still in his teens. "Group one, with Chekwort." She sent him spinning that way with a casual flex of her arm.

One of the older men, scarred and proudly bearded, was close, watching suspiciously, and then she was in front of him, hauling him forward, and staring into his eyes below her hand with a sensation like something was pounding on his brain and piercing into his skull, but he could say nothing, suddenly feeling like a child being handled by an adult.

"Group three, there is nothing for you here. Go outside with Isadora." The words reverberated in his ears, like the door on a sudden great opportunity had closed, and he didn't even know what it was!

His jaw worked, but then he was away and spinning around, and before he could catch and right himself, he was ten yards away and out the entrance of the tent.

"Told ye, McLannel," Miklan said, standing near the entrance. "She's looking for a certain thing, and ye either dinnae have it, or yer too late to get it. 'tis a hard fact, aye, but there's nothing for it, and she's not to waste time with ye. Go with Isa, she's got another offer for ye." He made a move-along gesture to the older man, who'd been one of his own sword instructors when he was younger, for all that he was a whore-monger and a bit loose with his morals on who to fight.

Grumbling, the swordsman turned away to the wizardess waiting nearby, cursing under his breath. He didn't want to be working under a wizard again, as famously uncaring as many were of the lives of their subordinates. That was true even if she was a distant cousin, as Lord McConnder was also his cousin, and he wouldn't trust the fool's commands in a real fight as far as he could throw the bone-obsessed arse.

---

It didn't take long to go through the numbers. Twenty or so of them were sent out of the tent, including all but one of the older men.

The main reason for that was that they were over Seven, and it was too late for them to become Forsaken. Even if energy-drained down, the stamp on their souls was there, and they were mostly Primos.

Two of them, however, were Powered. They just weren't very smart, but Wishcrafting could take care of that with remarkable speed, which meant those men could be trained into assets. It was likely they were going to be shocked they had magical ability, just not the mental assets to use it!

Chekwort's group was all of the youngest men and women, meaning those who were still Ones and hadn't taken the next step forward. Pretty much all of them were teenagers, some with martial dreams, others mostly the sons of farmers and hillmen who hadn't gotten much beyond their farms and homes. There were about thirty of them.

The remainder stood with the Mick. They were the ones who were all Two to Seven (only one of the latter), and had missed the first chance, but were eligible for the second.

"Stay in your groups and sit down," Sama ordered with a voice that had sliced through a hundred battlefields and more classes of students. The Caergard men and women were obeying the voice of authority before they even thought to challenge it.

"Forsaken."

She said the word, and it seemed to prickle in the air and on their skin. "Not in fact, but in belief. You believe you've been left behind by this world of magic, by your kin who have the ability to use that magic, and now your purpose and place is to be lesser things ordered around and commanded by those who could do all that you can, but you can't do all that they can."

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The statement was like a raw wound to them. Sama watched their faces frown in bitter regret and anger, a fact and truth they didn't want to accept, that a simple accident of nature had denied them magic and left them behind.

Forsaken, indeed!

"That is a lie, of course. You aren't Forsaken, although you might be forsaken." They could actually hear the difference in the word, it making them blink. "I am Forsaken. Miklan McMikal there is now Forsaken. You all… are Homo Sapiens Primos, core humanity. You are the foundation and bedrock of the human race.

"You are here for the chance to become Forsaken." She snapped up a hand before anyone spoke up. "Don't interrupt me!" she warned them all, and mouths clamped shut, feeling that hand on their forehead, gripping their skull like a rag doll, something pressing against their very brains, and they shut back up.

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"What you refer to as people with magical talent are Homo Sapiens Magos, colloquially known as the Powered. It's a genetic gift you are born with, like having blue eyes or red hair. They have the ability to wield energies often called magical, accumulate them in the body, and most importantly, send them back out.

"The Primos and the Forsaken do not have the ability to spend magical energy, and have very limited and specific ability to accumulate it.

"Forsaken are the non-magical people of the world. Not those who merely can't wield magic. They are actively non-magical." Sama paused to let that sink in. "Forsaken can feel the magic in the world as a pressure on their souls trying to constrain them, tie them up, and make them something normal and mundane.

"Forsaken push back against magic. Magic is not the stuff we wield. Magic is the stuff we push back against our whole lives." She surveyed the hungry eyes looking at her. "Yes," she answered the question. "We push back against all magic, and we bring it back to the level of human conflict.

"We cannot be heard by the gods, nor seen by the gods unless they come down and gaze upon us personally. We can generally only use magical Arms and Armor we've made ourselves with the right Runecraft to work with us, and such things are useless to the Powered. We can never use most magical items, Cast spells, or similar things.

"In return, as we grow stronger, magic cannot affect us. The manipulation of reality that it is magic goes still, burns away, or passes through us harmlessly.

"This continual defiance of magic gives us spiritual strength and fortitude that the Powered have to work very hard to duplicate. Our strength is within us, all the time, and magic is beating on us like a hammer on steel. We only get stronger with time."

There was a large rock sitting there next to her, weighing several hundred pounds, obviously too large to move easily, so just left alone.

She backfisted it. Her arm was slender, muscled like whipcords, but certainly not huge and strong like some of the bigger men, or even the brawnier women.

The CRUNCH of her fist slamming into the stone made every single person there jump in shock. They'd all heard combat, powerful blows, the impact of hammers on stone. They knew how hard she'd hit it!

She pulled her fist back, and everyone clearly saw the indent on the gray mountain granite of the small boulder she had just struck.

"Years," she stated, before the whispers could start. "It takes years to get to this point." And then she stepped over to the rock, spread her arms, and there was another crunch as she crouched down and her long, black-nailed fingers bit into the stone like it was brittle clay.

With a grunt, she straightened back up, lifting with her legs as the rock tore out of the ground, then with her back. With quiet protests, the stone and another two feet of its foundation mass tore up out of the packed dirt and came with her.

It out-weighed her twenty to one, at least. The faces of some of the bigger men went white with disbelief and awe, and the smart ones even paler as they realized those fingers had been grasping their skulls…

Then she hopped sideways five feet, and set the boulder down under perfect control there, the hole where it had been buried clearly visible.

The ones impressed at her strength swallowed. She'd… just HOPPED while carrying that…

Sama turned back to them, her face utterly bland, as if what she'd done was nothing too much to speak about.

"Some of you may one day get strong enough to do this. Some of you may get tough enough to run all day and all night. Some of you may get agile enough to dance on a tightrope and give cat burglars conniption fits.

"Everyone here has the potential to become Forsaken, if you choose to Defy the Magic."

She let the words weigh on them, scanning the very, very eager faces there once, before turning to land her eyes on the younger men and women in group one.

"There are two times in one's life when one can choose to become Forsaken." She held up two fingers in a V, waved them back and forth slowly, meeting all their eyes again. "Most of those in Group Three are past the time they could have chosen, and magic has its grip on them and won't let go.

"Those times are... when you are fresh and young in life, about to take your first steps down the long road to skill and power. In the parlance of the skilled, it is when you are a One, when you are First Level. If you know your magical nomenclature, it is the equivalent of being a First Initiate. A fresh apprentice, a barely-trained warrior, a barest acolyte of a priest who probably still gets his prayers mixed up." Her fingers came down to point at the first group.

"Congratulations. You are young, you can make the choice to become Forsaken and Defy the Magic with little effort, merely desire and being shown how. It will change your lives."

Her eyes turned sideways to the others, who all swallowed as those too-blue eyes wandered over them.

"You lot are late. You missed your best chance. You didn't know it was there, you got on with life. That's fine, no beating yourself up over it, but now you've got to do it the hard way."

Those in the second group were naturally tougher, more skilled, and more experienced than the youngsters of the first group, and stirred at her words…

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