The wizard did not acknowledge him, eyes still fixed on the window.
Yu hesitated, then spoke. “Fallem, can I ask you something?”
Fallem’s fingers stilled for the briefest moment before resuming their slow, aimless drumming. “What’s that?”
“Those two … Deltingar and Estington. What are they? What race, I mean.” Yu kept his voice low, careful.
Fallem flicked a glance at him. “Ulbatans,” he said, tone flat. “From the far south.”
Yu looked at him.
The wizard did not elaborate.
Yu asked. “Do you know more?”
“I’ve never seen others,” Fallem admitted with a shrug. “Never been that far myself. Only heard the usual things; exceptional fighters, deadly in close quarters. And…” He paused, his fingers slowing. “Resistance to magic.”
“Resistance?” Yu repeated. “What does that mean?”
“It means just that.” Fallem’s lips curled; not quite a smile. “Magic does not work on them. Not in the usual way.”
“How?”
Fallem closed his eyes, disinterest bleeding into his expression. “It’s Academy knowledge,” he said, a quiet superiority edging into his tone.
Yu’s feathers bristled, but he forced himself to keep this conversation practical. “So they are resistant by nature? Against all magic? Even against witches?”
Fallem exhaled through his nose, fingers resuming their slow, deliberate tapping against the wood. “It’s not my field. Worldbender elementers and healers, Lightshifters in general; they care about how magic interacts with others. I don’t. I’m a Worldbender transformer. My concern is how magic affects me, not how it’s warped or deflected by someone or something else.”
The dismissal was clear. Not in what Fallem said, but in the way he said it. That thin, veiled implication that Yu – bastard, wingless fina, failed wizard – was neither worth his attention nor common courtesy.
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