OOC: the bio for this character was approved over a year ago, but I never really did anything with it. I've decided to revive her today, after some discussion with the White Tower. Since I had a full sister before, I've decided to start this one off on the day of her Aes Sedai test.

 

IC:

"Ouch!"

 

The weave dropped and Irina reeled on her feet, her head ringing with the blow she'd just received. Caira, who'd once again managed to sufficiently destract her, sat giggling on the bedspread behind her, banded dress spread out around her.

 

Irina kicked the nightstand in front of her. It groaned under the abuse, but that was nothing new. Everything in here was old and shabby and hastily put together. The rug didn't fit with the curtains, the bed was hard and too narrow and the pitcher on her washstand was chipped. In two places. Not that it mattered. Up until now there hadn't been luxury in her life anyway.

 

It was just that when Nyssa and Estel Sedai had found her on that merchant train between Tear and Far Madding, she'd been lured to the life of an Aes Sedai not only with the thought of finally having the power to overcome her difficulties, but also to live life a little more luxuriously. Of course she knew that after she'd gone and passed for her Aes Sedai test - and there was little doubt in her mind that she would pass, for everything that Irina did was with a purpose and the zest to win - she'd finally step up a little in rank as far as having money was concerned. She'd receive a stipend and would also be housed better than the novices and Accepted were. In effect, she couldn't wait for things to progress.

 

But first this darned Aes Sedai test and the practice that went along with it.

 

"Kicking that nightstand won't help you concentrate harder, Irina" Caira said drily. The two girls weren't exactly the best friends, but they didn't hate eachother either. Both were kind of stand-offish and aloof, and as such did not really have a best friend within the Tower. Irina's sense of self-preservation had always made that she'd wanted to be the best in everything - and as such she was a sore looser - which didn't tend to find you the best of friends fast. Still, people generally got along with her, and it was at least better than roaming the streets.

 

Five years of novicehood, six years as an Accepted ... and it all seemed to be coming to an end now. Time to resume the practice. She started from the beginning.

 

Fire, Earth, Air together in a knot. Spirit, Water, Fire, some more Air just so. Add another bit of Fire, place Earth on it and there she had a glowing disk in her hand. She let it dissipate, all the while feeling lashes of Air around her that felt like whipcracks. Caira was having fun it seemed. Composing herself, she went on to the second weave. She knew all hundred of them by heart by now, but she had never gotten so far as to complete them all flawlessly.

 

A sharp knock on the door pulled her out of her concentration, and she instantly felt as if Caira had ducked her in a bucket of icewater. "Oooohh!" Caira giggled and walked to the door, but the giggle quickly dissipated when she saw who was standing there. Pia Tovisen, the Mistress of Novices, walked in with a grave face. At once, Irina searched her memory of anything she could be busted for now. The large splash of ink she'd left in one of the more rare books she'd lent from the library last week? The cockroaches she and Caira left in one of their fellow Accepted fresh dresses? She straightened her back and pulled herself up to height, looking the MoN straight in the eye, ready to face whatever punishment, when Pia simply said to her "It is time Irina. Leave your things and come with me immediately"

 

Caira blanched. And Irina could do nothing else but follow the Mistress of Novices to whereever it was the Aes Sedai test would be held.

 

 

The room was situated way below everything Irina had ever seen, even below the chamber where she had been tested for Accepted. The massive door gave way to Pia's single knock, and when she and Irina walked in, it was like stepping into a deja vu. The ter'angreal in the middle of the room wasn't exactly like the Arches, but it resembled them to a fair extent, as did the women who were present and kept it going by constant channeling. A shiver ran through Irina. Her Arches were something she didn't fondly remember. She'd come out of them steaming in anger - as was the case with most of the new Accepted, she later heard - and she didn't care much to repeat the experience. On the other hand, this test had something to do with channeling. Why else would she have had to learn the 100 weaves by heart? And learning, being the best, winning had always been what Irina had been superior at.

 

This will be easy. You know it. And when it is over, you'll have the world at your fingertips.

 

In the last eleven years, her teachers and mentors had both encouraged her competitiveness, but also had tried to subdue it when they felt it got out of hand. Irina had let them think she'd been mollified, toned down - softened - and to an extent she had been. But not how her teachers had meant it. She'd learned to be more subtle, that was all. She'd learned how to pull a bland face even though her mind was running. She'd learned how to lie without others noticing. She'd learned how to follow her own agenda while making it look like she cared for others. But in essence, the only thing Irina really cared about was herself. About rising above herself. And others.

 

She felt contemptuous about the weak, the ones who went out of their way to help others without gaining anything back for themselves. Aes Sedai, "Servants of All." At night, alone in her small Accepted room, she'd more than once pondered about the strangeness of it all. Here she was, being trained for an Aes Sedai, while all the while she was what seemed like the opposite. She was only a Servant of herself really. If she could help others while helping herself, that was fine. But Irina had always only her self interest at heart.

 

She'd been thinking what kind of Ajah would suit this. She was very good at listening to others and reasoning - because she didn't really have any conscience or feelings that plagued her. Or at least, she was very good with shutting that inner voice out. Guilt was not something that she felt often. For a while she'd thought she would make a good white, but then again, they were always - ALWAYS - busy with the logics of the world and theory and nothing much else. Irina did want to be able to venture out, meet other people. Be more passionate. Blue didn't fit her at all, they were too passionate. Irina didn't have a greater cause (other than her own betterment) so the Blues were something she hadn't even considered. Brown was too stuffy, Red to rigid in their ways with men, Yellow was much too caring and Green too feisty. Irina shuddered at the thought of having to bloody herself on the battlefield, in the frontlines. Gray. Now Gray sounded good.

 

“You come in ignorance, Irina Mariott, how would you depart?”

 

The question brought her out of her reverie, and she payed attention to Pia, who stood solemnly before her. She groped for the words she had been taught together with the weaves.

“In knowledge of myself.”

 

Pia continued.

“For what reason have you been summoned here?”

 

“To be tried.”

“For what reason should you be tried?”

“So that I may learn whether I am worthy.”

“For what would you be found worthy?”

“To wear the shawl.”

 

The shawl. It would be a Gray one resting on her shoulders before long. Tomorrow! She was sure of it. When Pia instructed her to remove her clothes, she did arch an eyebrow, but did as she was told. Not again.

 

The ter'angreal shimmered as she walked in ... and forgot everything ...

There were no clothes. Irina turned around in the shoddy corridor, putting down the tray with food and drink and calmly collected the waitress dress and shoes that were neatly folded and lay nearby on a cupboard. She put them on, not in the least perturbed by the strangeness of her actions. She moved as if in a trance, picked up the tray, walked into the crowded common room of the inn, until her feet rested on the star inlaid in the floor. There, she put away the tray and started to weave the first weave, quite naturally, as if she wasn't started at by numerous customers.

 

They all rose as one, and started to yell at her, throw cups at her, and one of them even tried to knock her unconscious. Irina ducked under his fist absently, finished the weave and took a step forward ...

 

flicker ...

 

Total darkness, until a light sprung up from a far corner in the form of a torch. Straight forward was an arch with a star carved into it. Irina proceeded forward and placed herself under it, starting to form the second weave. All of a sudden dozens of rats came pouring out of the darkness behind her, biting her ankles, scrabbling up her bare legs, screetching and twisting. Irina lifted her feet one by one, trying to shake off the vermin, all the while channeling the second weave. As soon as it was into place, she walked under the arch, bleeding from numerous ratbites on her legs ...

 

flicker ...

 

A dead garden, freezing winds, and shrivveled up rosebushes. The dead leaves on the ground formed a star and Irina placed herself on it. The second she started to weave the third weave, a Myrddraal materialised next to her, advancing towards her with his maggotwhite hands, and tried to rip her to shreds. Irina screamed, finished the weave, and saw the eyeless face nearing until ...

 

flicker ...

 

Her father smiled at her while walking with her mother in the garden. Irina followed them along the path until they came to a star inlaid in the path. They walked past it, and she hesitated, because it pulled her oddly. She placed her feet on the star and started to weave the fourth weave when her parents suddenly transformed before her eyes. Their skin started to blacken and bleed, their eyes bulged out of their sockets with pain, and they screamed to her for help. Irina weaved on - disturbed .. I never even saw my mother and father, they are dead, how can this be? ... until the weave was finally done and she left the star, coughing, choking, her face tearstricken. She wanted to help but ...

 

flicker ...

 

On and on it went, from walking on glass to being burned by fire, from standing on a windswept plane, seeing the most unimaginable creatures advancing on her, all intent on her death to being confined to a small very hot room where she could barely breathe. The hundredth weave fell into place and she walked through the arch, into the vault beneath the Tower, with welts and scratches and bites and burns all over her body, one arm limp at her side where a Trolloc had broken it, barely conscious but at the end of the test.

 

Healing was offered to her quickly, and left her weak and powerless. Pia escorted her back to her room where she left her, with the orders to rest and heal, and meditate on her life as an Aes Sedai.

It was still early in the afternoon and sunlight streamed through the windows. Odd, for it seemed to Irina that lifetimes had passed since she'd been taken to the test down below in the bowels of the Tower. She had somehow expected it to be the dead of night, but nothing of it.

 

This was supposed to be a time of contemplation, on how one supposed to be a Servant of All. Irina reflected while she slowly walked across the room, looking at the familiar cracks in the wall, the chipped crockery, the hard bed. Her two spare Accepted dresses hung on a peg on the wall adjacent the bed. Today would be the last day she'd wear one. She felt oddly detached, suspended as it were, between two stations in life. No longer the child, the Accepted, but not yet Aes Sedai either.

 

It had grown chilly, and she channeled to light up the cinderblocks in the tiny hearth. It was done without thinking, but the sweetness of Saidar filled her and she relished in the thought that from tomorrow on in, there would be no supervision. No one to tell her what to do and what not to - no classes to follow other than the ones she chose to. No causes to persue other than her own. And that brought her to her Ajah choice.

 

She'd long since recognized that there was nothing fixed within herself but the will to survive at any cost. There were those amongst the Tower, most notably the Greens and Blues who had nothing but the prevalence of the Light at heart. But for Irina things were never black and white, Light or Dark. There was only life, and surviving it. Life, and besting it. Life, and emerging as the winner. There had been too much bereavement in her childhood and teens for her to believe in the idealistic goodness of life. She'd rather take her chances with the strongest side, or making sure her choice would be the prevalent one. It fit well with the career she had in mind with the Grays.

 

She spent the night next to the fire, not answering the knocks on her door. Her Accepted friends were in the past now. There was a gap between them that could only be bridged if they passed the test as well. Her flesh still shivered under the Healing she'd been given to mend all her wounds. It had been like everything she'd imagined it to be and worse. And yet, she prevailed ...

 

The next day dawned bright and chilly, and when Irina stood up out of the chair she'd been sitting in all night she was stiff and cold. A few touches of Saidar here and there made sure her hair returned from disheveled to manageable, and when she took the dress she would wear for today out of the wardrobe, the Power made sure it was free of wrinkles. The silk fabric shone in her hands, and when she put it on and fastened the row of little bead pearl buttons at the back, she was surprised by the weight of it. She had never worn anything like this before. From rags, to white, to silk - the path lead higherup no matter how she looked at it.

 

When she looked in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself. She'd never thought of herself as pretty, but the woman who stood reflected there looked regal. Straight back, her hair a mass of reddish blonde curls she finally had beaten into submission, her face cool and composed. Only the hazel eyes spoke of the eddy of thoughts behind that unreadable face. Irina stroked the folds of the slate-gray shining skirt and answered the knock at the door with a clear voice. "Come in!"