His tone – so cold.

“You don’t? If you –”

“Shut up!” he screamed, rising to his feet, whirling at me. “You’re always talking, it’s always me, me, me! You’re the archmage, you’re the oldest one – well you’re not him! Not Dad! And I’m glad! Because you’re not the boss of me, not either of us! It’s a good job – what was it, to you?” His eyes came alight as they suddenly narrowed, the battle within him won by the forces of fury and wroth. “What was it, just one more adventure? ‘Oh, I know, I’ll go to Zadhal and face down evil gods!’ ‘Oh yeah, dragon, arch-demon, heretic, gimme gimme, what could go wrong!’ ‘Oh cool, I get to break myself out of mage-jail, so awesome!’ Is that how it goes? Is that how life seems to you? Cos it looks dropping different from down here!”

Sicker than flying wraithless, feeling more adrift in space than ever before, I cast about for support, only to find the facelessness of the landscape and her, Jaid’s eyes exuding their emptiness.

“You think she blames herself? She blames you! We both do. I blame you.” Tears were coursing down his face again but the voice of glacial anger rolled on, relentless. “You told me – told us – told us you’d run – promised us, you’d be back and then – then –”

I only beheld the tiniest fraction of the horror that had to be in him and yet it was too much for me – it broke me, to hear him drop to a whisper, the voice bubbling up from a hell-pit.

“Then you were gone, dead, like them, and we were the ones left behind. The ones you left behind. And I – I still don’t know, whether it’s even better that you came back than if you’d just –”

I’d closed my eyes, and was so lost in my thoughts, in his voice, that I hadn’t noticed Jaid get up until she slapped him.

He caught her wrist on her second swing, and when he twisted her arm it all descended into chaos. I got involved, applying the wraith-form to my lower body so that I could get between them, grapple them apart; Jaid was yelling incoherently through her sobs; Jaroan was spitting increasingly-vile words and he wouldn’t let her go –

In the act of separating them I took a blow from Jaroan across the chin but I managed to shove them apart with as much gentleness as I could muster. Even still, they both stumbled in the thick weeds tangled about their feet. I rounded on Jaroan, putting myself between the two of them.

“You think I deserve that, don’t you? You think it’s all just an adventure? Yeah, because the souls of thousands in Zadhal – who cares, right? Who cares what the dragons and demons do? It’s not like they’ve ever invaded our dropping street, is it! Who cares when they’re sentenced to death, thrown in a hole just for trying to save lives, a hole no one’s escaped for seven hundred years… who moves heaven and earth to get back to his brother and sister… to look after the most ungrateful –”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“That’s just what you want us to believe, what you want yourself to believe!” He was getting louder again and I looked aside at the ground to quell my own slowly-boiling anger. “You want to think you’re doing it for us, for the innocents and their souls – but it’s glory you’re after, it’s all you’ve ever been after – ever since you told us what you were you’ve been different –”

“I’ve been different? Knives, Jar? Knives! What in the Twelve Hells went through your head –”

“You were gone! I – I had to protect us. Someone had to protect us. You use daggers, don’t you?” He said it with a sneer on his face. “I heard Garet talking to Xan. I know about Zandrina. I know she’s – she was coming –”

Zandrina? It didn’t matter – I got the context.

“Gang wars? Gang wars, is your excuse for spitting on their graves like that? I thought, what with dragons and that whole Everseer –”

“What’s your excuse?” he shrieked. “You promised us you’d be safe and you left! You left and we were alone and for what? So you could line your pockets with platinum? So you could woo your g-girlfriend? We were fine, before! We never needed any of that stuff but you had to chase it! And look at what happened to us!”

I was finding it hard to breathe, the truth of it all, my egotistical actions, my self-aggrandising and my selfishness, waves coming thick and fast.

“I’m sorry!” I choked. “If I’d known – at the start – what it was, to wear the mask – I thought I knew – I thought I could control it all! What would you have done, before? If you were me, if you got this –“

Power? Was that what it was? The ability to channel magic by instinct was precious, something I’d missed in Zyger, and when it returned to me I’d been bowled over by the ecstasy of reconnecting with my gift –

Gift?

I looked at my life – the remnants of my life – and rejected that word. No gift brought so much woe on the recipient. It was a… trade-off. A reciprocal transaction, cost-on-delivery. It took away as much as it gave.

With me, it’d given a lot. I was one of the stronger sorcerers, I knew. Why was that? Was it just that I was the most broken? Was that why my future had been thrown into the shadows of Henthae’s sunken cell? Was I doomed from the beginning, or had I doomed myself? What if I’d been content to just sit in a booth day by day, ensorcelling things for other people to use, clock on, clock off…?

It’s the hell I made for myself.

I’d fallen silent, and it wasn’t until I met his eyes, knowing how vulnerable, how weak and pathetic I looked, that my brother responded.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done, in your place,” he snarled. “But I wouldn’t have forgotten my brother and sister!”

Forgotten… you? But I didn’t – I always thought of you. Always!

I had no voice.

I let myself go down to my knees, but the lightness of the wraith-form about my lower half meant I just pitched myself forward instead; I threw up my hands just in time to avoid full on face-planting the thick wet grass.

I raised my chin, lying on my front on the ground, weeds poking in my throat.

A few feet away, Oldbeard was feasting on Jaroan’s discarded tart, ponderously chomping away at the pastry and watching our altercation with wide eyes, his tail twitching from side to side at a measured pace.

I managed to sigh.

At least things can’t get much worse.

* * *