It took the rest of the day but I eventually found the strength to get up from the ground and pretend that everything was okay again. I couldn’t bring myself to bother with finding a few new minions right now, I could barely bring myself to walk back to camp. It was embarrassing, and I hated that the soldiers on guard duty on the camp perimeter would see me like this. I hated a lot of things right now.

It took all of my willpower not to animate all the dead around me and send them into camp to start slaughtering soldiers until they reached Rainer. Ultimately it was the thought of my crest torturing my soul until I died for assaulting my master that dissuaded me. Thinking more about it I realized my adoptive siblings were in the middle of the camp as well, and them I had no desire to harm. Plus at least one of them would be able to save Rainer from an undead horde, and with all six together and plenty of other mages around the camp the undead wouldn’t stand a chance.

With dark thoughts swirling in my head I came to the top of a small rise that overlooked the camp and the surrounding field. I felt a strong conflict grow inside me. For so long I had devoted all I had to the army and the kingdom of Avalon, but now I felt hurt and betrayed by those same things. This camp represented everything I once held dear, but now it was a symbol of my captivity. Rainer was in that camp, so were Josh, Sarah, Carter, Lum, and the rest of my adoptive siblings.

I think I hated that camp, I know I wanted to hate it.

Taking a deep breath I started down the hill. I had spent the whole day examining my feelings and weeping out my pain, I had spent the day being weak were no one would find me. Now it was time to be strong again, to be the confident mage slave everyone expected me to be.

Making my way down the hill I tried for the neutral expression I normally wore and might have even found it, I channeled a trickle of mana into my face and eyes as I focused on the healing nature of water, I brushed the dirt and dust off the front of my robes and tried to straighten everything so I looked somewhat presentable. I was as close to normal as I could bother making myself at the moment.

Getting into camp wasn’t a problem, there was still enough light in the sky to see by and I was a known face. The guards on duty didn’t even attempt to stop me, getting to my tent was proving to be harder. I couldn’t take three steps without a soldier congratulating me, slapping me on the shoulder and back, or drunkenly cheering at me. Through it all I smiled, thanked, and joked. It made me sick on the inside, I felt like every one of them was patronizing me. Like they all were in on a joke at my expense and each friendly greeting or slap was just another poke at me for the fun of it.

I knew it was all in my head and I knew it was irrational to think like that, but feelings tend to be irrational things.

“Lux! Lux over here!”

I looked over at the sound of the voice. Carter was waving at me from the arm of a huge soldier, she seemed to have found the biggest man at camp. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man was half ogre as he must have stood at least seven feet tall and had arms as big around as my torso. I wondered if the half ogre knew what he was signing himself up for…

Summoning up a smile I waved back at my adoptive sister and her chosen victim for the night, I had hoped to make it back to my tent without meeting any of my “family” but it seems that fate wanted to throw me yet another curveball today.

“Carter, hey. And who is this?”

Carter looked up at the half ogre beaming with a smile that was part pride and part hunger.

“This is Mark, he’s going to be my personal guard for the night. Maybe even for the foreseeable future if Rainer will agree. We’re actually going to see him now, do you want to tag along?”

I actually pitted the poor man. After a victory like today I doubted our master would refuse any small request and the loss of one soldier, no matter how big, would be a simple thing to give.

“No thank you sister, I think I’ll just turn in early tonight…”

My smile held and my voice didn’t even waver a little, I was proud of that. On the inside I just felt sorry for Carter, she was still blissfully blind to the bars of her gilded cage. On second thought maybe it was actually envy I was feeling right now.

It struck me then, I could never go back to the way things were. I would always feel trapped, feel controlled and cheated. I would forever feel like a slave to be used while my adoptive siblings felt loved and appreciated. It wasn’t fair, and I honestly wasn’t sure who had it worse.

Carter let go of her victim’s arm to lean in close to me.

“Lux, Mark’s a quarter orc. I’m going to finally have a real brute of a familiar at my command!”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Carter’s excited whisper was like a hiss on the wind, I barely heard her so her victim was still unaware of his now certain fate. As I gave my adoptive sister a grin she returned to her place glued to her victim’s arm.

“I’ll be seeing you brother, but I must be getting back to my date. You understand…”

I just waved Carter and her victim off and watched my adoptive sister skip along beside the man she planned to drain of life energies and using the empty husk as a puppet. Once again I wondered at her moral compass, and once again I decided it didn’t matter. Carter eats the lives of people for power, Lum plays with corpses and undead, Kel burns things, and Ike toys with a person’s mind like a toddler toyed with playdoh. In the end all of my adoptive siblings were messed up in some way or another, it’s what happens when a child is taken and trained as a slave early in life then later on taught magic and gaining incredible power. It tends to warp a person, let alone a child. I know it warped me.

I got back to dodging grateful and drunken soldiers as I made my way on the muddy paths between tents.

***

The thing about magic is that there is no such thing as “impossible”. There are plenty of instances of “can’t”, “Improbable”, and “Impractical”, but the impossible just doesn’t exist when one is speak of magic and its workings. Magic can quite literally do anything one can imagine, but there are limits. The three largest of which are usually a person’s creativity, willpower, or available mana.

Non-mages have trouble understanding this, hell even fully fledged mages have a hard time understanding it. Sometimes I even fall into that mundane way of thinking, and when I come upon a problem I can’t personally solve after devoting everything I have to it I’ll typically label it impossible. It’s a common problem with mages that our spells and workings are limited by this mindset as it tends to cripple a person’s creativity and willpower subconsciously, and since it’s a problem for even the best of mages the mundane people of the worlds accept the mindset of impossibilities as a fundamental truth of the universe. To a common man some things are just impossible and that’s the end of that, to a mage all that is impossible is what we think of and subconsciously accept as such.

I knew it was possible to throw off my slave status, I just needed to find a method I could accomplish with my own mana pool and willpower. I have a better than average mana pool for a mage, but my crest’s power reserves grew alongside my mana pool. I couldn’t just dispel my crest with brute force, which meant I would have to get creative.

As I sat there on my cot in my tent I contemplated the nature of the magic that bound my soul in slavery to another.

Slave crests were just one of the many ways to magically enforce slavery in the four worlds, and they were typically considered the best way to enforce said slavery. Enchanted collars could be removed, tattoos could be burned over or cut away, geas could be broken, contracts had loopholes, but a binding on a person’s soul grew and changed with them for as long as that soul was there. Soul crests were hard to create and cast, but they were largely believed to be impossible to break free from outside of dying or losing a soul.

I couldn’t hide my soul from the crest as the crest was now a part of my soul, I couldn’t remove it for the same reason, I couldn’t break or dispel it because it had the power to equal and counter any attack it sensed, and I didn’t have the skill or knowledge to go in and edit the parameters of an already existing crest. I could probably create an artificial soul that’s an exact copy of my own, but it fundamentally wouldn’t be me so I’m uncomfortable living with it instead of my own. Which left one option that I was hesitant to even contemplate.

I could change my soul significantly enough that the crest would disappear.

The problem with altering your own soul is that it almost never ends well for the one the soul belongs to, hence you. Sure it isn’t too hard to alter another soul, by which I mean it is very hard but not impossible. Fuck, I mean not improbable…

I leaned back in the bed and closed my eyes. If I was already thinking of this as impossible then trying to change my soul like I’m imagining was going to really suck. I’d have to fight my subconscious on every “impossible” step I came across and that would cost me more mana then I may have. If I could think of this as simple then it would be easier to harness my willpower and then my mana wouldn’t have to do double duty for my casting, but it didn’t seem to likely that was going to happen.

It was hard to change your own beliefs, and it was even harder to overcome set schemas in your own mind. Well, at least it is to me. Ike didn’t have a problem with stuff like that, but then again Ike made his mind a personal playground that bows to his every whim by utterly destroying his natural mental barriers and defenses. I did not want to follow Ike’s lead on the matter, in fact just by knowing our adoptive brother the rest of my “Family” felt uncomfortable with anything less than impregnable mental defenses. And by impregnable I mean that Ike was unable to break into even the first layer of defenses and we were comfortable that our minds and thoughts were safe, I only call it impregnable for the peace of mind the word brings. Sometimes literally.

So changing my soul was looking difficult to do on my own, and seeing how I was trying to break free of my slave crest I couldn’t turn to my adoptive siblings for help. I sure as shit wouldn’t turn to any other magic caster for assistance either, baring your soul to a mage is a bad idea for you and a huge temptation for the mage. I know I would have trouble not corrupting the soul of another if they presented it to me on a silver platter, and even unintentional emotions the soul picked up passively while exposed to another’s mana could have disastrous results for a person’s ego, beliefs, and feelings.

“Fuck…”

I felt it was a good summation of my situation. I was fucked. Sure it would be easy enough to lose the crest, plenty of options for that, the hard part I was having trouble with was coming out alive and myself after the crest was gone.

“Whoever came up with the crest soul binding was a genius, and I hate their fucking guts…”

It was too good, too good for me anyway. I didn’t see a way out, everything I thought of would either damage my soul, kill me outright, or leave me enslaved to someone new. I just couldn’t figure a way out of this problem, and I was just so tired from everything I went through today.

I felt my eyes growing heavy and my cot seemed more comfortable by the moment. What would be the harm in a little sleep anyway?