Chapter Thirteen: Streets of Freywyn I

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"A place once my own, alluding me unlike it once was. Now worn and weary age has shown, I query does it still follow? These lands will they accept my command, my hand? Does this time call for me- Awaken once more, have I played into plans far from sight. Or by mere chance?"

...

Like turning gaze from a starving child's outstretched hand, an indomitable will allowed Ceron to forgo his rush and past the robed thing mocking his image. It's time would come. Foremost the body and mind defined a mages ability, like a high this body came from brink of death surged by power non it's own. How long of this surge would last? These limbs were of mortal due, the remaining traces of my own elementium was foreign in this shell- Almost prison, seeping with no container to fill it. A truth was, most mages were but men birthed like any other whelp, the forces of wizardry thrust upon them. While exceptions to such rules, the deep foreboding itch kept at the back of Ceron's mind.

A stablehand was not in charge of a boat, nor a butcher a scribe among orthodox temples. This body's years was herald by a mind not Ceron's own. The verge of death mended the body but not the consciousness, mindspace the lack of feeling in surrounding mana greatly influenced the possible conclusion. Mana retardant, or fragmented mindspace, neither was a welcome outcome. Much Ceron tried to indulge his worry to the fullest, this was not a place or time for it- While under the ire of my own shackled tower, beget folly, all would be lost. Any sod with a kitchen knife could pierce mages in deep meditation, a particular trait that turned a many assassins' pockets endowed.

Laws, supernatural applications that defied most normal means. Magic, a field to be examined like any other scientific endeavor, every effect had reason even, if unbeknownst to the observer. Prophets, seers and desire from the bleakest depths of hades too had unseen mechanisms, privy or not. Knowledge, the unshakable quench for truth of the world's most primeval of functions was the pinnacle of wizardry, a spire many fell at the mere foundation.

A prickle etched into being, like moving sap, a mass of scurrying flies writhing on skin an intangible shake took hold as Ceron held his wrist, a spasm of flesh twisted engulfing the arm' Still Ceron bore with it, one issue at a time. 'Speak while you can, for what reasons were you scraping deaths door in that rathole?' Trying best to rid the cursed images from his mind, lesser issues and debt first' minutes went by in silence and Ceron's patience waned. Much he tried to deny, the act of breaching the barrier of consciousness lapsing Asriel's own was no meager feat, a underlying credence to the enrollment invitation.

Asriel Elrad, son of a sorcerer knight, digging graves and dwelling in a run down hovel' Mage families support their own, nurturing and finding talent was like picking a needle from a hay stack- Across multiple barns. Profit by knowledge, scouring explorers and able bodied apprentices built a legacies name. So why?

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Ceron shifted the flashes in his mind, weight of two lives jutting, intertwining. Holding the alleyway's brick wall Ceron pained to keep standing, a tidal wave of mixed emotion surged urging to run, fight and cry..

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A fenced estate, secluded in a wreath of trees weathered by seasons and rain. The vigor of walls crumbled as paint idly chipped, rooms void of but dust, the decorated halls vacant. Haggard breaths and glazed eyes, a sulfuric stench of decay and rot a figure laid under covers. Daylight's embrace cast from an open widow gloom of a forlorn sky on the horizon, an old man clutching a book and key his long beard knotted. Stagnant air clutched one's throat as the man coughed laborious breathing unceasing.

The man intently turned pages of a blank book, engorged in sights his own. Sounds of cicadas stopped interrupting idle reading, outside the window a tree visibly decayed, leaves churning as branches turned to ash then knocking, a thudding, scraping just beyond the chambers walls. Something approached, the door knob jostled invoking the unseen. The skin prickled as the fury demanded attention the knob froze with a click. Floorboards bellowed, the door flew open an ocean of blood gushed toward the old man's bedchamber, falling from his bed hobbling to cabinets- A hand reached out, holding him,

"Father, are you alright?' Wiping a tear Asriel felt the man's cold skin, staring into eyes whom failed to recognize, panic confusion draped with terror' "Monster, W-ha-- "Its me father!' Cant you see?"

The door opened, a medical cart pushed by a tailored butler carrying vials and flasks of elixirs.

Agape the man's weak body fainted slumping back, muttering breathlessly.

...

A unshakable pillar, against time the aging of flesh wasted away years to months and those to days a otherworldly sickness. No matter the concoction, it seemed the world itself was determined to wither father, a proud sorcerer knight in the leagues of tiered wizards succumbed like any common man. Prized powers grew tainted, weavings of magic failed the best apothecaries and physicians paid by carriages of crystal deemed fate the only cure. Haunted, by unseen visons his mind coursed in delirium.

A figure looming, a face amidst the seams of bedsheets a soft voice tickling your ear-- Mind was the first to falter, the otherworldly sickness ate inch by inch sanity dissolving like wet paper, his eyes glazed past seeing not his son but something alien. Yet it was not what took him "Kornva, Lay more' Asriel spoke,

"Those were his final words to me, sickness from within. Derived from tongue only we both knew, a glimmer of himself returned in the lasting moment I understood, looking at me and not past to some ghostly apparition, before father was murdered. The same man who moved water and fire by command was gutted like a stag. I did not know what he meant, not till last night.

Vile and greed twisted hearts, a sickness eroding empathy and compassion. I thought I had left them, the bandits who sieged my home, killed my father and sold all else in chains' my sister lay draped in collar and vice. I had come, by grace of my destitution forward Freywyn to forge the power, save my family.