Kayetan

Yoszovar, 4 years before the Rise

There are stacks of paper everywhere, and Magic is buzzing all around Master Iacopor and me. This is exactly what I've dreamed about for all those years — working closely with my Master, pushing the boundaries of known Magic, and inspiring each other to dive even deeper every time.

Right now, Master Iacopor is looking at a few of my drawings while I’m writing a simple test text to send to the screen — a big message board that is perched right in the middle of the small study that I now consider my second room inside the manor. I spend more time here than in my bedroom and the dining room combined; I’ve even installed a small secret safe here to make absolutely sure nobody will run off with our ideas. Master Iacopor is entertaining guests more frequently as of late, and though many of them are highly esteemed Mages, I wouldn’t trust them for the world. Luckily, Master Iacopor was intrigued by my use Magic there — I think my next project is already on the horizon.

Elrick is still working on his projects too, in his own study down the hall. Master Iacopor divides his time between the two of us. In the beginning, I wanted the Master to spend more time here, working on the screen, but it has grown less and less important for me to have Master Iacopor present. I'm doing great on my own, and sometimes Master Iacopor’s ideas on how to make things work are frankly not up to par. I’ve succeeded in baffling my Master with clever Magic solutions more than once.

Right now, I'm counting on another compliment. The drawings Master Iacopor is studying depict an intricate system of magnifiers that will allow us to spread messages all over the known world, and have them come in within a few heartbeats of sending them.

“This is great,” Master Iacopor mumbles, and I smile without looking up.

“Kai, I mean it,” the Master repeats. “This might become a global system. Just imagine the impact we would have.”

Now I do look up, and immediately I wish I hadn’t, even though Master Iacopor is again engulfed in the drawings and doesn’t look me directly in the eye.

This is the second reason I don’t want Master Iacopor around all the time. Melena looks so much like her father that it is uncanny, and if I look at him too often, I find myself hurled back in time, to the day when she was running from Horgas Maletti — I’d later found out that nasty guy was him — the day I kissed her. My mind and body still react to the memory, in a highly distractive way. I can count on having strange, feverish dreams about her whenever I allow my mind to wander off in her direction — which is almost every day, considering we dine together every evening. She barely looks at me, and I follow the same strategy, not wanting to show her how much I hate the fact that she ignores me.

She is right to do so, of course. My love — my lust for Master Iacopor’s daughter is completely inappropriate. I know she is out of my league by distances I don’t even want to fathom. But I can’t help myself. We had a bond before I Magicked her, and since then, it has only grown deeper. Sometimes when I see her, there’s still that faint shimmer of gold flowing from her, like when she was under my spell.

But I cannot let my thoughts linger on that now. If anything, I’m working on proving my worth right now. If I do this well, Master Iacopor will see me as an equal and she’ll grant me her attention. So, ironically, I have to forget all about her for now to possibly be able to get her.

So I do that.

During the day, that is. The nights are a completely different story.

Most of the time, my dream is a nightmare in which she turns me down time and time again, reducing me to rubble.

But sometimes the dreams take another turn, and I wake up sweaty and hard, with a yearning for Melena that is strong enough to envision myself slipping into the quiet corridors to her bedroom. One time I even made it to my bedroom door before halting myself briskly — most of the time I simply close my eyes again, and since experience tells me I won’t be able to fall asleep with this much hunger rolling through my body and soul, I’d stroke my hard cock and pretend my hand is hers.

When that first happened, I came quite quickly and was able to get a reasonably decent rest after that. But every time I have to help myself, my longing for her grows, and my own touch grows less and less satiating as my lust for Melena increases. How much longer will I be able to soothe myself?

The thought of her makes me hard even now.

But I have to control myself. I am building the future with my Master. I refuse to let anything come between me and my purpose, not even beautiful, fiery Melena. After I’ve sealed my fate, the way will be clear.

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Hoping that Master Iacopor is completely oblivious to all the thoughts racing through my mind and the blood streaming to my lower body, I notice him looking at me expectantly. Right, he said something. “Yes. Sorry, I was lost in thought there for a moment. Global, thats… Quite a lot to take in. Amazing. The message screen will bring more wealth and harmony between the lands, I’m sure.”

And that is what I need to focus on. This project, this future. My future.

I look at the words I’ve written. They look like something somebody else has provided. My heart has been nowhere near the lines. But it will do. “Are you ready for another test?” I ask.

Master Iacopor already veers upright before I’ve finished my sentence. “Yes!” He all but jumps to his feet. “From the hall?”

“Very well,” I agree.

It isn’t necessary to put much distance between the screen and the person casting the spell to convey the message onto the blank canvas, but somewhere in the early stages of experimenting, we delighted in sending each other jokes and riddles. Since the spoken word is still necessary for the Magic to work — I am working on changing that — we’d decided upon casting from other parts of the manor. The element of surprise and the absolute certainty that no audible information has been passed between the both of us through any other means but the screen — just to be safe — has worked wonders, and now it is more of a habit than anything else. A way to humor each other, and by putting meaning into the message, the heart is more easily involved. Trying to get the other to laugh is a good way of sinking into the emotions. I don’t really recall writing the words in front of me, but there is a punchline in it that Master Iacopor will appreciate, and I can already feel some anticipation about how the Master will react.

I take the paper, bow to Master Iacopor both because it is the polite thing to do and because I need to hide the fact that my body hasn’t fully recovered from thinking of Melena yet, and leave the room.

On my way to the main hall, I pass the space where Elrick is working. A waft of Magic trickles by; and a faint sense of something that is rotting. It happens quite a lot — Elrick’s quest for growing crops faster results in a lot of plants rotting as quickly as they grow, and one time, I had to clean up a bed of mold and fungus that had spread across the entire hallway. I got rid of the stuff itself quite easily, though the scent lingered for more than a week, and fresh tufts of hairy, mushroomy decay sprouted here and there at will. I considered teaching him the spell for cleaning it up within heartbeats, but decided against it. I’m still afraid he’ll spill the beans on my encounter with the Vorvalus Symbol on my first day, and though I don’t think Master Vorvalus would just kick me out, I can’t be sure. And with Sylva as happy as she is, and myself loving the job so much, I can’t risk it. So, I still take responsibility for all of Elrick’s goof-ups.

Elrick himself is more than happy to let me clean up his muck, of course. He rarely owns up to the messes he leaves behind, using the excuse of getting ready for dinner every single time — as if dinner is more important than anything.

He does fit in, though. At the dinner table. Much more than me, I have to admit.

I’ve grown used to Eilyn’s company, and I’ve had lively conversations with everyone but Melena, come to think of it, but still, I feel out of place at the dinner table. Maybe I can excuse myself in a couple of days to visit Sylva again. I miss her, and I know she misses me.

Maybe I can install a screen at Moppa Verin’s, so we can communicate more easily. Writing takes time, and I never know when a letter I write is picked up by my little sister, nor when she left one for me. Oh, the possibilities! I leave Elrick’s smelly room behind and take in a deep breath of fresh air. Sylva will be the first to be awarded a message screen. I can hardly wait.

But I’ll have to finish the test now, or else there’ll be no screen to give her.

At the sight of the family statue, I can’t help but cringe and sort of smile at the same time. I broke the symbol Magic in motion, the square in the diamond. I mended it, though I still haven’t found time to fix it properly, and now I’m the one showing Magic where to move to.

The spell is easy enough by now; the words roll off my tongue like they are part of the language of my soul — which, in fact, might be just about true by now. I read the words I’ve written earlier directly following the ancient words, knowing that they will make Master Iacopor chuckle as soon as they appear on the screen.

The message is a bit long this time; it takes longer to reach a punchline when the setup is somewhat sloppy. I frown as I read the lines out loud. I never thought about the size of the letters on the screen. Perhaps they will be too big for the whole message to fit onto it right now. Will that be a problem? Where will the rest of the message go if there is no space to store the energy? Will it be lost, hover in the air endlessly, or maybe wander the ether? I’ll perhaps have to think of a way of hold on to the messages.

And what happens if more than one person were to send a message to the screen, how would that work?

I don’t even reach the punchline on the paper in front of me. Thoughts are whirling through my mind. Maybe the messages need to be short, like chapter titles in books, conveying only a subject or headline. If I could create some kind of system to capture the whole message, to store it, keep it waiting until somebody chooses to read it, then a whole assortment of messages can be featured on the message screen without taking up too much space. There can even be a system that makes the headlines pop up in turns, and—

“Kayetan!” Master Iacopor comes to me, a haste in his step that I seldom see. I startle. Has anything gone wrong?

“How could you stop mid-message?” the Master demands.

“I…” I start.

Then, out of the blue, Master Iacopor hugs me. “If you leave out the punchline for something as brilliant as the ideas you just put on, I’d gladly miss it every time.” I let the embrace wash over me and smile incredulously.

“Do you even realize?” Master Iacopor says. “If only the headlines appear on the message screen, people will pay to read the whole message. That, my young Masterling, is going to bring in more wealth than you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”