Elric first discovered he had aptitude when his father caught him about to eat a piece of refined magore. He didn’t eat it, but the simple fact that he was able to hold a piece of it in his hands and be mostly fine meant that he had the ability to use mana like his father. Aptitude didn’t appear to rely on bloodline and would appear randomly throughout the populations, but Elric was a unique case.
He was a child from Rolith. In many ways, Rolith was a liminal nation. It was the territory acquired during the 4th campaign, just after Peroa. The lands of the first 3 campaigns are often considered “True Arlin”, where being born there meant you were a true citizen of the nation. This left Rolith stuck between two states, where it was neither Arlinian nor its own unique nation which had been absorbed into the empire. Their annexation had left them without a unique identity as a nation, yet nothing concrete had come to fill in the gap that was left. All that Rolith could do was wait for enough time to elapse for the emperor to declare them a true part of the empire.
The Mathers family was a family of craftsmen, well known in the nation. The lineage was large and branched out across Rolith, with many shops or items branded by the family name. Being a Mathers, Elric grew up fairly comfortably with his father and mother. He was taught to craft and build from a young age, and his father specifically trained him with carving. His father was working with magore, and that was how he got his hands on a piece and nearly ate it at the age of 5.
***
He was trained in his attunement at a basic level. He was attuned to water, which was an extremely helpful tool for a craftsman. Water could easily cut or bend things with enough pressure or could be used to cool objects. It was a power which would be considered a boon to anyone who bore the Mathers name.
He was given the attention he needed to get better at it and to combine it with his work as a craftsman. It was a simple life.
However, his family had made one major mistake when giving him training with his aptitude.
They assumed that they were citizens.
***
One of the most well known and most controversial sins of the empire were the raids. Even to those who were loyal to Arlin, the concept of raiding annexed territories for people with aptitude often left a bad taste in their mouth. For Arlin, the price of innovation was paid with blood, and these raids exemplified that. They would search through towns and cities, testing people’s reactions to magore to see if they had resistance. Those who had resistance were taken and used as fuel for the mining operations, while their families would generally be given small recompense in return. It was a sin, but one which the empire believed was necessary to protect its people.
Despite its deeper connections to the general empire and often being considered a part of their core, Rolith was still a territory and therefore was still subject to the occasional raid. Thus, when Elric was 15, he was caught in a raid and ended up as a slave along with his father. The timing of it was intentional, as Corith had just been conquered and the empire needed new miners for magore deposits discovered in the region. Elric was separated from his kin and left on his own in an unfamiliar world, not knowing whether his father was alive or not.
5 years later, he would be in a mining camp in Boralis, hoping to get revenge on the empire which deprived him of a childhood.
***
Elric was muddy. In their attempt to get to the mine unseen by guards, Elina had made the executive decision to dirty both herself and Elric in mud to better hide them from sight. He had met up with her after using North and Elm’s exit from the bunks as a cover. How she had gotten to the bunks without being spotted was unknown, but the first thing she said to him upon running into him was “Cover yourself in mud”. Elric’s black hair, along with every inch of his skin, was now a dirty brown. As rain poured over them, he quietly followed Elina as they made their way towards the mine, careful not to mess around with the magore in his canteen which was attached at his hip. The pieces were smaller chunks which had broken off of the stuff that North had been working on under his time as Elm’s apprentice, which he had brought back with him to the bunks the previous night. All that Elric had to do was to scoop up all the pieces that North had hidden in his bunks, put them in the canteen, and then do an extremely suicidal stealth mission while following a woman who did not care about the suicidal part.
There were many moments in life where Elric wanted to groan in frustration, and this was most certainly one of them. North may have been fairly good at convincing other idiots to follow him, but his strategic mind was befitting of his origins. It infuriated Elric on many levels that everyone around him seemed to be completely fine with his stupid decisions, but he relented. North had a specific energy to him which made others willing to follow him, and Elric lacked that.
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Elina continued to push along, crouching and dodging between cover to hide from the guards, all of whom looked to be slightly off. Sera’s poisoning had done its job, because most of the soldiers looked like they were a heavy breeze away from falling over. Elric followed, watching all of her silent commands. While he had doubted her at first, Elina’s confidence in stealth was not misplaced.
“We’re close. I’m going to have to take out a guard.” Elina whispered, a worrying smile on her face.
“Already? I thought you were going to fight after I blew it up?”
Elina gave a beaming smile which stood out from her mud covered skin. It was clear that her desire to fight a guard was less about Elric and more about herself.
“Eh, sooner or later, right? Just let me take this guy down and I can get you inside.”
Elric shrugged as they moved along. The opening to the mine had been cleared out, with the platform on one side where the slaves put their baskets. A guard sat there, struggling to stand while another guard watched him from the side. How Elina was going to deal with this, Elric didn’t know, but it worried him.
Elina snuck forward towards the platform, where she crawled in order to stay hidden. The night was already dark, but her mud covered skin made her blend into the shadows. The guard was still delirious from the magore and had been talking intermittently with the other guard, but the way they spoke was hard to comprehend. Mana poisoning was serious, but for such a small amount of dust to mess up a person this much was surprising to Elric. Elina, on the other hand, did not care.
She intentionally knocked over a basket, causing the guard to notice and take a moment to walk over to prop it back up again. When they got close enough, Elina grabbed them, and dragged them towards her. Elric watched as she wrestled the person into a position before snapping their neck. The other guard who was watching, still affected by the magore, noticed the disappearance and prepared to aim, only for a baton to come flying out of the darkness of the night and straight towards his face. There was a disgusting crunch noise as it broke his nose and slammed into his skull. However hard Elina had thrown it, it was hard enough to knock the guard out.
Elric was slightly horrified, but happy that Elina’s confidence was not misplaced. He started to move forward, following her opened path, until he heard a sound. It sounded like lightning coming from the other side of the camp. He turned, seeing that other guards had also taken notice of the loud noises. Suddenly, there was a beam that shot through the air, giving the sickly blue hue that was a distinct feature of magore weaponry.
Oh fuck. North better not be dead.
He couldn’t stop now. If the guards got too distracted by that area, they would screw over the dash to the armory. He needed to move.
Elric ran, not caring if he was seen, holding the canteen tight to make sure it didn't shake. Immediately, he heard the yell of a guard screaming to turn in his direction. Elina looked at him, not with frustration or fear, but with a wide smile. Whether he wanted to or not, he had just set her up for the best fight of her life.
He continued to run while beams of mana snaked past his sides, the entrance to the mine fast approaching. All he needed to do was get inside the mine and hit the right spot. Elina had picked up the burner and was already firing back at the guards. He darted through the mud and was able to pass through the entrance, canteen in hand and the timekeeper in his pocket. He felt as though his insides were on fire the entire time.
When he got inside, he was welcomed by the very dimly lit cave. Only a few lanterns had been kept up, with only a small amount of light being given by the natural magore. He grabbed a lantern and moved over to where he had been mining that day. He’d purposely left himself a bunch of small pieces of magore to put in the canteen with the other bits. Holding onto it without gloves still burned, but the adrenaline in his system was keeping him from focusing on pain. He grabbed it, placed it inside and ran back to the opening, careful not to shake it too hard.
He only had one real chance to throw it. He’d watched as Elina had practiced it so many times before during the meals. He’d mentally prepared himself for it, but he was unsteady.
I gotta keep that dumbass Corithian alive, don’t I?
He wound his arm back and threw it. The canteen, filled with raw and refined magore sailed through the air until smashing the top of the mouth to the cave. As it connected, the substance interacted, and the instability of the raw material caused all of the energy around it to be released at once.
It was a beautiful sight. The destruction caused by a mix of natural and unnatural magics was a sight to behold, and the cave quickly came crumbling down as it lost its stability. The stones began to fall one after another, blocking off Elric’s one and only escape. It was up to everyone else to save him when it was done.
He placed his hands on his hips, proud that he had completed his part of the mission… only to immediately recoil. He finally took a moment to look down at his stomach. On his right side, above his hip, there was a large chunk of flesh that had burned off. He could feel as some of his blood slowly dripped through the wound. The adrenaline he was working on kept him feeling most of the pain, but the realization was enough to shock him.
That was why my stomach felt like it was burning. It was literally burning.
Even in all of his pain, even with the fear of death now deeply instilled in him, all Elric could do was smile. As he fell backwards onto the ground, his consciousness slipping away, a single thought passed through his head.
North, I fucking hate you.