Dust lazily drifted down from the ceiling as the ritual's remaining energy dissipated, revealing two figures in the haze. Arryn was lying on his back, with his hands pressed against his bleeding eye socket. Sharman was keeled over, retching as he coughed up the dust that had filled his mouth.
Sharman was the first to regain his senses.
“Fuck” he said simply.
“Did we heal the eye at least, or are you blind in both? I have no idea what happened after I lost control of the ritual.” He approached the boy and looked down at his face. “Ah.”
Arryns originally blind eye was vertically split down the middle by a scar-like line, on each side of this line was a pupil. The entire eye was glowing, like it had been injected with a lethal dose of luminance crystals. The other eye was gone, the socket crimson.
Sharman gasped “How...could this be? Manifesting your magic must have broken Onu’s second law of magic, the transmutation division. But that would only be possible if the manifestation bloom was accompanied by soul energy. That must be how the affinity is gained —by the first natural affinity the soul meets.”
Arryn spoke up “Can you reverse this?”
“Hah, not really, unless you can unmanifest your magic, but that's impossible. I would love to study that eye though, it must be entangled with your will, maybe a focal point for casting.”
His voice grew louder and he began examining the ritual circle. “Do you know what we’ve done?! We’ve found a way to break the restrictions imposed by the gods.” He started cackling feverishly “DO YOU REALISE THE IMPLICATIONS??!”
As if realising the implications himself, the shaman went silent and whispered “This would allow me to step into the god's domain, I could break other laws.”
Sharman turned to face Arryn and realised that at some point during his monologue the boy had left. He heard the pitter patter of feet fleeing up the stairs.
Another research assistant gone, He shook his head sadly, maybe the next law I should break is the creation of sentient beings. I could create an indestructible research assistant who will never die, and never leave.
⟣⟡⟢
Arryn sprinted up the stairs as fast as he could. That shaman mutilated me. HE said he could undo the ritual. HE BROKE HIS PROMISE.
His legs ached from running up the stairs, but his emotions wouldn’t let him stop. Despite his earlier reluctance to go back to Thorstramor, it was all he currently wanted. To return to his mothers embrace, so she could tell him everything would be okay.
The light grew brighter ahead, and Arryn realised he could still see. At least one eye still worked, even though he could see waves of a white glow swirling around him. It might have been damaged in the ritual.
He emerged into the light, breathing heavily, the sunlight of dawn beaming between the gap in the mountains.
…and found himself surrounded at sword point by sky warriors.
“Wha- ?”
Some of the warriors shifted back.
On their faces was an expression that didn’t fit his mental image of them.
Every single one of these hardened warriors was terrified.
He spotted Lezen in the line up “Cousin, What’s happening?”
Lezen’s face froze at the sight of his cousin, but before he could say anything; a more tidy looking sky warrior took a step forward and pointed a silver device at Arryn, which started glowing red and ringing like a bell. “You have manifested a conceptual attunement, please keep your distance and do NOT attempt any spells.”
Arryn’s breath caught in his throat, his eye widening in horror.
No, No, No —that can’t be true.
It was rare that someone's magic manifested as not one of the 7 elements, but instead as one of the infinite concepts. However for these few unlucky souls, they had to grapple with an incomprehensible form of magic that did not adhere to any of the norms. Death was a common concept to manifest, also the most dangerous. An untrained death mage could accidentally kill the entire adolescent population of any small settlement, and while the older magicians wouldn’t die, they would catch a disease called the taint of death that made them wish they had.
Arryn briefly calmed down when he remembered that he would already be dead if he had manifested anything known to be dangerous. But that didn’t mean he was safe, for all he knew he could have manifested something completely unknown but far worse.
The tidy looking Sky Warrior, who he realised must be a Field Commander, put away the odd device and withdrew a scroll, which she unrolled and began reading from. “By order of the GBA or The Global Bastion’s Authority; you are hereby EXILED. You may not say goodbye to your family. You may not attempt magic.”
The stern woman took a deep breath before continuing.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“In acknowledgement of the treatise between the GBA and The Hidden Vale of Wizardry in regard to unknown or non-lethal concept users; you shall be provided with a safe mode of transport, a month’s worth of provisions and a map to the Wizard's entrance ceremony. If you approach any island residents or refuse to leave, your execution will be immediate.”
Arryn fell to his knees, his tear ducts too damaged to cry.
This can’t be happening. I‘m just dreaming.
He reached down and pinched his knee.
It hurt.
⟣⟡⟢
Several hours later Arryn found himself mounted on an elderly Gryphon, being escorted North away from the island, in the opposite direction of Thostramor. The Sky Warriors had refused to come within 30 feet of him the whole way back to Nortamos. Lezen had attempted to speak with him, but had been reprimanded and taken off duty.
It still felt extremely surreal, to the point that Arryn had just zoned out. Too much was changing within too short of a time and he had reached the point where he was just going with the flow, expecting his situation to constantly get worse and worse. The escorts left him when the last island went out of sight beyond the horizon of the sea of clouds. Leaving him just flying forward numbly.
His emotions had run riot so intensely that he no longer trusted what he was feeling at all, it wasn’t going to keep him alive outside of the bastion. So he took a deep breath and did what he did best, he pushed the helplessness, anger, self pity, and overwhelming sense of loss to the far recesses of his mind.
Suppressing emotions was something he had to thank his elven heritage for. There is no point being the longest lived race if a burst of anger could drive you into a quick death. In fact Elves got so good at it that after the age of about three hundred most developed the ability to meditate for centuries with no sense of the time passing. His mother had told him that when the elves entered this state they were left at the bottom of the world tree until they either woke up again, or slowly merged and became one with it.
Now what? Arryn wondered as he finally broke out of his trance.
Being exiled isn’t as bad as losing my eye, but it does end my dream of becoming a sky warrior. I can’t shelter in any other bastion because I have no ability to hide my conceptual attunement yet. Which leaves only the hidden vale of wizardry. He reached down into his saddlebag and bought out an aged scroll bearing the wax seal of the GBA.
The seal crackled and flashed as he broke it, betraying some imbued magical enchantment, most likely durability. He carefully opened the scroll, revealing a map more detailed than any he’d ever seen before.
The 7 Bastions were marked on the map, 6 of them spaced relatively evenly. Lost Solace was the only bastion missing, and that was because it was hidden in a pocket dimension, the locations of its entrance portals being a tightly guarded secret.
His eyes scanned the map, over the various regions of ocean, jungle, tundra, desert. He quickly spotted the runes for his home bastion, Skies Gift, south of most of the other bastions. But where do I need to go?
It didn’t take him too long to find the small image of an archway, with the rune for wizard underneath. It was a small amount north of his position, though he had no metric for how far away it actually was, Why would they have given me a month of provisions if it was at all close? Luckily for Arryn there were a few landmarks on the map; like rivers, mountains and a ravine.
Fishing out a compass from the bags, he checked his bearings, before memorising the relevant details and stowing it all away.
I need to fly under the cloud cover or I will never see any of these landmarks. He thought to himself. He had never been below the clouds, so he could not deny the small amount of excitement he felt at the prospect of seeing what the land looked like below.
He pulled the reins attached to the Gryphon’s harness and was surprised when the eagle-like creature started gaining altitude instead of losing it. How am I meant to go down? It’s not possible to push on the reins. Arryn checked again and found that pulling them left and right worked how he would guess. Frustrated, he kicked it hard in its flanks and gave a surprised yelp as the Gryphon shot into a nosedive.
“AHH” he shrieked as gravity stopped and his stomach felt funny. He frantically pulled up on the reigns until the nosedive levelled out into a leisurely descent.
It didn’t take long to reach the clouds, and when he did, instead of them being soft and bouncy like he expected them to be from afar, he just found them misty. Like a thick fog. The dampness of the air combined with the windchill quickly made him shiver, so he pulled a heavy cloak out of one of the saddlebags and wrapped it tightly around himself. The layer of clouds was a lot deeper than he expected and it took him a good 5 minutes of flying until he broke through them.
“Beautiful…” He whispered in utter awe. It surpassed all his expectations.
The Jungle wilderness reached into the distance as far as the clouds. The ground rippled like a cloth with bumps and folds forming cliffs, hills, small mountains and gullies. The sheer amount of plant volume far eclipsed the amount on the floating islands of his home.
As he stared down at the landscape something moving caught his eye and he watched a colossal 4 legged predator break through the trees, pouncing on an even bigger creature. The sight wiped the awe off his face, replacing it with worry.
Nervously he pulled the reins, flying back up so he was just under the layer of clouds. It never hurt to be too cautious, the next creature might be airborne and he would prefer it if he could slip into the clouds unnoticed.
After a few hours of flying, occasionally checking his bearing, his wariness slowly faded, relaxation setting in. He could vaguely see waves of light with his eye that he knew most people couldn’t and as he focused on his eye they became more intense, eddying around his hands and flowing through the forest below.
Maybe this is real. He wondered, Sharman said my eye was a focal point for magic, maybe that’s what this is, magic itself? He wasn’t sure though, he knew experienced magicians could develop a sense for feeling magic, but that wasn’t like this, he had never heard of anyone being able to actually see the energy. People absorbed and used it, but until a spell was cast with it, no one could see it.
It was possible his eye was damaged, but he didn’t think that was true, his eye may have felt odd originally, but he could see more clearly now with it than he used to be able to with two.
Depth perception still eludes me though.
As he watched the magic, it seemed to lull him, its flowing waves therapeutically similar to the Aurora he had climbed that tree to see.
His mind drifted away and soon he was deeply asleep. So much had happened to him, and he had spent almost an entire day awake.
The boy instinctually hugged the Gryphon in his sleep and the beast flew on, paying no attention to the status of its rider.
⟣⟡⟢