News spread fast in a small town like Betton. When it was announced that a Mage of the King’s Court would be passing through (the ever-optimistic chieftain assuming that the footnote of “as quickly as possible” was an act of courtesy), the ensuing excitement could have easily been confused for mass hysteria. It had been years since last anyone important had set foot in the small town, and this particular arrival was seen as extremely serendipitous.
Purely in regards to magic, the young Derin was particularly highly regarded. There were rumors that he was born reciting incantations and formulae rather than crying. Nobody knew this, certainly, but nobody bothered to point out the obvious fact that he was left on the doorstep of the chieftain’s manor as an infant.
“Derin! Where’s Derin?” A gravelly, cracking voice called. The source of the voice, a middle-aged man darting about the inner wall of the village, looked everywhere. He lifted lids off of barrels, and he knocked on doors, much to the displeasure of those who were still sleeping as the sun barely pulled itself up over the green forested horizon.
“Sir Bradley, I know you are excited for your boy’s opportunity, and your enthusiasm is infectious, but please let the rest of us have some sleep.” A woman spoke from her open window. “Derin is probably out training, you know how he is.”
“Heh, right. He never did know when to stop.” Bradley’s hand wandered to the top of his head, but he retracted it after grasping at the air where he would usually find his helmet. He resigned himself to wait at the crack in the wall that Derin thought nobody else knew that he snuck through.
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The overwhelming sound of rushing water overwhelmed Derin’s ears, drowning out the more distracting sounds of water in favor of monotonous white noise. This was his favorite spot to practice: there was no dearth of targets to practice on, and he was alone.
Derin’s eyes shut tightly, and he concentrated closely on the flow of his energy. Power gathered at the tip of his left index finger, and in the dark behind his eyelids, a bright flash of blue light enveloped his vision as he flicked his finger forward, unleashing a blue elemental blast.
He opened his eyes in time to watch the bolt of magical energy fly through the air, crashing into a tree stump on the far bank of the river, dissipating around it. “Tch,” he clicked his tongue. He had spent all night here on the verge of a breakthrough, but still he could only impart negligible power into his attacks.
“If I go back today and meet that mage, he’ll reject me. I’ll be a failure.” As of now, the only way by which Derin was able to put any force into his abilities was by pulling it from whatever element he wanted to impart on his attacks. It felt to him like cheating.
Once again, Derin gathered energy in his hand. This time, instead of focusing it in his fingertip, he poured as much as he could into his hand. Unfocused, it crashed upon the stump like a wave, dispersing into the air.
He sighed. It seemed to him as if the right answer was some combination of those two, but he just couldn’t find a way to focus large amounts of energy. Falling short on what must be so trivial for a real mage made Derin realize just how trivial of an existence he was.
Whenever Derin got introspective and self-critical like this, he knew his practice was done for the day. The emotions would not let him focus his magic again. He walked down the river, following it to his favorite spot.
The sound of water grew to a deafening roar as he approached the cliff over which a waterfall poured into the valley. The morning sun and its halo, like an eye looking down upon the world, shone light upon Betton and the dirt roads that led to it.
On the road to Betton was a caravan more luxurious and colorful than most visitors to this backwater village were. “Wait, is that…?” Derin asked himself, watching it.
As realization dawned on him, he muttered.
“Oh shit, I forgot!” He exclaimed in a rare outburst of emotion, and flung himself from the top of the cliff. He gathered his power in both hands, fusing it with the air around him and using it to push himself up at the same rate at which the grasp of gravity tried to pull him down. He shot over the canopy of the forest, grazing some of the highest leaves of trees that grew more ambitiously into the sky than those around them.
Within just minutes, he arrived at the western wall, and deactivated his makeshift flying spell. Next to the guard tower, a pile of bricks concealed a hole in the outside wall. Pushing them away, he slipped through the tiny crack, bumping his head into something.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Another late night hard at work, I see.” The deep voice of his adoptive father, Bradley, came from above him. “Any later and you would have missed the Mage of the King’s Court. Do you have anything to say about that?”
“Haha… I’m sorry. I won’t let it happen again.” Derin responded, pushing himself up onto his feet, avoiding eye contact with Bradley.
“I know you will. Now, hurry, we’ve got to go find Bart.”
“You know he hates it when you call him that.”
Bradley practically dragged Derin by the neck to the town hall, where Chieftain Bartholomew was waiting impatiently. “We cannot leave our distinguished guest waiting,” he said, his foot tapping to some unknown rhythm. For a moment, Derin thought he saw a tail wagging behind him in excitement as he walked. “When you first turned up, I couldn’t possibly imagine what you would become. I know you’ll make us proud, so show him what you’ve got!”
“But Chieftain, sir, I’m really not…”
“The first person in our village to have magic power ever, and you don’t think you’re cut out for this? If you have time to joke, you have time to meet our guest. Now go!” Bartholomew pushed Derin forward, causing him to stumble forward and finally register on the radar of the Court Mage.
“Magic?” The mage thought to himself. “Absurd. Magic outside of high birth was eradicated.”
“And you are?” He asked. “I’ll have you know I have a very tight schedule to keep.”
“My name is Derin.”
“Well met. I am Ooros, a Mage of the King’s Court. It’d serve you well not to anger me.”
“I will do my best. Would you answer just one request for me?”
“Of course,” Ooros forced a smile, preparing a spell behind his back.
“Well, I’ve been wanting to ask, since it’s so rare to have an opportunity to speak with anyone from the capital, do they take on aspiring mages there?
“Aspiring mages…? Boy, don’t tell me.” He feigned surprise. “I hadn’t planned on cleaning up some unfaithful nobleman’s mistake, but I suppose that’s just part of the job.” He aimed his index finger carefully at Derin’s head, firing a bright red bolt of magic power.
Derin barely had time to lift his hand. The power he held within that hand was barely enough to negate the power of the attack, and it still tore the surface of his skin, leaving cuts and gashes that dripped crimson blood onto his wrist.
The adrenaline racing through Derin’s veins was enough to refocus his mind off of the pain in his hand. Focusing energy into his palm, he shaped the air into a blade and pushed it forward.
The wind separated Ooros’s head from his body. As his head, forever locked in an expression of neutral confusion and surprise, rolled on the dirt, his body kneeled before crumpling forward completely.
Derin stared at the body he had just taken the life from, and back at his own shaking hands. He had just taken someone’s life.
What terrified him wasn’t that he had killed someone, it was the immense satisfaction that it brought him. That satisfaction was almost enough to overcome the sense of guilt from having been given such a chance, and completely killing it in all the wrong ways.
Standing in the clearing in the dead silence was like breathing underwater. His breath caught in his throat, and his heartbeat shook his entire frame, until he could no longer stand the guilt and pressure. Without a word, Derin kicked off against the ground and activated his air propulsion. Up he flew, until Betton was but a speck among the swathes of green below.
He finally looked back down. His mind pulled itself back to the moment that he activated that wind blade. His hands were wet with blood that dripped from the sky like rain. It poured from his palms, threatening to dye the entire forest below in red. As far as his eyes could see, everything was covered in the blood on Derin’s hands. His heart beat faster.
Evil. The word lurked in his mind, skulking about its periphery before wresting control over all of his thoughts. I am evil. More blood. He wished it was his own. Now, it had flooded the landscape. It drowned the town he had grown up in, and rose to his ankles as if trying to swallow him.
Derin’s magic broke. His flight stopped and he plummeted into the endless sea of red. The cold embrace of his sins numbed him, and he closed his eyes in resignation. This is my punishment for being evil.
Everything went dark. Derin plummeted through the sky, a low-flying flock of birds just barely dodging his unconscious body as it approached the trees.
His descent slowed. He glided through the numerous branches untouched until his unconscious body lazily floated into someone’s arms.
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Author's Note
Hi all! I haven't visited this site in a long while. I guess I've been doing my own training arc of sorts. I just got this new idea and had to share it. More to come whenever I have it, and maybe if I can establish a rhythm, I'll have a schedule I can adhere to.
If you have any comments, criticism, speculation, or anything of the sort to make, please make yourself heard! I always want to know who my readers are and how I can make my writing better.
Regards,
Amadeus