Eight years after the Unborn Lord saw his end at the hands of the heroes of the Edenian War, the religious capital of the Ardent Path, the city of Caelum, which was now considered part of the Éclat Kingdom, remained the centre of the lawful religion, as the newly appointed luminary did not see a reason to leave for a different residence. A choice he would live to regret, as he and several of his most devoted followers saw themselves kidnapped by an ancient cult known as the Sword of Truth.
This organisation, which was thought to have been completely eradicated after being outlawed long before the Edenian War, aimed to uncover the knowledge the gods kept hidden from mortal eyes through any means necessary. Their methods were seen as sacrilegious and downright inhumane, as they did not even shy away from sacrificing the souls of innocents and sealing pacts with the Archons in their pursuit of answers.
It took the entirety of the combined forces of paladins of the Radiant Knight Order, also known as the personal army of the luminary, and the city-guards of Caelum a whole week before they managed to track down the captives at the ruins of a ritual site deep within the Foretblue forest, which was located north-west of Caelum. A battle ensued, with the forces of the Ardent Path seemingly emerging victorious.
Celebrations were short lived, however, as during their scuffle, a curse of unfathomable scale was unleashed by the leader of the heathen cult, turning all organic life in a wide circle around the battlefield to stone. Unfortunately, Teles, a small village at the outskirts of the forest, was caught in the crossfire, with all of its citizens as well as the city-lord of Caelum, who happened to lead the operation from the small village, befalling the same fate. Clerics and healers all over the continent quickly gained notice of this unfortunate event and flocked towards the cursed region to try and return it to its origin, but to no avail.
In the following years, the successor of the petrified luminary decided to leave Éclat and moved the religious centre of the Ardent Path to his birthplace in the Kingdom of Corazón, and the people of Caelum followed, as they now believed the entire region to be cursed. Thus, the city was deconstructed to prevent monsters from taking shelter there, and a memorial was built in its place, with the statues of the brave soldiers who lost their lives to the curse surrounding it. The people of Teles, however, were left as they were, with the entire village now serving as their tomb.
Not long after the region was abandoned, rumours started to spread in neighbouring cities and villages of a man in grey robes who started to wander around the abandoned village, helping travelers who had lost their way on their journeys and sharing stories with them, most of which were regarded as nonsensical ramblings or tall tales.
Despite his friendly demeanour, wherever he was spotted, chaos and destruction seemed to follow the mysterious man, with onlookers reporting events such as wolves the size of mice being chased by a white rat the size of a wolf, trees growing abnormally large, then ripping themselves out of the soil and wandering off, never to be seen again, explosions by night, which turned out to be fireworks turning the sky into a fiery flowerbed, and other bizarre incidents which seemed to always involve him somehow. This only left one possible explanation: a wizard had taken root in Teles and made the village the new base for his experiments.
Wizards were known for their eccentric behaviour, as they all had once been scholars of the magical arts whose recklessness in acquiring such knowledge had caused them to go insane for one reason or another. The official term for these types of spellcasters used to be Chaos-Mage, as their actions and reasoning was incomprehensible and unpredictable, but as other magi did not even want to be associated with them by name, many spellcasters resorted to calling them "wizards" instead, which, until then, had been a term to describe a magically powered lamp which tended to go out at random intervals due to faulty runes. It was deemed quite the fitting description, as chaos-magi too seemed to drift in and out of sanity due to faulty connections in their minds.
Despite of their mental instability, wizards were still considered proper scholars of magic, though their research often entailed unusual and sometimes downright maniacal topics. It is said that many a scholar, who decided to collaborate with wizards to gain insight in knowledge they may have disregarded but may have the potential to benefit them in some way, saw themselves become victims to massive headaches caused by their antics, as wizards acted solely on their whims. Therefore, wizards were regarded as individuals to be avoided, as long as their existence was not deemed to be a threat to other people.
The man in grey robes living in Teles was deemed such a non-threat, as though his experiments may have looked concerning to most, they never caused any harm to nearby settlements, and he approached any person he met amicably and without even a hint of aggression. This, coupled with the fact that his aura, the excess arcanum² leaking out of his body, barely held up to what one would see within the average spellcaster, allowed him to continue to do as he pleased, with only minor incidents every now and then which involved the guards of nearby cities.
Over the years, many people came and went, curious about the old man and where he came from, but no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible for him to recollect even a single day before the one he had awakened from his slumber near the memorial that had replaced the city of Caelum.
What had ripped him from his dirt nap near the memorial appeared to be a white rat gnawing at his shoes, probably considering him to be just another dead traveler who had fallen prey to one of the beasts that lived in and around the forest. As the wizard noticed the little vermin, he quickly kicked the foot the rat had bitten into upward, lunging the rat towards his head, where he caught it before it smashed into the ground. Curiously, the rat did not seem to panic because of this, and did not even try to escape his grasp as he slowly rose to his feet.
"Who dares to awaken the mighty... ME?", he asked the rat in what he believed to be an intimidating manner, but only came out as the hoarse croak of a dry throat.
He stared into the eyes of the rat, as if trying to get her to tell him why he could neither remember his own name, nor why had lain on the ground, but the rat just looked at him with what could be interpreted as a questioning expression and squeaked. This caused the young man's stare to soften up.
"Well met, little one! Your fearlessness is most impressive! How about it, want to become my apprentice?"
If rats were capable of human expression, the rat in his hand would have rolled its eyes, but since it could not, it just squeaked again.
"Verily! Do not worry, I will provide you with food and shelter, as long as you provide me with your companionship. Now, what am I to call you?"
Another squeak.
"Hmm... a rather plain name for someone like you. How about a nickname? Let's see..."
The man intently examined the, as he had now figured out, female rat to find some distinguishable trait which would aid him in giving the rat a proper nickname.
He noticed a rather large, pitch-black pattern which seemed to resemble a 5-pronged star of some sorts on the rat's left side.
'Astra...maybe?', he thought.
Discarding this idea as it seemed too generic, he looked around him and noticed the memorial, surrounded by dozens of life-like, humanoid statues which had been placed in such a way that they formed a path towards the monument. The stone obelisk itself had the names of those who had been lost during the battle against the cultists carved into it. Two names in particular seemed to stick out among the others, giving him the feeling that he had once known people by these names, but seeing as they were both male, he disregarded that idea as well.
"AHA!", he yelled out as the revelation hit him. It was another familiar name, though again, no face came to mind accompanying the name.
"I will dub thee... Mira!"
The rat seemed to take a liking to her new name, or at least that is what the wizard had thought as the rat started to bite into his hand.
"Hungry, eh? Let us see if we can find something to eat!", he announced while stashing the rat into one of the pockets in his robe and stepping forward, intending to leave, only to trip over a large piece of wood and landing face first on the floor, similarly to how he awoke mere moments before.
"What in the name off...someone?", he cursed, unsure about whom to, as he stood back up and examined the tripping hazard.
It was a large, intricately carved staff, made to look like a tree, its thin trunk twisted around itself and ending in a small crown of leaf-less branches, into which a red, spherical crystal had been embedded. The wizard could not explain what happened, but he felt himself drawn towards the staff, and decided to claim it as his own. Holding it in his hands just felt right, as he would put it whenever he recalled this memory. His fingers grazed over the runes engraved into the staff which had already started to fade with time, making all of them illegible, except for one: Ignis, the rune of fire.
Seeing as he would eventually need to come up with a name, and this staff was now his, he decided to adopt the name of the rune as his new name. And so, with new staff in hand and companion in his pocket, he continued towards the forest to try and gather some food.
After a while, he stumbled over an apple tree full of ripe fruit. As he got closer, though, the tree turned out to be made out of stone, as did its apples. However, due to their being slightly rotten, real apples strewn across the floor, he decided to pick one from the tree to see what happens. Just as he expected, the apple instantly turned normal one it had been disconnected from the tree. One of these apples, he handed to his new companion, while collecting the others in his other pocket. However, four apples seemed to be the limit of what his pocket could carry, much to his disdain.
'Hmm... how can I get around this?', he thought to himself while biting into one of his apples.
Suddenly, as if someone had been listening in on his conversation, voices started to whisper into his mind. He looked around for the source of the voices but found nothing. The voices reverberated inside of his skull, making it hard to tell if the voices even spoke a language at all, or just hissed gibberish at him. Moments passed, which to him felt like ages, as he slowly managed to decipher the words the voices repeated to him.
'A... spell?
He concentrated his inner energy on the piece of wood in his hand, a motion which filled him with yet another feeling of familiarity he could not quite place, and spoke the words told to him by the voices, a chant in the language of the gods. He could feel the Mana around him shift as he did so, and a large spell circle started to appear beneath him. With the last word, he released the spell, which automatically aimed for his pockets. The wizard could feel the weight of what he had stuffed into his pockets disappear, to his delight. Then he remembered that Mira had occupied one of his pockets as well and began to panic. He reached deep into the pocket, feeling around for the rat, but found nothing. He closed his eyes in grief and thought about all the good times they had together, which consisted of the rat biting his shoe and hand, then devouring a whole apple in seconds before vanishing in his pocket, and a single tear rolled down one of his eyes.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"So long, Mira, my dearest friend. I hardly knew ye.", Ignis whispered, wiping his eyes with the seam of his robe.
However, before he removed his hand, he could suddenly feel the familiar plush of his vermin friend, which greeted him by biting into his index finger. As quick as he could, he yanked his hand out of his pocket, which sent the rat flying through the air.
"MIRA! I thought I lost you!", he yelled out in joy as he caught the rat mid-air with both hands.
The rat looked at him angrily, before yawning, as if to tell him that she had just been ripped out of the most wonderful after-dinner-nap.
"Wait, you do not mind floating inside of my pocket?", he asked, which somehow earned him a nod from the rat.
"Alright then, back in you go. And make sure to not overeat yourself in there!", he warned his companion, before stuffing her back into his pocket, together with all the apples he could find.
After he was satisfied with the amount of fresh fruit he had acquired, he continued his journey through the woods, this time to find some shelter. By pure chance, he managed to make his way out of the forest and into the nearby ruins of Teles before the sun had gone down. A village such as this, completely devoid of anyone sans the statues of those hit by the curse which had been left behind, would have raised multiple red flags for most who entered it.
However, the wizard just considered the statues to be some sort of weird form of art and paid it no mind. He wandered throughout the village, knocking on doors, and asking if someone would allow him to rest for the night, but received no answer.
The last house he knocked on, a small brick-house with moss-covered roof, which looked like it had been abandoned for at least a few years, was not locked up, so he decided to enter. The house was sparsely furnished, as the room he found himself in only consisted of a small kitchen area, a dinner table with 3 chairs around it, and a fireplace. The windows were broken, allowing for vines to grow through them, and the fireplace seemed to have become home to a bird-family some time ago, seeing as the bird's nest inside of it had already started to mould.
'Hm, guess no one's home. They probably won't mind me staying until they come back, especially if I start tidying up the place tomorrow.', he thought to himself and went upstairs, where he found the ceiling to have broken through at places, revealing the night sky to him.
'Getting kinda late, let's see if they have a spare bed somewhere.'
He found what he believed to be a bedroom and laid down on the remains of a wooden bed, the mattress of which seemed in unnaturally good condition.
'Quality stuff, I must say. These guys know how to live. I wonder what I should do tomorrow...'
As he continued to think about what was to come, the sweet embrace of sleep took him in.
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A man awoke surrounded by fog, lying on what he assumed to be a floor, though made of a material he could not name. He slowly rose to his feet and tried to assess his surroundings, but there were none, only the grey fog covering the floor and what appeared to be the night-sky, though the longer he looked at this sky, the less likely he thought it to be the one above Moros, as he did not recognise any of its constellations, nor did he remember there being any nebulas that resembled a scar, as if slowly healing after being split into two.
After a while, he decided to tear his eyes away from the unfamiliar ceiling, and looked at his hands, and, to his surprise, perceived them as clear as if being bathed in sunlight, the same as the rest of his body, despite there being neither a sun nor a moon or an artificial light-source shining any light on him.
The man remembered not how he got here, but he recalled what happened before he lost consciousness. This led him to only one conclusion.
"Am I... dead?", he asked out loud, but as expected, nobody answered.
Unsure of what to do next, he decided to go forward until something obstructed his way, even if that something was just some barrier that would keep him from continuing.
Minutes passed, maybe hours, or even only seconds, as there was no longer a way for him to tell. After a while, he came up with an idea that might have been able to tell him more about this strange place he found himself in. He decided to try to cast magic, a simple spell, just to see what would happen. He started to concentrate on the arcanum flowing through him, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not grasp it, as if it was no longer there.
'I guess this means I really am dead. A most unfortunate development.', he thought as he sighed in defeat.
"Unfortunate indeed!", a female voice answered his thoughts.
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Ignis awoke with a jolt, scanning the room with fear in his eyes, as if looking for someone. He heard a weird gnawing sound coming from his feet, and, to his amusement, found Mira biting into his shoe again.
"And a good morning to you too, Mira! Have you dreamed well?"
The rat ignored him.
"Ah, I guess it is hard making conversation in the morning without having had breakfast first. Let us see what the owners have left for us, shall we?"
Weeks passed, and Ignis started to get accustomed to living in the abandoned village. He repaired the house he took shelter in, he scavenged for food in the forest, and every now and then, experimented with magic to pass the time. After a while, he noticed that the entire village had been abandoned, and decided to repair the other houses as well, as him living here now made him the de facto leader of the village.
Every now and then, he would suddenly hear the same whispers he had heard before, thought they were still mostly incomprehensible to him. Yet, the longer he listened, the clearer the voices seemed to become, up to a point where he even became able to converse with them. They started to guide him, warning him of dangerous beasts that had made their nest near the village, teaching him new spells, and even telling him where to find food.
Trusting the voices, however, began to have adverse effects on his remaining sanity. At times, he could not remember where he was, or what he was just doing, and, after years of trusting them blindly, he one day awoke from a trance, which no doubt had been caused by the whispers in his head, in the middle of ruins deep within the forest which bordered his village. In front of him, he noticed a spell-circle drawn with fresh blood in front of the altar. He had no recollection of how he had gotten here, or whose blood was used to write the runes, but the continued assurance of the whispers in his mind, that he needed not know of the details and that he should just continue following their guidance caused him to make up his mind.
Ignis decided to ignore the voices, though he did not manage to follow through with his decision completely, as the voices seemed to grow louder the longer, he kept avoiding addressing them, and occasionally caused him headaches of such severity that they frequently caused him nosebleeds.
It took him months, but through continuous meditation, a method to return peace to his mind taught to him by a travelling monk he had saved from being eaten by a monster, he managed to seal the voices into the darkest corners of his mind, removing their control over him and reducing them to nothing more than a very vocal annoyance, which would sometimes try to bait him with even greater magical knowledge to coerce him to continue following their will. Though as the voices were no longer capable of physically affecting him in any way, Ignis kept ignoring them. Seeing as no amount of knowledge was enough to trick the wizard, the whispers instead resorted to insult and berate him in the hopes that the seals that held them back would start to crack as his concentration started to slip.
The days came and went, but Ignis did not care enough to mark how many, as he was not one to follow a set schedule. One time, he was visited by a married couple, who had claimed to have known him in his youth, though no matter how hard he tried, he just could not remember either of them. The two vowed to find a way to help him remember, but he just dismissed them and told them to move on, as if they truly were friends of his, he did not want them to burden themselves with a meaningless task that would only make them suffer from grief. The two objected at first, but they knew the words of the wizard came from his heart. Thus, they bid him farewell, but not before telling him that they had moved back into his former hometown, Zilia, to which they wanted him to return to as well if per chance his mind returned one day, which Ignis promised to do.
In the following years, Ignis encountered more and more people paying him a visit. Some would ask him for help, others for directions, and he was happy to provide them with both, as it meant a change of pace from his quite uneventful life. He was often offered some kind of compensation for his favours, which he seldom accepted, as he had no need for whatever they wanted to give him, except for money, which he was always happy to receive, even though he rarely got to spend it.
One of the few exceptions he made in compensation which was not related to money was for the gift of a merchant, whose cart he helped fix. A grey magician's hat with a wide brim which had matched his grey robe. He appreciated the gift, as he had begun to grow bald, and his head had become unprotected against the light of the sun, something that had annoyed him for some time now. Until then, he had wrapped his beard, which had grown to reach his belt at this point, around his head like a towel, something that earned him quite a few chuckles at his expense. He did not mind others laughing at him, but his beard hair caused him to sneeze at the worst of moments, which had been an unbearable torture to him.
"And that is the story of how I got this hat!", Ignis finished his tale to the young man in front of him, an adventurer who he had just saved from being devoured by a Coureur Lizard, a giant species of lizard that moved faster than most horses, which often troubled merchants on their way from town to town as they took a liking to the taste of horse-meat.
The carcass of the lizard, which was lying a few feet away from them, was missing its head, and the rest of its body was burnt black and still giving off smoke. The adventurer, who did not pay attention to Ignis' long-winded tale, but did not want to interrupt his saviour either, awakened from his dazed state as the old man had finally concluded his story.
"...uhm, that's all good and all, but I asked you where you learned to use such powerful magic, remember?", the young warrior inquired.
"I mean, don't get me wrong, I heard from some guy in the capital you were quite...weak? To kill a Coureur in a single blow is something most Copper-Ranks at the guild would not be able to pull off! Not to mention, I've never seen golden flames, EVER! And here you are, not even having broken a sweat after casting such magic!"
"OH YEAH! I remember now.", Ignis answered in a voice that suspiciously sounded like someone trying to pretend to be elderly, while stroking his long, grey beard deep in thought.
"To be quite honest, I have not the simplest of clues. Never mind that, have I told you the tale of how I received this hat yet? It is quite the long story, but an entertaining one nonetheless!"
"NO! I mean yes, yes you told me that.", the adventurer sputtered, not wanting to sit through the same tale again.
"Aaaanyway, I gotta go now! My 'friends' who left me behind to save their own hides are probably already preparing my funeral. Again, thanks for the help, old man.", he awkwardly tried to end the conversation, and bowed both in gratitude and as goodbyes.
"Mhm, farewell, youngster. And do be careful! There are Coureurs about. It seems to be their mating season, which makes them quite ferocious."
The young man looked uncomfortably at the wizard for a moment, not knowing how to respond, then decided to wave him goodbye and leave.
Ignis chuckled to himself as he stood up from the ground with the help of his staff, then looked around in his pockets for something. After a while, he retrieved a small, white rat, and brought it close to his face.
"Heh, got him good with that one, didn't I? I bet he actually believed that I'm just a senile old man! He was the first to listen to the entire story though, commendable!", he laughed triumphantly.
'You are senile you grey-haired moron!', familiar voices echoed mockingly in his head, but he ignored them.
"Alright, Mira! I guess today's dinner is secured! Will you carry it home?"
The rat squeaked.
"Excellent."
He placed Mira on the floor, then tapped her with his staff.
"AUGEO!"
The spell caused the rat to suddenly grow to the size of the great lizard's carcass. Mira's squeak now resembled the howl of a lion, as it bit a chunk off the lizard. This caused the wizard to whack her on the head with his staff.
"HEY! I said we're both eating it! I vanquished the beast; you will carry it! Same as always!"
The rat looked at him apologetically and gave off a low-pitched whine.
"Alright, alright. Sorry for that. Just take the thing home, okay? Once you're smaller, you'll be able to eat much more of it! Does that not sound much better?"
These words seemed to excite the rat, which now happily dragged the corpse after Ignis, who was already on his way towards Teles. As they approached, he noticed smoke emerging from the treetops, somewhere in the middle of the Foretblue forest.
'Hmm, I wonder what's going on over there.'