Wyll

I spat into the long blue grass growing along the outer wall of the warehouse, trying to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth. The bile burned my throat, and I found myself wishing I had brought some water. The night air was pleasant against my sweat-covered skin, and I leant with my back against the wall to try and calm my thoughts. Images of my body withering away or my mind being irreparably changed raced around my head, and it brought back the all-too-recent memories of fire washing over my body.

I was furious.

At Fyron, at myself. I had thought this was my golden ticket out of here, a serendipitous solution to my issues, but now it seems that this is the worst of all options. I was so foolish for thinking it would be that easy. Fyron had certainly made it seem so. I should leave right this second and never look back. And yet I was more furious with myself at still wanting to stay. I was ready to desert Brimstone and risk all of the consequences involved in that, why do I not have the same sense of preservation around this? Stupid. I was going to end up getting myself killed, and for what?

The door creaked as it opened next to me, and Fyron poked his head out to give me a sympathetic look before coming out to sit on the floor with his back against the wall. I was going to warn him about where I’d thrown up, but saw that it had mysteriously been cleaned up when I wasn’t looking.

“I remember when I first learned about this stuff, my reaction was fairly similar to yours.” he said, staring out over the river towards the city lights. “Ran out from my mentor’s house. Didn’t speak to him for a good month or two. In that regard, you’re doing better than I did. Ha!”

I said nothing to that, but I sat on the floor next to him. Fyron produced a bottle of water and a handkerchief from somewhere, probably just conjured, and passed them to me. I took a swig and wiped my face. The water was ice cold with a hint of lemon.

“A fear of magic is a healthy thing.” he continued when I didn’t respond. “Without it, you would risk taking it too lightly. Your taste of its dangers was a valuable albeit painful lesson, and one you won’t soon forget.”

Fyron took out his pipe, which lit on its own. He blew out a long stream of white smoke, which curled up to the starry sky. I wanted to tell him that this wasn’t going to work for me, that I would find some other way to get out of Brimstone or at least the front lines. My dad would be devastated, but he’d help out. He had plenty of connections.

Instead, I asked “Does it ever go away?”

Fyron gave that some thought, breathing out another puff of smoke. “No.” he said, and my heart sank. “And it shouldn’t. But part of overcoming it is accepting the lessons it teaches you, and using it for your benefit. We feel pain to learn those lessons. Same goes for fear. Without it, we wouldn’t have survived as a species.”

“But what if I can’t overcome it? If we’re doing this kind of magic, fear could be a fatal flaw.”

“Aye, you’re not wrong. But you should know that’s why I’m here. You should have a good grasp of what I can do by now, or rather the lack of things I can’t do. You won’t come to harm while I’m around, in body or mind.”

I couldn’t argue against that. Above all else, I was certain that whatever spell I could create that passed beyond my control, Fyron would be able to contain without putting down his pipe.

“Let me ask you something.” Fyron said, “Why do you want to learn magic?”

I thought about that for a moment. “To keep myself safe, I guess. Protect myself from the dangers of the world.”

Fyron chuckled, shaking his head. “I doubt that. If safety was your goal you wouldn’t have signed up for the artillerists. You’d be a receptionist at Horizon or something.”

I clicked my teeth, but thought some more. He was right again, of course. A year ago, I had no real drive or motivation. I’d coasted through school, not really aspiring to do much. Why would I need to? With the money my family had I never really had to work. I thought back to why I joined Brimstone in the first place, and the answer came to me.

“I want to impress people, I guess. My father, well, my family as a whole really. I want them to look at me and be proud.”

Fyron nodded sagely. “Hmph. Closer. What were you planning on doing to impress them?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. Take out an archdruid, maybe. Find some super-amazing artifact to take home and retire early like my dad did. Be some kind of war hero like on the Brimstone posters.”

“All within the realm of possibility, I suppose. Now, if you had the magic I did, how would you do it?”

“Well, shit. Same kind of thing but more, I guess. There’s a lot of evil in the world I could solve, a lot of problems I could fix. I honestly don’t know why you’re here in this dingy old warehouse instead of out there fixing the world.”

Fyron gave a sad smile, stowing his pipe. “You think it would be easy? Just go in, slay the evil overlord, save the world?”

“For you? I mean, yeah?”

“Tell me, who do you think would need to die to have the greatest positive effect on the world?”

“Man I don’t know… We went over some still-at-large rogue mages in one of our first sessions at Brimstone, but all of them sounded pretty nasty. I think they were trying to inspire us or something. Oh! There was this one guy who lives over in Gottlan, who took over a whole province with his summoned demons. I think his name was Axaran the Betrayer, or something.”

“Araxan the Betrayer?”

“Yeah that’s the one. Apparently nobody has been able to get close to the heart of his domain for years, since he has a bunch of insta-death bubbles surrounding it.”

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“And you think his death would cause the most good for the world?”

“Probably. He used blood magic to fuel his demon summoning, and raids the surrounding provinces for more sacrifices to this day.”

“Hmm, okay.”

Fyron closed his eyes for a second, and the air shimmered over his outstretched hand for a moment. There was a brief shimmer, then with a sudden popping sound a red, beating lump of meat appeared in his hand. Steam rose from it in the cold air, and as it beat it gushed blood onto the ground. Fyron said nothing, just looking at the hunk of flesh in his hand. His expression was neutral, as if he were examining a weed he’d just plucked from the ground.

After what felt like an eternity, as the heart slowly stopped twitching, Fyron looked to me. “Well, he’s dead now. Now what?”

I was stunned. There was no way that was right. I didn’t remember all the details of that training session, but this guy was supposed to be immortal, using dark pacts with otherworldly beings to extend his life longer than many mortal lifespans.

“What the fuck? What do you mean now what?”

“Well,” he said, tossing the heart into a nearby bush and magicking away the blood on his hands and the floor. “Do we stop there? Plenty of evil left in the world, and we have a few more minutes before we should get back inside.”

“I-” I wasn’t able to process all this at all. This was too surreal, too unbelievable. “I don’t know, that seems… wrong. Shouldn’t there be a big quest, some kind of honour or something?”

Fyron smiled, pulling his pipe back out of his pocket. “There’s no honour in killing. You should know that. As you can see, given a long lunch break I could take out the rest of the terrible people on that list you heard about. Probably a bunch of worse ones you don’t have clearance to know about yet. But why stop there? There are plenty of terrible people in the world. Killers, slavers, rapists. Shouldn’t I get them too while I’m at it? What about other criminals? Crooked lawmakers? Schoolyard bullies? When killing is easy, it loses all meaning. Honour in combat is simply the bravery to enter a fight when there’s risk it might not work out in your favour. If I dedicated myself to your goal of fighting evil, the only wicked one left standing on a mountain of corpses would be me, and you don’t strike me as the tyrant type.”

I thought about his words. He made a lot of sense, but I’m not sure if I agreed. With his power, there was so much good he could do in this world. He could end the war with the Elves, he could make crops flourish, could bring riches to the poor. Why was he wasting his time with us in some run-down industrial complex? I had so many questions, but before I could ask them Fyron stood up and dusted off his brown robes. Not a speck of blood remained.

“Shall we? The scary stuff is out of the way now. Of course, you’re free to leave any time you like. I won’t force you to stay here.” he said.

Part of me still thought running away was the smartest thing I could ever do, but at the same time I wasn’t ready to give in yet. I was less sure than ever why I still wanted to learn this terrifying kind of power, but one thing was crystal clear: I could never ever get on Fyron’s bad side.

We headed back inside, Fyron closing the door behind us. Medea and Arryn seemed to have been talking, but stopped their conversation as we came in. Arryn came over to see how I was doing, but Medea was fixing Fyron with an icy stare. I don’t know how she had the balls, knowing what he can do.

“Now then, I hope we’re all feeling a bit more settled. Where was I…?” spoke our mentor, walking over to the diagram on the floor. “Ah yes, the final piece of the puzzle - the Universe. A bit of an ambiguous term, I’m sure the elves would say something like the ‘Laws of Nature’ and the dwarves would name it some god or another, but for simplicity’s sake I just call it the Universe.”

He tapped the circle that surrounded the triangle of Mind, Matter, and Mana. “As I said, spells often want to complete themselves. The opposing force to that is the Universe, who wishes to keep everything the same or ‘normal’ as possible. You may wonder why no mage has ever rewrote history, or permanently changed the laws of physics. These things change the functioning of the world in such a way that it is intolerable for the Universe, and logistically impossible. The mana required for such feats increases exponentially, to the point where there isn’t enough on the planet to do such a thing. That’s how the Universe tries to get its way, by upping the costs of your spells if they change things around too much. You can think of mana as a sort of bribe to make it look the other way for a while.”

“What happened to not personifying magic?” asked Medea, arms crossed.

“Yes, well, sometimes it helps paint a clearer picture.” he replied.

“Do you think you could give us a practical example? All of this talk is going over my head a bit.” said Arryn.

“Ah, wonderful idea.” Fyron beamed, picking up a stone from the ground. “Take a Shape Stone spell, like Mr. Tarlow is so familiar with.”

Arryn sighed. “Don’t remind me…”

“If I were to quickly shape this stone…” Fyron said, and the stone burst into pieces for a second before reforming into a small statuette of a bird. “The Universe was upset for just a moment, and the result is something that could feasibly exist in the world, so there’s no continued cost to keep it there. The bribe in this case is very small.”

Arryn looked thoughtful. “Hmm, that spell is one of our most popular because of its ease of use. Practically every construction company in the city teaches it to their employees.”

“Indeed.” replied Fyron. “But if I were to make it float…” the stone bird started orbiting around Fyron’s head.

“The change to the normality of the universe is more drawn out so it costs more, is that right?” I asked.

“Exactly. Now, if I were to do this…” Suddenly, the stone bird grew tenfold, and brilliant orange-red plumes of fire sprouted from the stone like feathers. It let out a screech, and encircled Fyron like it was protecting him. His robes didn’t seem to catch fire, despite the shimmering heat surrounding them.

“I get it.” said Medea. “Greater changes, making something that doesn’t exist, so more cost, right?”

“Correct again Miss. Baninyet. So, how do you think we can mitigate this cost?”

Medea thought for a moment, one of her floating gauntlets coming up to rest on her chin. “Wait, runes?”

“Close! Runes work on precedent, which is the real ticket. Even if it is violating the usual rules of normalcy, if a rule is broken so often, the bribe needed to appease the Universe gets less and less. It’s always cheaper to cast a spell that everyone knows than one you’ve made from scratch. Tricks like this to manage mana usage are vital if you want to make it as a Free Mage. Taking all of this together…”

Fyron walked to the center of the diagram now, pointing to different parts as he spoke. “Mana is the main challenge when casting spells. The costs can be reduced by following precedent and influencing Matter instead of bringing things into creation through pure will, and throughout this you need to have a clear Mind and not rely on the spell to take too much control over you or the product of the spell.”

“Agh, this is a lot. I feel like I need to unlearn everything I was taught in school.” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose”

“Perhaps that’s a good place to leave things today. Until tomorrow, go home and try to shape a rock into something like I did. But… don’t go trying to make giant fire birds yet, please.” warned Fyron, and we all sighed in relief and went to gather our things.

Fyron was the first to leave, and I was about to head home too before a metal hand grabbed his arm. He turned around to see Arryn grabbed in the same way.

“We’re going for drinks.” she said, with and expression that told me I didn’t get a say in the matter. “I know a place.”