Arryn

From the rooftop of the local Horizon branch you can see the entire city. The setting sun dyed the surrounding buildings blood red, and looking down I could see the streets teeming with life. Scattered like shattered gemstones were the luminous multicoloured lights advertising everything from wands to runeboxes, and the tacky animated logos for each shop and brand made my head hurt. I took another swig of my bottle.

A group of young mages flew past, cackling and twirling in the air on their brooms. One, a young girl sat side-saddle across some kind of garden rake, gave me a cheery wave. I broke eye contact and looked away. Magic was rife here, and it seemed even someone as young as that girl could use it to fly above the rooftops with minimal supervision. What would her parents think if she fell? Maybe it’s better not to be able to cast magic. Safer, for sure. I finished off my drink, and went to look for another in the cheap Manamart plastic bag hanging from the rooftop railing. The sun was nearly below the horizon now, and it’s golden glow was being replaced by the buzzing illusory logo on the billboard above me. A white background, with a sky blue circle slashed across with a horizontal line. Underneath, a fairly plain line of text.

Horizon - Bringing tomorrow to you.

Before I really had time to think about it, I lobbed the brown glass bottle I was holding at the sign. It passed right through and smashed across the other side of the rooftop. Of course. Nothing in this city was anything without magic. I slumped against the railing, pulling out the crumpled letter from my pocket for what must have been the hundredth time that day. My eyes scanned the text, but nothing had changed. Maybe it was foolish to hope that the denial was some kind of test - that if I held on to the letter for long enough that the Arcanist company would see my determination to learn, but no. Just a regular, Mundane letter.

My brooding was interrupted by the sound of brushing and the tinkling of glass. I looked up from the letter to see a figure on the far end of the rooftop, sweeping up the glass I threw. It was a man, seemingly old but acting with a youthful vigour that made it hard to guess his age. He had a tattered cloak, and a fairly archaic wide-brimmed hat that hid his face except for a short salt-and-pepper beard. I didn’t see him come up the stairs.

“Ah, I’m sorry about that, ser.” I tried to not let my voice betray my drunkenness. “I, er, dropped that. I was going to pick it up on the way back down.”

The man finished his sweeping and looked up at me with a warm, almost grandfatherly smile. His crinkled eyes, I noted, were an incandescent gold. Not uncommon, in a city like Danmer, but striking. He began to walk over, hands in his pockets.

“Ahh, no you weren’t.” He spoke warmly, as if chatting with an old friend. “You were going to jump off after the sun went down, and that being the case I’m sure you had more important things to think about than cleaning up some mess.”

My breath caught in my throat. I took a closer look up at this man, so casually leaning against the railing and looking down at the streets below. I hadn’t told anyone. I hadn’t even really decided, I just…

“How could you possibly know that?” I couldn’t stop the lump forming in my throat.

“Just a hunch. Arryn Tarlow, age 25 and no known spells of note. Worked for 7 years at Horizon for the “Advanced Mana Infusion” package, only to be told he doesn’t have a lick of potential for casting at all. What a fuckin’ kick in the teeth, huh? I’m sure you weren’t here for the pay.”

The confusion I felt but moments ago turned quickly into a stiff discomfort. I stood up from where I was sat against the railing and turned to face him. He was short, I realised, but with the sun almost completely sunk he cast a very long shadow.

“Who are you? Who told you these things?”

I’ve always felt vulnerable on my own in this city. It only takes one maniac with a fire spell or some novice kid with his first wand to cause permanent damage if you don’t know how to defend yourself, and finding out I would never be able to do so made me feel so much weaker. Now, with this stranger who apparently knew my entire life story standing next to me, I started to wonder if I needed to defend myself.

He wasn’t responding to my questions, just looking down at the city. I noticed he was twirling a half-melted gold piece in his hand.

“Are you here to blackmail me or something?”

Suddenly, he slicked the coin into the air, and I didn’t see it come back down.

“You’re inquisitive, that’s good. Let me answer your questions with another question.”

He turned to face me properly for the first time, and his glowing golden eyes seemed to draw me in as he smiled again.

“How would you like to learn real magic?”

I was baffled by this turn of events. I was about to ask why he thought he could do what the biggest Arcanist company said was impossible, when I noticed the shards of glass flowing to his open hand. They clicked together like a jagged jigsaw piece, and once the bottle was fully reformed it started to fill with amber beer. There was even condensation on the glass.

He didn’t speak a spell name, or make a sacred gesture. He wasn’t even holding an implement, or even looking at the bottle for that matter. Like nothing, he had done five impossible things in such a casual manner that I was struck speechless. Seeing my reaction, he let out a bellowing laugh.

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Medea

The crowd roared as I took to the ring. The bookies would be making a fortune tonight, judging by the jeers that the people in the front row spat my way. They must be new.

Across on the other side of the ring was my opponent. Maybe just shy of six foot tall, but floating a few inches off the ground to seem taller. Shaved bald head, with the Elven rune for “eruption” tattooed on his forehead. I wonder if he knew it also meant “ejaculation”. His most striking feature was his right arm, a blackened and porous slab of rock. He cheered at the crowd as he stepped into the glaring white spotlight from the magelights floating around the room, and as he raised his charred arm into the air it crackled with heat, and began to glow orange like hardened lava. I suppose that explains the tattoo.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have quite the spectacle for you tonight. In this round of cast-less combat, our two competitors are both dying to show you their Mage Boxing techniques. In the red corner, we have a first-time challenger hailing from the 17th Division of the Brimstone corporation, Jimmy “Volcano” Jones!”

The crowd shouted wild encouragement as “Volcano” appeared on the holograms that appeared around the room. It showed a live feed of him doing some kind of dance move with his arm, along with some scattered information about him most of the patrons here were probably too drunk or high to read.

“Aaaand in the blue corner, we have returning champion Medea Baninyet, runewright and enchanter hailing from the Well of Wonders corporation! She’s back to defend her title and earn the chance to win our grand prize of one THOUSAND gold!”

The crowd booed, shouting more unkind words. Nothing I hadn’t heard before. My image appeared over the screen now, and to be honest I can’t really blame them for not thinking much of me. The image above their heads was a scrawny looking girl, with long white hair tied back in a rough ponytail, long pointed ears, and two stumps where her arms should be. Those not hurling insults my way were looking on with pity or concern, except one group of elven women who seemed to be too busy laughing at “Volcano”’s forehead.

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One figure in the crowd was different, though. A man sat at the bar at the back, looking directly at me with a calm smile on his face. His faintly luminous golden irises cut through the harsh white light of the spotlights. I shot him a confused look before the ring of the bell informed me that the announcer had finished rambling.

Volcano floated towards me. I had to wonder how he thought he had the mana to spare for that.

“Listen ‘ere sweetheart.” His voice was like wet gravel. “Yer gonna make me look bad if I take you out, so why don’t ye just call it now? Not sure how yer gonna kick me when I’m floating like this.”

Ah, that explained the floating. Also that he obviously hadn’t seen me fight before.

In response I took a fighting stance, much to his amusement, and like a silver flash two heavy steel gauntlets came flying off the hook on my belt. Both were solid steel, reinforced by very complicated runework that I had spent a very long time carving. Neither was usable as regular gloves anymore, since their hollows were filled by more steel and more runes long ago. Lefty flew out to grab Volcano by his magma arm, the metal beginning to turn orange from the heat on contact, as righty shot up into the perfect uppercut.

Maybe it was the levitation he had already cast on himself, but Volcano flew towards the ceiling, right through his own holographic image. I’d been warned about damaging the arena before, so I called Lefty back down again, dragging Volcano to the floor faster than he would have fallen. A cloud of white sand shot up, and I called back Righty to shield my eyes. The crowd was suddenly silent, except one man laughing in the back.

From within the cloud of dust, an orange glow began to grow brighter. Volcano was back on his feet, clutching his forehead with his flesh arm as his magma arm radiated heat. Some members of the audience in the front row began to push back into the crowd, red faced and covered in sweat.

“Ye fucked up, sweetheart.”

I tried to draw Lefty back to me, and saw it limply dragging a groove in the sand. Shit, the runic array must have deformed in the heat. I didn’t have time to do anything about that before Volcano ran towards me, touching the ground this time, and drawing back his molten fist.

I acted on pure instinct, sending Righty to impact his solar plexus while sidestepping the swing. He tried to grab the floating gauntlet, but I wrenched it out of his grasp with another mental command. He tried to backhand me with his fire hand, and in far too close of a maneuver I got Righty to block the blow. This wasn’t how my fights normally go. What do they teach those guys at Brimstone? Volcano followed up his backhand with a left hook, and I sent Lefty to intercept. The hand stopped, but only after the fact did I realise that Lefty was still dragging itself across the ground. Volcano looked just as confused, and the moment broke as he regained movement of his fist again. I didn’t let the distraction go to waste, and put everything I had into one final push from Righty. The heat had almost ruined its scriptwork too, but with my focus on only one hand I was able to give enough force to crack Volcano across the chin with his own fiery hand.

Volcano hit the deck as the crowd found its voice again, this time screaming my praises. The holograms above their heads updated to show me with a golden crown on my head, and Volcano with the burnt red fist mark on his cheek I’d just given him.

I sighed, sending Righty to go pick up Lefty. I quietly hoped that Righty is still functional enough to do repairs with later, or fixing the runes with my feet is going to be a huge pain.

I left the ring as the announcer rambled on some more about the fight tomorrow - the semi-finals, at last. Only two more fights and I can quit my job at the Well for a while. I followed the gloomy stone corridors to my locker room and found an old man, or maybe just a weathered younger man, standing by my door.

“I don’t know if you know what you just did, but you just performed what most would consider impossible” he said, pulling out a pipe and stuffing it with tobacco.

“Yeah, well, weight classifications don’t mean much when buffs are permitted.”

“Not that, though you are plenty skilled as a boxer. Tell me, how would you like to learn some real magic?”

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Wyll

“Easy now, you’ve still got another hour until the potion kicks in and your burns aren’t properly healed yet.”

The nurse had been very patient with me. Admittedly I hadn’t been the most cooperative of patients, with all the screaming and crying last night.

When people had told me that Brimstone was no joke, that I’d be at risk of serious harm if I didn’t take my protection spells seriously, I believed them. I really did feel ready to defend myself from any kind of magic. I even learned a counter-petrification spell, “just in case”. What I had never planned for was to be the victim of my own magic.

I’m sure the instructor meant well by warning us about the dangers of fire spells, how although we start or shape the fire with our hearts, minds and souls, it still burns and spreads as fire does. Being the cautious sort, I had set aside a bucket of water “just in case”. When the spell went off in my hands, I didn’t have a plan for that.

The pain was indescribable. I panicked, which only led to the fire becoming wilder and less controlled. My last memory before blacking out was my instructor shouting at me to “calm down”. Some of the other new recruits had managed to put out the fire, I'm told. I'm lucky to get away with burns just on my chest and arms, I'm told. I certainly didn't feel it.

The hospital room was a strange mix of sterile white and classic Brimstone black and orange. The various runes on the wall behind me marked vitals, potion progress, mana levels, and various other things I didn't understand. The multicoloured glow from the rune work as reflected in the large circular spectacles of the nurse, who was making notes on them. She was pretty, but that only made the pained grimace she made whenever she looked at my burns hurt more.

The potion was doing good work, though. I barely felt any pain anymore, instead just a warm numbness. My instructor had stopped by yesterday to drop it off, and assured me that I'd be fit to return to training by the end of the week. The way he spoke, it was clear this wasn't the first time a new recruit had blown up like I had.

The thought of returning to training twisted my stomach into knots. I doubt they'd let me back out now. The potion that the company provided wasn't cheap, as far as I was aware. Brimstone hadn't provided it out of the goodness of their hearts. More than most, they guarded their magical secrets more zealously than Horizon or Well of Wonders. If they hadn't offered to heal me up, they knew I'd likely need to ask another company who would surely agree in return for insights into Brimstone spells or runes. I'd heard plenty of stories about recruits “disappearing” for sharing company secrets.

I'd joined on a whim, sold by tales of glory in the North against the Elves, learning exclusive powerful spells, saving orphans from wicked blood images, more evoking tools than I knew what to do with, and now I'm stuck here. But the thought of staying, and risking feeling my skin charring while I desperately try to cast an extinguishing spell through my screams…

“Excuse me miss, is this the room for Wyll Darter?” A man's voice interrupted my thoughts. He walked into the room with confidence, sporting the black velvet armour of a high ranking Brimstone Officer. His tall cap showed a rank higher than I knew how to identify, and the staff floating behind him hummed with mana that crippled the air around it. Most striking were his golden eyes, which flicked from me to the nurse.

“Ah, yes ser. He has about an hour left to process the potion and he'll be good to be discharged.” The nurse seemed a bit uncomfortable, not sure how to properly address someone of his apparent rank. “Is there an issue?”

“Afraid so. Would you mind giving up a few minutes? I need to have a word with young Wyll here.”

“Of course.” The nurse gave an awkward curtesy. “I'll let the other staff know to not disturb you.”

After a brief moment to collect her tools and charts, the nurse was gone and I was left alone in the room with the new stranger. I tried to salute but found I couldn't raise my arm. The man watched the door close, and focused his golden eyes on me again. His eyes bored into me, like he was reading my very soul. An uncomfortable moment passed, and then he smiled widely and sat on the end of my bed.

I was very confused. All the higher-ups I'd talked to from Brimstone were stoic, dutiful, rigid professionals. Now this man who apparently out ranked them was leaning back against the foot of my hospital bed and lighting a pipe. As he exhaled the pale white smoke the uniform he wore blew away too in a billowing cloud of black fog, and left in its place was the same man in a tattered brown cloak.

“So, Wyll. You've sipped the tea of magic before it had cooled and burned your tongue, eh?”

“Ser, respectfully, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Ahh, don't bother with that. You've probably guessed by now that I'm not actually from Brimstone.”

My brow furrowed, and I realised that with my arms immobile I couldn't reach the button to call for help even if I needed to.

“Impersonating a high ranking member of the company is an executable offence.”

The man smiled as if I had just made a joke. “So is desertion.”

I didn't have a response for that. So I kept my mouth shut. This could still be some kind of test.

“I'm not here to drag you away to a dungeon, lad. Quite the opposite. How would you like a way out of your little bind here?”

Despite my doubts, my heart soared for a moment. If this stranger had some way for me to get out of my enlistment without crossing Brimstone and ever having to cast a spell again, I needed to hear it.

I decided to play it as cool as I could.

“I'm listening.”

The man took a long draw of his pipe, while giving me another one of those analysing looks.

“How would you like to learn some real magic?”

“Fuck.” I groaned.