After sprinting at a pace near incomprehensible for least half a day my legs have buckled and my ankles given way. My haste has slowed to a crawl. I am a creature of mud and leaves, covered head to toe as my face has exalted the forest's floor to many times to count. Furthermore, I am trailing now half a mile or more, tracking glimpses of my rambling companion racing ahead. Until finally, at last it appears her speed has lessened. However, as I inch on, I realise quickly, it has arrested. Learning this fact summons the the life back into me. Straightening my spine and lifting my chin, I make one last push to reach her. Willing my body forward in a state appearing ill phased by the undertaking, besides the coverage of earth and flora of course. This is the might of my pride. It won me my ranks, before that dragged me through training and gained me my merits. I am the only man responsible for my achievements, unlike the other highborn, I have earned every scrap of plaudits acquired. So, one last scramble it is. My calves and thighs are fire as I carve a streak through the brush towards my new master, towards my new future. I lose all form and technique, trees reach their sharp spindley fingers toward me trying to grasp my limbs. I endeavour close the gap. I summoned the last of my energy for the task and now that I have reached my small goal of closing in on my destination of the clearing. It seems, once more I am to descend to the ground for it to meet me in its usual jubilant fashion. Dizzy beyond belief, red faced and hacking, I feel as though every cell in my body is gasping. My lungs burn, my entire body screams. I see Y'eula start to once again smile. This is unsettling to say the least, she's wearing that sharp, gaping grin again. I recognise it, as it is the exact one she exhibited throughout her explanation of how she made an experiment out of me. My stomach flips and I retch. No food is contained in it, so I just twitch and spasm uncontrollably at my middle. To my side I see Y'eula innocently pluck a root from the ground and make it twist between her fingers, it wriggles side to side like me. I think this mockery till it glows. I'm finished dry heaving now but I feel utterly exhausted, I drop from all fours to sit. Following this Master slides toward my rather gracefully, still holding the glowing item in hand. She then proceeds to jam the bright needle directly into my forehead, I cry out in pain, her smile spreads, she repeats this process and I collapse to the ground and writhe in pain. The pain is unbearable, I feel like I am going to pass out, or I have already lost consciousness. There is only pain. And then there is not, I am still quite present, but removed from my body. I can see the field in which I lay, birds chittering as they circle overhead and even the very direction of wind. All this painted in various colours of light, not illumination from Sol, no, from within. Within everything. What I see clearest though are the actions of my master. Unable to move in my current state I hold no other option but to spectate. Plucking small specks of light, she handles them one by one, their brightness increasing as she does. Then places them into me. Each one pulls my back in as I feel the searing pain digs beneath my skin to lodge in my flesh. They are not still where they sit, periodical twitches etch their locations into my memory as the pain subsides. Each one an emberous worm, finding its home and cooling. Concurrently the glow my world is emitting increases, slowly at first. Then the separate hues, from separate things combine to form a blinding white and I am forced farther from myself, I am forced away from the scene. An itch claws at my side as I notice I'm a tree, there are beetles, in my trunk. Before I can start to contemplate the strangeness, I am one of the beetles, then a squirrel and then a crow. I turn my raven head and see a man splayed on the floor, laying beneath a cloaked woman. I realise that it is my body, I take a gargantuan breath and it is. I want to scream as I feel my soul expand inside, flowing to the edges of my limbs as molten metal. Soon as it reaches my extremities the burning subsides to leave an utterly pleasant feeling of warmth throughout my recumbent form. Expecting the feeling to twist or change into yet another configuration of pain I have yet to experience, I try to savour it to my fullest. A stark stillness enters me as I do, not just body, but mind also. My mind has not felt so together since before my restriction to the inky hole I was discarded in. Knowing I was a shadow of myself was far greater of an understatement than I remembered, how much I lost of myself to that space is now ever apparent. As the fog leaves my brain the questions come flooding back. Who attacked the hall? Why was I supposedly the culprit? Who was the other Magi?
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"Why did my sister have to die" These questions become ever so real as they cross my lips, unknowingly at first. However, under the realisation I had indeed spoken, I look to the young woman who bares me in her arms. Both physically and capaciously
"why?" and she, Y'eula, the first true mage, looks into my eyes, staring into the very essence of me and reveals the first real emotion her face has portrayed in my presence. A true understanding of sadness, a grief to most unknown. Then, she parts my lips with her own. A kiss given not from a place of sympathy. But, pure empathy. I am in the eye of the storm, stillness quiets the pain that had grasped my body. I feel better than I have in my entire existence. I want this moment to last as long as long as that darkness had held me, alas, it does not. However, the storm remains, intact, dormant, waiting. I feel a power now, a power I never conceived could be mine, course through my circuits and I am reborn.
"That isn't a question I have the answer to" Y'eula says to me, in the gentlest of tones "But, we can find out together"
"Yes Master" This time I mean it when I say the words.
"Good, good, I'll give ye a breath, take her time" Y'eula states plainly. "I'll be just here" she finishes then walks a span away from me.