22 May 2012
"If you want to know from the very beginning," the boy said, "you'll have to hear it right from the beginning. "As you already know, I'm a mage, and as Lily so helpfully described, quite a potent one. This I owe in part to my demon... friend, who I'll tell you about later. "I live in Serana, a city not a weeks journey from here, and I was, for most of my life, just a normal person - no magic, demons, no nothing, until about three months ago. It was then I was abducted by a group of slavers, looking for new blood to sell."
"I won't go into detail because I am not a sentimental person, but let me say the weeks following were the worst of my life so far. I was taken to another city state (name of Amarra) and sold to a high ranking noble by the name of Omar Shauken, who also, when we got back to his house, turned out to be a mage as well. He was a real slacker, let ALL of his servants to the work for him, never cleaned up after himself, and NEVER took a bath. When he appeared in court he literally cut a path before him because of his smell. He was the dirtiest noble in the city, but that didn't matter to him because his studies on magic took precedence. Morning, afternoon and night he worked on combinations of incantations for spells, ingredients for potions, you know, that sort of thing. "Furthering the science of magic" was an overused quote of his. And that was how I first caught his attention. My mother, when we stumbled on hard times before took jobs collecting ingredients for potions, so I knew most common ingredients inside out, so when I walked in on him mixing two reactants that I knew shouldn't EVER be mixed, I saved him from an early death by explosion by chucking the whole concoction out the window. It then (unsurprisingly) dawned on him that I was quite a handy person to have around, and I was elevated from the rank of slave to informal apprentice. And for a month he trained me in the arts of magic, and I was able to create a little magic, though I wasn't anything to scream about.
"Yet the appearance of a certain noble changed everything. Guillermo del Saré was a politician with a loose purse and even looser morals. He arrived in the court of the high lord of the city a month or so after I started to train as Omar's apprentice, an took an unhealthy interest in his dealings with magic, paying Omar to do experiments that remained secret to all but him and his benefactor. Whether this was for profit or other purposes I didn't know, but his interest was stopped abruptly by the unfortunate death of my master. His body was found in his room, untouched, yet with many... abnormal markings on the skin. To the city guards who came and cleared up the mess, he had temporarily gone insane, drawn the markings on himself, then promptly died as his heart gave out from the stress of it. To me, however, this stank of suspicion, and with the funds Omar had left me in his will (I also got the estate) I started to do a little investigating of my own.
"I dug up dirt using unscrupulous methods - paying informants, breaking in to his house, bribing servants, and found that Guillermo was a secret pioneer of the usage of magic for nefarious purposes - capturing innocents, forcing possession on them, then letting the newly hosted demons out on to the public, and then causing much mayhem and destruction. He'd then allow the state to collapse around him and rise up out of the ashes, taking over as its head. He'd then repeat. I only know this because he started this process in Amarra, and I was one of his first subjects.
"He captured me in the dead of night while I lay asleep, and took me to his dungeon. He then recounted to me that which I have told you now, which I felt was justified, as to him I was just another slave, and just a pawn in his plan. However, when he started the process he didn't know that I had a little magic, and when the spirit forced its way into me, I was able to bind it using what little I had. I was then able to tap into its reserves of magic and then - oh! Such power! It was like being immersed in pure energy! Naturally I was then able to break free and totally raze his whole mansion to the ground, but unfortunately he escaped beforehand. After that, I had to make my escape.
"I was able to get outside the city just by sneaking past the guards, but I then I felt that I had to warn the other city-states of his plot otherwise the whole alliance would come tumbling down, and would leave del Saré in charge of the whole empire. So I vowed to stop him and his evil plan by killing him the next time he surfaced in another city, and through some snooping at a travelling band of merchants I heard that he was on his way to my home town - Serana. So I was making my way through the Anilik mountains, when I heard something moving along the ridge, and dived into a bush. It seems Lily can take the story from there."
A Story • Opuss № I