And so Maziar entered the Northern Tower under the close watch of a half-dozen healers who had no idea how to cure him.
It took a few weeks for him to recover enough to be able to be on his own. When he awoke this time, Maziar found himself settled in a room with a letter from his mother telling him she’d gone to fight in the Darklands. She would be back soon, she wrote. ‘Wait for me.’
His stomach lurched with the thought that he’d missed his chance to speak with her in person, but considering he hadn’t eaten well for a long time, he focused on keeping his stomach contents where they were instead of dwelling on his anxiety.
While the other casters weren’t looking, he and War also tried to devise a plan of what to do from then on. Losing his core would drastically reduce his quality of life if he didn’t keep up with a strict regimen focused on improving his physical and mental magic. Still, it was hard for Maziar to come up with the will to give it any effort.
“What’s the point?” he one day asked War, who had taken the form of a cat that was currently sitting on his bed with him. He was nibbling away on an apple that had been cut up for Maziar by the servants before they left him to rest. “Why do you care, anyway? Isn’t it better for you that I die?”
“You say that as if I shouldn’t have any fondness for you,” said War. “I quite like you alive. You bring me apples.”
“Yes,” Maziar sneered with a fake smile. “It’s always about the apples.”
“At least I have a reason to live,” the not-a-horse said. “And you?”
“I just want to live long enough to see the revenge I bargained my soul for.”
“You’ll need to try harder, then. Divine retribution doesn’t often happen according to human schedules.”
“Is that so?” Maziar said with a small voice. “I guess I’ll just have to make my own schedule, then.”
War grinned. “Now that’s more like it. Shall we get to work?”
With a nod, a new plan began to take form as Maziar considered just how far he was willing to go.
It was months before Maziar had the chance to sit and speak with his mother. She had come bearing piles of gifts, including a complete furniture set and a whole new wardrobe for him. All of it was of good quality and seemed to be far too expensive for him to accept.
“Don’t worry about it,” his mother told him almost immediately after glancing at his face. “It’s not as much as it looks, and it’s all made from the parts of the Darklands monsters I’d slain and treasures I gained during my last trip, so it wasn’t very costly at all.”
“Still…” Maziar, who had grown accustomed to turning most gifts down over the years, was at a loss for what to do.
“You didn’t come with much,” she said awkwardly. “These things are just the basics for life in the Tower. Normally, your parents or a sponsor would have—well, I am your mother, I guess, but I know that—so… I had Marlen take your measurements and have some clothes made. I… If you don’t want them, that’s fine, too. They should at least tide you over until you can choose your own…”
He and Mira resembled her strongly, he realized, with her large pitch-black eyes, wavy brown hair, and heart-shaped face. Contrary to his expectations, she was neither indifferent to him nor upset about his being there. While she wasn’t very good at it, she expressed a care and concern for him that his father never had.
Her dark eyes bored into him with such pleading hope that he accepted what she offered him quietly, returning her awkwardness as he blushed at her eager attention.
“How have you been?” she asked, pulling up a chair and sitting beside his bedside. She thoughtlessly pulled the blankets around his waist. A torrent of questions came tumbling out. “How is Mira? What have you two been doing? How did you end up like this? What has your arrogant dolt of father been paying attention to that you ended up like this? Why didn’t you contact me earlier? Or did you try, and he stopped you? Mind you, I wouldn’t blame you either way—I know perfectly well what kind of man I married. If I could have taken you with me, I would have, but since your father had the king’s backing—oh, but you don’t need to know that. Don’t mind me.”
Maziar swallowed hard as he listened to her go on and on about all the things she wanted to know and all the things she wanted to do for him.
Why hadn’t Maziar just written to his mother when everything seemed to be spiraling out of control? She was the Grand Wizard of a whole Tower. It’s not like his father made her out to be some kind of monster; he just treated it as if it were natural for her not to be around. She was too smart for him–too ‘good’ to stay and raise her children.
Meanwhile, Mira was slowly being suffocated by the silence she’d been taught to keep, and Maziar was doing all he could not to be crushed by the weight of the expectations and feelings of powerlessness.
If he had thought of her sooner, would things have been different?
He supposed he never thought of her because why would he? And even if he had, if he had written a letter and received a negative response—or perhaps none at all—wouldn’t the confirmation that she wanted nothing to do with them have been worse?
Yet, here she was, twittering all about him as he sat, crippled beyond repair because of a choice he’d made because he thought he didn’t have anyone else to turn to.
“What’s wrong?” his mother asked, eyes wide as she wiped the tears off his face.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her, shuddering as unwitting tears became a fit of sobbing. His mother pulled him into her lap and hung over him protectively.
“No, Maziar,” she said, her own voice breaking. “I am the one who is sorry.”
But all Maziar could do was cry into her arms without giving her any reason as to why.
“That’s right,” she cooed, petting his hair. “You cry all you need to.”
Words his father would never have said, ever.
Though she hid it, Yulda was pissed. Maziar wouldn’t tell her what happened, but whatever it was, she knew that he’d been hurt more than his letter had suggested. She could get over the loss of his magic—such a thing was nothing compared to his life. His confidence and will had been so damaged by whatever had happened, she dared not imagine what he had seen or done or had been done to him.
Magic was replaceable. Her son was not.
There was no way for her to ever make up for the time that she had missed with her children, but she could do her best to build him up again. One day, she was determined to save her daughter as well, though the law might frown upon it. If having her marry into the Tower was the only way to save her from the nobility’s idiocy, then at least Mira’s husband would be under Yulda’s thumb.
Once Maziar had recovered enough to begin lessons, Yulda arranged a tutor for him to make sure he was ready to join classes.
“It won’t be easy without your magic,” Yulda told him as she helped him walk to his desk, where she had arranged a writing set and placed the pile of books he’d be expected to get through before the first-year classes started. “While it seems you can’t be a magus anymore, if you put the work in, you could become a magician, similar to me—assuming your affinity is the same as it was. If the rumors were correct, you had omni-affinity, didn’t you?”
Maziar nodded. “They were going to test me again when I came of age to see if I favored a particular discipline.”
“That does make it more difficult,” said Yulda, pursing her lips.
All casters had an affinity. This didn’t mean that they couldn’t cast other types of magic; it’s just that they were inclined to learn their affinity better and more quickly than magic that wasn’t their affinity. Being determined as an omni-affinity caster basically meant that he was too attuned with all types at once, showing no signs of favoring one or another. With Maziar’s magic being so damaged, it would be better to focus on that single affinity he was most predisposed to without the distractions of other types of magic to spread his attention too thin.
“All right,” she said, nodding. “Is there any one particular magic type you like to use?”
He blinked at her as if she were speaking another language, and Yulda had to strongly resist teleporting right to the Kreeth manor and telling Walden exactly what she thought of him.
“Is there magic you’d like to learn?” Yulda asked. “Something you might feel very strongly about right now?”
Maziar shook his head. “I just… want to live long enough to see Mira safe,” he told her.
Yulda’s heart shattered as she knelt next to her broken child. “You will,” she told him, brushing the hair from his face. “But we need to save you first. Let me take care of Mira. Tell me, what was your favorite thing to do with your magic before all this happened?”
His mouth twitched into a smile. “Play tricks on the servants and Mira,” he admitted. “And father and Rh—” Maziar stopped before he finished the last word. “Father, too.”
Chuckling, Yulda said, “I can’t say that I approve, but if that’s what you like, then that’s what we’ll do.” She summoned a book from her study titled A Beginner’s Guide to Mischief Magic and placed it firmly in his hands. “So long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else, you are free to do as you like here.”
“Thank you,” he said earnestly, then asked, “Do you have any apples?”
“An odd request,” she answered, wondering if that might be what his favorite food was. “But one I am happy to honor.” With a flick of her hand, a basket of apples appeared at his side. “Let me or Marlen know if you need anything else.”
Maziar smiled briefly before she took her leave and left him to his own devices.
After she had left, War, taking the shape of a middle-aged man with dark skin, long, curly black hair, and a pair of curved horns, stepped out from the shadows. A lion-like tail waved behind him, and his horse-like ears twitched.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell her the truth?” War asked, handing Maziar a different book than the one his mother had given him. Maziar tossed him an apple in exchange for the book. War caught it deftly and took a bite before saying, “She might be able to help you better, you know. I may know my craft, but my magic differs from humans.”
“No,” Maziar told him. “If she can protect Mira, that’s all I need her for.”
Eyeing his master warily, he said, “And you?”
“When I’m dead, you can do as you like,” Maziar said, taking the book War had brought for him in his hands and flipping through it. A Master’s Guide to Chaos Magic was scrawled in purple ink that shone gold in the light. War shrugged and continued to eat his apple while Maziar delved into studying the best kind of magic he could think of in order to take his revenge.
He had given up his soul so the Universe would take revenge for him, but no one knew when that would be. As he saw it, he had two options: sit on his hands, waiting to see Rhaltz’s inevitable downfall—or find a way to participate in said divine retribution.
Maziar’s plan after everything: Disappear. Gain strength. Destroy Rhaltz’s future.
Eudine had made it sound possible for him to at least partially recover, or else he’d be dead within a few years. What would he lose by trying?
Two years passed under the supervision of his mother and the other Tower masters who saw the young youth who had been once so praised by all fade into obscurity. With the passage of time, most who followed Maziar’s progress simply forgot, as people are wont to do with child celebrities. Without any idea that the boy’s soul had been taken, many merely assumed that his talent had been blown out of proportion by the Kreeth family and the king.
As for Maziar himself, he was still capable of magic thanks to the initial guidance of Eudine and the patience of his mother—but his progress was slow, feeling almost nonexistent. He practiced low-level magic, cultivated his mental magic by reading and exploring with War, and strengthened his physical magic by pursuing swordsmanship more than the average caster. Though he was endlessly frustrated on the inside, all he could do was grin and bear it.
Did he want to continue to live like this?
He wasn’t sure.
He decided to move on with his life as normally as possible, biding his time and waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Until the day that the initiates of the Tower gathered together to summon familiars, that is. Maziar already had War, and he had no extra mana to summon a familiar to begin with, let alone support one—but on the off chance that whatever magic he managed to pull out decided to work, he made sure the circle he drew was wrong.
He was sure of it. He might not have had much magic, but he darn well knew what a familiar circle looked like.
So when a young woman with wild red hair appeared after he cast the spell, he was utterly confused—and she looked even more confused than he was as she took one look at him and exclaimed: “What the f—!”
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