“What was she?” He asked quietly.
“Morgan?”
“Yes.”
His mother smiled into her words, and despite his best attempts to shut out his feelings, Lian felt warmth bloom in his chest. Longing for something his mother had once had. He didn’t understand it at all and it unnerved him.
“She was a raven. Bigger than most, stronger too. She was beautiful."
“The mark.” He started, then stopped to lick his lips as he debated on how to ask his question. “I’ve heard that Familiar Marks are in the shape of the animal that will become your Familiar. Can I see your mark?”
His mother turned towards him with a curious look on her face before she gave a small reluctant smile and nodded her head.
Going to her knees so she was eye level with Lian, she turned her back to him and swept her long black hair to the side, baring the nape of her neck.
Lian inhaled sharply at the sight of her Familiar Mark.
It wasn’t shaped like an animal. Instead it was in the shape of an animal’s print. The talons of a bird. She ran her finger through the mark effortlessly knowing where each line was. Like a precious friend that she had lost along the way. Lian wondered for a second if his Familiar would become the same thing to him as Morgan had obviously been to his mother. The thought made his heart squeeze sharply before he banished it, but not before he asked one final question.
“And… And what about mine?”
His mother smiled a secret little smile before kissing the tip of his nose and standing.
She made her way out of the room without answering. Lian didn’t bother to ask again.
It took near to four days for the cuts on Lian’s back to heal enough to allow him simple movements.
Though they were not battle scars, not scars of cowardice, the shame that swamped Lian at every pull from the wounds on his back almost crippled him farther. To a Warrior, there was no greater shame than to carry scars on ones back. His were no different. It didn’t matter that he had not run, he had allowed himself to be caught by surprise, and it cost him his honor. So while he was curious as to the Familiar Mark on his back, he wasn’t about to ask another soul about it.
His mother’s health was at a decline as well. Her legs had become too weak to carry her weight, her eyes sunken, and her beautiful pale skin was brittle and wrinkled like old parchment. Even her hair had lost its shine and luster.
Lian had picked up the habit of flipping a copper coin from finger to finger, working on both his dexterity and his boredom. He’d been working hard on wielding two swords before the assault, and while he couldn’t continue his sword-forms, he could do this at least.
Punishment for Nova had been passed down harshly, especially when Riker and the other two boys who had stayed and fought, threw the psychopathic boy under the wagon to escape severe punishments for their own part in the attack against Lian.
Banishment from the Warrior’s Guild.
Hound and Raider could always take Nova in, but he would never be a fighter for any of the King’s Alliance Guilds.
None of it mattered to Lian though. The next time he saw the boy, Nova would die on the tip of his blade. To take away a man’s honor was the worst crime one could commit against another, and that was exactly what Nova had done. Lian would have been well within his rights to demand retribution for the actions taken against him, had the Elders not banished Nova first.
With only ten days left before his sixteenth birthday, Lian didn’t see a reason to return to classes at the school house. Instead, he remained with his mother. Taking care of her and taking his lessons with her at her own insistence. Unlike her usually lessons, his mother focused heavily on Mage’s history, something she’d once refused to teach him directly. Always allowing him to read the books in their small shack but never sitting down with him.
Half of him wanting to rebel against these suddenly lessons, but the other half knew why his mother was doing this. This was the only way she could prepare him for what was to come.
At her insistence, he prepared a bag. Clothes, books, dried meats, a leather water pouch, string for his bow, two dozen arrows in a leather quiver his mother had made, and an array of throwing daggers, short daggers, and one of his father's swords with it's leather sheath. Most importantly, was the hand-bound leather book his mother slipped to him one night while lost in heated delirium. The one time he opened the book, he found it covered in his mother's hand writing. Unwilling to read any further, he shut the book and put it away. Everything was ready for what the Mages came for him, and he kept all of it under his bed.
While the end of her life loomed over them like dark cloud, it was hard to lie to themselves or each other, so it didn’t surprise Lian that it was during one of these daily lessons that his mother finally decided it was time to talk about what came next.
“I’ve never wanted this for you.” She whispered, voice weak and small. Lian had to swallow his emotions as he slowly put down the leather-bound book. “You weren’t ever supposed to know. When I sealed you, that was supposed to be it. If they ever managed to find you, it would be too late, they’d have no right to you.”
Her eyes were glassy and Lian knew she wasn’t talking to him as much as voicing her own thoughts. Still, he couldn’t help asking. “What do you mean?”
“Performing magic at such a young age. You were so strong, Lian. You will be an unstoppable force. I couldn’t let you fall into their hands. I never knew for sure, never saw it with my own eyes, but we always guessed. The Counsel only wants power. You must not let them have it.”
“What are you talking about? Mother, please.” He hadn’t heard her ramble like this before. She was never one to talk just for the sake of talking but now there was nothing she said that made sense. Illness had taken too much from her.
“You will know the way. They will send for you and you will go, you must. Your magic needs to be controlled, you must learn how to. Do not let them control it. Control you. You need to learn to do it for yourself, to survive for yourself.” Suddenly her eyes cleared and for the first time that day, her gaze focused squarely on Lian’s face. Her hand reached out and gripped his arm, the strength in it a surprising thing.
“Mom.” Lian breathed. Unnerved by the entire exchange.
“My son. My beautiful boy, you are just like your father. Your honor, your loyalty, your strength. I never wanted this life for you.”
Eyes clouding with tears, Lian grit his teeth against the sob that rose in his throat. He closed his eyes tight to hide from her gaze. He almost startled when he felt her delicate hand rest itself against his cheek. She was so cold.
“You’ll have choices to make. I know you will make the right ones. You’re so smart, my son. Killian.” When his name fell from her lips, Lian couldn’t hold the sob inside. One weak and wounded sound was all he allowed himself. “Your loyalty belongs to you alone."
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
The days passed one after the other with the only thing to mark them being his mother’s declining health.
It was almost as if using her magic to stop him during his fight with Nova and Riker had also used up her life force. Lian was fearful that this steep and sudden decline had been solely his fault, but every time he even stopped to think about it his mother would raise her frail voice to reprimand him for it.
She’d told him time and time again that it was not his fault, but she refused to actually give him an explanation. And somehow, he knew she had one.
So the days passed.
As he awoke on the morning of the third day before his birthday, he knew something was wrong.
It felt the same, it was the same cloak of tension that had covered him the morning he woke up on the day his father died.
He didn’t get out of bed that morning.
Instead he laid on his tender back, staring at the wooden beams of their little shack’s ceiling, and he dreamed. Just one last time.
He dreamed that his father was still alive. Dreamed that his mother had welcomed his father home with a long embrace and a tender kiss. Dreamed that his father had ruffled his hair as he passed by Lian on his way to a chair so he could rest his weary body. Dreamed of all the stories his father would have told him about the battle, about fighting besides men who grew to be as close as brothers, about the glory of a victory well earned, and the legacy of his Family name that Lian would soon carry into battle himself.
And then, after all he’s dreams ran their course, he pushed himself up from his bed and made his way slowly into his mother’s room.
The second he saw her form laying still on the bed, he knew.
Lian saw the raven, a big black creature made of mist and vail perched on the headboard of his mother’s bed, and he knew.
Saw her eyes closed, her lips blue, and her chest unmoving, and he knew.
His mother was dead.
The emotions came in slowly, sliding carefully through his veins like a snake stalking its prey. A burning on the back of his left shoulder, the sinking weight of his stomach, the hollow feel of his heart.
The black sludge making its way through his veins.
Lian couldn’t move at all as everything seemed to build inside of him. So slowly the darkness moved. So carefully it crept upon his body.
He must have been standing there in her doorway for hours and yet he still could not move even one muscle.
Inside his mind he was aware of everything. He knew that his attempts at blocking his emotions were slowly sub-coming to the devastation, and he knew that soon everything would come pouring out and he was not going to be able to stop it.
The pressure was reaching his head now and his vision was blurring. The darkness creeping in just like it had that day during the fight when his magic had lashed out and thrown Nova away from him. He also knew that without his mother there to repress it, it would explode out of him so violently he wasn’t sure he’d survive it himself.
And it was as if that thought was a switch because the second he thought it, everything…
Exploded.
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