《Black Book Saga》


 Prologue: Loss of Innocence

    The land was barren now, covered in the bodies of the dead and dying. It would be the perfect place to replace my lost guardians. I walked there, carefully searching the bodies for those that still lived but wished for death. As I searched my mind began to wander.


    It¡¯s been six years now since I was taken from my home on earth, and for those six years I have lived as a slave. That first year with the trainers was hell, but once I was purchased by my current master my life actually improved quite a lot. I was taught magic, and trained to be a slave mage for the Avalon military. My master, Commander Rainer, is and was then a strict but fair man who could show compassion and understanding when it was needed. In many ways my master served as something of a surrogate father figure for me.


    For the last five and a half years of my life I have served the kingdom of Avalon as both a battle mage and a healer, and for those five and a half years I have carried out countless orders given to me by my master. Today would mark the first day I ever tried to disobey him, and it also marked the first time my master was forced to invoke the slavery crest that was magically branded onto me.


    I wasn¡¯t very fond of today. In fact today down right sucked.


    In the last five years I haven¡¯t ever hated a day more than I do this one, and some of the days training under my various teachers and instructors could be pretty fucking horrible.


    I guess that was why I was out here wandering amongst the dead to find replacements for my now deceased minions rather than in the camp celebrating our sudden victory with the rest of the army. I didn¡¯t want to be around people, and I knew I sure as hell didn¡¯t want to be around Rainer, so I came here.


    I stopped and looked at the now barren and blackened ground. Just this morning this had been a field full of green grass and the rare yellow flower. Now it was a dead strip of land were nothing would ever grow again.


    I did this, me and my unit of fellow mages. Through the combined mana and will of over fifty magic casters we turned this place into a small wasteland where nothing can survive, and all with only one spell.


    I guess that shouldn¡¯t bother me, after all I¡¯ve done worse. Hell I¡¯ve done things that would get me branded as evil plenty of times, whether they were orders or my own choices. Still this time was special, this time I didn¡¯t want to do this and my master forced me to assist regardless. For some reason that made this time different than everything else I¡¯ve ever done, the why or how of the thing escape me but it does make this time different. At least it does for me.


    If I had to guess why this bothered me so much, then I¡¯d have to say that in being forced to help cast that spell I was made to feel powerless. I haven¡¯t felt truly powerless since I learned to harness my mana, but before then I felt powerless all the time. In the past it felt like nothing was under my own control, and that year with the slave trainers broke down any illusion of control I might have ever had. I guess today this spell served as a reminder that I still wasn¡¯t totally in control of my own life, and if I needed this reminder then I guess I must have forgotten what it meant to be a slave.


    Mages get treated differently from regular people, even here on the magic rich world of Eden the ability to channel and control mana is pretty rare. As such mages, of any state or status, are valuable. Even a mage who happens to be racially a monster are shown some respect, so my own status as a slave was second to my status as a mage. I had my own room, my own servants though they were really just my own magically compelled or controlled minions, my own clothes and equipment, and I even had a recognized rank within the military. Normal soldiers were expected to show me respect and to an extent even obey my commands. But despite all that in the end I am still a slave.


    And in the end a slave branded with a crest is still forced to obey whenever their master choses. Today reminded me of that lesson, and in so doing shattered my carefully built up illusion of freedom and authority.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I may be many things, but I was still a slave. Hell, I could even be the greatest magically prodigy in any of the four worlds and it wouldn¡¯t matter because that magical prodigy would still have to jump if their master asked them to. The alternative was simply to horrible, the price of disobedience with slave crests was typically torture of the very soul and nothing I knew of could withstand that for long.


    It was a hard thing, coming to terms with my status as a slave and all that meant for me. In the past I had accepted that because I had no other real choice, but now? Now I was no longer frightened kid who didn¡¯t want to die in his parent¡¯s townhouse with the rest of his family, I was a recognized mage with a fairly large mana pool and all the spells I could ever imagine at my disposal.


    There standing among the dead and dying I finally understood. There were countless cases of slave mages deserting armies, regardless of what method was used to control them. Avalon made up its slave mage units with children and teenagers, and it always assigned those units to fair and level headed masters with histories of kindness and parental dispositions. I had always thought this was a way to earn loyalty, but never wanted to look deeper at what was being done than what I found on the surface.


    I laughed even as I felt like a part of me was breaking. The bird is always so happy inside the gilded cage, it sings and chirps without the faintest worry in the world. Yep, the bird sure is happy, right up until it tries to leave and find the cage is locked. It¡¯s funny because I¡¯m the bird and somehow managed to forget there even was a cage, at least I did until I slammed head first into one of the gilded bars.


    I¡¯m sure it¡¯s funny because I¡¯m laughing, I laugh at funny things.


    ***


    Perspective changes everything.


    From my perspective I was the second oldest adapted son in a weird but close family of slave mages and military officers. I liked my life, was proud of my position, and loved my adaptive father even if my new siblings were annoying. I got hot meals, a good home, the chance to learn magic, and a new family when I had rightfully expected to be some rich old pervert¡¯s sex toy. My perspective was biased and rose tinted from the start.


    From the kingdoms perspective I was a tool. The broken kid with latent magical talent from the ruined world known for its former technology and advanced society. Earth mages tended to be better healers and enchanters because of the in depth knowledge that they could obtain from the many books or the rare internet connection. The kingdom saw the chance to buy itself a new healer or enchanter at a bargain price, and even have the opportunity to raise him to be loyal to king and kingdom. To some extent I had always known how I looked from the perspective of the kingdom, but I tended to not think too much about it.


    From the perspective of Rainer I was... I was just another kid to aid to the pile. I would be his burden for the next ten or so years until I either served my duty and earned my freedom, died, or managed to escape and erase my slave crest. I wasn¡¯t some adopted son to him, I was a soldier. Sure maybe I was a soldier he liked, I don¡¯t doubt he likes all the slave mages he is master too, but I wasn¡¯t loved like I had imagined. If I were a son to him he would never have used my crest to torture me like he did this morning, but I wasn¡¯t a son to him just a soldier. Even your favorite soldier gets punished if they refuse orders, and even your favorite soldier is forced into line or killed for treason if he continues being a problem.


    So yeah, perspective was everything. I had lost sight of what I was and what others viewed me as so I got hurt. Somehow I doubt Rainer was feeling what I was right now over our ¡°Little disagreement¡± earlier this morning. No, he¡¯d be right there in the center of the celebrations congratulating the others on a spell well cast and another victory well earned.


    I tried to wipe my eyes but the tears just wouldn¡¯t stop, they kept coming and I couldn¡¯t help but keep wiping to stem the flow. The slave trainers could get me to cry from pain and misery, but only Rainer and the realization that I had nothing but an illusion of family could get me to weep.


    It was my heart breaking, my soul tearing, my world ending. In those tears I lost who I was and everything that entailed. While I sat in the dust, dirt, and blood I felt a part of me die and suddenly I wasn¡¯t the powerful mage or the dutiful soldier, I was back to being the twelve year old kid who was being taken away from a burning home to be trained as a slave on a whole new world. It was painful and awful, nothing had ever hurt so much.


    I wasn¡¯t sure when the tears had started and the laughter died, but here I was and here I would stay. At least until the hurt lessened to something tolerable.

 The price of Freedom 1

    It took the rest of the day but I eventually found the strength to get up from the ground and pretend that everything was okay again. I couldn¡¯t bring myself to bother with finding a few new minions right now, I could barely bring myself to walk back to camp. It was embarrassing, and I hated that the soldiers on guard duty on the camp perimeter would see me like this. I hated a lot of things right now.


    It took all of my willpower not to animate all the dead around me and send them into camp to start slaughtering soldiers until they reached Rainer. Ultimately it was the thought of my crest torturing my soul until I died for assaulting my master that dissuaded me. Thinking more about it I realized my adoptive siblings were in the middle of the camp as well, and them I had no desire to harm. Plus at least one of them would be able to save Rainer from an undead horde, and with all six together and plenty of other mages around the camp the undead wouldn¡¯t stand a chance.


    With dark thoughts swirling in my head I came to the top of a small rise that overlooked the camp and the surrounding field. I felt a strong conflict grow inside me. For so long I had devoted all I had to the army and the kingdom of Avalon, but now I felt hurt and betrayed by those same things. This camp represented everything I once held dear, but now it was a symbol of my captivity. Rainer was in that camp, so were Josh, Sarah, Carter, Lum, and the rest of my adoptive siblings.


    I think I hated that camp, I know I wanted to hate it.


    Taking a deep breath I started down the hill. I had spent the whole day examining my feelings and weeping out my pain, I had spent the day being weak were no one would find me. Now it was time to be strong again, to be the confident mage slave everyone expected me to be.


    Making my way down the hill I tried for the neutral expression I normally wore and might have even found it, I channeled a trickle of mana into my face and eyes as I focused on the healing nature of water, I brushed the dirt and dust off the front of my robes and tried to straighten everything so I looked somewhat presentable. I was as close to normal as I could bother making myself at the moment.


    Getting into camp wasn¡¯t a problem, there was still enough light in the sky to see by and I was a known face. The guards on duty didn¡¯t even attempt to stop me, getting to my tent was proving to be harder. I couldn¡¯t take three steps without a soldier congratulating me, slapping me on the shoulder and back, or drunkenly cheering at me. Through it all I smiled, thanked, and joked. It made me sick on the inside, I felt like every one of them was patronizing me. Like they all were in on a joke at my expense and each friendly greeting or slap was just another poke at me for the fun of it.


    I knew it was all in my head and I knew it was irrational to think like that, but feelings tend to be irrational things.


    ¡°Lux! Lux over here!¡±


    I looked over at the sound of the voice. Carter was waving at me from the arm of a huge soldier, she seemed to have found the biggest man at camp. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the man was half ogre as he must have stood at least seven feet tall and had arms as big around as my torso. I wondered if the half ogre knew what he was signing himself up for¡­


    Summoning up a smile I waved back at my adoptive sister and her chosen victim for the night, I had hoped to make it back to my tent without meeting any of my ¡°family¡± but it seems that fate wanted to throw me yet another curveball today.


    ¡°Carter, hey. And who is this?¡±


    Carter looked up at the half ogre beaming with a smile that was part pride and part hunger.


    ¡°This is Mark, he¡¯s going to be my personal guard for the night. Maybe even for the foreseeable future if Rainer will agree. We¡¯re actually going to see him now, do you want to tag along?¡±


    I actually pitted the poor man. After a victory like today I doubted our master would refuse any small request and the loss of one soldier, no matter how big, would be a simple thing to give.


    ¡°No thank you sister, I think I¡¯ll just turn in early tonight¡­¡±


    My smile held and my voice didn¡¯t even waver a little, I was proud of that. On the inside I just felt sorry for Carter, she was still blissfully blind to the bars of her gilded cage. On second thought maybe it was actually envy I was feeling right now.


    It struck me then, I could never go back to the way things were. I would always feel trapped, feel controlled and cheated. I would forever feel like a slave to be used while my adoptive siblings felt loved and appreciated. It wasn¡¯t fair, and I honestly wasn¡¯t sure who had it worse.


    Carter let go of her victim¡¯s arm to lean in close to me.


    ¡°Lux, Mark¡¯s a quarter orc. I¡¯m going to finally have a real brute of a familiar at my command!¡±Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Carter¡¯s excited whisper was like a hiss on the wind, I barely heard her so her victim was still unaware of his now certain fate. As I gave my adoptive sister a grin she returned to her place glued to her victim¡¯s arm.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be seeing you brother, but I must be getting back to my date. You understand¡­¡±


    I just waved Carter and her victim off and watched my adoptive sister skip along beside the man she planned to drain of life energies and using the empty husk as a puppet. Once again I wondered at her moral compass, and once again I decided it didn¡¯t matter. Carter eats the lives of people for power, Lum plays with corpses and undead, Kel burns things, and Ike toys with a person¡¯s mind like a toddler toyed with playdoh. In the end all of my adoptive siblings were messed up in some way or another, it¡¯s what happens when a child is taken and trained as a slave early in life then later on taught magic and gaining incredible power. It tends to warp a person, let alone a child. I know it warped me.


    I got back to dodging grateful and drunken soldiers as I made my way on the muddy paths between tents.


    ***


    The thing about magic is that there is no such thing as ¡°impossible¡±. There are plenty of instances of ¡°can¡¯t¡±, ¡°Improbable¡±, and ¡°Impractical¡±, but the impossible just doesn¡¯t exist when one is speak of magic and its workings. Magic can quite literally do anything one can imagine, but there are limits. The three largest of which are usually a person¡¯s creativity, willpower, or available mana.


    Non-mages have trouble understanding this, hell even fully fledged mages have a hard time understanding it. Sometimes I even fall into that mundane way of thinking, and when I come upon a problem I can¡¯t personally solve after devoting everything I have to it I¡¯ll typically label it impossible. It¡¯s a common problem with mages that our spells and workings are limited by this mindset as it tends to cripple a person¡¯s creativity and willpower subconsciously, and since it¡¯s a problem for even the best of mages the mundane people of the worlds accept the mindset of impossibilities as a fundamental truth of the universe. To a common man some things are just impossible and that¡¯s the end of that, to a mage all that is impossible is what we think of and subconsciously accept as such.


    I knew it was possible to throw off my slave status, I just needed to find a method I could accomplish with my own mana pool and willpower. I have a better than average mana pool for a mage, but my crest¡¯s power reserves grew alongside my mana pool. I couldn¡¯t just dispel my crest with brute force, which meant I would have to get creative.


    As I sat there on my cot in my tent I contemplated the nature of the magic that bound my soul in slavery to another.


    Slave crests were just one of the many ways to magically enforce slavery in the four worlds, and they were typically considered the best way to enforce said slavery. Enchanted collars could be removed, tattoos could be burned over or cut away, geas could be broken, contracts had loopholes, but a binding on a person¡¯s soul grew and changed with them for as long as that soul was there. Soul crests were hard to create and cast, but they were largely believed to be impossible to break free from outside of dying or losing a soul.


    I couldn¡¯t hide my soul from the crest as the crest was now a part of my soul, I couldn¡¯t remove it for the same reason, I couldn¡¯t break or dispel it because it had the power to equal and counter any attack it sensed, and I didn¡¯t have the skill or knowledge to go in and edit the parameters of an already existing crest. I could probably create an artificial soul that¡¯s an exact copy of my own, but it fundamentally wouldn¡¯t be me so I¡¯m uncomfortable living with it instead of my own. Which left one option that I was hesitant to even contemplate.


    I could change my soul significantly enough that the crest would disappear.


    The problem with altering your own soul is that it almost never ends well for the one the soul belongs to, hence you. Sure it isn¡¯t too hard to alter another soul, by which I mean it is very hard but not impossible. Fuck, I mean not improbable¡­


    I leaned back in the bed and closed my eyes. If I was already thinking of this as impossible then trying to change my soul like I¡¯m imagining was going to really suck. I¡¯d have to fight my subconscious on every ¡°impossible¡± step I came across and that would cost me more mana then I may have. If I could think of this as simple then it would be easier to harness my willpower and then my mana wouldn¡¯t have to do double duty for my casting, but it didn¡¯t seem to likely that was going to happen.


    It was hard to change your own beliefs, and it was even harder to overcome set schemas in your own mind. Well, at least it is to me. Ike didn¡¯t have a problem with stuff like that, but then again Ike made his mind a personal playground that bows to his every whim by utterly destroying his natural mental barriers and defenses. I did not want to follow Ike¡¯s lead on the matter, in fact just by knowing our adoptive brother the rest of my ¡°Family¡± felt uncomfortable with anything less than impregnable mental defenses. And by impregnable I mean that Ike was unable to break into even the first layer of defenses and we were comfortable that our minds and thoughts were safe, I only call it impregnable for the peace of mind the word brings. Sometimes literally.


    So changing my soul was looking difficult to do on my own, and seeing how I was trying to break free of my slave crest I couldn¡¯t turn to my adoptive siblings for help. I sure as shit wouldn¡¯t turn to any other magic caster for assistance either, baring your soul to a mage is a bad idea for you and a huge temptation for the mage. I know I would have trouble not corrupting the soul of another if they presented it to me on a silver platter, and even unintentional emotions the soul picked up passively while exposed to another¡¯s mana could have disastrous results for a person¡¯s ego, beliefs, and feelings.


    ¡°Fuck¡­¡±


    I felt it was a good summation of my situation. I was fucked. Sure it would be easy enough to lose the crest, plenty of options for that, the hard part I was having trouble with was coming out alive and myself after the crest was gone.


    ¡°Whoever came up with the crest soul binding was a genius, and I hate their fucking guts¡­¡±


    It was too good, too good for me anyway. I didn¡¯t see a way out, everything I thought of would either damage my soul, kill me outright, or leave me enslaved to someone new. I just couldn¡¯t figure a way out of this problem, and I was just so tired from everything I went through today.


    I felt my eyes growing heavy and my cot seemed more comfortable by the moment. What would be the harm in a little sleep anyway?

 The price of Freedom 2

    I woke to the sound of groaning and the smell of rot and blood. Before I even opened my eyes I knew who was waiting in my tent. Siting up I wiped the sleep gunk out of my eyes and looked over to see Lum sitting at my desk with two ghouls at his side and a zombie kneeling before him, the kid was poking it in the eye to the zombie¡¯s vocal displeasure.


    Lum was a quiet kid, but he was a magical prodigy. Only thirteen years old and able to cast complex and intricate spells, the only reason he wasn¡¯t recognized as an ¡°Official¡± mage was his age. In two more years when he was fifteen he¡¯d be recognized as worthy of the title, but Lum was magically an equal to any mage I knew. I honestly suspected the kid might be my better when it came to magic, gods know why he looks up to me.


    As I looked at him Lum stopped poking his undead toy and wiped his finger off on his pants. With a turn of his chair the kid looked me right in the eye and spoke words that made my heart sink.


    ¡°Don¡¯t do it.¡±


    I felt my guts tremble and my heart rate pick up as yesterday¡¯s breakfast threatened to make a reappearance. Lum knew, he knew and he came to warn me off of what I was attempting. If it was anyone else I would have played it off, pretended nothing was wrong or tried to mislead them. If it was anyone else I could have, but not with Lum. The kid knew divination like I knew how to make my heart beat, an automatic and effortlessly natural reaction.


    ¡°Are you saying you don¡¯t want me to go through with this, or it will end badly for me¡­¡±


    I was honestly surprised by my steady tone, as on the inside I was so far beyond calm I was close to breaking down again.


    Lum tilted his head and gave me a contemplative look that didn¡¯t suit his young childlike appearance.


    ¡°Everything can end badly for everyone at any time, your actions, brother, simply have a higher likelihood of leading to a possibility you would consider a ¡®Bad End¡¯. I¡¯m saying not to go through with this madness because I¡¯ll miss you.¡±


    I stared at Lum and he stared back at me. We stayed like that for a long time, just considering each other until a loud groan from the zombie pulled my focus away. I stared at the decaying thing and wondered what was wrong with it, Lum was an amazing necromancer and typically his undead neither rotted nor made noise. I looked back and decided I might as well change the subject and satisfy my curiosity all at once.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with the zombie?¡±


    Lum shrugged and looked down at the rotting creature.


    ¡°I wanted to watch it fall apart naturally, like a normal zombie would. I haven¡¯t given it any mana and now it¡¯s hungry and losing bits and pieces¡­¡±


    Lum looked back at me and I saw he was tearing up. As I watched the boy I thought of like a younger brother begin to cry a part of me cried with him. I¡¯d miss him, as well as all my other siblings, but I wouldn¡¯t stop. I just couldn¡¯t stay with Rainer, not as a slave nor as son. And after yesterday I couldn¡¯t claim to be his soldier either, my loyalty to the man died out there on that barren field.


    ¡°Lux, in no instance I foresaw where you asked about my zombie did you stay with us and remain my brother. I didn¡¯t want you to leave but I can¡¯t make you stay, any instance where I try leads to your death! I can¡¯t even tell the others because it leads to your death! Everything I want to do leads to your death!¡±


    I felt horrible as I watched Lum cry in his seat. That was the downside to divination it seems, sometimes knowing the future leaves you helpless and stuck with impossible choices. Lum wanted me here, but anything he did to enforce that desire would kill me. Sure he could probably reanimate my corpse and stuff whatever remnants of my spirit he could dredge up into it, but it still wouldn¡¯t be me. Lum could have a Lich, a stranger, or a brother who left him behind; but in each of those possibilities he would lose someone he loved. I did not envy him his skill in divination, I don¡¯t think anyone in their right mind would.


    ¡°Tell me what to do brother! Tell me how to make you stay, how to make everything how it was supposed to be!¡±


    I just looked at the thirteen year old in front of me. When I was his age I was watching old movies from before the collapse and was clueless of the horrors lying in wait for me soon. Even after my capture and during my training as a slave I had no idea of what I wanted or how to achieve it. In many ways I still don¡¯t, but this kid knew exactly what path to take to get everything he wanted out of life. At least, he did up until yesterday when I had an epiphany about my life and threw off everything. Sudden brash decisions made in the moment had a tendency to do that to divinations.


    Still I wouldn¡¯t change my mind, I couldn¡¯t live like I had before.


    ¡°Lum, I think you know better than I do that there is no going back now. Rainer crossed I line I hadn¡¯t even known was there, and now I can¡¯t stand to live like I once did. I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    Lum turned away and wiped furiously at his eyes, sniffling and trying to regain his composure. I let him take all the time he needed while I fussed at my tangled hair, it was getting long and I¡¯d need a cut soon if I wanted to stop the bed head from getting out of control in the mornings.


    ¡°You know¡­ Even if you succeed, you¡¯ll be hunted. Avalon will let it go, even Rainer will accept it without issue, but Sarah will hunt you down. She¡¯ll hunt for her lost little brother until the day she dies if you leave, and eventually she¡¯ll find you.¡±Stolen story; please report.


    Well, now there was a scary thought. Sarah was the oddball of our family, she seemed the most normal and mentally sound of us outside of Rainer himself. In reality though I think she¡¯s the most broken. The woman is obsessed, driven beyond all imagining in what she feels is a holy and righteous cause to bring about universal peace. Sarah is also the eldest of Rainer¡¯s slaves and beyond protective of her younger ¡°siblings¡±, if I did leave she would never accept it.


    This was a complication that I hadn¡¯t considered, even if I did everything and was freed of all outside influence and powers with my personality intact and unchanged Sarah would hunt me. She would hunt me until the day I died to try and ¡°fix¡± me and lead me back to the ¡°righteous¡± path she envisioned us on. The absolute best case scenario would still leave me with a devoted hunter tracking me until one or both of us died.


    If the gods were watching me at this moment, they were laughing there asses of at my piss poor luck in life. With a sigh I tried to look on the bright side of things, then I remembered that there was no bright side and just tried not to get to depressed.


    ¡°Yes. Yes, I imagine Sarah will be an issue¡­¡±


    Lum looked down and his brown hair covered his hazel eyes.


    ¡°But you¡¯re still going to try to escape?¡±


    I nodded.


    ¡°But I¡¯m still going to try to escape.¡±


    Lum sunk deeper in his seat.


    ¡°Even if you know it would hurt the family?¡±


    I grit my teeth and nodded again.


    ¡°Even if it hurts the family.¡±


    Lum¡¯s voice was almost a whisper as he spoke.


    ¡°Even if it would break the family apart?¡±


    I clenched my hands and tried to not feel the pins stabbing into my heart.


    ¡°Even if it broke the family apart.¡±


    Lum was quiet a long time as he stared at the ground an silently wept. I knew it was weeping now, not crying, crying was a release of emotion but weeping was mourning a loss to great to bare. The difference between the two were subtle until you see a person weep, then the difference is as clear as night and day.


    ¡°Even knowing I love you?¡±


    I had to swallow, if I didn¡¯t something would have come out of my throat and promised to stay. It would have done anything to comfort the boy in front of me, said anything to make his hurt lessen just the tiniest bit. I think that something was my heart, but I swallowed it down anyway. I could live a life for my family, I might even be able to live a life for Lum, but if I did that it wouldn¡¯t be my life I was living. Sure at first I would pretend to not care about being enslaved against my will, I¡¯d try to be like I was before. Eventually I¡¯d fail, and it would hurt my family when I did. Then I¡¯d try and fix that by altering either my mind or memory for their sake, and that would be the moment I stopped being myself entirely. I¡¯m sure I could do all that, but more importantly I was sure I didn¡¯t want to do that. I loved Lum like a younger brother and there were very few things I wouldn¡¯t sacrifice for his happiness, but this was one of them.


    I¡¯m a selfish creature. It¡¯s one of the fundamental aspects of my personality, a flaw that I embrace wholeheartedly. I can do a lot for someone I care about, but I will never sacrifice who I am for anyone but myself.


    I didn¡¯t say any of this though, instead I simply told the truth to Lum without trying to explain or justify it.


    ¡°Yes, even knowing you love me I¡¯ll still leave.¡±


    I opened my arms as Lum climbed into my bed and tried to hug me to death. I patted his back softly as he wept quietly into my shirt. I was going to leave the kid eventually, in one way or another, so the least I could do was be there for him now.


    ***


    It was coming up on noon when Lum finally pulled away from me. As he sat on the edge of my cot and faced the far wall of the tent he spoke softly but with force.


    ¡°I love you brother, and I will respect your decision, but if you live through your attempt for freedom I will aid in any way I can in finding you and bringing you back to us. I will help Sarah and Josh as they hunt you. I will devote myself to Kel¡¯s attempts to summon you back. I will have my legions search endlessly for you alongside Carter. Lux, I will respect your decision to leave, but I will see you brought back to us. Even if it means you come back in chains tighter than the slavery you so resent now¡­¡±


    And just like that I knew that it wouldn¡¯t just be Sarah after me. It would be everyone, my whole family, everyone left I could consider a loved one would be coming after me to being me back here. Back to a life under the rule of the kingdom of Avalon and probably even back to a life with Rainer. Back to a life I couldn¡¯t accept.


    In that moment Lum promised me that every member of my family would become my enemy, he would see to it personally that each and every one of them would want me to return to this life whether I liked it or not. Lum could see each possibility and steer fate to the outcome he wanted, he could engineer his future in a limited fashion merely by viewing the possibilities of fate. Lum could make this promise and mean every word of it and see it all through with uncanny surety.


    I stared at the back of the boy¡¯s head and spoke my thoughts on the matter.


    ¡°In all honesty Lum¡­ That¡¯s actually quite terrifying.¡±


    I watched his head dip once in acknowledgement.


    ¡°I-¡±


    Lum started to turn to face me, but he suddenly stopped and faced straight ahead again.


    ¡°One last piece of advice brother. If you want to escape this life I¡¯d suggest you run far and you run fast. You never stop running, never stop chasing your precious freedom, because the minute¡­ the second you do we¡¯ll be there to bring you home. Even if you dodge us, escape us, fight us, hate us, scorn us¡­ Even if you hurt us as badly as you can, we¡¯ll still come for you. That is our love for you Lux, and nothing short of killing us all will stop us from making our family whole again. Even if the cost of that whole family is your freedom and happiness.¡±


    Lum got up from my cot and walked to the tent flap his undead moving into position behind him as guards. As Lum opened the flap and was about to leave he paused and turned back to me, the steal in his eyes was more than a little jarring to me. The Lum I knew was a soft spoken and obedient boy who had a hard time even disagreeing with one of his siblings, the eyes I saw looking back at me were nothing like the eyes of the Lum I knew.


    ¡°You think you¡¯re selfish Lux? Think about this, I engineered entire lifetimes of events so that I could enjoy a happy family life together with my loved ones. I alter the fates of infinite potential realities simply to win against Josh and Kel in go fish every Tuesday game night. You, brother, are even now the most selfless of all my siblings and I am the second most. Do you think the rest will be quite so understanding of your desires as I have been, do you think they¡¯ll hear out anything you say as we drag you back home?¡±


    As Lum left my tent I suddenly felt very worried for my future. I was a decent fighter and one hell of a mage, but I doubt anyone could get away from six mages devoted to see them captured. You¡¯d have to be a demigod or have a djinn on your side to even try. I didn¡¯t have a djinn, and my parents were anything but godly.


    I wonder, is it stupid or is it insane to attempt something doomed to failure right from the start?

 The Price of Freedom 3

    There is a very simple way to describe my current position, in fact someone long ago came up with a phrase that has been passed down through the generations that sums it up quite well. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Well and truly screwed. Fucked up beyond all recognition.


    I figured I had a day at most to escape the camp and get far enough away that Kel couldn¡¯t just summon me back with a calling circle, and I only had an hour if Lum decided I didn¡¯t need a head start. After his little spiel about me being the most selfless member of our family I was banking on only having an hour.


    It¡¯s almost funny how quickly things can fall into place when you¡¯re not given the time to plan or think. Suddenly I was crystal clear on what I had to do, and I found that there was no hesitation within me anymore. This camp was enemy territory now, and I was racing against an invisible countdown to my doom the longer I stayed inside it. The solution was simple, I needed to leave. Now.


    I raced around my tent stuffing as many of my belongings into my bag of holding as I could, all the while cursing myself for leaving so many valuables and so much equipment back at the capitol. Last month the mage who left the capitol with his family for another campaign had packed away only a few essentials and some battle equipment. He was a practical and na?ve fool who hadn¡¯t expected to have his delusions shattered on his trip, and he surely didn¡¯t anticipate his future self having to flee from both the army and his family.


    I really wished I had brought more ingredients and spell components, and I would have killed the gods themselves for my grimoire. Sadly all the wishing and theocidal thoughts in the world won¡¯t change things, maybe if I had a djinn¡­


    As I grabbed for my latest staff I had a moment to wonder how I was going to manage to get away. If I left and my crest still worked when Rainer found out I was gone things would not end well for me, at best I¡¯d be ordered to return. At worst though¡­


    I shook my head to banish those more unpleasant thoughts. My crest was a problem yes, but there was a fast and dirty way to be rid of it. I didn¡¯t like having to resort to that option, but seeing Lum this morning had stripped away any option of further research or planning. My crest either came off today, or it wouldn¡¯t be coming off at all.


    Fast and dirty would have to do.


    Opening the flap to my tent I stepped out and tried to seem unhurried as I walked around the camp. I could sense the undercurrent of mana lingering in the air and the ground, someone had done a pretty significant ritual last night. I didn¡¯t like that, it meant that there was someone here with a lot more power at their disposal than I was used to having to deal with. I quite liked being the strongest or smartest guy in any given room, I was happy being the big fish in the pond. When someone stronger or smarter came by it usually meant that I was in for trouble and pain, that is unless I could avoid there notice.


    My mind turned back to yesterday morning and I felt a chill run down my back. Someone in this camp had the ability to channel and harness the mana and willpower of over fifty magic casters, and that same someone had the creativity to craft a spell that killed an entire army outfitted with their own mages and casters. That was a person I did not want to meet, hell that was a person I didn¡¯t even want to think existed.


    It¡¯s sort of sad that the thought that there might be a demigod amongst the magic casters in the camp was the most comforting option I could imagine.


    Hustling past hungover soldiers and cheerful camp followers I made my way towards the camp border. I didn¡¯t get to replace my fallen minions yesterday, but if I was going to go on the run I would want a few loyal servants by my side to protect me. A battlefield full of the dead or dying would be the perfect place to pick up some new minions, at least it would be for me.


    Any mage worthy of the title knows how to create or enslave their own minions. Every magic caster from holy priests to hedge wizards have some way to gain a minion to do their bidding, though oddly enough few every call their minion as such. Terms like familiar or spirit animal get tossed around a lot, but personally I¡¯m found of just calling things like they are. I tend to call my minions pets or if I¡¯m feeling generous guardians, because in the end that¡¯s what they are. I own my minions, care for them and feed them myself, so they are my pets. My minions guard and protect me from harm, so they are my guardians. It¡¯s simple and to the point, but for some reason many of my peers find what I call my own minions to be in poor taste.


    Regardless it isn¡¯t all that hard for a magic caster to make a minion for themselves, at a basic level it merely involves channeling your mana into something that is empty of mana and wishing for it to be yours. Not very complicated in all honesty, but if a magic caster wants something more than a mindlessly obedient puppet then they¡¯ll need to get a bit more creative and complex in their casting.


    Personally I¡¯m fond of humanoid pets, that way I can take them with me wherever I may need to go and it is easier to communicate with them, who are loyal if not obedient. I always felt that total obedience in a minion was more a detriment than an asset, and have always made my pets and guardians with that in mind. When I tell my pet to wait outside while I get some sleep, I don¡¯t want it to still be waiting outside when an assassin attacks and I start screaming bloody murder. I need adaptable beings who will look out for my interests and person on their own, not mindless puppets to obey my every command to the letter.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    To that end I search for a specific base for all my pets, I look for the desperate and the broken. Those who long for death, for an end to suffering, and for a savior. I look for despite and broken souls and I offer them a new life under my mostly benevolent command. I raise my pets up from the horrors they were faced with and ask only for them to devote their everything to me. It works more often than not, and when it doesn¡¯t it¡¯s easier to overpower a desperate and broken thing¡¯s mental and spiritual defenses than it is to do so on something happy and healthy.


    To me battlefields, slave houses, and slums were like pet shops. All I have to do is go in and pick out the ones I like and want to take home with me.


    ***


    It is sometimes good to have a reputation as a dark and evil mage, sure it can just as easily get you killed but on occasion having just such a reputation is the best way to get things done. For instance when the mage you¡¯ve seen torture and slaughter countless men asks to go out to the battlefield to replenish his lost minions, you tend to let him pass unquestioned. Sure being connected to the commander of a renowned knight company might have helped, but I personally like to think it¡¯s my reputation, not Rainer¡¯s, that saw me out of the camp.


    As I walked over the rise and back to the small stretch of wasteland in death I had a sudden thought. I would probably never see my family again, and if I did it would be because they had come to drag me back to I life I wanted nothing to do with. Right here and now I was putting an end to the life I knew and had once loved. It was a sobering thought. It was also a very sad one.


    There would be no more Tuesday game night, no more helping Kel take care of her stables, no more hunting trips with Josh, no more pranks with Carter. Lum wouldn¡¯t come to me for advice anymore, and Sarah wouldn¡¯t be just a word away anymore either. I was well and truly on my own now. Alone, with no one to rely on or to catch me if I should stumble and fall.


    For freedom I had cast aside family.


    I came to the top of the rise and stopped, I didn¡¯t have the time to search around carefully for the living among the dead. I also couldn¡¯t afford to care for those too wounded to care for themselves, nor did I know what effects could be lingering from the unknown spell that had caused this. Compounding on these issues was the fact that I would need to rely on my pets more than I ever have before, I needed them to be competent and deadly as well as unendingly loyal and devoted.


    I could sit up here and cast a few tracking spells to locate those who had the potential for those qualities and were still alive down there, I could do that but it would take me almost all day. I didn¡¯t have the time to do that, but I could craft a simple charm that would seek out living mana unlike my own.


    It was always a risk to try and turn a magic caster into a pet, but I was already risking everything that mattered so who cared? Worse that could happen is I die, but as I was quickly learning about myself I would rather die than continue to be a slave. With a deep breath I started to focus my mind and will.


    Casting a typically spell isn¡¯t all that difficult, after a person learns to feel their mana and channel it things just sort of fall into place. A mentor of mine once equated casting a spell to the act of walking. ¡®For a baby it is impossible, for a baby struggles to move at all. The baby is a mundane person, one with the latent potential for magic. Toddlers will crawl and stumble, fumbling for the ability to walk steadily. The toddler is when you learn to channel mana. The child with some effort can walk and run, jump and play. Mages in training and novices are the child, they have some trouble in accomplishing their goal but it not enough to stop them. To the adult walking is effortless, as to is spell casting effortless to a mage. A mage merely decides what a spell should do, and casts the spell. An adult merely decides to walk, and simply walks there.¡¯ It was a good metaphor, and it was the best way I had ever heard spell casting described.


    To mundane people unable to use mage spell casting seems difficult or even impossible, and as such they feel it must be just as difficult for mages. For mages and other accomplished magic casters casting a spell is merely a matter of using up some mana, it can be difficult if you attempt something tiring that will use up a lot of mana but ultimately the action of casting a spell was as effortless as walking. An adult can run a marathon much like a mage can cast larger works, it will tire them as they do it but the action and steps taken are as simple as can be.


    Charms were easy simple things, less a walk and more a step. For my charm I simply reached for my mana, thought of what I wanted, and used my mana to shape¡­ no shape is the wrong word. I used my mana to make my thought reality, and through my will I kept the charm under my control before it took shape. Simple and easy.


    Rituals were more like what mundanes thought spells were, rituals were complex and messy things that could be difficult to manage and power. Still rituals allowed a magic caster to get more bang for their buck, effectively multiplying the effects and power of any spell cast through them. Most times rituals were unnecessary, and I personally felt that there was little point in using a ritual when you could just alter the way you cast a spell to make it more reasonable and efficient. Then again I have been repeatedly told I am a strange case for a mage and would have been better trained as a wizard or shaman, personally I didn¡¯t see why that would be the case.


    As I looked out on the field of death I felt my charm take effect. I could sense around six distinct pinpricks of strange mana that still felt alive. It was as good a sign as any that there were still magic casters alive down there, not all that surprising really. Magic casters always tended to be the last to die in battle and the hardest to actually put down, there were just too many ways for a clever caster to heal or protect themselves from harm when they weren¡¯t being specifically targeted.


    With a deep breath I started down the hill in pursuit of a couple new deadly pets.

 The Price of Freedom 4

    Following the feelings from my charm lead me to a small pile of bodies, luckily there was only one set of heavy plated armor to be had among the corpses so they were easy enough to move. At the bottom of the pile I found a robed figure that still had some life in it. The man¡¯s right arm was ruined paste, half his chest was, for lack of a better word, melted in, and he looked as dead as any other corpse around here. Still I felt the life within him and could sense his mana inside him working furiously to fix his body.


    I doubted the man was actually conscious, so I reached out with my own mana and tried to make contact with him spiritually. The sharp burning sting that I felt as my mana entered the man¡¯s body was just a minor hint compared to the seething fury and violation that was transmitted back to me through the link before it was severed. This mage was pissed, and he was furious at me for what he felt was a violation of his spirit. He was not a despite soul, just an angry one. Not pet material.


    I tipped my staff down towards his head and focused on earth and rock, the crushing might of stone and the steady nature of soil. Earth wasn¡¯t my best elemental affinity, but it was still an element I was comfortable with. All it took was imagining his head incased in rock for the ground to rise up around the caster¡¯s head and begin to harden. A second casual thought about the earth crushing in his skull and a trickle more of my mana was enough to end the casters life.


    Because he was rude I decided to add insult to homicide, taking a page out of Carter¡¯s book I wrapped some of my mana around what was left of the dying caster¡¯s mana pool. His mana felt hot and heavy, but there was a feint hint of shadow to be found there too. He definitely had an affinity for fire, a smaller affinity for air, and a slight affinity for darkness. The fire was useless to me, and the air wasn¡¯t much better, but darkness was my major elemental affinity and I sucked up all he had to give of it. The rest would probably be ground out into neutral mana inside of my pool, otherwise it would just dissipate so there was no real loss.


    I left the empty corpse and followed the feelings of my charm as it lead me to another source of living mana. When the feelings grew strongest I found myself looking down at a man with no face. It was a grisly sight, but I had long since grown used to such things. There was very little horror in the world that could truly turn me away anymore, at least the man still had most of his jaw intact.


    Sending out my mana I came in contact with a cool and damp wind inside the man, my own affinity for water rejoiced at finding a like source and my darkness moved to consume the man¡¯s mana before I reigned it in. Simply having our mana make contact and merge was a simple and inefficient form of communication, but I doubted this man was capable of much else. Through our mana we sent feelings consciously or not, so by touching his I could gain a sort of empathic understanding of the dying caster.


    He felt hopeless. He feared the journey to the great beyond, but he was in so much pain. Everything hurt, everything burned. They had betrayed him. It was hopeless. Hurt so much. Pain. Fear. Betrayal. Loss.


    The feelings were a jumbled mess, but they were a mess of things I recognized. He had the mindset I was looking for, but without a better way to communicate I wouldn¡¯t be able to determine anything about the man¡¯s personality. Ultimately it didn¡¯t matter, but I usually liked to have a better idea of who my pets were before they became my pets. It served to give me a reference and point of comparison for a pet¡¯s behavior if I knew what they were like before. Still nothing about this situation was usual, so I would simply have to judge the man on how he behaved as my pet and correct any faults or defects in personality after the fact.


    Nodding my head I sent feelings of calm and reassurance to the man through my own mana before withdrawing from the contact. I had found my first pet, but I couldn¡¯t work on him now. I would need time to do this right, and time was something I didn¡¯t have a surplus of at the moment. What I did have was an incapacitated pet candidate who would probably be unconscious for the next day or so if I could keep him from dying. All I needed to do was take his body with me and work on his conversion after I broke free of my crest.


    The downside of that was I¡¯d have to waste mana carrying the man along, and that mana cost would only grow with every new pet candidate I picked up. Time constraints and mana constraints, this was not at all ideal. Still I am a trained battle mage as well as an adept healer, I knew that things often conspired to go wrong in the worst ways at the worst times. I knew how to deal with it, adapt and overcome.


    Three. I could manage to lug along three people without it being a problem. If I did more than that it would start to eat away at my mana faster than I could passively regain what I was expending, and having a drain on your mana pool while on the run and planning to carry out an intense summoning sounded like an awfully stupid idea. Yes three would be ideal, I could work with three.


    I pulled on shadows and called on the darkness of the world and shaped it into a sort of stretcher, I willed it to follow along behind me in the air and support its load carefully. Then I tried to lift the man without a face, then I tried again and wondered why the fuck he was so heavy. With a grunt of frustration I managed to man handle the casters body into my darkness stretcher and vowed to form the next stretcher under the body of my next potential pet. That caster had to have weighed well over two hundred pounds, but somehow the man looked fit and healthy. Well healthy besides the missing muscle and skin¡­


    Wiping the blood and puss off my hands and onto my pants I set off to follow the next of my guiding feelings. I walked for a while and really took in the damage that this army had suffered. It was like a bizarre tapestry of death here, and few bodies were damaged in the same way. I saw corpses that were melted, burned, frozen, rotting, discolored, torn apart, and some that appeared to be peacefully sleeping. There was a body that looked to have been turned inside out, a body that looked like it had been crushed into a sphere, and a body that had simply looked to have aged itself to death. As I walked towards the next source of living mana I saw all this and I couldn¡¯t help but wonder what sort of spell could do this. Oh, it was simple to kill with a spell. It was even simple to kill in creative and disturbing ways with a spell. Killing thousands in a variety of unique and separate ways with a single cast of a single spell was not simple. I hadn¡¯t even thought it was possible, even with the aid of a hundred other casters, yet here I was walking through the aftermath of such a spell.


    I really did hate seeing stuff like this, it reminded me that while I might be a pretty big fish in my pond there was a vast and endless ocean out there were I barely qualified as a minnow. Stuff like this unnerved the hell out of me, and made me want to hide away from the world and all the dangerous shit that lived there. My mind kept trying to think of ways I could cope with a spell like this being aimed at me, my rational side told me I couldn¡¯t. At best I might survive, much as my pet candidates have, and might be able to heal myself back to normal.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    It was never good to be confronted with a force beyond your comprehension or ability, it typically served as a precursor to a gruesome end. My strategy had always been to avoid such things, to hide away from the big dangerous things in the world and hope they didn¡¯t come looking for me. Honestly I think it¡¯s how most people survive on Eden, hell it might be the only way to survive on Eden.


    On Earth you had to look out for raiders and gangs, there was the occasional caster to worry about too. The big thing on Earth to watch out for were enchanters who had managed to make a gun that actually functioned or maybe a healer who worked out a way to magic up diseases. Earth was dangerous with its mana storms and magic plagues, but it at least made a sort of sense. Hell even Gaia made a sort of sense, and that world had as much magic and ambient mana as Eden. What made Eden so fucking terrifying to me was that there was no real peaking order, at least there wasn¡¯t for mortals. Eden was the playground of the gods, and we mere mortals were simply allowed to live here. At any given moment a bolt of lightning could be dropped on you from the sky, or a demigod on some obscure quest could be coming to kill you. Or someone could cast a spell that simply killed thousands of mortals without any forewarning or signal.


    In a lot of ways I hated this world, but I also sort of loved it. I spent a good portion of my life on Eden, and I made a life here. Granted it was a life I was currently abandoning, but still.


    Maybe once I was free of my slave crest I¡¯d find a rift and try heading back to Earth, or maybe I might like Gaia.


    I chuckled at that thought as I walked up to the blackened body of a woman. She looked like a few dragon fire victims I¡¯d seen in the past, and if I couldn¡¯t sense the mana inside alive and well I would have pegged here as long dead. I was actually pretty impressed she was alive at all, I doubted I could manage to survive such severe burns myself.


    Leaning down I reached out for her mana and felt a dark and blazing presence brush up against my mana immediately. This woman was just alive, she was awake, or at least spiritually aware. To say I was impressed would be an understatement, I was amazed. Maybe a little flabbergasted. Definitely shocked.


    I felt her then. Anger. Regret. Hatred. Resignation. Despair. Hope. Caution. Desperation. Fear. Helplessness. Resolve.


    She could feel me, and it brought forth a whole surge of emotions within her. It was easy enough to imagine what she thought, I would probably be thinking the same things if I were in her position. She wanted to be saved, but she feared what meeting me would entail. In many ways she was justified in that fear.


    I decided she would make for a good pet, though I suspected her conversion would be a long and difficult process. She was a powerful caster, and must be clever as well as resourceful to be not only alive but even aware after what had been done to her. She¡¯d be a good ally to have, but she¡¯d be an even greater pet if I could manage it.


    I cast my dark stretcher under her and moved on to the next candidate, now with two near corpses following in my wake.


    ***


    It was sort of sad to feel one of the presences of living mana die away as I walked through the field of death. Not because I felt sorry for them, and not even because I pitied them, but because it meant I had one less chance to pick up a pet.


    The last caster I found had been a very spiteful and cunning woman, her spirit had tried to attack me when I tried to make contact with her. She wanted to consume my earth and water to speed up her own recovery, instead I took her mana and used it to directly expand my mana pool. I think I grew my total pool by about a hundredth with that alone, so I wasn¡¯t to upset about it. Honestly it was pretty rare to get the chance to absorb another mage¡¯s mana like this, outside of very battlefields and deathbeds I couldn¡¯t think of another opportunity where it would be possible. Even if I managed to kill a mage, I still wouldn¡¯t be able to wrangle much mana away from their dying body as their souls would fight to keep it with them. Only when casters are so incapacitated that they can do nothing else but focus on recovery is it possible to steal their mana, and even then only when they have fully committed to their recovery and it is now longer possible for them to pull back can it be done. Carter has said there¡¯s a trick to getting mana out of a live caster, but if that¡¯s even true I sure as hell don¡¯t know it. And speaking of Carter¡­


    I was running out of time to search for another pet, and I could almost feel the goddess of fate watching me and laughing. I had two sources left, and I might have time to grab one on my way out of the field. No real time to do even a cursory inspection of their spirit, it would be a case of grab and go. I wasn¡¯t happy about that, but some deep part of me was screaming that I had best leave now if I wanted to make a clean escape. As a magic caster I have a deep and incomprehensible connection to the flow of mana around me, and sometimes that meant my hunches and gut feelings were more than just instinct. As a mage, you have to trust yourself when these feelings come up as sometimes they¡¯ll end up being ethereal premonitions.


    Like any good mage would, I trusted in my gut feeling and started sprinting for the mana source that felt the closest. It was time to go, and I was damn sure going to be gone before whatever it was that I felt was after me got here.


    I dropped my staff and let its smart-float enchantment take hold. Pumping my arms I tried to kick my stride into a higher gear as my gut feeling turned into dreadful certainty. In a split second I weighed my options and as it turns out I didn¡¯t need another pet after all. I was more than happy with the two I found thank you oh so very much.


    Spell, I needed a spell! Something to hide me, or confuse them, or something! I just needed to buy a bit more time, time for me to escape and slip out from under this slave crest.


    I ran, I was a fast runner, but I knew sooner rather than later I¡¯d be caught like this. I had to do something to get away, but my mind was drawing a blank. I had no place set up to teleport or gate to, and trying to fuck with space like that without prep work was a good way to kill yourself. There wasn¡¯t much I could do to buff up my speed that Josh or Sarah couldn¡¯t match or outdo. I didn¡¯t have the time to struggle with bending the light around me, and it wasn¡¯t dark enough out to fade away. And none of that mattered anyway because Rainer could have me rushing back against my will with just a word.


    Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck FUCK! I took too long, risked too much¡­


    I fell as a piece of torn ringmail caught my foot. As I tumbled to the ground I had a thought, it was a simple and brilliant thought. Rainer couldn¡¯t call me back if he was too distracted to notice I was gone, and my siblings couldn¡¯t chase me down if they had to protect Rainer and the camp.


    There are few things more distracting than a horde of undead coming towards you, and undead are relatively cheap to make magically speaking. It also doesn¡¯t take long if you don¡¯t want your undead to last very long, just expend some mana to animate the bodies and give them a goal. Easy peasy.


    Picking myself up I wore a crazy grin as I dumped half of my mana pool and all of my newfound hatred for Rainer and the pain he had caused me into the surroundings. I willed everything to rise up, to find Rainer and to hurt him as much as they hurt. I wanted them to charge the camp, and ordered them through willpower and mana to make my desire a reality. Then I started running again, with only the occasional glance behind me to see if my slapdash spell was working.


    Looking beyond my two floating pieces of cargo I saw corpses begin to pick themselves up off the ground and grab their weapons.


    ¡°That should buy me a bit of time.¡±


    I felt the wild grin on my face grow. This was my first step on the path of freedom, and already the hunt was on. I wonder if the fox ever felt more alive than when it was being hunted, I wondered if it was crazy for a part of me to be enjoying this, but most of all I wondered if Lum would laugh at my piss poor excuse of an undead horde. He¡¯d probably find my slapdash undead as amusing as I found his attempt at demon conjuring, maybe that would earn me some points with the kid.


    I had a feeling I¡¯d need all the points I could get with my family fairly soon¡­

 The price of Freedom 5

    My impromptu undead horde worked perfectly, I could tell by how I no longer felt like I was moments away from capture. The fact I wasn¡¯t writhing on the ground from unendurable pain inflicted directly to my soul was a good indicator of my plans success as well. All and all I was proud of myself, and more than a little surprised at the effectiveness of my idea.


    Sadly there isn¡¯t much cover to be found and the open plains were huge, so my little escape attempt hadn¡¯t taken me all that far in the grand scheme of things. I had found a spot behind a small hill that kept me mostly out of sight, it wasn¡¯t the best hideaway but it was all I had to work with. I figure it¡¯ll suit my purposes just fine, and once I had gotten rid of my crest I could start on searching for a more permanent place to keep myself hidden.


    Checking over my two pet candidates I found that the man was a little worse for ware, I cast a simple healing charm over him to keep the caster alive while I was indisposed. Thinking it over, I gave the woman the same charm just in case she was fairing worse than she was letting on. She sure looked a lot worse than she let on, so I figured it was probably the right call.


    With my wards suitably cared for I sat on the grassy ground and started to meditate. Meditation and other forms of focused rest tended to increase the rate a caster recovered there mana, for me meditating helped me regain mana almost five times faster than I could in a normal state of mind. I was going to meditate until my mana pool was back up to a level I could feel comfortable with for a summoning.


    In less than an hour my mana pool felt mostly full again and I stopped meditating. With a deep breath I stood and grabbed my staff from where it floated beside me. With great care I used the end of my staff to draw a large circle in the earth, and as I closed of the circle I began to draw another identical circle around the first. You could never have too many precautions when summoning, but it was often deadly when you had too few. Closing off the second circle I felt I had the bare minimum of precautions in order, everything else I could deal with on the fly if both circles managed to fail.


    There were three golden rules to summoning that anyone sane should adhere to. The first and most commonly overlooked rule was to never summon something you couldn¡¯t take down yourself, it was depressing how many summoners were recorded to have been killed by what they called forth. The second rule was to always summon within a containment mechanism, summoned beings can be tricky and hard to keep ahold of if preparations aren¡¯t taken beforehand. And the third rule that seems to be constantly forgotten by summoners is that you can never be sure what you¡¯ll call forth. Plenty of summoners end up getting random beings instead of what they were calling for, and while you can increase the probability of getting what you want with traces, items of significance, and targeted calls that probability will never be one hundred percent.


    I had the bare minimum requirements for a safe summon, and the only thing I had to tip the odds of summoning what I wanted in my favor was the ability to cast a targeted calling. All said, it was not what I had hoped to have for a summoning. If I had any other option I wouldn¡¯t even consider summoning under these circumstances, but desperation makes even the most foolish actions seem reasonable.


    With a deep breath I poured mana into the circles.


    ¡°I call on the darkness, the primal and untamed, the children of worlds and beloved of mana, I call for the pure and untainted wanderer, the immortal and eternal custodian, the master of the ethereal and mystic, I call for¡­¡±


    With all my willpower I focused my mana into the very word itself and willed it to carry across all of space to drag back my target. For that moment my mind was both clear and unwavering.


    ¡°Elemental!¡±


    I felt my mind return to normal as I lost a good bit of mana, I watched as the air at the center of my innermost circle began to ripple and distort. With an unnerving lack of sound something entered the world that was not there before, there was no flash of light or fanfare simply a being now residing in a space that a moment before was empty.


    I looked at the dark cloud contained within the innermost circle and felt a wave of relief crash over me. Summoning was never a sure fire thing, and targeted summoning was more an art of flattery and description than an actual spell. Yet here I had before me a dark elemental, the very thing I had hoped to summon.


    It only took me one try even with these shitty conditions and half-assed preparations, Kel would be proud.


    I watched as the dark cloud shifted and flexed within the confines of the circle, it was testing the circle¡¯s strength and I was comforted to find the circle didn¡¯t even waver once. I had summoned an elemental and was able to keep it contained with only a single protective circle, if I had someone to brag to about this I¡¯d be milking this feat for all it was worth.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    My grasp on my staff tightened as I took a step closer, I was standing right on the edge of the outside circle now. A part of me wondered once more at the sanity of what I was going to attempt, the rest of me told that part to shut the hell up and fall in line. My current motto was ¡°freedom or death¡±, if this was the only path to my freedom then I would just have to buck up and take it.


    I stepped into the outer circle.


    ***


    I must have sat here with the confined elemental within arms reach for an hour before it spoke. The voice of the elemental was part snake¡¯s hiss and part lover¡¯s whisper, it also had a rather disconcerting echo effect.


    ¡°Why have you summoned me mortal?¡±


    I just looked at the dark cloud of pitch black fog and shrugged.


    ¡°I had a proposal to make, and I figured it would work best with one of your kind¡­¡±


    The cloud seemed to somehow grow darker as it laughed.


    ¡°Ahahahah... So you merely wish to bargin? You would like to make a deal, or perhaps create a contract? Yes, I have heard you mortals are fond of doing such things.¡±


    I shook my head, my eyes never wavering from the elemental¡¯s form.


    ¡°No. There will be no contract, and there certainly wont be a deal being struck.¡±


    The cloud lashed out with an inky tendril of black, but the circle containing it didn¡¯t waver and I refused to flinch.


    ¡°So you attempt to bind me mortal? You shall find I am not so easily kept! Yes, you may hold me now, but it will take only one mistake¡­ one small mistake and I shall be free while you will be dead.¡±


    It was a decent threat, but I¡¯d heard better from worse. Strangely enough I actually found that promise of death to be sort of endearing, this thing hated being under someone else¡¯s control about as much as I did. We were similar in a way, and that was a very good thing indeed for what I had planned.


    ¡°No, I didn¡¯t summon you to bind you either. I had a different proposal in mind actually¡­¡±


    I trailed off and waited to give the elemental time to process what I said. It would probably be confused, as I¡¯m not even sure if what I was planning had ever even been attempted before. I¡¯m sure someone somewhere had the idea and tested it, but there was no record of such a thing in anything I had ever come across.


    ¡°You¡­ are a strange mortal¡­¡±


    I just nodded at that.


    ¡°True.¡±


    I wondered how much longer it would take for Rainer to discover I was missing, it was creeping up on sundown so probably not much longer. I was running out of time, but this couldn¡¯t be rushed. If I was going to have any chance of this actually working like I intended then I¡¯d need to take things slowly.


    The elemental slowly condensed, and from the foggy cloud a figure took shape. It was a featureless humanoid silhouette sitting on the ground much as I was and facing me, the elemental tilted its newly formed body¡¯s head.


    ¡°What is your proposal mortal?¡±


    I took a breath and tried to steady my nerves, when I spoke my voice was as calm and cool as ice.


    ¡°I propose a union. Not a binding or a contract, but a complete merging of being. I would see us joined as one so that we both would be set free.¡±


    I think I might have surprised the elemental as its form dissipated completely and it returned to its foggy cloud appearance. There was another feat to add to my list, surprising an immortal extra-dimensional being of pure magic.


    ¡°I¡­ I do not understand. You wish to become an elemental?¡±


    I shook my head.


    ¡°No, that would just create a whole new set of problems for me. What I¡¯m proposing is that we both become one singular being, something neither elemental nor human. Something new, with none of the restrictions being an elemental entail.¡±


    The black cloud rippled.


    ¡°You propose madness. You are insane¡­¡±


    I just stared at the elemental and shrugged again.


    ¡°Maybe. Still I am offering you a once in a lifetime opportunity. The chance to become more than you are, to become something greater.¡±


    The cloud rippled and shook. The elemental¡¯s voice was a soft and unsure thing when it spoke again.


    ¡°I¡­ I do not understand¡­¡±


    I tried to put on my most kind and sincere smile, a smile that could lull even the most jaded and cynical into trusting me. I knew for a fact that I had a kind face, it had a sort of cute boyish innocence to it that didn¡¯t mesh at all with my personality. I¡¯ve been approached by strangers and acquaintances alike and told that I look like a na?ve and innocent soul in need of protection. Usually I find my face to be an annoyance but on occasions like this one it is the greatest of blessings.


    ¡°It¡¯s simple really. I am offering you all I am, I¡¯m giving you my everything. All I need in return is for you to do the same for me¡­¡±


    In a way it was unfair. Elementals were powerful and wise in many ways, they were practically eternal beings unknown to death as well, but they share the same failing that fae creatures tend to have. They could be far too trusting of the unknown. To such creatures the unknown is a marvelous thing, a promise of something new and exciting to add some measure of flavor to the blandness of eternity. Offering such a being a chance to embark first hand down an unknown path was like dangling honeydew dust in front of an addict, the temptation was irresistible.


    The black cloud shifted a swayed for a few minutes in silence, all the while I held my smile and sincere expression. When finally the cloud settled down it took on a deep and bottomless black color that seemed to suck in all other color around it.


    ¡°Who are you mortal?¡±


    I amped up the wattage of my smile by a notch and reached for the friendliest tone I could manage.


    ¡°My name is Lux, and I¡¯d love nothing more than to be one with you!¡±

 Side (Rainer): Something Lost

    Rainer felt something was off the moment he woke up. Maybe it was his many years of experience or perhaps it was a side effect from being around so much magic so often, regardless Rainer had a distinct feeling that something was wrong.


    Yesterday had been a decisive victory, a victory that had come at the cost of some tired magic casters alone. A part of Rainer was both disturbed and disgusted with how the battle was won, after all killing a man should be a personal thing not some mass slaughter from a distance, but he couldn¡¯t argue with the results. The demigod had promised an overwhelming victory and she had delivered that in spades. Rainer could complain about that, and neither could the rest of the army¡¯s leadership.


    Carefully maneuvering around his command tent Rainer found himself strapping on his training gear by sheer habit alone. A faint grin crossed his face at his unconscious actions, he was approaching forty years of age now yet at times he still felt like the young squire that needed to practice each morning. It lent credence to that old saying, you¡¯re only as old as you feel. Of course, Rainer¡¯s access to multiple skilled mages who would happily keep their ¡°Father¡± healthy and spry might have helped things as well.


    Grabbing a training blade and adjusting the leather bracer on his left arm Rainer left his tent. Outside he was immediately flanked by two of his knights and one of his slaves, though Rainer tried very hard not to think of them as slaves too often. It was easier on everyone involved if he didn¡¯t treat the kids as slaves, but Rainer couldn¡¯t bring himself to see them as his children either. The middle ground Rainer had found was treating the mages as he would particularly gifted squires training under him, and so far that seemed to be working wonders.


    In truth Rainer was more than a little uncomfortable with acting as surrogate father to his slaves, and the personality quirks his slaves had developed hadn¡¯t helped matters much. Out of all of them Rainer felt that Josh was the most normal, though the boy¡¯s eating habits and predatory nature could be unnerving to those unfamiliar with him. Maybe that was why Rainer kept Josh by his side instead of one of the more spell oriented mages under his charge.


    Glancing at Josh as he walked he noted how the boy was moving. Josh didn¡¯t so much walk as he did prowl, his every movement radiated a grace usually only seen in big cats. The yellow eyes that peaked out from behind the boy¡¯s long messy hair seemed to size up everything they saw. Rainer knew that Josh used his magic to enhance and alter his physical body and abilities, the boy could probably overpower men three times his scrawny frame¡¯s size. Rainer had always thought that Josh would make one hell of a knight, and the rest of his company shared Rainer¡¯s evaluation of the boy.


    Trying to mask his internal worry Rainer asked the question.


    ¡°Josh, did you find out what sort of ritual our¡­ guest conducted last night?¡±


    The demigod worried Rainer, she always had despite the assurances his superiors had made that she wouldn¡¯t be an issue. Despite all his talent and skill Rainer was still a man, a mortal and unmagical man at that, so being so close to a person with the blood of gods flowing in their veins was unsettling to say the least. He may have granted his permission to the demigod to conduct her ritual on the camp grounds, but he didn¡¯t trust her farther than he could throw her. He had sent Josh to observe and discover whatever he could from the ritual as the demigod cast it.


    Josh merely nodded.


    ¡°Sarah or Lux would have been better, but I did manage to figure out the gist of it. The ritual was some sort of cleansing thing, making the mana around the camp denser and cleaner. It also seemed to draw in lots of the ambient mana too. My guess is that spell yesterday drained her damn near dry, and this was a way for her to recharge quickly.¡±


    Rainer considered that for a moment. It was true that Josh¡¯s magic tended to be more physical and as such he was less skilled at the more mystical arts than the others, but Josh was the one that Rainer trusted the most out of all seven. Sarah and Lux might have been able to tell him more, but Sarah¡¯s obsessive nature made Rainer hesitant to use her for much outside of combat and Lux had disobeyed an order for the first time making him an uncertain factor as well. That left Josh or Carter, and Carter had little experience with magical espionage.


    Still as long as the demigod wasn¡¯t posing a danger to the camp Rainer didn¡¯t really need to know much more about whatever she did. The business of the gods and their children was above his pay grade as far as Rainer was concerned.


    ***


    Rainer ducked a wild swing and stepped into his opponents guard, the overextended swing went harmlessly past him as he jammed his blunted blade into the leather guard piece protecting his opponent¡¯s chest. It would have been a killing blow in a real fight, of that Rainer was certain.


    Stepping back and letting his opponent catch their breath Rainer started his evaluation.


    ¡°Your technique got sloppy as the match wore on, you started creating more openings than you could ever hope to keep covered and you stopped making feints. Still that overhead chop of yours has improved, damn near dislocated something parrying that away¡­¡±


    Rainer grinned at the young knight in front of him. Haner was a new addition to Rainer¡¯s company but the young man was shaping up to be an excellent knight. That was for the best as Rainer only allowed the best to work with him and his men, it was how he had forged the Steel Lions into the top knight company in all of Avalon. Maybe even all of Eden as well.


    Rainer commanded five hundred knights in total, his lions as he liked to call them, and another three hundred squires and trainees on top of that. Those numbers coupled with the seven slave mages assigned to him made the Steel Lion knight company all but unstoppable, and a huge asset for the kingdom¡¯s use during a war.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ¡°Josh, why don¡¯t you show Haner here how far he still has to come before he can call himself a true lion.¡±


    Rainer stepped out of the training ring and saw that the crowd around the ring parted for the scrawny yellow eyed young man. All of the lions knew Rainer¡¯s charges, and all of them treated the mage slaves with a healthy dose of respect. More than a few times these men had been personally saved by one of the seven mage slaves, and all knew that each of the seven were combat proficient. Even still, the lions treated Josh with more respect and awe then they did the other six. To the Steel Lion knight company Josh was a member in all but name, and the boy¡¯s fierce temperament and wild fighting style made him one of the strongest members in the company. Rainer even knew that his men whispered that Josh was unbeatable in physical combat, that nothing outside of magic could stop the young man.


    Rainer honestly couldn¡¯t ask for a better example to push his knights to greatness, nor had he found a better method to break in a new recruit than to send them into a match with Josh. If they survived in one piece then the knight was lion material, if they didn¡¯t¡­ Well if they didn¡¯t then Lux would get more practice putting people back together. It was a win-win situation as far as Rainer cared.


    Settling into the crowd to watch the latest match Rainer felt a sudden sense of unease. This was a scene he¡¯d seen countless times before, yet something about it still bothered him. Rainer shook of the thought and decided it was simply a case of too much wine the night before.


    Rainer watched as Josh approached Haner in an unhurried prowl, Haner put up his guard like any good knight would but he was obviously unfamiliar with Josh¡¯s fighting style. Seemingly without raising any sort of guard Josh approached the knight and slowly began to reach out with his left hand. Haner made a preemptive swipe at Josh¡¯s hand with his blunted sword, but the blade found only air. Almost faster than the eye could follow Josh had ducked under the swipe and moved in close to Haner. A hand with a grip of steel grabbed Haner by the face and suddenly the young knight was smashed flat into the packed dirt headfirst.


    Haner was unconscious, understandable really. At least the young knight¡¯s head was still intact, it was clear that Josh held back so as not to hurt the man.


    Rainer bit back a sigh. It could hardly be called a match let alone a spar, but that was usually the case when Josh entered the ring. Only the most senior knights could put up any sort of fight with the boy, and Rainer himself was unsure if he could win a match with Josh. It was one of the reasons that Rainer and Josh no longer sparred.


    Haner was in one piece and didn¡¯t appear to have any shattered bones, that was equivalent to a ringing endorsement for the young knight. Soon enough Lux would have Haner back on his feet and Rainer could get back to deciding where he wanted to position the young knight.


    Rainer froze. Suddenly he noticed what was bugging him earlier, Lux was nowhere in sight. Usually the boy would be standing front and center at the ring to watch the various practice matches and heal the seriously injured, but today Lux wasn¡¯t here. Rainer thought back to early yesterday morning, it had been the first time Lux had disobeyed an order so Rainer had used the slave crest to punish the boy. Perhaps Lux was still upset about that, Rainer might have to talk with the boy and address this before it grew into some larger issue. One of the first things Rainer¡¯s superiors had warned him about before he was allowed to act as master to a unit of slave mages was to keep the slaves happy and loyal. Rainer couldn¡¯t allow small issues to grow into larger problems, and he certainly couldn¡¯t allow one of his charges to develop resentment or a grudge.


    Rainer turned to call for a runner to fetch Lux when the screams started.


    Josh was by his side in an instant, the young man¡¯s head tilted up as he scented the air. Rainer looked at the mage just as the surrounding men turned to seek out the yellow eyed youth as well. Josh looked up and Rainer felt as if those slit pupils stared into his very soul as the young man spoke.


    ¡°I smell rot and death. Probably undead, lots of undead. Coming from the west¡­¡±


    Rainer nodded and looked out at the men gathered around him, his men. His lions.


    ¡°Well, you heard our mage... What the fuck are you lot still doing standing here!?¡±


    With that there was a flurry of movement as knights rushed to find their equipment and head into battle.


    ***


    Rainer found himself standing between Carter and Ike watching a battle unfold before him while all the while wishing he was in the thick of it swinging his blade alongside his men. There were disadvantages to being in a position of command, and being forced to stay out of the fighting was one of them in Rainer¡¯s opinion.


    ¡°Where did they even come from¡­¡±


    Rainer didn¡¯t expect an answer as he oversaw the last of the undead get swept aside without much trouble, still it didn¡¯t surprise him when one of his charges spoke up. However, what was said floored him.


    ¡°Looks like Lux made them, but it was a really sloppy job. More wishing with mana then actual spellwork¡­¡±


    Ike spoke with a confidence that told Rainer he didn¡¯t doubt his statement in the least. Ike wasn¡¯t any good at necromancy, but he could read mana signatures with a skill that was almost uncanny, Rainer couldn¡¯t really doubt him if the boy said that this was Lux¡¯s doing. That didn¡¯t change the fact that Rainer was shocked though, this all seemed to come out of left field. Lux sending unsupervised and feral undead into the camp could be taken as an attack against Avalon, in short it was treason. Rainer couldn¡¯t imagine why Lux would do something like that when he was one of the more loyal of Rainer¡¯s charges.


    ¡°Why? Why would that kid do something like this¡­¡±


    Ike turned and looked at Rainer, and to Rainer¡¯s eyes it seemed that the boy was confused.


    ¡°Why? Isn¡¯t it obvious? Lux doesn¡¯t like being a slave so he chose to forget that he was one in the first place, yesterday you reminded him by using his crest for a punishment. Lux probably hates you for reminding him of what he was trying to forget and decided to leave, the undead were likely sent here to distract you from calling him back¡­¡±


    Rainer knew that Ike liked to dig around in peoples¡¯ heads, most of the time Ike knew what was going on more clearly than anyone else around him but he never seemed to share his insight without prompting. Of all of Rainer¡¯s charges Rainer understood Ike the least and feared him the most. At that very moment Rainer thought of simply killing Ike, it was a mix of frustration at the situation and that ever present fear that Rainer felt whenever Ike was around him that made the idea appealing. Still it was an unrealistic thought. The other slaves were close to Ike for whatever reason and killing the kid would throw the whole of Rainer¡¯s carefully established dynamic out of whack.


    Still Lux was a problem, and that boy would certainly be deserving of severe punishments for his actions today. Rainer could easily just vent his negative emotions on Lux during the boy¡¯s punishment, that way he wouldn¡¯t have to worry about how others saw his actions. Lux was very bad so Rainer had to make sure he was suitably punished, not even Sarah and her overprotective nature would be able fault Rainer for being a bit cruel in how he punished Lux for this.


    Focusing his attention on the link between his mind and the slave crest belonging to Lux that usually went ignored deep within his subconscious Rainer tried to activate the crest¡¯s punishment function. Rainer didn¡¯t feel a response from the link, so he tried to activate the recall command that was part of the crest¡¯s core programming. Again there was no response.


    It was like Lux was dead.

 Two Become One 1

    I am¡­


    We are¡­


    Was? Am? Will?


    It¡¯s all so unclear. I, we, don¡¯t remember how this happened. One moment there was us, now there is only me. Or is there?


    We are still there, we still exist don¡¯t we?


    But I¡¯m here, and I am so how can I be we?


    I think I¡¯m itchy.


    It hurts. Everything hurts. It burns us, and it makes us itch.


    What was that? I thought there was something there for a moment¡­


    We didn¡¯t want this, we never wanted this! I don¡¯t understand. Pain. Pain everywhere.


    I can¡¯t feel anything anymore, the itch is gone too¡­


    We are in so much pain¡­


    Who am I? Who are we? Who was I? Who were we? Who will I become? Who will we become?


    So many questions, but there is no answer. Am I asking all those questions? I can¡¯t really tell, but I think I can hear two voices. They are familiar yet unknown to me.


    We hate this, make this end.


    I don¡¯t understand what they want.


    Why did we do this? Why must we suffer?


    Do they know me? Can they hear me as I hear them?


    We are not the same. We cannot be the same¡­


    I feel strange, like something is wrong somehow. I can¡¯t tell what is wrong, but I sense that something is¡­


    It all hurts. Why? Why would we do this to ourselves!?


    In the end I can¡¯t tell what¡¯s wrong, maybe I never will¡­


    We were us, but now we are not. We are¡­ No! Not ¡°we¡±, not anymore¡­


    I think I understand now¡­


    It shouldn¡¯t have been like this¡­ He didn¡¯t think it would turn out like this, that it would hurt us so¡­


    But I¡¯m so tired¡­


    It just wanted a new experience, it didn¡¯t imagine how horrible the unknown could be when it agreed¡­


    Sleepy¡­


    THIS MUST END!


    ***


    I felt horrible. My body ached in a way I didn¡¯t think was possible and my head felt like it had pins jammed inside it.


    At least on the upside I was myself again. For a while there I think I didn¡¯t exist, almost like the being Lux and the being dark elemental were metaphysically smashed together and shattered into pieces while a toddler tried to put them back together again. It was a less then pleasant experience and I¡¯d very much like to never have it again.


    Still I¡¯m me again, at least I¡¯m mostly me again. Enough me that I can recognize myself and not notice anything wrong with myself. I hate thinking about this, it makes my headache hurt worse. Stupid metaphysical identity issues¡­


    I seem to be floating in a white¡­ Expanse? It was a white space that was actually pretty harsh on the eyes to look at, but overhead I saw an endless void of black darker and deeper than anything I could ever imagine. Where the hell I was and what the fuck I was supposed to do here was anyone¡¯s guess. Hell I could be dead and this could be the afterlife for all I knew.


    This. This was exactly why you should never text out an experimental spell on yourself. Well, in my case it was more of an idea for an experimental spell that I somehow might have managed to cast. Maybe.


    Nothing like flying blind.


    As I was trying to gather my bearings and count up my marbles to see how many I had lost from this whole ordeal I noticed I wasn¡¯t alone. There was something else floating in the white with me. It looked like a fluffy grey cloud that if I squinted really hard sort of had the shape of a human. It didn¡¯t take me long to guess that my new elemental friend ended up in the same boat as me, but then again that wasn¡¯t all that surprising. The whole point of this endeavor had been to fuse my very being with that of the elemental¡¯s. At least, that was what I was trying for.


    What actually happened was anyone¡¯s guess, for all I knew I blew us both up in a dazzling but pointless display of magic and idiocy.


    I decided that I should try and make contact with the elemental and figure out what we¡¯d need to do to get out of this place. But first I think I¡¯ll just float here quietly for a while, just resting until I feel less like death warmed over. It should only take a small eternity.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ***


    Hours passed, or at least it seemed that way.


    This place seemed to be timeless, there was a certain peaceful quality to it as well. It was a good place to just float and think, and given the way I had rushed into this situation in the first place having time to just think was a good thing. In hindsight the idea of fusing myself with some other being to change my soul enough that the slave crest got removed was pretty much the most insane thing I had ever come up with. If I wasn¡¯t so desperate then I probably would have thought things through a bit more and tested the theory on a few random test subjects.


    I was all for poking around with the bleeding edge of new magic, but normally that was when I had a few safeties in place to keep me alive and well. Without anything to assure me of my safety I was pretty much doing the magical equivalent of stumbling through a cave full of sleeping bears while blindfolded, screaming at the top of my lungs, and swinging around a stick. Sure there was a chance that everything could turn out fine, but the most likely outcome would be a violent and painful death.


    That was the problem with inventing some outlandish new magic or spell, you had no idea when, how, or if the magic would fail. Sure the skill and knowledge of the magic caster are a factor, but in the end magic can be a finicky and wild thing. Inventing little spells and charms is fairly easy, it was when you started trying to create new rituals and heavy reality bending spells. Of course there was a work around for things like this, but it usually involved throwing massive amounts of mana at any issue that pops up while casting spells. I can say with surety that no single magic caster outside of the gods themselves have the mana pools to just casually invent new rituals and massive spells on the fly.


    My fucking up this huge complicated spell that I invented in the half hour I was running away from a battlefield, not all that surprising¡­


    I had almost no idea what I was doing while casting the spell, and I had even less of a clue about what had gone wrong and how I could fix things. I was pretty much just stuck here in this white place, and I would remain stuck here until I figured out how to safely undue the spell I had cast. That or figured out how to force the effect I was trying to achieve and complete the spell manually for lack of a better term.


    Either option would take me a long time, and I only had the faintest of ideas on how I could go about attempting either process. I had a guess that the fusion had failed because the elemental and I were too different and we jointly rejected the union, but I couldn¡¯t be sure that was the case. My best guess as to how I could complete the fusion process was to just make the both of us more compatible with one another, the way that could be done was escaping me though. How I would go about ending the spell and undoing the effects it had on me was looking to be the much more difficult issue, and even if I managed to undo the spell with no side effects I would still be stuck with a slave crest on my soul.


    Maybe it was because I had pretty much nothing to lose, but I was leaning towards just seeing the fusion through to the end.


    Floating in this white expanse was a unique experience, but it was also probably a temporary situation. I couldn¡¯t imagine that I¡¯d just be stuck here forever, instead I had a feeling that this place would eventually break down or disappear taking both me and the elemental with it. Sadly I didn¡¯t know when the white expanse would break down, or even if it would, I was just working with a feeling.


    I tried to move over to the elemental, and by tried I mean I wiggled around in what felt like zero gravity while going nowhere. It was actually a little depressing, and I was more than a little glad that the only thing around to see my embarrassingly futile struggle was an unconscious elemental¡­


    ***


    It turned out that the key to moving around in the white expanse was to simply imagine yourself in a new position. You think about yourself in a new spot then you sort of just poof into being in that new spot, it reminded me of the more complex teleportation spells that were all but impossible for a single magic caster to cast. I admit that I wasted a while playing around with the effect, but who could blame me? It wasn¡¯t every day you could instantly teleport around without tons of effort or prep work.


    Now I was waiting right next to the elemental, I was hoping that when it woke up I could try and make us more compatible with each other. My plan was simple, I¡¯d just be honest and share everything about myself as I could. The idea was our compatibility with each other would have to rise if we knew more about one another, and I figured the more we discovered about each other the greater our compatibility would become. It was a fairly simple idea, but sometimes the simplest solutions were the most effective.


    It was almost funny in a way, the only way to save myself was to be sharing and caring with another being that was a total stranger to me. It was like fate saw my paranoia and unsocial nature, laughed at it, and flipped me off while leading me into a situation that would force me to go against my nature. I had once heard a saying from a mage, fate was a vindictive and spiteful /bitch and so was her sister karma. I have no idea how that saying went over with the goddess of fate and destiny, but I do know that the first man credited with the speaking that saying aloud was killed in a¡­ unpleasant manner.


    Regardless, I didn¡¯t really see anything that could be done until the elemental woke up. I was stuck just killing time until then, which normally wouldn¡¯t be a problem for a mage but I didn¡¯t have access to my mana in this place for whatever reason. No magical tinkering to stave off boredom for me, instead I had to amuse myself with more mundane means. I quickly discovered that twiddling your thumbs could be oddly satisfying if you make a game of it.


    I also had plenty of time to think about what I¡¯d do even if I managed to escape my slave crest, and the lack of answers I found depressed me to no end. The sad truth of things was that I had no real direction on my own, most of my life was spent simply doing what others told me. I had desires, sure, but that wasn¡¯t the same as having concrete goals or plans for myself. I didn¡¯t want to go back to Avalon and if I could manage it I wouldn¡¯t mind becoming an archmage, but outside of that I had no real life goals. I didn¡¯t really want to settle down with some woman and start a family, a life like that would bore me to tears. I didn¡¯t really want to reap bloody vengeance upon the kingdom of Avalon or Rainer and his precious lions, I still felt some irrational attachment to them for some reason. I certainly didn¡¯t want to become a god and ascend to the divine realm either, that seemed like far too much work for a really shitty reward.


    In the end I really didn¡¯t have an idea about my future, not even an idea on what I wanted out of the future. I liked being a battlemage so I¡¯d probably find a way to keep fighting people, I also rather liked the idea of carving out a place for myself somewhere in the four worlds so I might try that too. That was about it.


    Turns out I didn¡¯t like thinking about how aimless I was and how I didn¡¯t even know what I wanted to do with freedom even if I gain it. Maybe that was part of the reason twiddling my thumbs seemed like a far better way to kill time than considering the future or planning ahead.