Serenfyrr
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1.
He was very thin, a stick of a person, with threadbare clothes that, being extremely wet, stuck to him, and black hair that grew down past his shoulders, dripping with water. He kept scratching his left wrist, on which a large glowing blue rune cuff lay, pulsing with some form of magic (though really, it was with the absence of magic that it was pulsing).
Everyone was looking at him. He lowered his swollen, pale face and tried to shuffle more quietly, but he was probably the most interesting thing the soldiers had seen all month, and they weren’t about to turn away and go back to their business. The soldier’s grip on his left forearm increased under the scrutiny as the posse half-dragged him to the leader’s tent.
Someone stopped the group dragging him to the leader’s tent, and he lifted his head a few inches to see that it was another soldier, who was looking at him intently with some disgust and something else in his eyes, lip curled. “Where’d you get…this?” he growled. “Picked it up in the forest? Caught him trying to spy on us?”
“No, ah…” the soldier blinked a few times. “Caught ‘im…well, it don’t matter where I caught ‘im, yeah? He’s a bloody mage, caught ‘im tryin’ to work some of his spells.”
“To do what, exactly? Go against the Rose? Stir up a rebellion? Did he break any laws, Spencer?”
“Well, er…” The soldier, Spencer, scratched his ear uncomfortably. “He was usin’ magic, and that’s against a law! Big ‘un, too.”
“To. Do. What?”
“I dunno!” Spencer finally exploded. “I just saw the smoke, tasted the tang in the air, and the magic radar went off the charts! We went to where whatever it was had happened, and smell somethin’ like oranges in the foresty air and him layin’ on the ground. He obviously overextended his powers tryin’ to do somethin’ dangerous and fancy, probably tryin’ t’ kill all of us in our sleep.”
“Pishposh. We’re guarded by too many wards to count, Spencer. One stick of a boy couldn’t bypass our security even with Warlic on his side.”
His breath caught in his throat. Did they know… they couldn’t know, they couldn’t. What had he walked in on? Why was magic so hated, what was going on? Where was he?
He scratched his cuff absentmindedly, having long since gotten used to the feeling of the poison inside him, sapping him, making him stumble and clouding his vision and pounding his head. It was like mana dehydration, except worse. The rune was unfamiliar to him, which was a feat in and of itself, but it seemed to be working. He was almost dead on his feet.
“What exactly, sir, do you propose we do? We’ve got to show him to the Duke, you heard ‘im, he said any suspicious activity ‘round these parts were to be reported immediately!”
The man looked at him again, and the boy shrunk into himself some more. They knew, at least this Duke person, something about him and what was going on. But they seemed to be the enemy…what was going on?
“Let me have ten minutes, Spencer, with the boy. Alone. Then let the Duke at ‘im. He’ll be dead meat within the hour anyways, I just need to talk to him, nice and civilized.”
Nice and civilized. Hah. With these maniacs?
Spencer growled, but shoved the boy into the man, who grabbed onto his right arm to steady him. Spencer said to his men, “Just…disperse. Go back to whatever you were doing; this isn’t worth our time.”
They dispersed, and the man dragged the boy into an unoccupied tent and motioned or him to sit on the cot. The man sat on the chair. “Look,” he said in a whisper, looking around as if the walls were about to pounce on him, “I know what this looks like and I know you have no idea what’s going on. Is that true?”
He nodded quickly.
“What’s your name, or what can I call you?”
“I—I…I dunno. I think…my memory’s shattered. Bits and pieces.” Don’t tell them, don’t tell them, even if you do remember don’t tell them. “Maybe…Thorn? I’ve always wanted to be called Thorn.”
“Well then, Thorn, where did you come from? Unlike most of these bumbling fools, I actually know my way around magic. That in the forest wasn’t an explosion, it was a rift. A teleport. Where do you come from?”
He knows. The revelation was frightening. Thorn grew even paler, if that was possible. Little exposure to sunlight for about six months would do that to a person. Sun. The sun was bad, the sun would kill. The moon was life. Don’t you dare touch the sun, don’t touch it ever. Except…except he had escaped, this place was different. Different place, different rules. He could feel it in the air, there were no wards here.
“Lore—though I assume this is also Lore.”
“Yes.”
“What…what can I call you?” Thorn asked.
“Brand,” the man said. “Lieutenant Brand.”
“Well then, Lieutenant Brand, I have come approximately five hundred years into the future of Lore to avoid the wards put on our sun against us, the afflicted.”
“The what?”
“Ah, good, they don’t exist any more. Well…look, I have to tell someone, even in this messed up world where magic is persecuted—I mean, what is with that?”
“Jaania happened, that’s what.” Brand sounded regretful.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jaania is, but it must be horrid. Magic is wonderful. In my time, I was just normal, you know? Just an apprentice, just studying, just like everyone else. Then one day, this man came into my home, froze my master in a block of ice and shattered him into oblivion. Said he wanted to talk to me; said he was me from my future; said he was going to give me a gift. Then he bit me.”
Thorn reached up his swollen hand to tug his collar down a bit. Two bite marks, faded from age, were shown clearly on his neck.
Brand sucked in a breath. “You’re a vamp,” he whispered. He looked like he was going to grab a sword and lop the boy’s head off immediately.
“No,” the boy shook his head quickly. “I’m afflicted, that’s all. The sun was like poison to my skin, but it didn’t burn me. There were wards put up against us—we’re Afflicted. I couldn’t go out at day. I had to stay inside, and build wards like my master used to, to protect myself from the wards he put in place, or that were already up against us, I don’t know—so that when I needed to get food and water, I could without writhing on the ground. When I finally went out, I found that everyone had been bitten; everyone had been afflicted. I gathered everyone; we went underground with all our wards and magic around us. Then we formulated a plan to escape, but the man came after us. He was the one that had cornered and bit everyone (though no one said that he had told them he was them, nor said that he was giving them a gift, so I assume I am special in some degree), and now he wanted to eat us—at least I think he wanted to eat us. Maybe just suck us dry, make us completely like him. Make us wraiths—not vampires, vampires are different—like him. So we built up a teleport. All of us, using all our magical ability, and we almost made it work. We had to go some place safe, some place that the sun would not harm us. We knew no ward would last centuries, and neither would he. It started up, the homemade generators buzzing with all our energy, and then he attacked. I was the only one that got through it before he sliced up the generator. So here I am.”
He spread his arms to prove his point. “Now, take me to your Duke, would you? It seems like he knows something about the generator and the man, or else why would he be here, in the middle of nowhere? I need to ask him about the man.” His eyes were ablaze with fury, and his entire frame straightened throughout the telling. What little life he had left seemed to have returned to him.
Brand looked at Thorn and sighed. The story rang true, and he would get no more out of him. He was right; the Duke probably knew something, though he probably wouldn’t be too kind on the boy since he usually had a strong stance against magic users.
“Alright,” he sighed. “Follow me.”
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