Metal Mage

by Eric Vall

  “Rightttt,” I drawled. “You sound like you recited that from a book.”

  The half-elf woman blushed. “Well, that’s what it is,” she shot back defensively.

  I held up my hands as I laughed. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” I assured her. “I just meant that description is a little vague. Who makes up this order? What do you do, specifically?”

  Aurora pursed her lips in contemplation. They were still stained purple with berry juice, and I had the crazy urge to lean forward and kiss them. I was drawn out of my lustful thoughts as she exhaled sharply.

  “If I were to put it simply,” she said, “I would say that the order is composed of mages and our duty is to aid the king in keeping Illaria safe. Does that suffice?”

  “Almost,” I replied with a smile. “So, if I were to make an educated guess, I’d say a mage is someone with magical powers, correct?”

  Aurora nodded at my question, but her emerald eyes looked puzzled.

  “Okay then,” I grinned, “but then why you were able to shoot fire while I could only shift some dirt around?”

  For a moment, the half-elf maiden was completely silent. Her entire face was bewildered.

  “It is because we are of different elements,” she explained slowly. She looked at me like she had never seen someone like me before. To be fair, she hadn’t.

  “Different elements?” I asked

  Aurora then frowned sharply and pointed to my hand. “You have the mark of a magus,” she argued. “How can you not know these things?”

  I looked down at the back of my hand again and marveled at the strange lines there. They had faded back into my skin after the hole had collapsed on the drake. Now, they were dark brown in color, almost like a henna tattoo. I brought my hand closer to my face to examine the pattern again. It was still an upside-down triangle with a horizontal line, but up close I noticed an entirely new line that I had missed before.

  This one was different from the rest. Unlike the others, this line was silver and was barely discernible. From certain angles, I couldn’t see it at all, like a mirage on my skin. It ran underneath the other lines and cut diagonally across the entire triangle. On one end, it looked pointed, like an arrow and, on the other, it looked like the hilt of a sword.

  “You said that before,” I remarked to the half-elf woman as I looked up and met her eyes. “But I don’t know what this is.”

  Aurora’s porcelain brow furrowed as her frown deepened.

  “How can you be a fully grown mage and not know what you are?” she asked incredulously.

  Somehow, I thought telling her that it was because a goddess had dropped me on this world less than an hour ago wouldn’t go over well. So, instead, I racked my brain for a response and plastered on my most charming, convincing smile.

  “The kingdom I’m from had very little magic,” I replied, “and the magic we did have was nothing like this.” I gestured vaguely to the pile of rocks beside us. “Before today, I didn’t even know I could do that. No one told me.”

  That part at least was true. Nemris had said this world was magical, but she never mentioned me actually getting any powers. I was even more confused than Aurora.

  “You’ve never manifested your abilities before?” she gasped.

  I shook my head negatively in response.

  A shocked smile tugged at the corner of Aurora’s mouth as she shook her head in response to my revelation. “You truly are a novice,” she said in disbelief. “I am surprised you were able to use your powers so efficiently against the drake.”

  “I’m a fast learner,” I countered with a grin. I don’t know if it was the fading adrenaline, the magical berries, or just the fact of my current situation, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this alive. I was like a giddy child. I wanted to know anything and everything about this glorious world that I had been sent to.

  “We’ll see,” the half-elf maiden teased, but then she sighed and slid fluidly to her feet.

  I scrambled to follow her and held my arms out to catch her if she wavered again, but I didn’t need to. Despite the blood loss, the half-elf maiden arched her back to stretch as if she had awoken refreshed from a nap, and I tried not to ogle as her breasts strained deliciously against her white dress.

  “However, if you insist I continue speaking,” she sighed as she dropped her uninjured arm from over her head, “may we at least return to my horse? The sun will set soon, and I would like to be behind Serin’s walls before it is dark.”

  “Of course,” I responded quickly. I glanced around the clearing we stood in and noticed it had become slightly dimmer as we had talked. The light that filtered through the canopy of leaves was more golden now, the color of late afternoon.

  “Where’s your horse?” I asked as I looked back to the blue-haired woman. She wasn’t on one when she bolted out of the woods with the drake hot on her heels.

  Aurora jerked her chin back in the direction she came from. “I left her about a kilometer and a half from here,” she replied. “Before I truly started stalking the drake.”

  “You stalked the drake yourself?” I asked incredulously. “Alone and on foot?” I couldn’t mask how impressed my voice sounded, and the half-elf maiden flushed faintly at the question.

  “It was not so hard,” she responded modestly, and her green eyes trained to watch ahead of her as she began to walk. “It leaves a very distinct trail behind, easy enough to follow. I would have been quicker on Nerfina’s back, but I worried she might get injured when the drake and I exchanged blows, so I hid her in a small grove of trees.”

  “Still sounds totally badass,” I said.

  “Badass?” She glanced sideways at me. “When I make long travels, I might take a donkey or mule with me, but since I am close enough to the city for such a pack animal to not be needed. I most certainly would not take one who misbehaved.”

  “Ohh,” I chuckled. “It’s just a phrase my people use that means you are strong and talented.”

  “You compliment me again?” she asked as she raised a blue eyebrow.

  “Of course,” I chuckled and shrugged.

  “You are an odd one, Mason Flynt,” she replied, but I did see her cheeks warm a bit.

  While we were talking, we had crossed the entire meadow and entered the dense forest. The trees were taller here, and less light trickled down to the leaf-strewn ground. The trunks also seemed closer together, and there was no path save the one the drake had made as it crashed through the underbrush. Aurora had been right. It did leave a very distinct trail.

  “So,” I said as we followed the path back. “Can you tell me more about these elements you were talking about?”

  “You are very inquisitive,” Aurora said. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, and I could tell she was trying not to smile.

  “Wouldn’t you be if you found yourself in a new kingdom with new found abilities?” I countered.

  “Fair point,” she replied with a shrug.

  She then took a deep breath, and the air charged with magic for a moment before a bright red flamed sparked into existence on the blue-haired woman’s finger.

  “The elements I referred to,” she explained as we walked, “are the natural elements of the world. There are six of them. They are the source of our powers.”

  In a straight line, she sketched out four images in flame, and they floated before us in the air. With the same slender finger, she pointed to the first symbol. It was an empty triangle, exactly the same as the one on the back of her hand.

  “Fire,” she recited and then moved on to the next one. “Earth.”

  This symbol matched the one on the back of my own hand. Mostly. The one she drew didn’t have the diagonal arrow through it, but I didn’t comment as she continued down the line.

  “Air,” she said as she pointed to the opposite of my symbol: an upright triangle with a horizontal line through its topmost point. Her finger then slid to the last emblem which was a plain, upside-dow
n triangle, the exact mirror of the one below her knuckles. “And Water.”

  “These are the alchemic signs for each of the elements,” Aurora went on as she waved her hand and the fiery emblems began to circle each other. “When a magus child is born, the symbol for whatever element they have an affinity for will manifest on the backs of their hands. You, for example, have the earth emblem, so you are a Terra Mage. I, on the other hand, am an Ignis Mage. Those with an affinity for Air are Aer Mages, and those who tend toward water are called Flumen Mages.”

  I absorbed all this information like a sponge. Then, I did a little math.

  “Wait,” I said with a frown. “Fire, Earth, Air, Water. That’s only four elements. You said there were six.”

  Aurora smiled. “It seems you are quick of wit,” she jested. She waved her hand and wiped the four fire symbols away. In their place, she drew two more. “The last two elements and their mages are slightly different.”

  “How so?” I asked as I studied the symbols closely. I had to be careful to watch where I was walking, but the displays in the flames was mesmerizing.

  “These are the elements of Light and Dark,” the half-elf maiden explained as she pointed to first an empty circle, a hollow ring, and then one that was filled in with fire. “Unlike the other mages, Lux and Tenebrae magus children are not born with marks on their hands.”

  “Then how can you tell what they are?” I questioned with a furrowed brow.

  Aurora lifted her hand and set her fingertip below her right eye as the last two symbols winked out of existence. “They are all born with different colored eyes,” she responded. “Lux Mages will have one solid white eye. Tenebrae Mages will have a solid black one.”

  “Why are they different?” I asked.

  The half-elf shrugged. “Only the gods know,” she replied. “As novices, Lux and Tenebrae tend to be the weakest mages, but this is because their elements are so temperamental. But those who can harness their powers and become masters are some of the strongest and most formidable mages in all of Illaria. The leader of the Order, Abrus, is a Lux Mage himself.”

  I took a moment to digest all this information. It was quite a lot.

  “Alright, so there are six elements and six types of mages. Does every mage answer to the Order?” I asked as my mind churned through a thousand half-formed thoughts and questions. I stepped over a large root as I tried to make sense of the chaos in my head. The way Aurora spoke of it, the Order sounded almost like it would be the religious as well as the militaristic branch of Illaria.

  A shadow flickered over the half-elf maiden’s face, but it was gone in a blink. “The Order is first and foremost an institution of learning,” she replied. Her voice had taken on a strange edge. “Their sworn duty is and has always been to teach and train mages from every corner of Illaria. However, the Order is not compulsory. If a magus child does not wish to come to us, we will not force them, yet nowhere else in the kingdom does there exist a more extensive wealth of knowledge on magic.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “I thought you said the Order’s job was to be the right hand of the realm,” I remarked. “How does that work if it’s just a school for mages?”

  Aurora frowned in frustration. “The Order isn’t ‘just’ anything,” she responded. She sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her thin nose. “It is both a place of learning and the right hand of the realm simultaneously. Long ago, when the kingdoms were forming, the new king of Illaria approached the strongest mage he had heard tales of. At this point in time, mages were scattered throughout the land. They were not centralized and, if a magus child was born to non-magical parents, the child usually went without instruction or was hunted down and killed by ignorant individuals.”

  Righteous anger burned in the depths of Aurora’s dark green eyes, and her uninjured hand had curled into a fist as she went on.

  “The king approached this powerful mage and offered him a deal: if the mage agreed to help the king protect his new country, all magus children would be welcomed in Illaria,” Aurora recounted. “More than that, the king granted the mage permission to school and train these children. The mage, having seen the deaths of too many of his people, agreed. And so, the Order was established. For generations, the Order has taught magus children how to wield their powers and worked alongside the king to keep Illaria safe. And, for generations, we have been. Until now.”

  Her voice had taken on a steel edge again, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “What do you mean?” I asked as I surreptitiously glanced over my shoulder for any more incoming drakes.

  Her narrow shoulders lifted as she inhaled deeply and then exhaled a sigh. “The state of things in Illaria is… precarious at the moment. There has been a rash of violent deaths in the outlying towns and villages. Some feared that it was the beginnings of a plot against the king. As one of the Order’s strongest Ignis Mages, and a trained Defender of the realm, I was tasked with investigating the deaths and putting a stop to them, which is what I was doing when you so rudely interrupted.”

  I started to feel offended, but then I looked down at the half-elf maiden and found her grinning. “I jest,” she reassured me as she reached out and brushed my elbow with her uninjured hand. My skin tingled beneath her touch, and I found I had to force myself to focus on her next words. “In truth, I am grateful I encountered you. The drake was stronger than I anticipated. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t assisted me.”

  “Happy to be of help,” I responded with a smile. I might have puffed out my chest a little, too. “But at least this means you completed your mission, right? I bet the king will be happy to know it was only a rampaging lizard causing the deaths and not a nefarious plot.”

  Aurora’s smile slipped into a frown. “Perhaps,” she said at length, but I could tell from her furrowed brow something was bothering her.

  “What is it?” I asked as we skirted several fallen branches the drake had snapped in its murderous chase.

  “It’s nothing,” she tried to say, but at my raised eyebrow she sighed again. “It is just that drakes are native to the northern mountains. They make their homes in the caves there. I simply can’t fathom why one was rampaging this far south.”

  “Maybe food’s become scarce in the mountains?” I offered. “It could have just been looking for a decent meal.”

  “That sounds logical,” Aurora murmured, but her eyes still seemed troubled and far away. We spent the next few moments in contemplative silence.

  “So, seeing as I’m a novice and everything,” I finally said in an effort to change the subject and bring a smile back to the half-elf maiden’s face, “could you teach me how to be a proper mage?”

  Aurora blinked and looked up at me in bewilderment. Then, she began to laugh, and the sound made something deep and primal in my chest preen.

  “No, I cannot teach you,” she replied as she continued to chuckle.

  “Why not?” I frowned.

  “Because, as you’ve learned, we are of different elements,” she explained as she held up the back of her hand. The red lines stood out enticingly against her pale skin.

  “Well, would the Order teach me then?” I countered.

  The blue-haired maiden nodded. “It is their sworn duty to instruct any mage that wishes to be taught,” she repeated. “If you wish to learn, they will teach you.”

  A thrill of excitement raced up my spine as I thought of the power that rattled through my bones as the earth collapsed on that drake.

  “I very much wish to learn,” I responded eagerly. “Will you take me to them? The Order, I mean.”

  Aurora glanced at me out of the corner of her eye with a wry smile. “Why do you think I’m having you accompany me to my horse?”

  “Because you like me and are charmed by my smile?” I flashed my teeth to prove my point.

  The half-elf laughed again. “I am rather fond of people who save my life, this is true,” she remarked.

>   “Does that happen regularly?” I asked.

  Aurora considered me carefully. “It never has before,” she replied. Her eyes dipped from my head to my toes critically before she faced forward again and ducked beneath a low-hanging branch.

  That primal thing in my chest preened again, and I walked a little taller.

  Before long, the forest began to thin again, and the light that fell through the canopy was now turning orange. As we had walked, I had noted a few strange flowers and odd-looking fauna, but nothing as surprising, and thankfully nothing as dangerous, as the drake. At one point, I paused to watch an amethyst butterfly glide past, its wings as bright as gems.

  “Keep up,” Aurora called from several feet ahead of me. “We’re almost there.”

  I jogged to catch up with the blue-haired maiden, but she had quickened her pace as we rounded a bend in the path. Just as I had reached her side again, Aurora left the trail the drake had made completely.

  “This way,” she called over her shoulder before she strode straight into the emerald green underbrush. I followed close behind her, and soon, we entered a grove of white birch trees. About fifty feet away from where we stood, a beautiful, dappled gray horse stood grazing beneath the trees, tethered to one of their trunks by its reins.

  “Nerfrina,” Aurora called affectionately as we approached. The horse lifted its head with grass hanging from its jaws and nickered as it threw back its head.

  “I missed you, too,” the blue-haired maiden chuckled. She reached out and lovingly ran her uninjured hand down her mount’s forehead. “But the deed is done now. And look, I’ve brought a friend back with me.”

  She turned and held her hand out to me. Without hesitation I took it, and she guided my fingers to stroke the horse’s muzzle.

  “This is Mason Flynt,” she went on as she introduced us. She then turned her emerald green eyes on me. “Mason, this is Nerfrina.”

  The horse’s hide was supple beneath my fingertips, and she nudged her head forward into my palm. I laughed and scratched behind her jaw.