Spellscribed
Provenance
By Kristopher Cruz
With special thanks to James, Lacey, Larry, Gina, Alec, and
Everyone else who helped me make this possible. You all really did
make the difference when things were getting tough for me.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Prologue
The fates are an indecipherable sort. Their plots and plays cross the destinies of all men, human or otherwise. To them, time and life are but threads they weave together. They hold the strings; they know when certain ones weave, and when all strings are cut.
Of those strings, there are the ones who are considered heroes. They are beacons of light to those who live in darkness. Where their threads travel, others weave around them to form powerful cords which alter the flow of the destinies of hundreds if not thousands of lives. These great heroes are whispered about even in the years before their coming, to those whose minds and hearts are closely attuned to fate…
The light of the moon weakly played across the elder man's face as he watched the newborn child quietly shift within the blanket he held in his arms. The night sky was overcast, with dark clouds murky and obscuring the stars. The moon had only the littlest sliver of space to shed her light. Most of that light was on the infant he held, and for all purposes he supposed that some obscurity would be good. If an accidental observer saw the exchange, he would not be able to do his job effectively.
He smiled as the child cooed softly and chuckled as the babe grabbed at the stubble of his closely shaven chin. Looking up, he spoke to the one he had brought the child to.
"This child is yours now." he stated, adjusting his arms so the child would be comfortable. "Valeria cannot care for him."
The younger of the two held up a hand, his dark hair and eyes almost black in the deep night. “So I was informed. Is she really gone?” he asked.
The elder passed the child to the younger, nodding in the dark. “Yes, though it took nearly all three of our lives to end it. We did not foresee this result in the slightest when we assisted her with the ritual.” He replied, shaking his head. “I only narrowly survived. Even so, I fear the death she brought against us was only forestalled. Valeria is… was one of the best of the Holy Circle. Her death and revival have shaken the foundations of the order.”
The younger looked at the child in the dark. He was beautiful, with large and inquisitive emerald eyes that were pools of luminous green in the dark. Fair skinned, the babe would have a flawless appearance if it weren’t for the effects his mother had left him with. A small curl of stark silver hair stuck to the newborn’s forehead. The worst of it was thousands of miniscule red lines that covered his tiny fragile body. They twisted and whorled across his fair skin, following arcane patterns of spell work. They flowed over his meridians, using them as a guide for the powers worked into the babe.
It must have been horribly painful for the child, yet the babe merely looked up at the younger man and cooed. Reaching up with a chubby arm to tug at his clothes, he seemed no more inconvenienced by the magic woven upon him as he was the night air or the sound of their talking. As he held the child into the moonlight, he glanced up at Valeria’s assistant.
“What about these marks?” he asked.
The elder frowned. “The hair will always be such a color, nothing that can be done to change it save for dyes. The marks were gleaming gold when he was born, and have been fading since that moment. I believe that they should either fade away entirely or at least become less obvious as time passes.”
The younger tilted his head. “What are they?”
The older man shrugged. “I am not sure. Wizard Markus performed the ritual to tattoo them upon the babe, but he is dead now and hadn’t said what its purpose was.” He scratched his chin. “Though Valeria did things in threes. Three reasons, three tasks, three assistants, three investitures of power. Whatever it was, she was more than certain it would work.”
The young man nodded, and looked down as the baby started to cry. “He’s hungry.” He observed.
The elder man shrugged. “Then make sure he’s fed. He is your son now.”
The young man sighed as he turned to the house he dwelled in, the fire inside framing the front door in light. “It’s very strange, being the father of a child born to my great-great aunt.”
The elder turned away. “Wizards live long lives, my friend. I am going to keep an eye on the child, to observe his growth and lend a hand where needed. He does not need to know my involvement, understand?”
The man only waved a hand over his shoulder, and the older man vanished with a twist of his wrist and a carefully enunciated word. Looking down, he saw that the child had quieted, and was looking about curiously with brilliant emerald green eyes that seemed illuminated despite the darkness of the cloudy night. “Well, Endrance.” The man began. “Let us see about getting you fed…”
Chapter 01
The young man sat quietly in one of the dark chambers of his master’s keep. The cold radiated up his limbs from deep within the stone beneath his soft-shoed feet. It made him at least mildly uncomfortable and cold.
Endrance had stopped growing after a while, remaining five foot six for the last year or so. His face was just angular enough to be attractive, with soft edges and smooth cheeks. His eyes and ears bore very faint traces of elven heritage, an almost unnoticeable slant to his eyes and point to his ear tips. Being short, he was also very slender, and had slimly developed muscles, perhaps another throwback to there being an elf in his ancestry somewhere along the line a few generations ago. The cumulating effect being that he looked either a very beautiful man or a handsome woman.
He wore cotton pants and shirt, simple and unembellished. They were covered over with a simple, sturdy cut, dark gray robe that had a white sash around his waist.
The sash was cotton, just as the robe, but it was bleached white and the end of the sash dangled from the looped knot on his side. It had three golden-threaded Sigils on the end, each vaguely circular in nature. They represented the stages of his growth as a user of magic, just as much as the rest of his ensemble did. The plain gray robes indicated he was an apprentice, while the white sash showed he had mastered the basics all apprentices had been taught. The three Sigils were his degree of mastery. All formal sashes were cut so there was room for twelve Sigils once they were tied. The young man knew that each degree of mastery was orders of magnitude harder to obtain than the last.
It had taken him nearly nine years of dedicated training and study to get to the third. Learning since his early childhood, he had learned prodigiously, yet still he had so very much that he didn’t know. Like any craft, or art, there was always room for improvement.
He looked at
his master, who sat upon a simple wooden chair across the room from him. His face was illuminated by a single tallow candle that the master kept in a candelabrum on the small table next to him. Its light flickered and jumped, casting eerie shadows across his countenance. He rested with his head propped up on one hand and his elbow on the armrest of his chair.
His master wore robes of dark blue silk and silver thread. His sash was black silk, and upon it eleven gold Sigils gleamed in the faint candlelight. His aged visage still held some of the sharp edges he bore in youth, some of which only had been made sharper by age, others softened over the years. His jaw line and nose were evidence he had been at one point very handsome. His wrinkled, weather beaten skin composed an aged and experienced inflection upon his person. Clear, sharp, calculating brown eyes peered out from beneath bushy gray-white brows. He seemed surprisingly alert for a man in his eighth century. Almost an afterthought to his appearance, his bone white hair was cut very short, almost like he had shaved it once long ago and only recently had grown out.
Master Kaelob was a High Magus, one of perhaps a half dozen in the empire of Ironsoul. Endrance knew he had been lucky; High Magus Kaelob had once been apprentice to the legendary mage Valeria and through the years leading up to the mage’s death had proven himself time and again for Ironsoul as an independent Wizard. Her mysterious death triggered him into going into retirement, though he would not say specifically why he did so. Being picked as an apprentice by someone of his stature was a great boon and a sign of status amidst the magical community.
Today he stood before his master in an official capacity. Normally during training and study days they dispensed with formal dress and garb and merely dressed comfortably; after all no ceremonies had to be observed on a day to day basis. Today was important however, and all rites were observed.
The elder magus coughed gently, clearing his throat, though no one was present to hear the conversation other than his apprentice. He fixed his eyes on the young man, who tensed up slightly as he spoke.
“Apprentice Endrance. You have proven your breadth of knowledge and your studious acquisition of the art.” He began, his voice soft but carrying throughout the room. “Your voice has been trained to carry the proper words to the great magic, and you have been instilled with the techniques to maintain that voice.” The corner of his mouth twitched, as he subtly subdued a smile. “You have shown mastery of the sensory arts, as well as mastery over moving your spiritual force and shaping it into existence.” He finished. “Would you say that this is true?”
The young apprentice nodded. “Yes, master.” He replied, his soft voice seemed to be swallowed up by the stone instead of amplified by it. “I have accomplished such things.”
The master’s chin dipped towards his chest momentarily. “You have met all the requirements for the holy Circle of Magi to sever your title of apprentice, and bequeath the title of practitioner, except for one.” He replied. He sounded like he had repeated this statement more than once before, and was drawing more from rote than active memory.
He held a finger out, pointing to the young apprentice. “You must prove your cumulative experience in a trial. This will challenge you in all aspects of your mastery, and know that you will be in very real danger.” He let the last word drag out ominously. “Do you understand the risks?”
Endrance nodded solemnly, though inside he was trying very hard not to laugh. He had spent hours studying the customary speeches he would have to listen to in order to increase in status with the Circle of Magi, so he knew that Kaelob was reciting the ceremony word for word. He was also making it seem overly dramatic, with the dark room and the ominous tones. Even after all this time, the master had a sense of humor that bordered on insanity. It was to be expected as an apprentice of the mad mage.
“I understand, master.” Endrance responded, “I am ready to begin the trial when everything is ready.”
The High Magus popped to his feet in a smooth lurch, striding up to his apprentice and tugging his sleeve as he blew past. “Excellent!” he exclaimed, completely out of protocol or character for the rite. “This way then, m’boy! Had the spot set up for a week now!”
The apprentice spun about and tried to keep up with his master. Kaelob was tall and scrawny, with long legs and an improbably long stride for Endrance to keep up with, being a whole foot shorter than the man. He hurried along behind the High Magus, whose sweeping steps took the two of them to the keep courtyard.
Endrance looked about as they came to a stop. He had crossed through the courtyard every morning for nearly ten years, and it didn’t look any different than it usually did. Heavy stone laid in even squares. Hard reinforced walls stood resolutely against the open sky above them. Banners drifted in the breeze from posts Kaelob put up long before. The blue banners had crudely sewn images of a face sticking its tongue out in white thread. It looked absolutely awful, but Kaelob never changed them.
“I don’t understand, master.” He said, scratching his head. “It looks like it always has.”
He turned to look at his master as the old man made the deliberate action of dropping a small glass sphere upon the stones. The delicate object cracked against the flagstones and shattered into tiny pieces, and from within the sphere came a great rush of wind, whipping around the two magi. Endrance shielded his face and closed his eyes against the wind, which had the bitter cut of winter, even though the last snows had fallen months before.
The winds died down, yet it got even colder. Crisp cold air pervaded his robes, and he looked around in surprise. They were not where they had stood moments before. Instead they found themselves upon a small stone rise near the top of the local mountain. Endrance rubbed his arms and tried to keep warm as he looked around. He thought he could see his home village in the distance, and Kaelob’s keep was protruding from the forests nearby that.
High Magus Kaelob clapped his hands and gestured in the other direction. There was a small stone tower jutting up from the top of the mountain. The Watchstone Tower, Endrance realized. He’d never seen it up close, and it didn’t look as impressive as he thought it would be.
The stone tower was barely forty feet wide at the base and thirty where the top was broken off maybe sixty feet up. The grand stones of the tower were covered in layers of snow and ice, crusted around its outside and through its window's bolt holes. It stood at the tip of the mountain, a task of construction beyond anyone Endrance could think of. The only way to reach the tower on foot was through the narrow climb to the front arch. Steep drops encircled it on all the other sides of the circle, and a fall from the top would be certain death.
It looked like someone had reached up with a giant hand and swatted the top of the tower down long ago. Several of the large stones that made its walls lay scattered around the area, most covered in snow and frost, others half buried in the dirt. It was broken at what Endrance could guess was the halfway point. Almost level with the end of the tower was one of the floors, almost swept clean by how close the walls had come down around it. It made for a great platform to get an unimpeded view of the surroundings.
Kaelob pointed to the top of the tower. “There.” He exclaimed, seeming unimpressed or impacted by the cold. “The top of the tower is where our test will begin. There you will demonstrate your resolve, concentration, and ability to survive in the world.”
With that, the old man rotated his right hand around at the wrist, his fingers clenched in an unnatural pattern while he jabbed at the top of the tower with the other hand’s index finger. “Ambularus.” he muttered, leaning forward and taking a single step.
His foot landed on the top of the tower, and the rest of him followed immediately after. Endrance barely felt a trickle of power coming from his master. It was a quick and effective teleportation spell with marginal draw on the weave of magic. Endrance shook his head as he trotted over to the tower’s entrance. His master had proven his expertise with even his most simple of spells.
He didn’t think that
he could pull off a spell similar to that. Even so, he would have to take much longer to cast and drain far more energy than he felt given off from the magic his master wove.
As he got closer he slowed to a walk, eventually needing to carefully pick his way over the rough terrain. He saw blocks of stone, broken shards of the tower, imbedded in the ground. He gauged one block to weigh easily a few hundred pounds, so them being half buried on impact was to be expected. As he got close to the tower he started seeing the wreckage of the tower’s armaments.
The cold started to wear at him, and he shivered. The robes were an extra layer of heat trapping cloth, but the wind was cutting right through it. As a result he was getting cold very quickly, and could do little to help himself. He would have to pass this test quickly and get back where it was warm. He smirked as he considered using the flame spell he had seen his master using so many times, but decided against it. He wanted to save that for when it was needed. He wasn’t supposed to have learned the workings of the spell from just watching master Kaelob, but he had managed to figure it out.
He passed by a ballista bolt, snapped in half and partially buried in earth and snow. The head of the weapon was made of three staggered rows of sharp hooked blades, and the back end of the bolt had the rusted remains of a chain attached to it. What could they have been using those for? He wondered, stepping into the building proper.
The entrance to the tower was an empty stone arch, the wood and iron door had succumbed to the weather and old age centuries ago. Inside had been picked clean by scavengers and animals, and the continuous winds and cold air made the place a stone icebox, the only sound the whistling of the wind through its drafty bones. It was only marginally warmer inside, as the wind was cut down greatly by the stone walls. He still wouldn’t want to stay a night here without heavy repairs and a large fire. And bedding, blankets too. Perhaps with a departure of his sanity to top it all off.
Along the back wall a set of stone steps curled along the wall leading up. It was likely only one more floor between the floor and the top of the tower. He sighed, rubbing his hands together as he moved up the tower.
Spellscribed: Provenance Page 1