Sex Wizards - Mastery Ch. 08

"Fucking hell, what happened?" I can't keep the awe from my voice. It's hard to reconcile the grandmaster I know with his past, but as he talks, more of an accent starts to emerge. It gets a little easier to believe with every word.

"What you'd expect to happen when a group of trained evokers go up against a bandit gang armed with nothing but stolen weapons and armor. Vian had put me in charge that day, and I still wonder if he knew what was coming. It would have been just like him," he says with no small amount of bitterness. "The fight was over in less than a minute. They did it without killing a single one of us, though it is how I got this scar." He points to the big one on his chest that I had traced the last time we were down here.

"We were clapped in irons and brought down the mountain," Arlon says. "Faunette patched me up, but she later told me she spotted me as non-bloodline almost immediately. When time came for our sentencing from the constable, she negotiated a deal. While the others were sent to a granite quarry for their sentence, I would work the magiline mine for the Crux. So every day for a full year, I went down those stairs to mine and shape focuses."

"Gods, that sounds back breaking," I mutter.

"That was the constable's hope," Arlon says. "It's a miracle I still enjoy doing it, really. The granite quarries are far worse, though - the reason that the sentence was only a year is because most don't survive it, whether it be from an accident or someone else killing you for your dinner." He says it with no small amount of bitterness, and I can't help but wonder what happened to the people who were caught with him.

"But since I was working the magiline mine, I was spared that. Faunette made sure to show me all that magic could do, and no matter how constrained I was, I couldn't help but see glimpses of how it was made. Yet during that entire year, she didn't tell me I had magic in my blood. I was going mad wondering why she had gone out of her way to change my sentence."

He has a fond smile on his face, his expression far away. "Then, on the very last night of my indenture, she told me," he says. "It felt like my entire world had dropped out from under me. For an entire year she could have used me for casting, but she recognized that because I was indentured here, I wasn't able to give consent - not truly. If she had used me for casting, she would have been no better than Vian, who used me for years while he held the chains I was too blind to see," he says. "Instead, she waited, and showed me all that magic was capable of before telling me that I could do it." He gives a small huff of a laugh. "She all but guaranteed that I would join the Crux the moment she intervened on my behalf."

"Where is she now?" I wonder.

Arlon's smile turns sad, his eyes going glassy. "She found Quietus fifteen years ago," he says. "A cancer that even magic couldn't heal. I never repaid her for all she did for me, but even so, she gave me one last gift by naming me grandmaster of the Crux."

I swallow and slide beside him again. "I'm sorry," I say. I recognize that pain and know there's nothing for it. That hole exists and no words can fill it.

Arlon tightens his grip around my shoulders. "Death is just the last step of life," he says through a sigh. "Maybe Quietus will be kind. Maybe when I've taken my last breath, they'll allow me to see her again."