The trip back was uneventful, and an uncomfortable silence hung between the pair. Era occasionally glanced down at Gabriel out of the corner of his eye, guilt gnawing at him for upsetting his compatriot. I hope he doesn’t hate me, Era thought, I certainly didn’t mean to upset him. A small part of him wondered if, on some level, Gabriel was envious of him. He wasn’t entirely unable to dismiss the notion.
Gathering his courage, he finally asked what was on his mind. “Gabriel, are you… mad at me?”
Gabriel looked up at his tall companion and sighed. “No, I’m not mad at you. I’m just… well, magic is not something you do accidentally, but you did it. I’m trying to figure out what that implies.”
Era nodded. “I see… um, I’m glad you’re not angry at me, though.”
“Do you have any idea how long you were with Death?” Gabriel inquired. “Any perception of time? Did you age?”
“Not really,” he said after some thought. “I know I didn’t age, but I feel like I was there for a very long time.”
“Huh.” Gabriel stroked his beard in thought. “I’m willing to bet that you got amnesia at some point. There’s obviously a lot you don’t know about yourself, and if your sigil is any indication, you’ve got quite a history about you.”
Era suddenly grew worried. “If I really did lose my memories… Gabriel, what if I stole that? What if the sigil isn’t mine?”
He chuckled. “First off, you’re too uncoordinated to be a thief. Second,” he said, his tone growing serious, “it recognized you. Magic has a degree of sentience to it. It’s almost alive. When it’s sealed into an object, that sentience is even more noticeable.”
“It… recognized me?”
“Yeah, I asked it if you were its creator. And you were, apparently.”
“It… talks?”
“More like I got a feeling from it. Magic speaks through emotion.”
“I see. That explains a lot.”
Gabriel looked over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Earlier, when I floated… I felt incredibly happy.” He smiled at the memory. “I felt overwhelmed with excitement at having discovered magic.”
Gabriel blinked and turned away as a nostalgic smile crossed his face. “Reminds me of the first time I used magic,” he said quietly.
Era’s face lit up. “Please tell me about it. If you don’t mind, I mean.”
“Not a bit.” He rolled his shoulders and continued. “I was really young, like three or four. I know I said you can’t do magic by accident, but it’s different when you’re a kid. Kids have such powerful imaginations that some of them can do magic naturally. You had to ask the magic to come to you, right?”
Era nodded.
“And there’s another factor: kids can’t do anything by themselves. They ask for help from people more powerful than they are. Magic doesn’t come to those who don’t ask for it, but it doesn’t have sense. It comes to anyone who calls, even if that person has no fucking clue what they’re getting into.
“So I asked for help one night to chase away the monsters in the dark. And before I knew it, the room was so bright I couldn’t even open my eyes. It hurt to look at it, it was that bright. I started crying, Mom and Dad walked in, cue parental freak-out.
“Mom and Dad thought they could just teach me to control the magic themselves, but my grandparents would have none of that,” he smirked. “They were overjoyed at the thought of having a sorcerer in the family, so they convinced my parents to enroll me in a mage academy – at their expense, since Mom and Dad could never afford it.”
“Was it expensive?”
“Hell yes. It’s incredibly expensive, but it was a drop in the bucket to my grandparents, especially considering the boasting rights they’d get from having a wizard for a grandson. So I got enrolled there, I dropped out at sixteen, and the rest is history.”
“I see.” Era was quiet for a moment. “How did your grandparents react to that?”
“Well, Grandpa was dead, but I’d imagine he’d be pretty pissed,” he joked, “and Grandma… well, she disowned me, just like she did her daughter after Mom married a ‘peasant.’ I’d seen that coming a mile away, though. No great loss there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Era said quietly.
“Don’t be. I wasn’t upset about it then, and I’m certainly not now,” he replied. “Besides, Mom and Dad were just happy to see me again, so I had the approval of the only people whose opinions I cared about.”
“They hadn’t seen you for a while, I take it?”
“Mage schools are boarding schools. You live there until you graduate… or leave, in my case. You could travel home for holidays, but I wasn’t wealthy enough to afford the travel costs and I certainly didn’t have time for a job. So I hadn’t seen them outside of the words of a letter for years and years.”
“Wow,” Era said, awestruck. “You must have been so lonely.”
At that Gabriel laughed. “Oh, I had plenty of company,” he quipped, “especially on our nights off.”
“Are you implying something?” Era asked in confusion.
“Yeah, but that’s a story for another night,” he grinned, “probably one I’ll only tell after copious amounts of ale.”
Era had spent the last half-hour trying to cast a spell.
Sweat beaded on his brow as he tried his hardest to focus his attention. A ball of light, he thought, picturing it vividly in his head as the words came to him, right between my palms.
The buzzing of energy was much more subdued this time; he barely felt it and had to scrounge for it. At last, there was a flicker of light between his cupped hands, a flicker that was gone almost as soon as it arrived.
“Darn!” he swore, leaning back and patting his forehead with the sleeve of his robe. Sighing, he got up and walked into the kitchen for a cup of tea.
The front door opened and Gabriel walked in with a basket full of salt-preserved venison. “I’m back,” he called. “Any luck?”
“Barely,” he replied, an exasperated smile on his face. “It just won’t come as easily as it did before.”
“The magic was welcoming you,” Gabriel said as he put the meat away. “Happens to all new practitioners. It was checking you out, getting a feel for you. Trust me when I say that it’ll never be that easy again.”
“That’s… disappointing,” Era replied glumly.
“Hey, if you really want it, you’ll be able to do it.” Gabriel strode over to him, looking him right in the eye. “But listen to me, and never forget this: don’t force it. Trying too hard can be as bad as not trying at all.”
Era looked at him incredulously. “Really?”
“Yeah. If you try to force it, you’ll only get overwhelmed. You’ll only be focusing on your inability to make it work, and then you’ll get trapped in this spiral of self-defeat. You have to just relax, let it come to you.” He turned away, keeping eye contact. “And it will come to you. Just give it time.”
Era beamed at him gratefully and nodded. “Thank you, Gabriel.”
“No problem. Now help me put this away.”
No comments:
Post a Comment