Battle Mage, The Caves of Time

by Donald Wigboldy

  "I only know of her from what I've been told," the wizard replied without admitting anything more. "Even so, I would say that my situation is a little more severe than this friend of yours."

  Marcel looked at the dark haired girl and frowned, an impressive feat since Ylena's charm kept most men smiling at her, Sebastian thought based on every time he had seen her in public since her accident. "Were you affected by magic, young lady?"

  Ylena's eyes betrayed her uncertainty, even to simpler folk like the farmers of his family. Sebastian noted that the diplomacy wizard's ability to hide her feelings had seemed to be less skilled of late like the wilder control of her magic now. It was just another symptom of the change. While the girl had most, if not all, of the woman's lifetime of experiences and memories; he wondered if her body had been turned back to the point that it also affected who she truly was.

  Some wizards had memories that could access every day since they were children. There were people like that who weren't wizards, but the latter were more common. He wondered if that part of her brain might have been compromised.

  Not wanting to lie, Ylena said simply, "We aren't quite sure what I was exposed to, but whatever it was has made me look much younger than I should be."

  Katya spoke up and added, "She's been checked out by enough wizards and it's been a long enough time that there is no reason to worry about her getting worse, but no one's seen a way to reverse it either. Even Sebastian couldn't figure this one out."

  His family looked towards her brother and Sebastian noted, as with his parents, that they seemed a bit surprised by the mention of the mage alongside wizard healers.

  "Why would he know more than they?" Marcel asked sounding the way he looked as his attention flicked from his daughter to his son and back again. He was the most skeptical, which made Sebastian wonder why his father had seemed so much more relatable earlier in the barn. It was the first time that their relationship had felt comfortable and now it was back to this, he thought.

  "Well," Katya began and leaned back slightly as if she relished the fact that she had been asked. Perhaps it was more like the look a spider gave that unfortunate fly, Sebastian thought in amusement. "I had this friend who had..." she seemed to be searching for the right words and he wondered where his little sister was going with this. Could she be referring to...

  Her smile broadened and she asked, "Would you believe that one of my best friends is a dragon?"

  Gasps and the single word spawned questions which came from their mouths in complete shock.

  "Well, when I first met her, Cheleya looked like a pretty, blonde haired girl. I mean she is as pretty as Ylena is, but blonde. The funny thing is that people love her and no one would ever guess that she was a dragon, but she used to only play at being a human girl before an evil wizard put a curse on her!" She was playing it up a bit, her brother thought though she wasn't exactly wrong either. Katya was being overly dramatic, however, making her story grow to encompass more than he had expected her to say.

  Katya went over Cheleya's plight and the many wizards that she had visited to try and reverse this curse as she called it. She mentioned High Wizard Darius, as if his parents had any idea who that was. He was a legend, but outside of wizards' circles in Southwall, the immortal was barely known.

  She told of her friend's need to run from the evil wizard and that he had fooled her people into believing that he was a good person when in fact he was a spy for the Dark One. Playing it up, his family listened enrapt by the apprentice diplomacy wizard's talent for telling a tale.

  "After several months, Cheleya was beginning to believe that she would be human forever, but along comes my brother, the owl of mages, and he takes a single look at her before figuring out a way to fix her."

  "It wasn't quite that easy," the one in question remarked starting to feel uncomfortable with being the focal point of this story. It was a good story, he had to admit, and Sebastian hadn't known every part that she told now.

  "Don't be modest, big brother," Katya replied with a big grin. "You know that no one else could figure it out."

  "It was my research into runes that made it possible," he said with a shake of his head.

  Ashleen placed her hand on his forearm and looked at him sincerely. "She's right. You're being too modest, but..." she let her gaze cross the others at the table until her blue eyes rested on Marcel whose question had prompted the story, "it wasn't just his ability to make or understand runes either. Sebastian is a surprisingly good healer and, combined with his other talents; he discovered a way to pull the stones from Cheleya. Not only that, but he was able to make it so she can turn back and forth like she did with her amulet in the first place."

  When her words ended, no one else spoke for a minute. Katya's storytelling had been enough to leave them all speechless, but Ylena seemed lost in thought. The meal was nearly ended and, when they had finished, everyone picked up their empty plates to bring them to a large sink set under a window bringing in the southern light. Even exposed to the sun as much as possible, during the winter those pipes which brought the water inside could freeze. It was warm enough now that it helped to warm the water before it went into a boiler used to heat the liquid to assist in cleaning.

  They broke up slowly. Ashleen remained with Katya and the other women to wash and put away the dishes. While Marcel seemed to forget about the work that the women were doing, he began directing his boys towards the afternoon's work.

  Ylena caught Sebastian's arm and held him up letting the other men walk away from them. "Sebastian, do you think that you could do something like that medallion magic to help me change back to my normal self?"

  His forehead wrinkled and the mage replied, "Cheleya used a medallion to change her form. Mar'goyn'lya and che'ther move from gargoyle and dragon bodies to human. They don't really change their age, though I suppose that the final form is based off of how they see themselves as a human. It could make them look older or younger because of that, I suppose."

  He looked at the dark haired beauty and said, "I don't really think it could be used to actually change your age in that way, however. Why would you want to by the way? I mean, I understand that you are in your teenage body, but isn't that something most people would want? Your life is likely extended by a couple decades as well, but you sound like you hate it."

  Sighing, Ylena stared at the ground for a moment before answering, "I suppose that there are benefits, but this isn't me, the me I was anyway. You wouldn't want to become a child and have to grow all over again, would you?"

  "I..." he started trying to consider the possibility.

  "If Katya had been struck by that dust, she wouldn't even exist now," the wizard stated gravely. "I watched Ukor disappear from existence in little more than a second. I knew the man a bit. He was a little younger than I was, but he went to White Hall as an apprentice around the same time as I.

  "There's nothing to bury, nothing left of him at all," she finished lamenting the fallen wizard.

  Her eyes looked at him in frustration before the girl complained, "I feel as if I am starting from the beginning again. It's as if everything I worked for was just washed away in a blink!"

  Giving her a moment to dwell in her dismay, Sebastian finally sighed and reminded the wizard, "You are still here. Your memories still remain, don't they? Katya is your apprentice and she remembers what you have taught her. Your past students do as well, I'm sure. Even Ukor's existence isn't just gone.

  "The people that he's touched, like you, remember him. His death might be unusual and oddly clean, but he still died. A person destroyed by a wizard's fireball is just as dead as he is.

  "You're not dead. The people who knew you still do. Yes, there are problems with it, but it isn't as bad as a wizard losing an arm or leg. Your body is whole, more whole in some ways. Scars gained beyond this age of your body are gone too. Your body's clock, even the eggs in your womb have reset.

  "Even if you chose to retire as you could hav
e, you could do that and still start a family for decades more."

  The mage shrugged and finished, "Look on it as a second chance or just continue with your life. It's up to you, Ylena, unless we find a way to reverse the process."

  Her jaw firmed a moment before the woman's eyes turned curious, if still dark.

  "What if I was struck by the dark dust? Wouldn't that age me back again? I could let a single grain touch me and maybe it would wear off before I was thirty-seven again..."

  "Or you could age to fifty or sixty losing time. You wouldn't want to lose part of your life just to try and get back to your exact look and age, would you?"

  It was Ylena's turn to sigh as the girl spun around and stomped a few feet along the wood porch. Turning back towards him, the wizard reminded him, "I'm thirty-seven, Bas! These boys look at me and see a fourteen year old girl. They will never catch up to me, but we will look the same! I'm an adult. Am I supposed to find love with one of them and be able to reconcile it here?" she asked pointing to her head.

  "Were you looking for love before this?" he asked curiously.

  She blinked at him before shyly looking away at the grass beginning to grow beyond the porch. It was spring, a time of new life, like Ylena's, he thought silently.

  "I... didn't have anyone that I was interested in, but it wasn't that I had given up or anything." The girl sighed again and looked at the mage for answers.

  "For now, just try to get a handle on your magic and emotions, if you plan to continue as a diplomacy wizard."

  "Why wouldn't I continue?" she asked looking surprised that he should question her resolve.

  Shrugging and putting his hands out to his sides as if he might be unsure, Sebastian instead answered, "Your control of both isn't the same as it was, but you have a second chance to decide if this is the life that you still want. You could have left the guild and school already, if you wished. That means you could move on to the next stage of your life and choose what you would like to do with more youth and time.

  "What do you want to do?"

  They stood in silence save for another sigh from Ylena. Her eyes narrowed slightly as the girl looked at him in annoyance. "Why do your questions seem more important than mine, mage?"

  Again he shrugged. "We all hit roads where there is more than one path we can take. You can continue on the path you're on as a teacher at White Hall or do something else. I doubt that the wizards' guilds would stop you from leaving or changing positions.

  "You're young enough to consider other possibilities and old enough to have accomplished a sufficient amount to know more about what you want to do. It's up to you what you do with the rest of your life no matter how many years you might have now."

  He waited her out, but with the wizard thinking about what he had said, Sebastian decided that it was time to go find his father and brothers. Doing farmer's work, the mage considered that he could decide which way his life went as well. He had left the corps and worked for the king now.

  Ashleen was his companion, lover and best friend. Should he decide now, like his father had implied, or did he still have time to see a different path again?

  He hadn't regained his youth like Ylena, but there always seemed to be new paths to decide. While he commiserated with the wizard, magic was part of their lives and meant that they had to roll with whatever it brought them if they were to work with it.

  Putting the thoughts behind him for now, the mage soon let hard work cleanse his mind.

  Chapter 18- A Quiet Room

  "I had fun today," Ashleen stated as she moved in front of the wardrobe in the corner.

  His mother had insisted that they stay for supper as well making it later than he might have planned, but they were farmers. The sun was still up, the afternoon on the verge of being finished, when they ate the meal; but Sebastian had been surprisingly famished. He had worked hard all day, yet strangely it had felt like a vacation since it was nothing like his usual days as a battle mage.

  "I'm glad you had fun," he replied and stifled a yawn. It wasn't so much that he was tired, though that was part of it, but more that they had stopped to relax. The food in his stomach still being digested likely didn't help matters any either.

  "I think your mother was starting to like me," the pretty little blonde said letting her dress drop from her shoulders. It would have hit the floor if Ashleen hadn't grasped her upper arms in the process of removing it. As clean as the Alamore's kept the inn, he doubted that there wouldn't have at least been some dust and whatever dirt they had tracked in over the last few days.

  She looked over her shoulder as the girl slipped free of a garment which had required Sebastian to button up a handful of buttons along the back. This was one of the dresses bought in Hala somewhere along the line of months that they had been there, he assumed. It was the fashion of Southwall not Kardor. He had seen the ladies of Kardor and, like the dresses he had seen Ashleen wear when they had first met, most wore layered robes that crossed in front. Belts bound them closed and often one leg or the other would slip free as they walked which made it easier to take greater strides than dresses bound tight.

  He was used to her teasing him with her body. It wasn't even so much teasing these days, though it had once been. They knew each other's bodies well enough. Not only the outward physical was known, but their healing magic had let them trace their partners in ways that went beyond sight. While the lightning wilder wasn't as proficient or strong in it, what ability she did have let them create a sort of sensory loop that heightened many of their actions done together. It was something that he had discovered with a different girl, but he rarely thought about her, and when he did Sebastian did his best to brush the memories back as he continued to set his sight on Ashleen.

  "What isn't to like? I'm pretty sure that my dad likes you too. He says that you're too good for me, though surprisingly not in a bad way," he mused thinking about the way his father seemed to mean the words.

  Giggling, the pretty blonde turned towards him and agreed, "Well, he's probably right, so don't ever forget that."

  Gazing at her mostly naked body, Sebastian didn't exactly disagree with either of their views on his relationship.

  "So you were talking with him about me? What were you talking about? It was a long day," she said and picked up a Kardorian dress lying on the bed waiting for her. The Southwall style dress had been hung up in the wardrobe. He was pretty sure that worn clothing went on one side of the cabinet she had chosen, while clean was pushed to the other side. Ashleen was also very good about having her clothes cleaned on a regular basis. The returned clean clothes would slip onto the bar inside the wardrobe from the opposite side of where she placed the worn.

  Sebastian paused a moment uncertain if he wanted to relay the bulk of his father's message. Still, he didn't wish to lie to her either. There were few secrets between them and what few there might be probably only came from not being asked. He couldn't even think of any particular bits of information offhand that he hadn't shared with her aside from some magic he was working on perhaps.

  "Oh, just the usual parental advice, I suppose. I think both were impressed with the fact that as a lady by birth that you were still game enough to try to help out at the farm, though my mother worries that if we were to ever leave this inn we might starve based off your cooking skills," he finished with a laugh. It was probably a comment that his mother had never meant for her to hear, but the wizard just laughed.

  "Well, I suppose I could either keep working under her tutelage or we could go back to Kardor where I could have of my father's chefs teach me.

  "How hard can it be? I've mastered magic after all."

  "I'm not sure that is how it works," the mage said with an amused shake of his head.

  "Anyway is that all they said about me?" she asked working him for more information. Her evening dress remained open as if she could entice him with her body to give her the information that she wanted.

  "They think you're beauti
ful too, though they also seemed surprised to see Ylena with us today."

  "She's your sister's teacher, but you are right, her current appearance is quite surprising. Even knowing her from before the accident, I have to admit that she seems prettier than before and she was quite attractive when I met her."

  "For an older woman especially," he added making Ashleen wrinkle up her face as if in distaste.

  "Oh, don't say it like that near Ylena or Katya either. No woman wants to hear something like that," Ashleen cautioned him as she walked around the foot of the bed to stand in front of Sebastian as he sat waiting for her. His clothing change had only consisted of a new shirt. The pants were clean enough in his opinion.

  "What other girl or woman is going to have this dilemma to hear that comment? You do see it, don't you though?"

  Sighing she sat in his lap facing him. Her dress parted even more. Though he had seen her naked many times; her attributes still drew his attention and appreciation when the girl did things like this. She saved such revelations for him in private. Ashleen was a lady after all. What they did in private was between them and not for others to know about or see.

  "I know that some people see youth as being prettier on a woman than some age, but Ylena was still quite pretty for her age... for anyone's age really; but..." Ashleen paused wrinkling her brow in thought. Her blue eyes looked over his head as she sat in his lap thinking about what she had seen. "Do you think that her magic is causing some of it? I mean a wilder with diplomacy magic can be quite dangerous. You've told me about what happened with Katya, so we know it can happen. If her magic is out of her control, then we might be seeing what she wants us to see."

  "She wears a controller necklace. The gem is lit letting us know that it is still in effect."

  "Those gems slow a wizard's release of magic to help them manage great power, but they aren't perfect. If her power is on all the time, it might not restrict her much at all. A cast spell would be fought by the necklace, but if it was essentially cast at some point without her realizing it, the magic could just remain on in essence."