Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale

by Alex Oakchest

  This line of thinking brought me to one conclusion; I wanted to get better at using my spell, and I needed to know more about casting to do that. The only thing I could experiment on right now was my stances.

  Here goes.

  The first time I’d cast chare, I’d been freezing and desperate. You might say I was in a hurry. I just wanted to shoot a fireball and get warm, and I hadn’t given much thought to technique.

  What if the way a mage performed his spell stances affected the spell itself?

  More importantly, was I always going to look like I was performing some kind of martial art when I wanted to burn something to death? I guessed not; I had seen the mages use spells, and their movements were quicker and more subtle. I guessed that came with experience.

  To test my theory about stances and their effect, I went back outside. No sense burning down the barn while I was in it.

  I took out the novice chare book, and I spent an hour flicking through the pages and copying the stances again. I guessed it was a little like how a person might practice their form when lifting weights. The better your form, the more effective the exercise.

  I took my time to get each one right, so that eventually I was standing and posing exactly how the diagram in the book portrayed it. So that my legs and arms were in the same exact positions.

  Satisfied I had improved my form a little, I could move on to the experiments.

  Power, and speed.

  First, I started cycling through the stances as quick as I possibly could, while keeping my form as perfect as possible.

  I went through them again and again, purposefully going much quicker than I ever had before.

  I soon heard a whisper in my ears.

  Hrr-chare. Hrr-chare.

  Aha.

  The energy trembled inside me and gathered in my palms much quicker than before, and the voice had spoken to me a lot earlier this time.

  Not just that, though. I began to get a sense of the exact moment that the energy had built in me, and that the spell was ready. I guessed the feeling of energy was actually the elemental coursing through me somehow, and I knew that releasing the spell would deplete it.

  But here was the thing. By cycling through the stances at breakneck speed while concentrating on holding my form, the spell had become ready to cast much quicker. The drawback was that the build-up of energy felt weaker.

  That ended one experiment; the quicker I did the stances, the faster the spell.

  Just to cap it off, I did the stances at a ridiculous speed again, this time not paying attention to form.

  And just as I thought, nothing happened.

  If I didn’t do the stances correctly, the elemental didn’t work. Speed and form went hand in hand.

  Right. Next experiment.

  This time, I did the stances at an achingly slow pace. Working slower, I could hold each stance in a much better form than before, and I forced myself to stay in each stance for longer, even when my muscles began to hurt.

  I held each stance and counted in my head, and I began to feel the energy build in me much slower, but a hell of a lot more powerful than before.

  I completed stance one.

  Stance two.

  The voice spoke to me now. Hrr-chare. Hrr-chare.

  Stance three.

  Now the voice wasn’t a whisper; it sounded like someone was right next to me.

  Stance four.

  Stance five.

  Now the voice was shouting at me. Almost screaming directly into my eardrums, not just repeating the spell words but booming them, ordering me to say the words and cast the fire.

  Stance six.

  And then the energy built up so much that I felt dizzy, and my throat constricted. I thought I would pass out.

  “Hrr-Chare!”

  The words screamed from my lips, but I hadn’t purposefully said them.

  A great whooshing sound came from my palms, and a great sphere of burning light shot from my skin, the flames roaring and intensely hot. They smashed into the ground and then burned outwards, spreading streams of fire over the cold ground before dying out, and leaving a blackened, charred mess behind.

  Holy hell!

  I collapsed to the ground, utterly wiped out.

  [Fire] elemental depleted x2.

  Wow.

  It took me a few minutes to get my breath, and it was only then that I could focus on the rest of the words.

  [Fire] discipline improved by 6%!

  Rank: Grey 7.00%

  Damn it, I had wasted two elementals by scorching the hell out of the poor, innocent dirt!

  At least I had learned something. The longer I held a stance in perfect form, the stronger the spell. But if I held it for too long, I lost control of it and I couldn’t recall the elemental.

  Not only that, but making the spell stronger cost meant it cost more elementals to cast.

  Interesting. Maybe this was where rank came into play. My [fire] discipline was ranked as grey, but perhaps if I increased it, I would be able to hold spells for longer and make them more powerful without losing control. Maybe medallions had something to do with that, too.

  At least I knew I could cast spells in a hurry, as long as I concentrated. They’d be weaker, but they’d still cast. And if I really needed to, I could use more elementals and shoot a more powerful ball of flames.

  I guessed it hadn’t been such a waste, after all. Knowledge has a price, and if you don’t pay it, you’ll always be ignorant. I knew more about how magic worked, and everything I learned now might save my ass in the future. The elementals I had used were an investment.

  Yeah, this had been a productive afternoon. I didn’t even care so much that the clan would be impressed with me. It was more pleasing that I figured this stuff out for myself, because in the end, I was the only person who would give a damn about my survival here.

  After today, I was just that little bit more adept. A little more attuned to how to live in this place. A step further on the road to better magic.

  And much more capable of scorching someone's ass, should anyone threaten me. That felt good.

  I got to my feet, still exhausted physically, but alive with energy mentally.

  “Come on, buddy,” I told Roddie. “We’ve got a clan of green-skinned mages to find.”

  CHAPTER 12 – A Time Before Isaac

  He is born as Dacian Mead of the Tallsteep clan, but it will be years before he gets the name he keeps for the rest of his life.

  At first a noisy baby, he surprises the clan by growing into a quiet child, snatching contemplative moments where he can find them. He prefers reading and studying to the ways of the blade, and it is this that brings trouble to him as he gets older.

  “You sure he’s your boy?” clan members ask his parents. “Are you certain he’s not a Lonehill runaway or something?”

  Lonehill.

  Just the mention of their enemy’s name brings Dacian’s father into a rage. Dacian understands that his father doesn’t get angry and challenge other clan members into a duel just to defend his son.

  No, his father despises Dacian’s studying as much as the rest of them. Unlike them, he believes Dacian will grow out of it.

  Dacien understands that his father meets every insult with a challenge to fight for one reason; even comparing his blood to a despicable Lonehill is an insult to his family. It is like pissing all over his father’s, his father's-father's grave, and then all the way back to every clansman who came before him.

  The spit of dishonor carried through back to the old days before the portals opened. Before the great emigration.

  Those insults about Dacien, they are urine that soaks in the mud and then trickles down through the soil, staining every bleached corpse in turn.

  And thinking about this brings Dacien to another interesting area of study; why had they always buried they dead in layers, one on top of the other? It made no sense, and it seemed to give no honor to the dead.

  This was just
one of several studies that brought punishment upon him.

  The price for digging up a clan corpse, even if you had the best of intentions?

  Two whips on your bottom in front of the clan.

  And so, Dacian grows up under his father’s protection, but not his love. His father takes him out into the wilds to hunt. To train. To learn the ways of the blade that have let the Tallsteep clan survive here after the great emigration.

  Dacian goes because he wants to please his father so that he doesn’t have to fight his own clansmen with his fists anymore. He hates seeing his father come home with broken knuckles and a bloodied nose, just because Dacian was born without the blade in his heart.

  But while he is out in the wastes with his father, deep down, he spends every minute wishing he was back in their tent. Buried under his blanket, his books spread out, a candle casting a soft light over the words he’d devour deep into the night.

  This lack of desire shows in his training. It makes him slow to learn the clan’s techniques. It makes his father grow angry, though he holds it in and never, ever shows it in front of him.

  Dacien knows what he’s thinking. “He’ll grow out of it,” his father keeps telling himself. He can almost see the words spinning in his mind.

  It’s a hard conflict to reconcile in his head. The idea that your father cares for you, but hates everything you are so much that his only wish is that you become something else.

  But Dacien can’t change. He tries. From the ages of seven to nine, he pours himself into his swordplay, but the body can’t overrule the heart, and not even the easiest of the clan’s techniques sink in.

  The only things he seems to absorb are his books. And not just any books; Dacien’s prize possession is a tome that he found once, on a hunt.

  He had accompanied his father on a skirmish, one intended to put some fire in his belly, as his father called it.

  Their scouts had found a Lonehill camp. Not their main camp, but an offshoot of Lonehill people sent into the wild’s to seek fertile pastures.

  This was nothing special; for the last fifty years, the Tallsteep and Lonehill scouts met in the wastes, often coming to bloody battle over rich soil.

  Today, there would be no battle. Battle implies both sides fighting for their own causes, but how can sleeping men and women fight?

  Dacien and his father and a few more Tallsteeps stole in, slaughtering them as they slept.

  “Magic’s worth shit when you can’t see the knife before it slices your throat!” roared his father, his eyes burning with blood frenzy, his muscles covered in blood.

  Dacien watched impassively. He wasn’t a fighter, nor was he scared of violence. A boy who had grown up in the Tallsteep clan could never fear blade, even if he hadn’t mastered it.

  While his father and those who survived their skirmish sat by a fire and got drunk to celebrate, Dacien explored the now-empty tents. He didn’t find much at first.

  A few robes of the Lonehill color. Vials of potions carrying both sweet and foul aromas. Tasting bitter, tasting sugary.

  But it was in one tent that he found prizes better than he could ever have imagined.

  A small medallion on a metal necklace.

  A battered book, the pages bent and ripped in places. The title on the cover read, Hrr-Chare: Un gata fur Novicien.

  He hid the medallion in his robe pockets and he wedged the book against his waist, between his skin and his underwear, and he drew his robes up tight so it wouldn’t slip. Then, he joined the rest of them and pretended to revel in their victory.

  For the next six months, he reads his looted book whenever he has a chance. He rushes through it at first, fascinated by the secrets within. And then he starts again, slower this time. Puzzling over every word. Squeezing every drop of meaning that he can get from it.

  He studies the stances within the pages and he copies them, always darting his gaze to his tent to make sure nobody sees.

  Years go by. He watches the children his age earn their yellow, blue, green ranks. He watches them swap daggers for swords for broadswords. He sees them rise in honor even at their young age, because they take their teachings to heart and they hunt and kill for the clan, and that is the only way a person can rise.

  He can’t pretend that he doesn’t hurt. That he doesn’t sometimes wish he’d been born with his father’s heart. He didn’t ask to be born like this, to hold the blade in disdain. Yet the clan act as if Dacien made a choice, even as a baby.

  One night, Dacien’s father stumbles back into their tent. It’s late. The moon casts a glow on his reddened face, making it obvious how drunk he is.

  “Your mother would be ashamed of you,” he slurs. “Shamed to her soul. If a necromancer resurrected her now, she’d see how you are and she’d blame herself, and then she’d kill herself again.”

  The words make his eyes sting. He doesn’t know his mother. He suspects that a person’s mind stores more memories than they realize, and that somewhere in his own are his infant memories of the woman who birthed him, but he’s never been able to drag them into the light.

  So, he has always trusted his father’s version of her, even though he knows it is just that; a version. In some ways, every person has different versions of themselves that exist in the world.

  Two men may see another man in an entirely different light. Does that make the man just one individual, or is he two? Is every person stretched out to infinity?

  “You’re not listening, are you? After everything I’ve tried to teach you. All the fights I’ve had in your name.”

  Dacien finds his tongue. “Sorry, father.”

  “I know you are, lad. But it won’t be enough. You’re getting to the age where…well, you know our ways.”

  Dacien knows them well. He knows the tests of their clan, and what happens to those who fail them. He knows why, too. He knows what an unforgiving place this world is. They didn’t struggle through the great emigration just to die in this world.

  He can’t blame them. Not his father, not the elders, not any of the clan. He holds no anger at all to what they must do, and he understands why they would do it.

  Even so, he can make fate his own, rather than letting it be his master.

  So that night, while his father snores and fills the tent with mead fumes, Dacien grabs his medallion and puts it around his neck. He takes his book and stuffs it in his robe pockets. He takes just a single jar of water and one dried fig; no more than he deserves.

  And then he sneaks out of the camp and away from his clan.

  He has only walked thirty minutes into the wastes when he hears the screams.

  Scared, he turns back. He sprints toward camp, where he sees flames spreading, and the blazing fire shines on great figures tearing through camp.

  Ogres. Dozens of them. More than the Tallsteep clan could ever hope to face.

  And it is at that moment that Dacien learns who he truly is.

  Not a man of the Tallsteep clan, but a boy. A boy whose soul didn’t take anything from his father’s.

  To his eternal shame, Dacien runs.

  He wanders the wastes alone for weeks. Months. He sleeps in houses left empty by the Builders.

  He loots from cupboards that haven’t been opened in a long time. He avoids the cities because he knows the danger they present, but he sometimes takes a chance with towns. Especially if he is hungry.

  As skilled as he becomes in scavenging, the wastes defeat him. They always do; that was something his father always told him.

  A great illness starts in his lungs and spreads, and still he survives and he scavenges. Soon, he coughs up blood.

  It is now that he knows what a fool he was. A child, yes, but a fool. He falls asleep every night while uttering apologies to his father, to the elders, to everyone. He knows that he didn’t bring the ogres upon their camp; how could anyone blame him for that?

  But he could have gone back.

  He should have gone back.

  Even if he
’d be running into death, he should have fought with the rest of them until the end. And now, it is too late.

  For the Tallsteep clan, anyway.

  Maybe not for the ogres. Because if clansfolk with blades and decades of experience in using them couldn’t stop the beasts, then maybe there was something else that could. Something written in books.

  Something used by people like him, but utterly unlike him at the same time. His clan’s ancient enemy; the spells cast by the Lonehill clan.

  It was all well and good dreaming of these things, but fate mocks him. The coughing and the bleeding gets worse, and he gets weaker by the day.

  Then come the fainting spells, growing so often and so prolonged that he loses hours at a time.

  It is after one of these spells of sickness that he wakes up not alone, not in the wastes, but a tent.

  “Was it a dream?” he groans.

  The tent opens. A man enters.

  “Father?”

  It isn’t his father.

  The man is green-skinned like him, but he is tall and thin and has a great, wild beard. In the center of his forehead is a golden circle.

  “Your name isn’t Dacien anymore,” says the man.

  Dacien sits up. “Who-”

  “You know who I am. You know where you are. And those people out there, they know where you came from. I have spoken to them, and I have made an agreement. But your name cannot be Dacien; that is a name of the Tallsteep.”

  Tallsteep. Just hearing the word is like an arrow of guilt in his gut.

  The man steps closer. “You have a new name now. This is your home, and we are your new people. Welcome, Kaleb.”

  CHAPTER 13 – Dark Waters

  “There they are. See them?”

  Roddie gave an excited yip and wagged his tail, and I was happy that he seemed to be feeling much better. He was still skinny as hell, but I would fix that.