Chapter 1: Ignorance
June 13th, 1070 AE. I'd had a nightmare the previous night.
There were screams of countless people, all fleeing a terrible darkness looming over them. They couldn't escape it. There were screams, and then there were roars, and all the people were engulfed in the darkness. It got them. The landscape was engulfed in fire. A terrible fire that devoured everything in the darkness. The fire was hungry. It took them all. There were more screams of fear. Ferocious roars, and an outcry of terror. Fear...
Terrible, terrible fear.
I woke up in a nasty fit. I'd hated nightmares; they always rattled me. Ever since I was small, I'd had a hard time differentiating thoughts from reality. This was suitable, however, for someone in my profession: a mesmer, where there is no line between the two, and you can take neither for granted. Of course, at this point, I was only just becoming a mesmer. I was nineteen at the time, and my training was to begin today, but my nightmare had woken me up ahead of schedule–it was still dark out, the striders hadn't even begun their morning squawking. Falling back to sleep, however, would land me in that same dark dream...
I grabbed a book and opened it. It was my newest reading endeavor: Hexes and Illusions, Volume I. This book was a crucial part of my training, and I decided to be ahead of the game when my training began.
It was impossible to concentrate inside my room, scattered with papers and books. There was no way to focus in that room, in that house no less.I snuck out of the house, my parents not hearing a sound, and crept over to the forest neighboring my quaint Ashford house. I sat beneath a tree and continued reading. It was difficult to read in the dark, especially in the shade of the tree, where the moonlight couldn't penetrate the darkness. I read the texts of the book, but they were awkwardly phrased and didn't make much sense.
Spectre. Purple. Illusion. Agony. Key words in the passage. I didn't understand the connection, but "agony" definitely didn't sound like something a mesmer of my meager stature was ready to deal with yet. I turned the page onto something new and continued to read. I couldn't focus on that, however, running the previous words over and over through my head. I needed to know what the agony meant. I needed to know what this "purple illusion" was. I needed to harness its power.
There was a skale asleep in the river–a river skale, no threat at all. I saw the incantation and chanted it, pointing my makeshift cane at the skale. A purple aura surrounded him, and the skale burst out of slumber and began writhing in pain. Agony. I could tell he was weakening. Within seconds he put up less and less of a fight until he eventually just collapsed. Dead. I was amazed, that spectre that I released, the manifestation of the energy I pooled into my cane, ended a life. I had an adrenaline rush, as most do when they cast their first spell. I felt I was the king of the world, that I was a natural, that I was the best mesmer alive. I was hungry for more spells, so I sat back down and devoured the texts. About half an hour later, the sun began to rise. I began to pack the book up and head back to my house to prepare for training. As soon as I closed the book, however, I heard grunts and howls coming from further down the path. I hid behind a tree and saw two grawls coming down the path towards Ashford.
"Pukpuk hungry in morning. Pukpuk want steal chicken!" shouted one.
"Pukpuk need stay quiet so Uggugg find chicken to eat. If mean people in village hear Pukpuk, they come with swords and chop Pukpuk in pieces," replied the other.
"Pukpuk sorry..." Pukpuk finished. Their conversation skills were lacking.
I wondered what chickens they were considering stealing. The only chickens in Ashford were Pitney's, and they were the ones he was about to enter in the fair. I couldn't let the grawl steal them, they were Pitney's prides and joys. Then I remembered the damage I'd done to the skale... I muttered the same incantation, and the one named Pukpuk was surrounded by the purple aura, just like the skale. But the grawl wasn't writhing in agony. He merely groaned and fell down to the ground, but composed himself and looked around fiercely.
"Why you fall down, fool?" Uggugg asked Pukpuk.
"Pukpuk no know. Pukpuk's head hurt very bad, and Pukpuk could no stand." Pukpuk replied.
"Pukpuk have headache?"
"No! Somebody play with Pukpuk's mind! Somebody make Pukpuk hurt, and when somebody make Pukpuk hurt, Pukpuk make somebody hurt!" Pukpuk howled. I trembled. Two grawl with hammers against one young mesmer was a fight whose outcome I didn't want to find out.
I crept out from behind the tree and tried to make my way silently back to my house. However, I didn't have the darkness on my side anymore, so I was easily spotted by the keen eyes of the grawl. Pukpuk took notice first and pointed at me.
"Boy from behind tree! That who must make Pukpuk's head hurt!" he shouted. He ran towards me and grabbed me by the collar. He hoisted me up so we were eye level and sniffed me. I pleaded for mercy.
"Please don't hurt me, I miscast it on you, I apologize!" I begged.
"What you say? What is 'apologize'?" Pukpuk asked me.
"You mean... you don't know?" I replied, chuckling a little. These ape-men were dumber than I'd thought.
But Pukpuk didn't see anything funny about it. "Why you laugh at Pukpuk!? You think Pukpuk stupid for not knowing big word!?" Pukpuk growled in my face. His breath smelled horrible, but I knew better than to tell him.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Pukpuk. It won't happen again, I know my place. I'm very small, after all, and you're very big, and you..." I tried to finish, but Pukpuk tightened his grip on me.
"You say Pukpuk big and fat!?" he yelled in an outrage. I tried to say that it wasn't what I meant, but he wouldn't listen. "You dare call Pukpuk stupid, and then you call Pukpuk fat!? Pukpuk think that boy is stupid one!" he screamed in a frenzy. He threw me down on the ground and yelled for his partner. "Uggugg! Get your hammer! Help me crush boy's bones!" Uggugg obliged, picked up his hammer, and joined Pukpuk. They swung at me, but luckily, I was able to dodge them. In the midst of the fighting, I dodged one hammer, but backed up into another as it connected with my back. I was flung into the ground, a horrible pain coursing through my nerves. I rolled onto my back and attempted to get up, but one of them pinned me down. It was Uggugg, letting Pukpuk get ready for a prime swing right into my head. I figured this was the end, and words wouldn't be able to get me out of a situation concerning two creatures who barely understood them anyway. I simply looked up. Pukpuk looked down at me and howled with delight. "Boy will soon know place and will never call Pukpuk mean names again!" He gripped the hammer tightly. But just as he was about to rain the hammer down on my head, a blaze of something purple overtook him. It almost looked like purple lightning. The purple lightning surged all about him, and spread to affect Uggugg as well. Uggugg released his hold on me and they both began writhing in pain. After a few seconds, the purple lightning exploded and the pair flew back onto the ground. Uggugg was unconscious, and Pukpuk yelped, got up, and fled in fear. There was no honor among grawl, apparently.
I got up, dusted myself off, and thanked Lyssa for my safety. I suddenly heard a voice behind me.
"Pyrus, getting yourself into trouble on your first day of training isn't the wisest choice you could make," said a soft voice behind me. I turned around and saw who it was.
"Lady Althea! I apologize for my impudence!" I replied to her, bowing my head in shame.
"You're not ready to take on such creatures as the grawl yet. You're barely ready to take on skales," Lady Althea retorted. I kept silent, as I knew she was right. Lady Althea was the smartest woman I knew, as well as the most beautiful. A woman fit for a king, or more notably, a prince, as she was Prince Rurik's fiancee. "That spell you just witnessed was called 'Energy Surge', and is a spell you'll not be able to cast for sometime as it is very advanced. It's considered 'elite' as far as spells go, and you can barely handle weak spells this early in your training. But that's why I'm training you."
"But I can handle spells, Lady Althea! Just tonight, I taught myself how to conjure a spectre to harm an enemy!" I pleaded, hoping to make her think I wasn't as much as an idiot as I'd portrayed myself to be.
"You learned 'Conjure Phantasm' in one night? And taught it to yourself?" she asked me, puzzled. "That's... remarkable, Pyrus. Most students can't even read the texts of the spell books, let alone teach themselves. Perhaps there's hope in you yet," she added with a smile.
"Thank you, milady," I replied, blushing.
She walked up to me and handed me a green masquerade mask. I stared at it blankly, not knowing what to do with it.
"Put it on," she told me. I did so. She smiled at me. "Let's begin."