Kenneth is different from what he used to be. I no longer imagine him in his leather jacket and fur cap. When we talk, he does not make jokes or smile as much as he used to. His face is clean-shaven. He speaks with more conviction. He is, in short, more mature, an "adult," as he calls it. The word does not carry the same dread and disgust to me as it used to.
The shelves are neater and more are filled, with books provided from Arch-Mage Miner's personal collection. The basement, a hub for Kenneth's dimensional research, is finished, with the entrance inside of Kenneth's magically locked library. My bedroom is more furnished, and now I have a desk of my own, where I spend most of my study time.
In spite of all I have learned about Kenneth, he still remains mysterious and unknowable. I look up to him with respect. He is a formidable mage whose ability far exceeds my own, a wordsmith whose intellectual musings and spontaneous poetry intrigue me and enchant me, and an unstoppable force who I know better than to disagree with.
When Kenneth opens the door to my room as I am studying at my desk in the morning, I feel like a storm has rolled in, even though the door has opened gently.
I set down a wand, cork a potion, straighten a pen, and turn my head toward him. It is not normal for him to enter my room so early in the morning.
"Is there something wrong, Master?" I ask him.
"Yes... very wrong," says Kenneth. "The military's taken my master and enlisted him as a battle mage for the war."
"Has the war really gotten that bad?" I ask.
"As bad as I expected," Kenneth declares bitterly. "I knew the Planara were going to do everything they could to grind the military to a bloody pulp. I told Miner that myself, that there was no way the military was going to do without the magi from Bellsound, but he wouldn't listen!"
"I am so sorry."
"Don't be sorry," Kenneth snaps, "My master isn't going to die. But Notch knows when he'll be coming back. A decade, maybe. But it doesn't matter. I am taking matters into my own hands. I am not letting your training fall behind because my master refused to teach me the Spark."
"The Spark is reserved for Arch-Magi, is it not? Isn't it unnecessary for elemental mastery?"
"Void magic doesn't work like fire or air magic," says Kenneth. "Even the simplest void spell would tear you apart from the inside. The only way around it is become resistant to the void, and there are only two ways to do that. One is to accept the Spark from a void mage. The other... is to do what the very first void mage did."
"And what might that be?" I ask.
"You're about to find out," says Kenneth.
I suddenly find myself confronting the possibility of becoming a void mage, after all this time, and it comes as a shock. I smile with glee and excitement.
Kenneth and I are descending lower and lower down the narrow stone stairways of Sarah's mines. Kenneth's right hand carries a pickaxe, while his left hand carries a large brown bag whose contents are still unknown to me.
At the bottom of the last flight of stairs, there is a small room, slightly larger than my modestly sized bedroom. The neatly carved-out underground stone walls are the usual grey shale color, but the floor is much different. It is jagged and dark, with stone jutting out in some places and recessed in others. The flickering torchlight will sometimes cause areas of the stone to shine brightly like metal, but some parts seem to remain permanently dark. Perhaps there are deep narrow grooves within the rocks, but it is hard to tell in such dim light. I bend down and reach my palm toward the dark stone in order to understand its texture. The grooves are so deep that hardly any of the stone touches my hand, and yet the parts that do are incredibly cold. As I lift my hand, I notice a thin line of newly drawn blood streaked across my palm.
A material like this would make an excellent sword.
"Master, what is this rock called?"
"Bedrock, of course," says Kenneth, as he sets the bag down. "Haven't you heard of it?"
"Of course," I tell him.
A wave of recognition comes to me. I have heard about this material so many times from rumors in Maplefall, even back to when I was very young, and the books I have studied since. It is said that no tool known to humankind is capable of destroying it. Not even the void can affect it. It is possible that if it were not for bedrock, our world simply would not exist.
But I never imagined bedrock would look so... ominous.
"This looks like a good spot," announces Kenneth, as he crouches down and hacks his pickaxe against a lone patch of shale surrounded by the shadowed silver bedrock. I hear the shale rock shatter and hiss as it falls away, leaving a dim blue light in its place.
"There it is. The void," says Kenneth.
I walk toward the hole, crouch beside Kenneth, and stare into the blue expanse peeking through the window of dark grey rock.
"If you look closely, you can see streaks of grey flow back and forth, like ripples on the water," says Kenneth. "It's amazing to think that something so calm could be the source of so much chaos. Countless disjointed memories flow throughout the void, the remains of countless souls discarded, after they have become irreparably corrupted with evil with so many lives passed. As Sarah puts it, the void is like a great field, upon which old souls are reaped and left to fallow.
"And yet... despite all the disjointed memories I've discovered in the void all these years, not once has there been a memory of malice among them. It's almost as if the void knows what parts of souls to destroy... as if the void has a mind of its own. An eternal being without form... sifting through countless lives. Poetic, isn't it?"
I nod, starting to feel uneasy. Somehow, knowing that a soul could remain in the void forever, not completely destroyed, with memories still intact, is even more disturbing than the prospect of losing my memories when I die.
I look at the beautiful streaks of silver, undulating against the distant blue light, and I fear having that substance inside of me.
But do I have a choice? I already pledged to become Kenneth's apprentice long ago. I knew the risks involved. Surely my fear is a small price to pay to unlock the secrets of the mind.
Kenneth reaches into the mysterious brown bag and pulls out a book and a potion.
"This is a diluted mana potion, just enough to cast the spell," Kenneth tells me, "and this is the spellbook you will read from, once the only mana you have left is from the potion. I will open it up to the Spell of Acceptance, the same spell that is used in the ritual before the Spark."
Kenneth sets the potion and book down, and reaches back into the brown bag one more time. He pulls out a rope. "And this is the rope you will hang from, as I drop you down into the void."
I peer forward into the blue expanse of the void, knowing that is where I will be, and my heart immediately starts to pound.
"You know what to do," Kenneth states. "Empty your mana pool."
I nod, shove my fear aside, and point my arm down toward the opening in the void. I let out an arc of lightning with all my strength. The sudden expanse of the lightning surprises me, and I wonder for a moment how powerful I have become. Yet, just as abruptly as it began, the strands of light fizzle out, and I feel dread for the next step.
"Now, the potion," Kenneth states, as I reach out my hand toward him.
I grasp the small, tapered glass, and look at the tiny pool of liquid at the bottom. It is as clear as water, with only a faint tint of orange in certain angles of the light.
I lift up the glass to my lips and tilt the small pool of liquid into my mouth. Even after I drink it, my mana pool still feels as empty as before. I set down the emptied flask on a patch of shale.
Only one more step before I hang myself into the void. Can I really go through with this?
"Now, read this," Kenneth says, handing me the open book.
I hold the weight of the spellbook in my hands, and scan my eyes across the first line of the Spell of Acceptance. My mind distracts me with fear, and it takes several attempts as I try to remind myself that I have to do this, that it is the only way I can learn void magic. My eyes finally catch on the lines. I feel like the words are dragging me along, as if the speech is flooding out of my mouth uncontrolled. As I piece together the phrases formed by my voice, I realize I am accepting the void itself as my master. As my mouth finally closes, I feel an emptiness inside of me that is profound.
This is wrong. I should not have forced myself to cast this spell.
Then, I look toward Kenneth. I see him holding the rope with both hands.
"It's now time for the final step," says Kenneth. "I will tie you to this rope, and when I say so, I want you to jump into the void. When you have been in the void for one minute, I will pull you up. Understood?"
I consider telling Kenneth, here and now, that I do not want to go through with this anymore. But as I sift through my mind for some explanation I could give for why I would disobey my master, I find none. I owe Kenneth everything for the magic I have learned. Why should I betray him now? Why should I turn away from learning void magic, when so many times before, Kenneth has shown me how beautiful and complicated it can be?
"Understood," I tell Kenneth, shoving aside my fear, if only for a moment.
I walk up to Kenneth, and let him tie the loops of ropes around my arms and my waist. I watch as Kenneth picks up the rest of his pile of rope and unwinds it, as he steps further away from me.
"Are you ready?" asks Kenneth.
"Ready," I respond.
"Jump now," says Kenneth.
I step forward and peer into the void one last time, the rope clinging gently to me. But, try as I might to take one more step, to prepare myself to jump into the void, I find myself paralyzed with fear. No matter how hard I remind myself how important this is for my training, every bone in my body screams out at me, telling me that this is wrong. My heart pounds and my fists and jaws tighten with indecision, and a tingle in my back compels me to step back, with the fear that even that is not enough to prevent me from slipping into the void.
Then I blurt out, "I cannot go down there!"
"You accepted me as your master," insists Kenneth. "You knew the risks involved."
"I know," I tell him. I stare at the hole into the void, but no new willpower comes. I stand hopelessly.
Kenneth's footsteps echo closer, and Kenneth's grey-hooded face appears on my right. "Then tell me, Iris, why do you disobey me?"
"I fear I will die," I admit to him.
"What do you mean you fear you will die?" asks Kenneth, anger creeping into his voice. "Don't you trust me? Do you not realize I would never let that happen to you?"
"It would not be the first time you have put me in a life-threatening situation," I reply.
A wave of anger flashes across Kenneth's face, and he slaps me, with a force that stings my cheek and pulls on my neck.
"You ungrateful, little girl!" Kenneth shouts, filling me with dread. "How can you still not trust me, after all this time? Does our master-apprentice relationship mean nothing to you? Tell me Iris, what must an apprentice always do for their master?"
"Obey them," I tell him, with regret.
"That's right," says Kenneth, "and tell me, Iris, what is it that you just did?"
I say nothing, afraid to anger my master more by saying the wrong thing.
"Iris, I order you to answer my question!"
"I disobeyed you," I tell him.
"That's right," says Kenneth, to my relief. "And I don't feel like having you disobey me again, so I will not order you to jump into the void again today. But before we go, I want you to know what it feels like to have void fire inside of you, so you can understand the tiny amount of pain you refused to endure."
Kenneth places his hand upon my shoulder. I flinch at his touch, but I resist the urge to shrug it off, knowing it will only compound my disobedience.
A foreign energy surges into my shoulder, and I feel a burning pain so intense which I have never felt before. I hear myself cry out in agony, as I fall onto my hands and knees. My body shakes. The world seems to tilt and fill with dark spots. Even as the surge of energy has finally settled, my body still feels aflame with fever, and all my muscles weak and aching.
Tears stream from my eyes. I look up at Kenneth, as he looks down at me from beneath his grey hood. His gaze pierces into me with unwavering intensity, as if I should feel guilty to ever look away from him without his command. And his mouth is curled into a subtle smile, as if my disobedience is some humor to be entertained by, an ironic self-sabotage of my supposed path to greatness.