The air around her was like a rope threatening to break under some enormous weight. Wizard slowly, painfully, brought up her wand and pointed it at the small area in front. Pure focus and nothing else. Just her and the gathered targets. Come on, come out, she had the components and knew the incantation and knew she had the power.
"Come on!" she yelled after a minute of trying this. "Damn this! damn this all to the nine hells!" she threw down the wand and stomped on it several times. It broke under the second stomps force, and when she realized this, she kicked the pieces hard hurting her foot, but she didn't care.
She'd been at this in the training area of the school for the past three hours after classes had ended. There were several rows for spells that were single target with constantly repairing golems within, and several pits with the same creatures although spread out and more in number. The dusk's rays came in a large nearby window like a lantern.
This wasn't just a spur of the moment for her. Whenever letters were received from her brother, you could often find her down here.
She stood there, huffing and puffing, looking at the wand scattered about on the floor. Something stinged in her eyes, "Fuck!" she said shakily as tears rolled down her face. Collapsing to the floor in a huddled position, she was shaking very hard, "why can't I do anything?..." she smacked the cold tile several times before her hand started hurting and she stopped.
There was nobody about, all had left to the living area or their quarters. Even the other professors had gone home. Just her, just the supposed evocation professor who couldn't even cast a fireball. How foolish she was, what a joke, what a damned joke.
'I wanna be as strong as you, big sis!'
'Another perfect casting like usual, I expect great things of you, young lady.'
'What a couple of clowns, losing to a bunch of goblins like that? pfft!'
'Oh my, of course we can find you a position here. An opening for evocation has popped up just in the nick of time.'
"You are not going!" Wizard yelled at him as he ducked a small vase getting thrown at him. It shattered on the wall and fell to the ground.
Brother turned back to her with a face bordering between begging and bewilderment, "Why can't you understand? I'm doing this to prove to them you aren't a failure, that I'm not a failure. You trained me after all!"
"I don't give a damn what they say! I won't allow you to be at the risk of what happened to me!"
"Sis-"
"Do you know what those things..." she huffed thinking of the foul smells and the ghastly smiles of those blasted hellspawns, "do you know what those things did to Warrior? do...you..." her voice kept getting lower as she spoke, "did to Fighter?..."
"Sis-"
"it's every day in my head! it's constant. If I wasn't ready to be an adventurer, then neither are you. I won't allow my baby brother to be...to be..."
"Sis," he hugged her, and he was crying too, but his voice was clear, "I'm not you."
He was gone the next minute, and the coldness of it was his final gift.
She stumbled through the abandoned halls of the school, a Wizard without her hat or a staff or a wand. Her dress dragged behind her and her long red hair was frizzled beyond believe, like one of those fairy tale witches' mother and father used to read about to her and her brother. She missed them, she missed him.
As she placed her pack down at her room's floor, brother had followed her in, a strange look to him. "Is...what the bastards at the academy said true then?...about...the goblin lair-"
"Don't!" she yelled turning back at him, her eyes with heavy bags under them. "Not now...not...now. Never again!" she pushed past him and went to some stairs leading to a small attic. Inside there was collected wands and scrolls and all sorts of small magical trinkets from their family's history of the wizarding craft. Paintings of grandfathers and mothers, the lesser famous of the massive lineage inside boxes, the most displayed in the halls of the mansion.
"Sis wait!" brother said as he followed her up. Wizard had her family staff in hand, and she was staring at it close as she stormed over to a case at the center of the room. Placing it inside, she shut it and latched. "What're you doing?!" he said as he finally caught up.
"Never again!" she repeated as she placed her hands into her hair. Clutching so hard that blood started seeping out of her scalp like some strange art piece. "I'm not worthy, I never was!" she fell to her knees, her brother watching perplexed next to her.
She was crying now, and it was hard. Sobs that filled the attic like a banshee's wailing in the forest night. He went by her side, holding her as she sucked in breaths, crying so much that eventually her voice stopped working and all that remained were small whispery gurgles.
The halls as she entered her home were silent, the paintings of her relatives looking down upon her. They spoke to her every day, she heard them in her head. Wizard wanted them out, but they wouldn't leave. They were like those back at the frontier, always mocking, always laughing. That bitch left them, she left them for that freak. Maybe he saved her life, but is the one she led now any better?
"But of course!" the archmagi said, his gentle smile wide under his beard. "As a matter of fact, a position to teach cantrips opened just this week. I'm sure a wizard of your talents will find that easily manageable." He said it with such kindness, such understanding. But, he was laughing at her like the rest. All of them laughed at her, so why wouldn't he?
Five years of this, five years of being mocked, laughed at, by her peers and damned schoolchildren. She would not stand for it, not anymore. The fear drowned out by this anger that'd brewed for so long. Like a cauldron left to brood.
What went wrong? too many goblins? awful tactics? it could be any number of things, but she'd tried finding a reason behind it all the same. Why had they failed where other adventuring parties succeeded so handily?
'Did you hear about that goblin slayer over in frontier town? his whole party went and killed a red wyrmling, they gonna call them all the dragon slayers now or something?'
That wide eyed little girl, nothing more than a priestess or cleric or whatever the hell fresh out of the temple. How? how had she done it? why couldn't Wizard do what she did? why couldn't she be like her?...
All this time, and day after day she just seemed to lose more and more of her magical ability. Every time she did magic, Wizard would think of that time and...she'd slip. The desperation and screams of Warrior as he watched what happened to...to...oh god's...
She stopped on a staircase going up and sat down and covered her head. The feeling of watching it, while your own self is dying, suffocating from vomit. Then being wrenched back to life only to be laughed and whispered at as soon as you're able to walk about the adventurer's guild. All of this, she wouldn't wish it on anyone.
But what could she do? sitting there on the stairs facing down to the bottom, she knew she could just go into the kitchen and make herself something to eat and sit crying on the couch and then go to that trip to the frontier in the morning. More than likely to face the girl whom she'd thought so little of in the past, along with the shards of it.
Or she could go upstairs. Take the staff and disappear from the city. Run off to Watertown, find her brother, join him. To sleep with the staff close by, to listen to the sounds of the birds singing in the half-sun morning, and to fight monsters again to prove that her hard work was not for naught.
Wizard could have done that, she wanted to. She could practically feel the breeze upon her face and hear the sounds of crunching leaves and see the interesting characters and creatures that passed on by.
Wizard looked up, seeing the top of the stairs. Standing, she took a step up, and another step up. Several more, and then another. Her breathing stifled then, near the top of the stairs. For a moment, she seemed glued to the one stair.
She was weeping. Taking a step back, she traveled all the way back down the stairs.
The next day, she and the children were gathered in a large hall with dancing illusions of creatures that seemed fantastical. Their lights, dancing like the starry night. Items on display in a golden shine, their histories dated all the way back to and before time. A sword imbued with the fire of the sun, gauntlets that were said to be made with steel of the gods themselves, a scythe with the power to steal the soul of one's enemy in a single fell swoop, and staffs reserved only for the archmagi.
Wizard watched this as the archmage went on about the frontier, something to do with untamed magic and ancient liches. She barely listened, just standing there, a new wand in her hand. This was it, she was really doing this. The teleportation circle with all its runes below her, and the whispers of the other teachers gossiping about her.
"We'll be transported to water town for a small detour, and there we will have our own private ship to take all the way to the frontier lands! the journey there and back will be a few days, but I promise you all it will be most interesting!"
Most of the children were excited, fidgeting and talking amongst themselves. To be that young again, wait, what was she thinking? she had no friends in her childhood.
"Expect to witness many a magical creature while there. Hill giants, centaurs, goblins-"
He went on, talking of safety among the usual warnings to stay close with the teachers at all times. She just stood there, waiting for the speech to be over so she could start waiting for this trip to be over. What fun.
"There are ancient ruins yet unexplored, and land untamed by mortal man. Perfect for aspiring mages such as yourselves!" a small cheer swept through the crowd of little ones.
"All of you must draw on the potential from within, you may even find it on your journey. For some, it may be hard at first to find your gifts. But you all must remember, with hard work brings the fruits of your labor."
"He tends to drone on a bit does he not?" it was whispered to her right. A man around her age, bushy curled black hair and a tall thin body had said it.
"A slight bit," Wizard agreed.
"There's some wisdom to it though, at least, I think. He is master of all arcane schools after all."
"I'm not in the mood for a philosophical debate right now, artificer."
"You're never in the mood for much at all."
"Shut up."
"You wound me madam fireball," he said with that same dumb smile on his face.
Wizard just sighed in response, "Why, are you talking to me? five years later, and you still won't get the memo."
"I thought you may need a friend is all, this place we are traveling is...you know what you're right," he held up his hands.
Wizard glared at him, "I do not appreciate you making a damned joke of-"
"I wasn't joking."
"...Well, I...don't need a guardian."
"I said friend."
"Shove it."
When the archmage finally finished with his speech, several other teachers including him began the teleportation circles enchantments and incantations. They threw up their wands or staffs and the circle began flickering with this blue and purple light that went about rhythmically like the constellations of the night sky.
A sheen was on all within the circle and Wizard stood there, a lack of wonder upon her face as the children shrieked with cheers and laughter, before finally, she saw the stars of the universe and the world above. All of this, and she just closed her eyes, feeling herself flying at a speed that seemed so impossible and possible yet.
Then she was falling and falling upright, then down, and then she was spun about like yarn until it all stopped. When she opened her eyes, Wizard found herself within a familiar and yet oh so strange laboratory. The shelves of grimoire, the cauldrons bubbling, and that scent like burning wood and medicine. This wasn't Water Town.
Glancing around, she held the wand in her hands with great caution. Ready to cast at the drop of a pin. Cast she did when a sound above caused her to jerk up and let loose a bolt of fire that sizzled through the air and struck true against a shield.
The defender sat above her in the air, tapping at nothing as she held her hand up. Then she snapped her fingers, clearing the shield. "Is this what I receive for inviting a guest to the palace of hearts desire for the first time in over two-hundred years? you ought to lay away with some of those stuck-up morals girl."
"W-Who?..."
The woman wore a fine black dress and had sleek raven hair to her back. She smiled down at Wizard, turning upside down in her position as she put her hands to her face and said, "Welcome, care for a drink?"
"...No? w-who...where in the plane's am I?!"
"Keep your voice down and be calm, we haven't time for too much chit chat. I have dinner with a few fine guests in an hour and I must wrap this up quickly."
"What?"
"My name isn't important, what is important is what you're going to do for me. I'm not about to travel the planes just to give this out."
"Huh?"
"Tell the kid...well actually he'd be an old man by this point, tell the Archmage of whatever the college is called now that..." she tapped her head as if trying to remember something very important, "Vecna...no...Wave Echo...no...ah yes, yes that's it. Tell the old man that there's been some strange activity in the eastern lands of the...what was it...some shoddy little...oh the frontier, yes that's it. Tell the old man that a few giants are doing something very bad there, yeah that was it."
"D-Doing...what?"
"Oh...something about their code of conduct or whatever, believe it or not they have those it's rather strange. But anyways, tell the old man or someone important so this can go and get snuffed out. I really have to go now."
"H-Hold on? a-a...giants!?"
"Yeah, crazy right? something called the ordining just...shattered." She sprinkled her hands for dramatic effect, "La dee da da, are we good here cause I really gotta be going. Keeping fey waiting could lead to a whole lotta bad things, like charms or curses, trust me I've seen my fair share kid."
"Um...I still have a lot of question-"
"Okay! see ya kid, make sure to get this message out cause it's pretty dang important. Real dangerous stuff could come about if you don't, kay bye."
She blinked and she was within the walls of the water town guild.
They were allowed to go about the town as they would be going off on the boat the next day. The children would be staying on the thing, allowing for some teachers to go about and relax. Wizard went by herself, her eyes slightly glossy as she kept on. Why didn't you tell him? why didn't...
Was it a dream? she pondered the thought as she walked through the busy streets of the town, ignoring the vendors shouts, and seeing the posters for a festival of the blazing sun like a pilgrim searching for some promised thing.
What if it wasn't? or what if she was going crazy? that wouldn't exactly be a new concept to wonder of. Sometimes, late in the night when all she could think about was that fateful day of her baptism of fire, Wizard felt her sanity slipping away in small tears.
Two possibilities. One, the archmage looks at her as if she's crazy. Two, that strange woman was telling the truth and something really is going on within the frontier lands.
This was getting to be too much, she walked past a big tavern titled the 'Sleeping Portal' that had a large rectangular stone building at the bottom with a slated roof at the top. Taking in a breath, she decided upon a drink then to the Archmage to tell him about everything. Crazy or not, there was a small sense of duty within her.
She opened the door, brushing past a few outgoing patrons. There were sturdy wooden tables lit by candles about the establishment, and the sounds of gambler dice and drunken adventurers singing could already be heard from the outside. In particular, the off key singing of three bards at a corner table that filled the taproom.
Wizard walked inside, fumbling with her coin purse as she tried finding an empty table. Then she heard something that made her skin go as cold as a winter night.
"Sis?!"
In the middle of the tavern, three people were sitting together at one of the tables, mugs in hand. Her brother, a Rhea, and Warrior.