Sebastian winced when he came to, echoes of the pain flickering through his consciousness. I guess I know what it would feel like to dip my arm in molten steel now. Bad, it would feel bad. What happened? Where am I? He was still a bit out of touch, and it took him a minute to realize he was in his bed in the tower. Shit, I bet Owdel had a cow. His thoughts turned to what had happened, and he reflexively looked in his hand for the iron ball that had clobbered him, all he saw was some bandages, but the moment he thought about it, he realized he knew exactly where it was. He could feel it sitting in the corner of the room on a table, wrapped in a rough cloth.

He immediately turned to face it, then Owdel spoke up, startling him since he hadn’t even realized he was in the room, “I believe we have already covered the potential hazards involved in passing out in random locations, which allows us to move to more important topics.” He leaned closer to Sebastian. “What, in the name of all things holy and unholy, is that?” He stabbed a finger at the table in the corner. “And maybe even more importantly,” He stood, grabbed Sebastian’s arm, and pulled back the bandages from near his elbow, “What is this? Have you been toying around with enchanting yourself? Do you have a death wish? As if it isn’t stupid enough to enchant what was the count? Twenty-two items in a single day, and one of them seems to be some sort of parasite enchantment, you have to try and enchant yourself?”

Sebastian was shocked to see that the runic patterns that had originally only been on his hands, and not even his whole hands, was now extended up to just past his elbow on his right arm. He immediately lifted his left arm, and was relieved to see that it wasn’t covered in runes. He wasn’t as relieved to see that they had extended to his wrist though. A woman walked in with a basin and interrupted his inspection.

Owdel gestured her back out the door, “He is awake now, thank you for your help, but we can manage from here on.” Turning back to Sebastian after she left, “Explain.”

Sebastian did his best, but he didn’t have a clue about the things Owdel wanted to know the most, namely the patterns on his hands and arm, and the mystery ball of molten misery. Once he had told Owdel everything he could, he asked, “What did you mean by parasite enchantment? Is that what it does?”

Owdel glared at him, “It was stuck to you. For three days. Leeching every ounce of mana from you the entire time. Why do you think I had someone from the town here to take care of you? I couldn’t risk touching it, or letting my apprentice touch it, as for all we knew it would siphon the mana from us as well and we can’t very well have all of the town’s magi put in a coma because one of them is a reckless fool. Now, do you at least have an idea of what it does?”

Sebastian shook his head, “No, I didn’t even know it was enchanted at all, like I said. I thought it was just some random thing I made while trying to clear my head.” He froze for a second, “Wait I was out for three days?”

Owdel nodded, “Bloody fool blacksmith keeps coming by too, seems convinced your idiocy was his fault and won’t accept me telling him that you are perfectly capable of being a suicidal moron without his help.”

Sebastian frowned, “I haven’t done anything suicidal on purpose, and I don’t even know how any of this recent stuff was even possible!”

Owdel gave him a wry grin in response, “Boy, after the second thing you enchanted, you leapt off the tower. Then you enchanted a metal stick and a bow in one day, without concern for the consequences of mana fatigue. Then the very next time you do some enchanting, you make twenty arrows, a hammer, and that thing over there. Technically twenty-three total, if you count the fact that you seem to have decided to enchant your own bloody arms. On purpose or not, that is more than a little reckless.

“Since you are up, and have no way of explaining any of this, I am issuing you another formal guild order to figure it out. I expect to be informed of anything you learn that is relevant.”

Sebastian watched him walk out of the room, feeling a bit overwhelmed by these new developments. With nothing better to do, he started to unwind the bandage covering his right arm. I guess they thought it was part of the problem and that it wouldn’t hurt to bandage it? Actually, it’s more likely that Owdel didn’t want to look at it anymore. As he unwrapped more and more of his arm, that last theory on why it was bandaged seemed more probable. He was inspecting it with a tinge of morbid fascination, and when he tried tracing the lines with just his eyes they tended to get lost in the swirls, forcing him to start over every time.

He frowned when he unwrapped his hand and found a dark red circle on his palm. It was still the pattern, with normal colored skin in between the lines, but right where he assumed the ball had touched his palm the lines weren’t that faint white they were everywhere else, they were a brownish red. He started turning his arm every which way in an effort to see if there were any other strange, well, stranger spots.

His door burst open again, and suddenly Sarah crashed into him, hugging him fiercely. Before he could begin to react to that, she let go of him, reared back and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. “Never scare me like that again! You are the only friend I have left! You are not allowed to die, or go into comas ever again you hear me?!” She stormed back out of the room while Sebastian stared after her in shock.

She definitely takes after her mother. They are both insane. Sebastian was actually glad she had immediately left, because he was certain that anything he said in response to that probably wouldn’t have gone over well. He sighed, then glanced warily at the cloth wrapped sphere in the corner. Besides, I think I have to lock myself in the library for the foreseeable future. Hopefully there is something that can help explain what happened to me, or is happening to me as it were.

For the next four days, Sebastian did precisely that, and got more frustrated with each passing day. His only consolation was that things had more or less returned to normal in the tower, apart from the underlying tension they felt while waiting for fresh reports on the mystery threat. Sarah had calmed down in a few hours, and apologized for hitting him. Owdel had actually been out of the tower or busy reading scout reports for most of the time.

Sebastian thumped another useless book shut before leaning back and scrubbing his face with his hands. He just couldn’t find any record of something similar to what was happening to him. He had found records of other enchanters enchanting something they were touching when experiencing extreme emotion at least, but most of those items had been at best minor trinkets, and at worst utterly useless. Which didn’t explain how he managed to enchant a hammer and not the gloves he was wearing, and certainly not the sphere that he never touched until it was finished.

Owdel walked in as Sebastian was getting up to put the book back on its shelf, “Sit back down boy, we finally got news back from the scouts. Still no luck I take it?” Nodding at Sebastian’s arm, “Well it’s not important anymore. We are going to need to find out if that mess will allow you to use magic still. The guards and the hunters are going to need every bit of help we can give them, but I’m rescinding the mandate to enchant their gear. We cannot risk powerful magic weapons to fall into their hands.”

Sebastian was confused, “Whose hands?”

Owdel strode over to one of the shelves and grabbed a book. Then sat across from Sebastian, “This is a copy of a book written over five hundred years ago.” He slid it across the table so Sebastian could look at it.

Sebastian recognized it, “This is about the legend of the Twisted isn’t it? Everyone hears about that when they are little, my mom used to use them as a threat to make sure I behaved.”

Owdel grunted, then reached across to flip a few pages in it. He stopped on a sketch the author had made. A hideous squat thing, holding an unwieldy club stared at Sebastian from the page. Sebastian was about to ask what a copy of a five-hundred-year-old drawing had to do with what they were facing now, when Owdel pulled out a small bundle of folded pieces of parchment and a couple small pieces of soft leather. He tossed them onto the book in front of Sebastian.

When he got a look at them, it felt like his blood turned to icewater. Different angles, different levels of drawing ability, different weapons, but very clearly the same creature as the drawing in the book. Each and every drawing Owdel handed him. “But that’s, that’s just not possible!”

Owdel didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. There was no way the hunters would return with a bunch of fake sketches, and even if they had, the odds of them so closely resembling a sketch from five hundred years ago that nobody in the town had seen before were astronomical.

Sebastian stood and started to pace, they were supposed to have been wiped out. Legends spoke of a great storm that warped the world, bringing mana and magic, but also changing many of the living creatures it struck. At first the survivors of mankind stuck together, including the Twisted. Eventually though, they grew to hate what they called the Beautiful Ones, jealous of those that were left unchanged physically, and even more jealous of those that changed to the more beautiful races like elves. Pressure built between the two groups, until finally the Twisted gathered and left.

Everyone else thought that would be the end of it, but the hatred the Twisted had was passed to every generation, and the changes made to them caused them to multiply quickly. It had come as a huge shock when a massive horde of them attacked the kingdom nearly a hundred years after they left. It was only the intervention of the newly established Mage’s Guild that saved the kingdom from complete annihilation, but the legends say that not a single one of the Twisted tried to flee. Each and every one fought to the death. If there had been more, up in the mountains, or deep in the wilderness, and they had continued to spread unchecked, there could be thousands upon thousands of them, ready to pour out of the north and restart a centuries old war of extermination.

Sebastian clenched his fists. And they killed my father. He opened his right fist and stared at the dark red swirls that flowed across his palm. “You are right, it is time to find out if I can still use magic.”