Gorren was a storm of snarls and pain as he slammed against the table.

“Do it!” He screeched, slamming his right arm on the wooden surface. The limb was blackened up to the elbow, like it had been cooking over a fire. Tentacles of blackness squirmed just under the skin, bulging out like a mass of wriggling worms.

Timothy’s espression was one of absolute terror as he stood by the other side of the table. The young man held a long knife in trembling hands, but made no attempt to use it.

Gorren clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw went numb. White-hot agony licked his arm, spreading all over his body like tentacles of burning iron. His coscience jolted and buckled in flashes, begging to shut down.

“Do it, idiot!” He screeched. Darkness creeped across his vision, the pain squeezing at his mind like an iron vice.

He shook his head wildly, spit flying from his mouth. He stomped repeatedly against the floor, screaming against the pain, struggling to remain awake.

“Do it, for goddamn’s sake!” He screeched again. “Do you want me to die?”

Eyes wide as saucers, trembling hard, Timothy remained where he was.

“Useless!”

Anger mingling with agony, Gorren reached out and grabbed the knife out of his apprentice’s slack grip, before pushing him away.

The effort left him slumping on the table, but still he kept his grip on the knife.

Vein of the temple pumping, he glared at his arm with blootshot eyes, bulging out so much that they seemed about to fall off. His face was deathly pale and his chin was plastered with spit.

With an animal snarl, he raised the knife, and brought it down.

Amidst the agony, it was almost a relief.

Later, Gorren was slumped down on a massive chair, completely drained. As he trembled wildly, there was not an inch of his body that didn’t scream in pain. The cauterized and bandaged stump left of his right arm was a single clump of agony that he kept clutched to his lap.

Eyes closed and features set into a pained grimace, he tried to breath slow and deep, a task not made easy by the hot spikes that stabbed through his chest with each intake of air.

Tiredly, he opened an eye to glance at his apprentice.

Timothy sat on the floor, his back against the door. His face was a chalky white as he stared into space, gaping.

Gorren closed his eye, and his grimace deepened. The boy seemed to have taken it bad. He supposed he hadn’t been very delicate, but it wasn’t like it was his fault, wasn’t it?

Still, he wanted to try and repair.

“Don’t worry about my arm.” He grumbled. “I will grow another one.”

Timothy turned his still shocked gaze on him. The young man blinked, like he was registering the words.

“That… that’s all you have to say?” He asked, incredulity so high that he looked ready to burst laughing like after a bad joke.

Gorren opened his eyes to stare at him with a inquisitive frown.

Timothy didn’t give him time to speak, as he jumped at his feet like a startled rabbit.

“What even was that thing on your arm?” He asked, voice shrill. “You… you could have died! You could have killed us both! There was an explosion in the laboratory, for goodness’ sake!”

Gorren narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like such weakling reactions.

“You’re overreacting.”

“I am not!” Timothy protested, almost whining by the sheer terror and nervousness still running through him. He pointed a trembling finger against him. “Is this that you’re studying? This… this dangerous things?”

Gorren closed his eyes, irritated. The full explaination would have taken a century, so he decided for the answer closest to the truth.

“It’s complicated.”

This time, Timothy actually laughed, a joyless sound that grated on his sore ears. “That’s what you call that? I felt the Mana emanations of your experiments. There’s enough energy to level the plateau, for fuck’s sake!”

Gorren gritted his teeth, staring daggers at his apprentice for snooping where he wasn’t supposed to and for daring questioning him.

“I have it under control.”

“Yeah, i can see that alright!“ Timothy replied, voice oozing sarcasm.

Gorren clutched the stump with his remaining arm, bristling at the low blow. “A minor inconvenience.”

“Yeah, right.” Timothy challenged him. “I saw that thing that had latched to your arm. It wasn’t normal! It didn’t belong to our world!” His tone raised to threatening level. He looked hardly in control. “What even is that you’re studying? What forces are you tempting?”

Gorren was getting angry. He was sore and pained already. He didn’t need this brat’s ignorant fears weighting him down.

“You have not the expertise nor the authority to judge me, apprentice.” He hissed, putting emphasize on that last word.

“But i am here!” He slammed a hand against his thin chest. “I am here just as you! And your experiments put my life in danger as well as yours! Not to speak of all the people of the town!”

Gorren was offended by that cowardice. Wasn’t he the one that had been wounded? What rights had Timothy to complain?

“My experiments push the very boundaries of human understanding of magic. Risks are obvious, but i have them under control.”

“Do you? Do you really?” Timothy challenged. “Or it’s just that you are grasping for things that will be the deaths of everybody around you?”

Gorren snorted with derision. Had he really so little faith in him?

“You have to stop.” Timothy hissed. “You have to stop those experiments before they damn us all!”

The proposition alone felt like a sword to the neck for Gorren. He couldn’t believe that his own apprentice would ask such ridicolous things of him. He felt betrayed, stabbed in the back by the one he had fed and raised.

“I thought that maybe you had the guts to reach for greatness.” He said, furious. “It seems that i was mistaken. You are just another weakling.”

Timothy seemed to hesitate before his master’s rising temper, but didn’t back down.

“There’s difference between guts and madness! If you cannot control what you unleash, you have to stop!” He pointed wildly at his stump. “Look at what you have done to yourself already! And who know what will happen next time! Who…!”

“Silence!”

Timothy flinched as struck. He drew back before Gorren’s incendiary glare, fear of his Master finally dousing his determination.

“You dare to lecture me on this, whelp?” The old mage snarled, showing teeth like a beast. “You, that has a hundred times less experience than me? You, that was but a ragged mutt when you came whimpering at my door?” A spike of pain ruptured through his arm, making him writhe on his chair. Still, he didn’t stop. “Why don’t you understand? There is no greater calling for a man than this! The search for ultimate knowledge, to understand the fundamental laws of our universe! This is greatness, the greatest prize that a true Seeker can obtain! There cannot be compromises in such an endeavour. You have to give yourself fully to it! It’s a war, you hear me? A war! A war against the chains of ignorance that shackles us! Against the very limits of humankind!” Ignoring the agony, he raised his stump. “This is but a wound! What soldier refuse to return to the battlefield after such a little thing? I tell you who, the weaklings, and the cowards! You are no Seeker! You are a weakling!”

The outburst drained him of his last strenght, and he slumped down, wheezing. Still, his eyes, burning coals full of hatred and furious determination never left his apprentice.

Trembling, Timothy stepped back, unable to stop looking at that crippled old man, unable to stop the terror taking over his thoughts.

“Weakling.” Gorren wheezed. Agony wracked him, making every word a torment. “I don’t need… a weakling. Take your things and get out of my tower, now.”

Timothy wavered. He tried to talk, but Gorren wouldn’t hear anymore.

“Get out!” He screamed.

Something seemed to break in Timothy, and the young man stormed out the room, the door slamming after him.

Gorren remained alone. Struggling to breath, wracked with agony, alone with his torment and his stubborn, hateful, furious determination.

He passed three days of hell, forced to bed while his healing magic did his agonising work to repair the damages.

The moment he was able to walk, he forced his battered body at his feet and, snarling at every step, he staggered to the quarters of his apprentice.

He found the small room empty. Timothy had left the things he had given him, each at their place, taking only the clothes he wore. Understandable, since he didn’t possess anything that his Master hadn’t given him.

Gorren leaned against the door, wheezing. His thoughts fluttered like wounded butterflies.

“I had to see this coming, i guess.” He murmured.

Planting his staff down, he staggered out and into the corridor.

“Just another weakling.” He panted.

He hadn’t ever noticed how silent the corridors of his tower were, how large. Shadows piled up at the edges of the pools of light projected by the magical lanterns, behind the corners, against the ceilings. There were many points where the light didn’t reach in there, he realized.

“In the end, nobody has what it really takes to follow me in this journey.”

His voice echoed in those dark places, returning to him again and again.

“The greatest of endeavours, walking in the footsteps left by the greatest of Gods.”

He walked, but didn’t know where he was going. Everything hurt. His throat felt as dry as a desert. His chest was tight.

“There’s something greater?”

Without knowing how, he found himself into the central hall of the tower, the greatest. The statue of cowled Ur emerged from the darkness, looming over him like one of the gargantuan Titans of old. The shadows were thick there, so much than an army of observers could be hidden amongst them, and he wouldn’t see them. He pictured rows upon rows of red eyes, staring, judging.

“Am i not right?” He shouted, suddenly angry. “Isn’t such a quest that makes us closer to the Gods? Isn’t this research the greatest adventure that a man could give himself to?”

His audience of shadows didn’t answer. He turned, seeing gazes all around. They covered everything he could see, threatened to drag to the light what he had buried away into the darkest depths his memory.

His wrath increased at the silence, at the creeping fear that slithered into the back of his mind.

“There’s only the work!” He declared. “There’s no need for anything else! Do you hear me?!? Nothing else! Nothing!”

His words seemed to choke in his own throat as he pronunced them. The shadows sorrounded him from every side, rising like the tides. The eyes stared from high now, the gazes of demons and judging gods.

“I am Gorren An-Tudok!” He screamed, his voice feeble but still the rage in his chest was such that he could feel it rumble against his ribs. “I don’t need anybody! Only my work!”

He drew back as the shadows edged closer, clutching the stunted grow of his arm to his chest. Horror and anger warred in his mind. He tried to call for light, but found that he didn’t have any strenght. It was like if the darkness ran through him instead of blood, smothering him.

Still, he cried out, refusing to admit what was happening.

The shadows barged against him, crushing him between them. He flailed, trying to push them away, but his hand couldn’t find anything to push against. The darkness covered his mouth, soffucating him. He fought like an animal, but there seemed no way out of that crushing embrace.

His frenzied thoughts ran to a haggard boy that he had found at his doorsteps. His eyes were the same of a stray dog, without a house, without anything to return to. If he died, nobody would care, nobody would ever notice. His death would have been the same that the smothering of a candle, the same of a leaf falling from its branch.

Why had he taken that stray with him? He had said to himself that he had done it because he had seen potential in him, the possibility of a helping hand in his endeavour.

It was a lie, said so that he didn’t need to see the ugly place where the truth had sprouted from.

And the truth was… the truth was that…

… that those eyes were the same that he had worn a long time ago, walking under a silent moon.

He returned to himself with a sharp breath.

Surprised, he looked around. The hall was empty, the shadows where they had been.

Slowly, he got up.

A hallucination?

He passed the back of a hand over his forehead. He was covered in sweat, his skin cold and clammy.

He shook his head. He couldn’t feel anything arcane in the place. A hallucination, no doubt.

Still, the truth he had found was still there, imprinted in his mind with letters of fire.

He hobbled to the statue and, after having kissed his palm, leaned against it to catch his breath.

When he found a measure of calm, he started to think.

“A kindred spirit? This is the reason?”

It was laughable, reeking of the same weaknesses he had always abhorred. And still, he imagined what the tower would have been without Timothy around, imagined the silent corridors full with shadows, the laboratories where the only sounds were the bubbling of the cauldrons or the fizzling of the alembics, the libraries where the dust piled up thick as day after day and year after year passed.

The image sent a rush of terror through him, the shadows all around that seemed to thicken.

In fear, he stormed out of the hall.

“Curse you!” He screeched, staggering away. “You have contaminated me with your weakness!”

Cursing the day he had allowed that mutt in his house, he raced toward the doors of the tower, the same that he had opened one day to find that pest shivering in the cold.

As he ran, heaving and wheezing, a small voice in the back of his head kept trying to stop him.

He could be anywhere by now! You won’t ever find him!

He ignored it, staggering across corridors and down ramps of stairs, risking to fall and break his neck with every step.

He won’t return anyway! You have thrown him out, you doddering old fool! You have thrown him out while screaming the same things that had so many calling you a madman! He won’t remain in the same place with a crazy old fart like you!

He forced his battered body to almost its breaking point, ignoring the reopening wounds and the crying muscles.

And even if you find him and he listens, what then? Will you beg? Will you say that you’re sorry? You? Don’t make me laugh. You believe in those words, from the first to the last. And you are too proud to say sorry!

“Shut up. Shut up.” He hissed through gritted teeth. “I’ll give myself to my research, body and soul! I forgave everything for it, everything!”

He reached the last corridor, but even staggering and hobbled his momentum was such that he couldn’t stop himself in time. He smashed against the wall, his hand shooting out to grab at the corner just a moment before he crashed to the ground.

“I ask only this…” He panted, gazing at the door. “I just…” Leaving the staff where it had fallen, he advanced the last steps. “I just don’t want to be alone.”

He grabbed the doorknob and, with a snarl of effort, pushed the great door open.

It was cold outside, enough to set someone shivering.

Timothy was there, huddled against the door, with only the clothes he wore and nothing else.

The young man watched him, but there was no anger there, no reproach, no fear. Only the pleading, broken look of a stray dog without anything to return to.

There was no need for words.

Gorren felt the need to hit him, to throw him out again, to hug him, to plead and ask for forgiveness, to say that he, alone in that tower, would drown in the shadows. Instead, he didn’t say anything, the words having decided that they wouldn’t come out.

He just nodded inside, and retreated from the frigid air.

As he gingerly picked up his staff, he heard Timothy’s steps behind him. Turned out that small voice at the back of his head was right on one thing: he really was far too proud to ask for forgiveness.

As he felt the waves of emotion retreat back in their riverbed, he turned to gaze at his apprentice.

Timothy looked like shit. His eyes were sunken and unfocused, his lower lip bluish, his hair unkempt, his clothes filthy. He looked ready to drop at any moment.

Gorren was about to start grumbling about his condition, but hesitated.

Despite everything, he felt he couldn’t let the matter drop, not like that.

He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Listen to me.” He said, and Timothy blinked, trying his best to listen. “You might consider me a madman, and maybe i am, but know this. Even if i risk my own life in the work, and would gladly give it away for it, i would never put you or anybody else in this town in danger. No matter what.”

In his addled state, who knew how long had passed since the last time he had drank something, Timothy needed a moment to register those words, but once he did, something softened in his eyes. He stood straighter, and nodded once.

“Thank you, Master.”

Gorren felt his heart clench at his earnest expression, but still managed to stifle any traitorous emotions before they could rear their ugly head. To tell the truth, he hadn’t ever put much thought about other people during his experiments. Maybe it was about time to start.

He was about to say something, but Timothy cut him off.

“Master.” The young man said. “Why are you so obsessed?” He eyed warily the way Gorren froze, but he didn’t stop. “I… i know that i am just an ignorant bumpkin that know nothing, but… why? Why do you follow this ultimate knowledge with so much insistence? Why?”

Why. A simple question. For Gorren, it meant go rummaging in the darkest corners of his memories, where things worse that shadows lurked.

They stirred, woken by that simple word: why.

Gorren wouldn’t let them. He slammed that door shut once again, closed all the latches, sealed back all that could be sealed.

He sighed. That was something that maybe he wouldn’t ever be able to tell, definitely not now.

“One day, apprentice. One day.”

Thankfully, Timothy decided not to press.

Just then, Gorren’s attention returned to the young man’s deplorable conditions.

“Let’s get you something warm.” He said, then grimaced. “And a bath, i guess. Help me god, young man. Why do you start to stink the moment i am not watching you? Don’t say anything, i don’t care. Come on, come on.”

Timothy tried to protest, but Gorren wouldn’t listen to any excuse. Simple banter, but the old mage felt like light was illuminating his mind once again, banishing the shadows to their dark corners.

In the end, Timothy caught a nice fever, and Gorren, that not even in his wildest dreams could have ever imagined it, found himself having to nurse him back to health, all the while he was the one with a still growing arm!

There was something profoundly unjust in that, he was sure of it, but still, he didn’t complain, at least not too much. Because the shadows of the tower didn’t raise to clog him in their frigid embrace anymore. And that was enough for him.