It started innocently enough.

“I was thinking, Master…” Timothy began. The apprentice was perched on the top of a sturdy ladder, dusting the top shelves of the library. He did so very carefully. Up there it was very much uncharted territory and he still remembered the Uzbikian that Master had forgotten was there trying to get out of its jar.

“I don’t care. Shut up.” was Gorren’s gruff answer. In the archmage’s eyes, the best quality of his only apprentice was his ability to fade in the background. Still, that didn’t stop him from voicing his thoughts from time to time. Too bad that they usually were about some bullshit he couldn’t be bothered to put up with, especially while in the midst of an experiment.

Timothy obediently clamped his mouth shut. Focusing on dusting, the young man counted the beatings of his heart. Once arrived at one hundred, he heard Master pace and mumble.

“Master, i was thinking…”

“What?” Gorren grumbled. He had hit a stubborn snag and a moment of pause would only help him to start afresh. Also, he had forgotten there had ever been an exchange.

“It’s just…” Timothy struggled to reach a point behind a pile of books. “It’s such a shame.”

“What’s a shame?” Gorren impatiently tapped his foot.

“Well, there’s so much here in the Tower,” Timothy replied. “So much knowledge. I was thinking that it’s such a shame that nobody can benefit from it!”

Gorren immediately thought of savages and ignorants strutting about his precious collections and tomes. Obviously, the image was as terrifying as it was intolerable.

“Whatever you’re thinking.” Planting bony knuckles on his hips, the archmage gave his perched apprentice his most stern glare. “Forget it.”

Despite being up there, Timothy still managed to cower a tiny bit. “O-oh, i just thought…”

“That it’s a shame, yes.” Gorren gestured dismissively. “Except that it’s not. The path of magic is not for everyone, boy. Only the strongest in mind and body and soul can plumb its depths. Imagine if the wicked, the foolish or the talentless would try it. It would bring nothing but ruin and failures. No, apprentice. This knowledge has to be guarded, jealously, and then, with the utmost caution, it can be passed over to those that are worthy of it. There’s no other way.”

Timothy blushed with pleasure at his master’s implicit recognition of his worthiness. Still, he didn’t let go.

“I-i understand, master, but…” He tried. “Surely there aren’t only, you know, terribly dangerous secrets in your libraries? I am sure that a lot of people could benefit from your guidance on simpler topics and…”

“Do i look like an elementary teacher to you?” Gorren interrupted him, sweeping impatiently with his arm. “I grapple with the deepest mysteries. I don’t have time to play teacher to mages that don’t know how to lit up a spark.”

“But…”

“Enough.” Gorren’s eyes narrowed, making the young man rapidly swallow back his words. “Purge yourself from these distractions and focus on your training. On my part, i will forget we ever had this discussion; and i expect that you didn’t bring it up again. Have i made myself perfectly clear?”

Gorren’s tone brooked no argument, and Timothy knew better than to start one. The young man gloomily nodded.

“Good.” The old mage nodded with satisfaction. The boy could come out with stupid things but he was quick to rectify himself. That was good.

An inspiration took him. Quickly, before it could disappear, he ran back to his experiment, already putting the topic out of his mind.

But Timothy didn’t, the young apprentice brooding over it as he kept his work.

Gorren was reviewing his notes when a knock at the door of his studio interrupted him.

The mage frowned, not so much from the disturbance but rather form the bad feeling suddenly surging in his gut. It could be only Timothy, could it? There shouldn’t be any problems with him… except if he broke something.

Opening the door revealed just his wayward apprentice, and wearing just the kind of strained smile and body language one could expect from someone that had just set half of the Tower on fire.

“What have you done?” Gorren demanded to know.

The young man winced, then settled on the most piteous puppy-eyed display Gorren had ever the displeasure to see. The urge to just club him there and then was strong, but he repressed it. It couldn’t be so bad, right? Timothy was a fuckup about many things, but he was usually a cautious fellow. He would have thrown him into a ditch a long time ago if not.

“Ehm, there… there’s something you should see, Master.”

Turned out that he should have just clubbed him.

Gorren frowned down from the window at the little group of ratty-looking people standing awkwardly before the door of his Tower.

“Y-you see, Mast…Urp!”

Timothy tried to sneak in an explanation but was promptly cut off. Having his Master grabbing him by the neck tended to do that to him.

“Explain.” Gorren’s tone was just icy enough to freeze hell, almost as much as the gaze he drilled Timothy with.

Timothy liked to live. He explained.

It turned out that he had kept in touch with a couple of friends from back when he lived in town. One of the two was a budding mage that had gone to enter into the small magical community that had been growing alongside the settlement’s size. They weren’t many or organized or influential, but they had nonetheless attracted the attention of the clergy of the temples that had been in town from its early days. The priests didn’t like the chance of competition in the field of magic and had been going out of their way to make their life difficult, hoping that they would just pack up and leave. Obviously, rather than just do that and go in some other, more arcane-tolerant cities like Budrovia or Frankof, the idiots had decided to get all patriotic and plant their feet down. Even more obviously, the priests had turned up the heat by convincing the peasants to sell food to the mages only at high prices. The morons had managed to resist for some time by pooling together what they had, but their purses were getting light.

They had asked Timothy for help, and his moronic apprentice, for some reason he couldn’t even begin to fathom, had decided that it would be a good idea to bring some representatives to talk with his master. You know, because he ran a fucking grocery shop or something.

“Master, please,” Timothy pleaded. “These people need our help. If we don’t help them, they will be forced to search for scraps soon!”

Gorren passed a hand over his face, forcing back the urge to just slug his apprentice on the jaw. Scavenge for scraps? He highly doubted it. But Timothy was just the right kind of soft and stupid to believe whatever things these fellows told him. And even if that was the case, what part of “i don’t care about what happens outside of this Tower?” hadn’t he understood? He needed the utmost quiet to perform his research. Putting his head in a hornet’s nest like that was just doing the opposite. Who knew what ideas would those priests take if he started helping those they wanted out of the city? He could barely fathom the string of nuisances they could pelt him with! No, no and no! Nuisances, all of them! Out!

Something of his thoughts must have transpired because Timothy became white as a sheet.

“Master, please,” the apprentice croaked out.

Gorren blocked the demand to see those intruders out of his home a moment before it left his mouth. An idea had hit him, a way to turn that nuisance to his advantage.

Stopping the grin tugging at his lips from showing, he set his expression into a cold mask.

“We have some supplies in the root cellar,” he said. “You can give them something from there. Don’t touch anything from my personal stock.”

Timothy’s expression brightened immediately, but Gorren remained stern.

“Whatever you give them you will have to work to replenish,” the old mage warned. “You can use the lesson and exercise hours for it.”

Timothy nodded, a giant grin plastered on his face.

“Thank you, Master!” He said, bowing low.

Gorren nodded and, without adding anything else, walked away, considering the topic closed.

“Come to me when you’re done,” he said. “I will have work for you.”

As he walked back into the Tower, he felt satisfaction bubble in his chest. Initial annoyance aside, that nuisance had turned into a surprisingly useful affair.

He knew his apprentice. Despite his clumsiness, Timothy had a real talent for magic, but more importantly, he deeply loved the art. Now he would be forced to decide between giving those people many supplies and waste who knew how much time by working dusty earth for potatoes and grain; or rather sent them away with barely a piece of bread and being able instead to pursue his crowning interest. Gorren had no doubt that his apprentice would choose the former. After all, who would give up the delving in the magical arts for gifting food to little more than strangers? And Timothy’s feeling for the path was too sincere. He would choose wisely.

And in so doing, he would get two birds with one stone. The nuisances would see that there was no charity to be had from his door and his apprentice would make a step forward in the road of true dedication.

Gorren wasn’t one that wasted time with self-celebration, but right now he felt that he deserved a pat in the back.

He enjoyed the satisfaction for some moments more. Then, he turned back his mind to more serious business. That nonsense had cost him enough time already. It was time to get back to work.

Everything. He had given them everything.

Gorren watched the empty cellar like it was full with two-headed talking dragons dancing a merry jig.

Oats, flour, water and potatoes; there had been two years' worth of provisions in there. Now, it was an empty wasteland.

In a daze, Gorren left the cellar and snuck upstairs. From a window, he watched down on the small fields surrounding the Tower. Timothy was there, bare-chested as he plowed a potatoes patch.

Gorren could barely believe it. He had his golems to work the fields. Working by hand alone, Timothy would need at least three years' worth of work to make up for the supplies he had given away. Three years without study, without advancement, without magic. Three years passed slogging through dusty soil and back-breaking labor.

And for what? For a bunch of strangers from which he couldn’t ever hope to be repaid; all for the small price of the chance to delve in the mysteries of life, the world and the cosmos.

A surge of delusion and anger shook him out of his daze. So his apprentice preferred to hang out with his city friends rather than follow the sacred path he had worked so hard to initiate him to? Well, he could stick to that. No more revelations for him. The hoe was more suitable.

“Fool,” he snorted. Betrayal stabbed at him. And he had even thought that the boy had what he needed, the dedication for it. Bah! What a failure! And now, who knew what other nuisances would come from the city? Ah, but Timothy could deal with them on its own, couldn’t he? He would have enough time in his hands for it.

Furious, Gorren gave his back at the sight of his disciple working and disappeared back in the Tower’s bowels.

For two weeks he kept at his sulking, closed in his study and refusing to heed his wayward apprentice’s summons. He was so angry with Timothy for his perceived betrayal that he even had his golems guards the inner parts of the Tower, keeping the young man from it. It was only fitting, since he had decided his path, wasn’t it?

Still, as much as he tried to sink back into his work, the question kept tugging at his mind. He had witnessed Timothy’s dedication to the Work, seen his disregard of pain and fatigue for it. The boy genuinely loved the art, even if his talent was subpar at best. Why acts in such a way that got him away from it?

It was a choice so opposed to everything Gorren believed in that he couldn’t but mumble and crunch over it; and the more he did, the more he couldn’t find an answer, and the more he was vexed by it.

In the end, it reached such a point that he found himself unable to focus on the work at all. Furious and frustrated, one evening he threw to the floor the glasswork he was working with. Even as precious alchemical liquids splashed around, he was already changing shape. As a bird, he flew out of the window and into the twilight sky.

This wasn’t working, he thought. He needed to find an answer to this conundrum, or it would just drag at him.

Before he could decide, his wings were already carrying him toward the part of the city where the mages that had started all that mess had been holing up. When he realized it, Gorren only accelerated. He wanted to see the people responsible for Timothy’s stumble, understand what he had seen in them that had pushed him to disappoint him in such a way.

By the time he landed on the roof of a house, a number of schemes with which he could have those troublemakers thrown out of the city were already hatching in his brain.

The sounds of festivities shook him out of it, attracting his attention toward the streets below.

Magical lamps had been affixed at every corner and every wall, so that the entire neighborhood was bathed in a cheerful light. People in simple clothing were out and about, mingling, talking, laughing.

These don’t look like starving people to me. It wouldn’t have been surprising if those guys had deceived Timothy for some nefarious purpose. Many would have given their liver to see the mysteries he held in his Tower; and the boy was way too trusting for his own good.

Thinking that, he took flight. Wherever he went, he saw the same scenes: people, clothed in the trappings of humble life, preparing for what looked to be a little festival. Magic was a constant presence: small, Gorren would call them puerile, spells coiled outwards from palms and fingers; little bursts of light raised up to illuminate smiling faces before disappearing in brilliant flashes, flicker of flames extended toward recently affixed lamps, nestling into their glass containers like dancing fireflies. The atmosphere was one of happiness and relaxation.

The people there weren’t well-off by any stretch of the imagination; ratty clothes, weather-beaten skin, stains and marks and crookedness left by hard, peasant life and past sickness were the usual. Sunken cheeks and eyes showed that, despite the cheerful air, that was a struggling community, trying and failing to fit in a city that didn‘t want them.

Gorren wasn’t impressed. Nothing that you can’t see in any city of this wretched continent. If one was to concern himself with every starving peasant, the world would have already gone back to the stone age, each scholar too busy with the unwashed masses to even have time to open a book, let alone to make serious research.

This wasn’t worthy of giving up the Work.

The boy is more foolish than i thought, or these people have somehow misled him.

The more he continued in his exploration, the more his contempt grew. Wonky spells, half-haphazard incantations, gestures and words done out of ignorance and blind hope rather than true understanding. And the smell; god, the smell!

With his contempt growing, Gorren’s thoughts turned increasingly sullen. Giving up the chance of studying the magic arts for that dung heap? Ridiculous. It was obvious that those people had somehow misled his apprentice, that, as the fool that he was, had allowed a misplaced sense of pity to make him go astray. But he wouldn’t stand for it. As his teacher, it was his duty to see him walk the right path. Those rats wouldn’t burn the boy’s chance to walk the Path. They wouldn’t take him away…

Circling in the twilight sky, Gorren thought how to resolve the issue. There wasn’t need for complex schemes. In fact, given the place, the simpler the better. He would plant evidence of prohibited magic in a few houses. An anonymous tip to the temple of Helios would do the rest. Pawing as they were already for an excuse for more cracking down, the priests would jump at the chance and a general search would be indicted. There would probably be some victims as the outrage exploded once his false proofs were discovered, but he couldn’t care less. If anything, it was a good punishment for lying to and then trying to steal his disciple.

Satisfied, Gorren started looking for a good place where to start. He would need to return to the Tower to prepare the false evidence, but he needed to scout the place first. Finding the right one wasn’t a problem: every house was a good place, not like you could tell them apart, filthy hovels that they were.

He settled on a small brick house just because his owners, a ratty-dressed couple, was on the front porch, talking with some of their stinky friends, and so wouldn’t be in his face while he took a look around.

Settling on a side window that had been left open, he started to look around. Let’s see. The place was as pitiful as expected, looking more like a peasant’s home than a magic practitioner’s. Only with a cursory glance Gorren already found at last three places where he could plant the evidence: in a hollow under the floorboard, between a beam and the roof or maybe behind the small oven.

Child’s play.

Satisfied, he was about to take flight, when a sudden sound echoed from deeper in the house.

Gorren recognized it with surprise: it was the sound of someone coughing.

Curious despite himself, - when he hadn’t be? - he slunk down the window and in the room. Hopping across the floor, he reached the door and peeked in the room beyond.

The place was tight but the lack of furniture stopped it from feeling cramped. A ratty couch stood pushed against a peeling wall. The coughing came from the little bundle of blankets that occupied it.

As Gorren watched, it turned, showing the face of its occupant. The mage‘s breath caught.

The child could have been nine at most. Scraggly hair soaked with sweat clung to a skeletal face, the skin the color of old paper. Her cheeks were sunken deeply, as well as the eyes, tiny blue stars drowned in two large inky stains.

As he watched, the girl fell into a coughing fit, her tiny body flinching and shaking like a branch under a storm.

In her fit, she uncovered an arm. Gorren’s eyes widened as he saw that it was filigreed with black, bulging veins. While the girl coughed, they squirmed and pumped, like fat worms trapped just under her skin.

Gorren knew that malady. Mana Sickness. Wizard’s Scourge. The Worm Plague. There were many names for it, but all amounted to the same thing: an insidious, progressive sickness that affected only mages, and among them only those possessing a great amount of Mana while having at the same time conduits that were damaged, unstable or badly ordered. Unable to pump regularly, the Mana accumulated in the sufferer’s body in clumps that ended up shutting off the flow entirely. Without the life-giving currents, the body turned into a brittle, salt-like composition. It was a slow process, lasting years and punctuated by growing pain and growing disability. It ended when the sickness reached the lungs or the heart. Invariably, unable to breathe, the sufferer died of suffocation.

It was horrible malady, with a horrible end.

Forgetting everything, Gorren watched the girl with attention. Judging by her appearance, she must have been suffering for a few years by now. She seemed still able to move, but that wasn’t the real point. Mana Sickness usually attacked only mages with a great amount of Mana and a body unable to contain it. Still, if left untreated, it incubated in the original patient and turned into a more virulent form, able to attack mages of all kind. At that point, it became similar to mundane maladies; a weakening of the body, like that derived by inadequate alimentation, sickness or bad hygiene, was enough to open the doors to it. From there, a pestilence would sweep forward…

Gorren was brought back from his reverie by the sounds of steps.

Just as he darted out of view, the couple he had seen before the house, the parents of the girl, he suspected, made their apparition.

He heard them speak with the girl, voices dripping with care, to which she responded weakly. Another question, this one from the mother, hinting deep concern. The girl said something, sounding firm. The man laughed.

Slowly, with the utmost attention, the father lifted the girl.

Gorren had to repress the urge to jump out and start to screech. Untreated sufferers from Mana Sickness needed to stay put as much as possible!

The father, nor the mother, nor the girl heard his silent protests. Smiling, the man brought his small cargo outside, where he was welcomed by cheers.

Gorren pushed himself against the door’s corner, struggling to hear.

“…looking mighty fine today, aren’t we?”

“Thanks to the food the apprentice gave us! This gal sure has some fine appetite!”

“Dad, please…”

“Ahahaha! It’s all good! Come on! A toast! Franklin, get the cask! A toast to the Archmage in the Tower!”

“For helping us poor sods!”

“Hurrah for him! I can still barely believe it. When Timothy said his Master would help us, i half expected him to return with a sack at best, not with a full wagon!”

“You said it! And you have to see how that poor boy works now. Goddammit, i say we go and help him tomorrow!”

“That’d be just right,” the father of the girl agreed. “And we need to give our thanks to the Archmage as well. Oh, there’s come the beer. It’s the last, so let’s enjoy it. A toast! To the Archmage!”

“To the Archmage!”

From there, it was cheers and laughter and more compliments to the generous duo that allowed them to take a break from the tension of those dark days.

Gorren listened for some time, feeling his rightful vengeance melt like snow under the sun.

“Fucking damn it,” he grumbled, turning away.

A quick sprint and a jump brought him out of the window, and from there he was in the sky, flying toward the darkening horizon.

If they were so taken by their own humble festivities, maybe the people of the neighborhood would have noticed, and marveled at, the strange bird that circled the sky that night, like he was searching for a home that kept eluding him.