The land was barren now, covered in the bodies of the dead and dying. It would be the perfect place to replace my lost guardians. I walked there, carefully searching the bodies for those that still lived but wished for death. As I searched my mind began to wander.

It’s been six years now since I was taken from my home on earth, and for those six years I have lived as a slave. That first year with the trainers was hell, but once I was purchased by my current master my life actually improved quite a lot. I was taught magic, and trained to be a slave mage for the Avalon military. My master, Commander Rainer, is and was then a strict but fair man who could show compassion and understanding when it was needed. In many ways my master served as something of a surrogate father figure for me.

For the last five and a half years of my life I have served the kingdom of Avalon as both a battle mage and a healer, and for those five and a half years I have carried out countless orders given to me by my master. Today would mark the first day I ever tried to disobey him, and it also marked the first time my master was forced to invoke the slavery crest that was magically branded onto me.

I wasn’t very fond of today. In fact today down right sucked.

In the last five years I haven’t ever hated a day more than I do this one, and some of the days training under my various teachers and instructors could be pretty fucking horrible.

I guess that was why I was out here wandering amongst the dead to find replacements for my now deceased minions rather than in the camp celebrating our sudden victory with the rest of the army. I didn’t want to be around people, and I knew I sure as hell didn’t want to be around Rainer, so I came here.

I stopped and looked at the now barren and blackened ground. Just this morning this had been a field full of green grass and the rare yellow flower. Now it was a dead strip of land were nothing would ever grow again.

I did this, me and my unit of fellow mages. Through the combined mana and will of over fifty magic casters we turned this place into a small wasteland where nothing can survive, and all with only one spell.

I guess that shouldn’t bother me, after all I’ve done worse. Hell I’ve done things that would get me branded as evil plenty of times, whether they were orders or my own choices. Still this time was special, this time I didn’t want to do this and my master forced me to assist regardless. For some reason that made this time different than everything else I’ve ever done, the why or how of the thing escape me but it does make this time different. At least it does for me.

If I had to guess why this bothered me so much, then I’d have to say that in being forced to help cast that spell I was made to feel powerless. I haven’t felt truly powerless since I learned to harness my mana, but before then I felt powerless all the time. In the past it felt like nothing was under my own control, and that year with the slave trainers broke down any illusion of control I might have ever had. I guess today this spell served as a reminder that I still wasn’t totally in control of my own life, and if I needed this reminder then I guess I must have forgotten what it meant to be a slave.

Mages get treated differently from regular people, even here on the magic rich world of Eden the ability to channel and control mana is pretty rare. As such mages, of any state or status, are valuable. Even a mage who happens to be racially a monster are shown some respect, so my own status as a slave was second to my status as a mage. I had my own room, my own servants though they were really just my own magically compelled or controlled minions, my own clothes and equipment, and I even had a recognized rank within the military. Normal soldiers were expected to show me respect and to an extent even obey my commands. But despite all that in the end I am still a slave.

And in the end a slave branded with a crest is still forced to obey whenever their master choses. Today reminded me of that lesson, and in so doing shattered my carefully built up illusion of freedom and authority.

I may be many things, but I was still a slave. Hell, I could even be the greatest magically prodigy in any of the four worlds and it wouldn’t matter because that magical prodigy would still have to jump if their master asked them to. The alternative was simply to horrible, the price of disobedience with slave crests was typically torture of the very soul and nothing I knew of could withstand that for long.

It was a hard thing, coming to terms with my status as a slave and all that meant for me. In the past I had accepted that because I had no other real choice, but now? Now I was no longer frightened kid who didn’t want to die in his parent’s townhouse with the rest of his family, I was a recognized mage with a fairly large mana pool and all the spells I could ever imagine at my disposal.

There standing among the dead and dying I finally understood. There were countless cases of slave mages deserting armies, regardless of what method was used to control them. Avalon made up its slave mage units with children and teenagers, and it always assigned those units to fair and level headed masters with histories of kindness and parental dispositions. I had always thought this was a way to earn loyalty, but never wanted to look deeper at what was being done than what I found on the surface.

I laughed even as I felt like a part of me was breaking. The bird is always so happy inside the gilded cage, it sings and chirps without the faintest worry in the world. Yep, the bird sure is happy, right up until it tries to leave and find the cage is locked. It’s funny because I’m the bird and somehow managed to forget there even was a cage, at least I did until I slammed head first into one of the gilded bars.

I’m sure it’s funny because I’m laughing, I laugh at funny things.

***

Perspective changes everything.

From my perspective I was the second oldest adapted son in a weird but close family of slave mages and military officers. I liked my life, was proud of my position, and loved my adaptive father even if my new siblings were annoying. I got hot meals, a good home, the chance to learn magic, and a new family when I had rightfully expected to be some rich old pervert’s sex toy. My perspective was biased and rose tinted from the start.

From the kingdoms perspective I was a tool. The broken kid with latent magical talent from the ruined world known for its former technology and advanced society. Earth mages tended to be better healers and enchanters because of the in depth knowledge that they could obtain from the many books or the rare internet connection. The kingdom saw the chance to buy itself a new healer or enchanter at a bargain price, and even have the opportunity to raise him to be loyal to king and kingdom. To some extent I had always known how I looked from the perspective of the kingdom, but I tended to not think too much about it.

From the perspective of Rainer I was... I was just another kid to aid to the pile. I would be his burden for the next ten or so years until I either served my duty and earned my freedom, died, or managed to escape and erase my slave crest. I wasn’t some adopted son to him, I was a soldier. Sure maybe I was a soldier he liked, I don’t doubt he likes all the slave mages he is master too, but I wasn’t loved like I had imagined. If I were a son to him he would never have used my crest to torture me like he did this morning, but I wasn’t a son to him just a soldier. Even your favorite soldier gets punished if they refuse orders, and even your favorite soldier is forced into line or killed for treason if he continues being a problem.

So yeah, perspective was everything. I had lost sight of what I was and what others viewed me as so I got hurt. Somehow I doubt Rainer was feeling what I was right now over our “Little disagreement” earlier this morning. No, he’d be right there in the center of the celebrations congratulating the others on a spell well cast and another victory well earned.

I tried to wipe my eyes but the tears just wouldn’t stop, they kept coming and I couldn’t help but keep wiping to stem the flow. The slave trainers could get me to cry from pain and misery, but only Rainer and the realization that I had nothing but an illusion of family could get me to weep.

It was my heart breaking, my soul tearing, my world ending. In those tears I lost who I was and everything that entailed. While I sat in the dust, dirt, and blood I felt a part of me die and suddenly I wasn’t the powerful mage or the dutiful soldier, I was back to being the twelve year old kid who was being taken away from a burning home to be trained as a slave on a whole new world. It was painful and awful, nothing had ever hurt so much.

I wasn’t sure when the tears had started and the laughter died, but here I was and here I would stay. At least until the hurt lessened to something tolerable.