Chapter 21: A Mage’s End

“Now you know why high-level mages outside those trained at the Akademiya are so rare,” Hima said as they were about halfway back to Sgobor’s homestead, just as the excitement of the battle started to fully wear off and make the pain in Miro’s right shoulder and the fingers of his left hand harder to ignore.

“How’s that?” Miro asked.

Hima let slip one of those small sighs that seemed to preface every single sentence that she’d ever spoken to him. “I’m sure you’ve heard of this story, either in your own village or two towns over. A promising young mage impresses all the locals with their amazing powers and grows up as the pride of whatever village or neighbourhood they’re from. Then someone suggests that they’re destined for greatness, that they’re meant for grand adventure. The mage laughs this off at first, but then starts to believe it until the conviction grows into a decision and now the mage is saying goodbye to their friends and loved ones and heading off into the world. And they’re never heard from again.” Hima exhaled, sending a frosty breath into the air. “Not directly, anyway. Except maybe there’s a rumour – someone’s heard screaming in the night, or found a bloody tattered cloak by the river.”

There was a chill that went through Miro that had nothing to do with Hima’s cold breath. He recalled a fellow named Ludvik, who lived just up the river from Miro’s village. He would occasionally visit their local tavern, juggling balled lightning to everyone’s amusement, a spindly charred scar still visible on one of the establishment’s walls from when one of Ludvik’s spells got away from him. Ludvik had a breezy disposition and struck Miro, who was more than ten years his junior, as someone who enjoyed every moment of their own existence. On the day that Ludvik had last gone through their village, Ludvik used the invisible force crackling between his fingers to muss Miro’s hair and make it stand on end in a ball of fuzz, which Miro thought was a lot of fun until he saw Volod making fun of him to the Stolyar Sisters so he pressed his hair down with his hands, which honestly did not improve matters much.

Sometime later, Miro had heard some of the local boys, Volod among them, talking about how Ludvik would soon set out for the Deep Scar Mountains that lay far east of the Lake Country, and how he was going to come back a hero. Volod being the only other mage among them boasted that he couldn’t wait to grow up so he could do the same, which to Miro sounded like a neat idea but for someone else other than himself to pursue.

Miro had heard nothing about it for months until one evening, when he’d already gone to bed and the conversation around the dinner table turned to those low rumbling tones that signaled to Miro that under no circumstances was the discussion for his ears, which only made him that much more motivated to eavesdrop.

“Where did they find him?” came Sierra’s voice, raspy and horrified.

“About thirty miles east of here. Poor fool hardly even made it to the Lake Country.” Miro sensed that Bondook was shaking his head.

“Did they know what got him?”

“Bear, most likely, Or an axaurochs. Only way they figured it was him was that ring he always wore, the one that glowed hot when he did his thing.”

Miro realized with soon to be sleepless horror who they were talking about; that white-hot glowing ring, the same colour as that easy smile framed by the wild blonde hair. Miro wanted badly to tell the others the next day, to offer up some news from the outside world and earn whatever credit came with delivering such knowledge. But the cautionary tale may have discouraged Volod from following suit and leaving their village, so Miro chose to keep his mouth shut.

“Damn,” Miro whispered, returning to Hima and her ridiculous walking pace, as if she hadn’t just fought off an entire nest of razorbacks single-handedly.

“Happens all the time,” Hima said, “A bear wanders too close to the village, all the goatherds are in shambles. That is, until the village mage shows up to dispatch the beast and save the day. But that was only one bear, and probably half-starved, which was why he was so close to people in the first place. Out there though? Our brave mage encounters a pack of wolves. How many fireballs does he have? Five? Maybe six? There’s more wolves than that, and they have to eat.” Miro swallowed uncomfortably, the cuts in his shoulder throbbing. “Without someone who knows what they’re doing to guide them, a young mage doesn’t know to throw most of their skill points into Vitality. They don’t know what their limits are because nothing’s there to test them until it’s too late. I may not be the Akademiya, but as far as you’re concerned, I’m the next best thing.”

“How did you know to join the Akademiya?”

“I had no choice.” There was no bitterness in her voice that he could hear, but the fact that no further explanation followed made him question his hearing. Hima, if it was at all possible, walked even quicker now. “I hope you haven’t thought to assign your skill points to something useless in the heat of the battle.”

He'd almost forgotten about it completely but Hima’s words brought up the message about his two additional skill points into his vision.

“I’m guessing I want these in Vitality?” Miro asked.

“One of them, yes. The other one, though” she hesitated, and he realized how unusual that was for her, “Put that in Dexterity. I’m not sure if it’ll do anything but let’s see if that improves your aim at all. Certainly can’t make it any worse.”

After assigning his points, the flat arid landscape before them, with Sgobor’ farmhouse now visible in the distance, was superimposed with his latest character sheet:

MIRO KALDOUN

Level 5 Mage

Strength 3:

Dexterity: 2

Vitality: 3

Intelligence: 2

Charisma: 3

Spells: Incinerate level 1 (cost: 0.5), Lesser Fireball level 1 (cost: 3)

Maximum Mana: 18

Mana regen: 2.5 per hour

Debuffs: unavailable

The most pleasant result of this experience with the razorbacks was seeing just how significantly leveling up and putting points into his Vitality stat boosted his maximum mana and hourly mana production, now enough for six fireballs with a replacement rate of almost one per hour, which sounded impressive in theory, but was only useful if he could run from razorbacks for hours on end, periodically unleashing fireballs and hoping they connect despite his abysmal aim.

Then his thinking shifted – from his new reality full of deadly razorbacks and oxhawks and mountain road bandits, to his reality of less than a week ago, wondering if he could ever be able to make it to level five before he died. How could he have known that something that seemed as distant as death was just around the corner? He’d owed it all to Hima, he knew, especially the part where he had not yet wound up like Ludvik. There was something about her though that made her very difficult to thank, with her cloak that didn’t billow quite as much as it should have when she walked, and the way she always kept pace half a step ahead of him, so the most he could see of her was a sliver of the side of her face. Still, far be it for him to deny that he owed her.

“Thank you, for everything back there.”

“I’d only done what I was expected to do. Oh, and if Nydra asks what happened to your hand and shoulder, just tell her you fell on some rocks.”

When they reached Sgobor’s homestead, someone must have spotted their approach, most likely the keen-eyed archer, because the three of them came out of the house to greet them, Sgobor with his leg freshly bandaged but not limping.

“How did it go?” Nydra asked of Hima, who was descending her ice steps.

“I fell on some rocks,” Miro said, hopping down from climbing over the fence.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, bastards came out of nowhere, nearly got the best of me.”

Miro glanced at Hima to see her roll her eyes before she turned to Sgobor and said, “We found the nest. Your razorback problem should be much ameliorated.”

“Thank you,” Sgobor said with a hint of embarrassment behind that beard and perpetual scowl.

No sooner had he said it than Miro’s experience bar, which had just rolled over to the next level, shot up so far that it almost reached the next one.

After a moment, Hima snapped back from a slightly distant look that Miro thought much resembled his own whenever he was reading his display, and said, “I told you. Classic quest scenarios. Nothing quite like them to fill out your experience bar.”

After a lunch that Sgobor insisted they stay for, they bid farewell to their host and, at Nydra’s continued insistence, resumed their journey without the benefit of horseback. As a form of compromise with the group, Nydra also served as the primary pack mule, wearing not only her armor but a large pack on her back, refreshed with some provisions from Sgobor. Miro, though, did not escape having to pull some of his own weight, and had some of the burden redistributed to him as well, despite his preference to keep weight off the shoulder whose wounds Nydra described as “the bread and butter of military experience” and went on to say that “no one goes through the first week of training without getting something like that, or worse.”

They didn’t travel far that day, some consideration being given to the fact that Miro and Hima had an eventful morning, though Hima still pulled him aside for practice, making sure each precious mana point was spent as efficiently as possible. After they were finished, Nydra, citing his injuries, said that he was allowed one day of respite from her training, and that he could pick up his sword the next day as long as it didn’t make his bleeding too bad. Miro noted that the baseline was not no bleeding at all and decided it was best to enjoy his night off.

They’d found the remains of a solitary tree, one of the few lone giants in these parts that did not grow huddled together in the groves they’d passed. It had been felled years ago but its uprooted innards provided some shelter for them to settle under.

After sleeping in a proper bed for two nights straight, Miro begrudgingly returned to his thin sleeping bag under the open air, though even this was a far cry from that first night when he went to sleep shivering on nothing but a bed of pine needles, while two people of questionable motivation used a whetstone to sharpen swords that may or may not have been intended for him.

As he went to sleep that night, every sound coming from the wind-swept planes reminded Miro of the razorbacks, and he wondered if critters were able to hold a species-wide grudge. Above them, sitting on the lip of the upturned roots with his legs dangling off the side, sat the archer Peteri. Miro thought it strange, having only known the rough care of Bondook for so many years, to be comforted by the presence of a stranger.