Chapter 43: The Second Magus

“You should have told me.” Miro’s growl had stuck in his throat, but had the intended effect of chasing the laughter from Nydra’s face.

“Miro, I –”

“You think this wouldn’t have been helpful for me to know?” He heard his voice rising then, and didn’t care. The flame needed to escape somehow. “I thought there was something wrong with me but it turns out I just wasn’t going about it the right way?” Miro’s breathing was shallow and he could no longer remain sitting. “Did you know about this?” he snapped at Hima, who was standing nearby with her arms crossed and gazing down at Nydra.

“No,” Hima said flatly, making the briefest of eye contact.

“Great, so not even my supposed teacher knew. How was she supposed to do her job, if she probably assumed I was broken too?”

“Miro, I didn’t assume –” Hima started but Miro cut her off.

“Don’t even start – looking at me like I was defective even before you found out about my debuff.” He knew this had nothing to do with her, that he was being unfair, but in the moment, he didn’t care, his anger would not discriminate, and he hoped that she would not hold this against him later.

“I don’t even know what you want from me anymore,” he yelled, looking from Peteri and then back at Nydra. “You told me you were sent to get me because I might be a magus. You saved me from those bandits. And even though you tell me that it was all done for me, you stand between me and becoming the thing you expect me to be in the first place!” As he shouted this, he released his balled fists and when he did so, a bolt of golden lightning shot upwards from each of his hands and exploded in a crack of thunder over their heads.

Miro stared at his hands as if they did not belong to him. The others similarly gawked, and even Hima’s eyes, alight with a new blue shimmer, were transfixed. A flurry of activity flashed before Miro’s vision.

His experience bar, which had grown substantially during their fight with the rebels, but was shy of gaining him a level, now tipped over the edge. Miro had reached level 7.

Immediately following, an even more important message materialized, etched in jagged font:

Lightning Mage Skill Tree Unlocked

And then two other notes appeared:

New Spell Learned: Lightning Bolt

2 Skill Points Available

The last message lingered, pulsating gently as he ignored it. Miro could feel his new power coursing through him, right alongside his fire skill. To his right hand he summoned little bolts of electricity that hopped from finger to finger, to his left, he called a flame that enveloped the entire hand. He had command of them both, a true magus, for anyone to see.

“But, how?” Nydra asked.

“Yanik,” Miro answered, watching the lightning play in his hand, “The miller’s son. I’d never told you but … he was a lightning mage. He had accidentally burned down the mill when he was trying to defend it from Commander Sajoy and his troops.” How terrified the boy had looked just because he possessed the power that Miro now wielded in his palm. “He told me he never wanted to have this power. So I must’ve taken it from him without realizing.”

Even in Miro’s mind there was no longer a question of what he was. A great weight of doubt had fallen from his shoulders and allowed him to breathe more freely. What he could actually do with this newfound freedom remained to be seen. He briefly looked around and found a twisted shrub growing out of a rock. He aimed his right hand, the nascent lightning still sparking there, and gathered another bolt that he released at the shrub, or rather, in the general direction of the shrub, since he missed the plant entirely and only ended up scorching an empty patch of rock.

The accursed debuff notification sprung up again, a teasing reminder that his challenges were far from over. He blinked it away.

“Nope, still cursed,” he said with a shrug and after a brief awkward laugh saw Nydra’s face relax. Despite her letting her guard down, there was still a storm inside him, but sure enough he had no energy left to let it flow out of him. “Maybe we should just get going,” he suggested, “We still got a rebel king to dethrone, don’t we?”

“Well said, lad,” Nydra agreed, and it was Hima, never one to make much of a fuss of anything, who led the way and climbed back on their horse. Peteri gave Miro a slight nod and closed his eyes briefly as if in approval, and then followed suit, but Nydra lingered, her lips parted as if she was finding something to say. She was not, in that moment, the confident warrior that lay waste to the rebel soldiers hardly an hour earlier, and there was no part of Miro that enjoyed seeing her like this on his behalf. It suddenly made him feel like he was making too much of a deal out of it all, that he should just submit to this game – the Kingdom-wide hot potato where he was the eponymous potato. Though he doubted that he could, he wanted everyone else to just move on from this.

Miro was taken back years earlier, when it was Sierra that looked on him with similar eyes, even though it was her health bar, newly there, that was depleting with every passing day. Although he had not fully understood his new power yet, it wasn’t hard to tell that there was nothing good about the growing darkness on the right side of Sierra’s green bar. It frightened Miro deeply, this silent steady onslaught, and she had already started to look tired, with dark rings forming around her eyes.

“Are you alright, Miro, love?” Sierra asked, sitting down at the edge of his bed, and putting her hand on his forehead. Since it had started, Miro had trouble sleeping, and whenever he was awake when he oughtn’t be, Sierra would know, and would come to check on him. “Something’s troubling you?” Raspy and coarse, even when she was well, Sierra did not have a gentle voice, though she used it gently.

In response, Miro shook his head, and pulled his blanket up to cover his eyes, so that he would not have to look at the depleting bar, hovering so brightly in the dark.

She pulled the covers down to just under his nose and said, “You know if there’s anything you want to tell me, Miro, love, you’re always welcome to.”

He stared at her dumbly, barely nodding.

“You know that, right?”

“I know,” he whispered.

“That’s a good love,” Sierra said, and ran her fingers through his hair. “Anything that’s happening to you, I’m always there to listen.”

All Miro wanted though was for Sierra to go away and to take her terrifying emptying health bar with her. Still, over the course of the following days she would come to him, no matter what he was doing and ask, “Are you alright, Miro, love?”

Even as she was lying in bed, no longer able to get up, her skin an ashen colour that was difficult to look at, she had asked him with an effortful smile, “Are you alright … Miro … love?” And they were the last words she’d ever spoken to him, ever spoke to anyone, before she closed her eyes for one final time.

He was hundreds of miles now from where she had died, occupying what seemed like an entirely different life, but a life that Sierra had given him.

“Nydra,” he said, looking deep into the woman’s eyes, “I want to know everything about her. I need you to tell me everything you can.”

Nydra’s eyes shimmered with the beginnings of tears that she never let out. “I can do that, Miro.”

“Just,” his own breath caught in his throat, “Maybe not now. I need some time.”

“Whatever you need.”

“Thank you.” He nodded, and broke their gaze by looking at the ground. “Go ahead, we’ll catch up.”

Nydra threw him one last concerned glance over her shoulder before mounting her horse, and the two former members of the King’s Finest went ahead of Miro and Hima’s horse down the road. There had once been six of them. Nydra, Peteri, his father, and now Sierra. Thankfully not Bondook. Miro wondered if he should have asked about the other two, but there was always the risk of uncovering a new, hitherto undiscovered pain and he could not deal with at the moment.

“You coming?” Hima asked, not unkindly, and knocked him out of his pensiveness.

“Yeah, hold your horses … horse,” he answered, cracking his first smile in what seemed like a lifetime, but it had not even been an hour.

He walked up to the horse, steadying himself for another awkward ordeal, but Hima gave him her hand and helped him climb up, and again he noticed how cold it was.

“You going to be okay?” she asked without turning her head back.

“I think I’m going to have to be,” Miro said, “I’m the next magus, apparently.”