Letter to Hayley II

Dearest Sister,
 
I don’t know what you’ve heard, as I am sure the news has spread across the city, but I wasn’t responsible for Darius’ death. It also shouldn’t be a surprise that my engagement with Emily is over and I am going to need to leave Keralon for a while.
 
I put up the charms you sent me, for which I was very grateful. They did keep me safe in Cairn Fussil at least, but it seemed like all the wiccan protection in the world is no match for my love life.
 
It has been quite a while since we last met up, so I guess I first need to explain how I got into this mess. Long story short is that you were right about nobles in your previous letter.
 
At the start of the year, things were going well between Emily and I. She even started coming over to Cairn Fussil. I was super nervous the first time she met Amarra, I guess this must be what it is like having your girlfriend meet your parents. It went well and they didn’t kill each other. Amarra even taught Emily a few magical tricks, although Amarra did insist that Emily and I sleep in different rooms in the tower.
 
It was on one of the days that Emily was visiting that Gerald the peddler stopped by at Cairn Fussil. I don’t think you’ve ever met Gerald, right? He is a satyr merchant, although he doesn’t have a cart or horses. He usually just turns up at the strangest hours knocking at the door of Cairn Fussil. He seems to be aware when Amarra is at the tower, not sure how he does it. In any case, it always goes the same way. He and Amarra share a cup of (very) warm tea, and he starts producing all kinds of magical trinkets from his pockets. By the end of the tea, the table is full of goodies, despite him giving no indication that he was lugging several carts of merchandise around. Amarra then has a look, and usually buys an item or two.
 
This time was different a bit, as Gerald had brought a book written in Sylvan. He had remembered me pestering him about the Fey and pointed it out to me. I was excited at the time, as this had had the potential to be my big breakthrough after almost a year of investigation. Alas I couldn’t pay the price, as it was several years worth of my stipend. Just as Amara was saying that I could save up in time and that I had to appreciate the value of patience, Emily threw a pouch of gold on the table. Despite being from only a minor house, I would often forget just how much richer the nobles were in Keralon. In any case, she had more than enough to buy the book and said it was an early anniversary gift for me. Gerald tried to pawn several other trinkets to her (once he knew how wealthy she was), but Emily had told him that the book was plenty.
 
Emily and I then spent the rest of the evening deciphering the book. My Syvlan was still extremely rusty, but it was one of several languages that Emily had mastered. It was clear to the both of us that the book was old, and the dialect was uncommon. It was filled with strange poems and rhymes that almost didn’t make any sense. But there was one story that jumped out, which told of a farmer whose crops were dying year after year. One night a fey came to him, and made him a deal. In exchange for sanctuary in a small patch of trees on his farm, the fey would grant him the power to make his plants grow stronger and more powerful than before. The farmer agreed, thinking of his starving children. The deal was made, but when the farmer woke the next day, he found that nothing had changed. His farm remained as barren as before. But when he went to work his fields, he noticed that wherever he went, plants would grow in his footsteps. His blood, sweat and tears were causing the plant to bloom and spread. The harder the farmer worked, the faster and stronger the plants grew. The farm thrived, and the farmer was sure to build a shrine for the fey in the small patch of trees. The farmer continued to toil in the fields, working harder than he had ever before. He only lasted five more harvests before he died from exhaustion. The morning after his family buried him, they were stunned to find a large oak had sprouted on his grave. His eldest son took it as a sign and went to the patch of trees near the farm. When he passed, a few years later, it was the next in line.
 
The story ended with an illustration of a mighty oak forest, with at the center a small shrine which had several runes, very similar to those I had once seen in Hillfield and Logvale.
 
I still remember the chill down my spine when I finished translating the story with Emily. There was a certain inevitability behind the words, as if they were leaking power and intent. I remember thinking how foolish I was that we could ever stand up against such power. But it was Emily who hugged and comforted me, and told me that she believed in me, in us, and that one day we would also get strong.
 
So we rededicated ourselves to our studies. I had been more sure than ever that if I wanted to take on the fey and protect my friends, and protect Emily, I would need to get a lot stronger.
 
We would switch between Keralon and Cairn Fussil. At first, Amarra was more than happy to give us both some additional training exercises. Casting cantrips, readily untangling them and casting them again. Writing down ever more complex runic circles with just a flick of our hands. But after a while, Amarra grew concerned that we were both pushing ourselves too far and actually urged us to take a break.
 
Instead we spent more time in Keralon. Emily’s progress had impressed her teachers at the Academy as a second year student and had actually been given a bit more leeway. This meant she could get me on the Academy grounds as her ‘man servant’ (seriously, what is wrong with nobles…), and I was allowed to observe some of the higher level training sessions with her. This did cause more than a few rude comments from Darius and Samuel, who despite my only attending the Academy for a few weeks, still remembered me and some of their more colorful insults. Both Emily and I resolved to just ignore them and tried to learn as much as we could from the training. We would then replicate some of the practice ourselves in the garden of her family’s mansion, which was often empty during the early morning.
 
However one practice session was interrupted when Emily’s mother showed up. Apparently our activities had been noticed by some of the servants, and her mother had grown concerned that Emily had been sneaking off to a far corner of the garden with some boy. While she was glad at first to discover it was only magic practice, Emily confessed that we were also together and had pledged to get married.
 
I held my breath for the longest time as the frown on Emily’s mother’s face grew ever deeper with each new piece of information. Luckily I managed to not make a complete fool of myself, did the appropriate bow, mentioned my own status as a wizard’s apprentice and that we would not go through with the wedding without her father’s blessing. We got a ‘we will see’ from Emily’s mother, before she left us to our training. Emily told me that her mother not outright rejecting the idea of us getting married is a significant victory, although our future practice sessions were now permanently chaperoned by one of the Dumont servants.
 
This went on for several months, and we were both making significant progress in our magic. Progress that would be soon put to the test. One day Emily came with news about the Tournament of Mages. It was organized by the Magical Academy, but was open to any magically inclined individuals. Emily first introduced it as dueling practice for mages, but when she saw that this concept was equally foreign to me, she explained it was a contest, a battle of magical power. It was mostly meant as a showcase for the best and brightest upcoming mages. It would be attended by several Heralds, to scout for new potentials. According to Emily, placing high in the tournament is a surefire way to get on a pledge for Mirrdin’s Court, which is a very rare opportunity.
 
Without the organization of any true wizards’s guild, you did need a sponsor among the known mages of Keralon (which seemed to be mostly those in the Briar Ring, or at least those known to members of the Circles). When I asked Amarra about it, I had expected more resistance, but she actually said it was something that she could arrange for me. Even after living with the woman for almost two years, I still know very little about her or her relationship with the other mages of Keralon.
 
After we both managed to register for the Tournament, we focused our training, pushing ourselves harder than ever. I had gotten permission from Amarra to spend several days in Keralon for the tournament and had rented a room in a local inn in the Canalside district. As it was close enough to the Dumont mansion in Northwall district, Emily snuck out to visit me.
 
I was very restless for the Tournament the evening before, but Emily told me that I had nothing to worry about, that my practice would certainly pay off. When I told her the same, she confessed that she actually had an ace up her sleeve. I still remember the shock when she then promptly rolled up her sleeve to reveal several runes that she had drawn across her arm. I immediately recognized them. They were refined versions of the same runes we had found in the Sylvan book that we had bought from Gerald. The ones from the illustration of the fey shrine.
 
She explained that these runes were the reason for her rapid progress lately, and that it was giving her an edge over her classmates. Before I knew it, I was yelling at her for being so foolish. I don’t know everything I said, but I definitely called her out, that she didn’t know what she was doing and that she shouldn’t haven’t taken the book without my permission. She reminded me that she actually bought the book, and that I was in no place lecturing her as if she was some child. She called me a fool for ignoring this potential, and that she was doing this for us. She said that if she could win the tournament, she was sure she could restore her family’s political power and then her father would have to accept our plans to get married.
 
Our argument was cut short when a knock on the inn room door from one of the other patrons asked us to be quiet. Emily just huffed and said she was leaving anyway, and I could only look on as she sped out of the door back to her house. I keep wrecking my brain to this day for what I should have said to have things end differently. Maybe I should have been more clear about my concerns or that I should have insisted that she stay the night. But it was only the start of my many mistakes.
 
The next day, we gathered on the Academy grounds. A tribune had been set up for the audience. It was organized as a typical tournament, with one-against-one elimination matches until there was only one contestant left. Each match was the same, we were shown a relatively harmless spell that could easily disentangle its counterpart (a very simple version of the much more rare actual Counterspell) and the goal was just to dispel your opponents spell before your own was. A pure battle of wits and magical prowess.
 
Emily and I didn’t speak at all that morning. I had wanted to wish her luck, but I knew that if we spoke, we would end up arguing again. So I decided to wait until after the Tournament. In fact, I even hoped that if I could win the entire thing, I would be able to show her that any fey help was as worthless as it was costly.
 
One big advantage we had was that we were both placed in the lower age bracket. So we didn’t have to battle against experienced wizards (I actually have no idea how they deal with elves or other long lived races, but I am sure they have some kind of correction for it). However this did mean that we were in the same bracket as most of my former classmates, including Darius and Samuel.
 
The tournament placed us in random seeds, and me and Emily ended up on different sides. That meant that if we were to have to fight each other, it would be in the finals.
 
For my first match, I was placed against a noble girl I remembered from my time at the Academy. When I walked into the arena, I was immediately taunted as “farm boy” by the audience. No doubt the doing of either Darius or Samuel. As the referee started the match, I immediately worked through the verbal and somatic components of the spell. Despite the jeering of the crowd, it was over in less than five seconds. The spell unraveled in my opponents hands before she had even properly finished the first sigil. After our battles through Lorewood a year prior and all of the practice Emily and I had been doing, the girl hadn’t stood a chance. I walked off without a word.
 
As I waited for my next match, I was pleased to see Emily also win her match with ease. I kept a close eye on her, and was relieved to see that she hadn’t even needed to use the fey runes she had placed on her arm. Before long, we were both in our semi-finals. And of course, I had to fight Samuel.
 
I wish I could say that I maintained a professional and sportsman attitude, but one taunt in from Samuel, I yelled to him that I was going to wipe that fucking smile of his face (I was very on edge that day, ok?). The referee whistled, and our match started. And I immediately noticed that something was wrong. The signs and sigils that Samuel was using were not the ones we had learned that morning. They were faster, less complex, and far more powerful. It didn’t take long before I felt a pressure on my own spell, and its threads unraveling.
 
I didn’t have the time to think about it at the time, but the rules didn’t say that we needed to cast the spell as is without variation, leaving room for some creative freedom among contestants. And while I had only learned the spell that morning when the instructors gave us all a copy on a spell scroll, it was more than possible that some contestants had already learned the spell in advance, or a faster, more powerful version of the same. And if you can practice, you can outpace anyone who just learned the spell, even if your talent was lacking (and unfortunately for me, Samuel did have some talent).
 
But I wasn’t giving up without a fight. I immediately reinforced my spell, and moved to the defensive. I knew how to keep concentration and honestly I was also just very lucky. Samuel’s spell was hitting my spell construct like a sledgehammer, but I kept shifting it around, so that the only the sturdiest parts would get struck. As the seconds ticked by, his assault was relentless, and more than once my spell had come close to failing.
 
But I put everything I had into it. I had something to prove to Emily, and I refused to give up. No matter what fate dictated I was determined that I would not lose against Samuel. As I kept my spell on the defensive, I reached out and felt for the threads of fate. I envisioned the future I wanted and seized it from Arysia’s grasp. And in this path, Samuel made a mistake and his spell wobbled. Just enough to reduce the pressure on my own spell and within a moment I struck out, hitting exactly the right spot for his spell to fizzle out. It caused a slight explosion in his face, burning his eyebrows, which pleased me greatly. I walked off the arena with a smug smile on my face, knowing that my place in the finals was secured.
 
Then it was time for the other semi-final, Darius facing off against Emily. Whomever would win this battle was supposed to be my opponent in the finals. I was sure at first that Emily would easily win against Darius, as between the two knuckleheads, he was the less capable one. But when the match started, I grew very concerned as I realized that Darius had learned the same variant of the spell that Samuel had.
 
I noticed that Emily started gritting her teeth as she was also caught unaware. She reinforced her spell, and then I felt a chill down my spine. A chill I hadn’t felt in more than a year. I saw the runes on her arm start to flare and Emily’s simple spell seemed to become alive, latching on to her, feeding on her.
 
Emily started pulling power from whatever unholy pact she had closed with the fey, and it was clear that she wasn’t in control. I glanced at the referee, an elderly mage, who seemed to not comprehend what was happening. I knew I had to act, but I was still spent from my own fight against Samuel. But I had to save Emily.
 
So I used every inch of the magical reserve I had left, hoping to change the outcome that seemed so inevitable now. But I was too weak, and they were too far. Emily’s living fey-charged spell lashed out and consumed Darius’ spell. Then the arena exploded.
 
The next few hours were a blur. They put me in a small room where I was interrogated for what seemed like forever, by guards, by teachers of the Magical Academy, by some Knights and by one Cleric of Spade for some reason.
 
Finally a gruff guard entered the room and laid out the facts for me. Darius had not survived the explosion. Several wizards had confirmed that it was due to the interference of Fey magic in the tournament. I asked about Emily, but the guard would only say that she was still alive.
 
The guard continued. They had several teachers at the Academy testify that I had a particular interest in Fey magic. They had reports from students that Darius used to bully me. They even had a witness who claimed that I had had an argument with Emily at an inn the day before. There were several unconfirmed reports that I had been casting a spell during the match. Finally, with both Emily and Darius eliminated, I would have won the tournament.
 
Honestly, when I heard it all, I started to doubt my own innocence. They then offered me two options. Either confess and the incident would be ruled as an accident. Or maintain my innocence and stand trial for the murder of Darius Greyblood.
 
My first instinct was of course to fight it. But doubt had seeped into my mind. And best case, if they found out I was innocent, they would go after Emily next. So I gave up, and told them that I would admit my guilt.
 
They then told me what would happen. I would be disqualified, and Emily would be crowned victor of the Tournament of Mages. I would be barred from entering the Magical Academy grounds again, and forced to pay a fine of 1 000 gold. I would also issue a public apology to the Greyblood family. I realized how lenient these terms were, even if I had no idea where I would find so much gold.
 
I spent the night in the cell, and they drummed me up for the apology the next day. I was escorted to the Greyblood manor, where I stood before Darius’ parents and claimed responsibility for the incident. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I thought they would cry or be angry with me. But I hadn’t expected their vacant eyes and their silent nods as they accepted my apology. While there were a few officials attending the apology, likely to confirm that it happened, for some reason both Samuel’s mother and Emily’s father attended. They both gave me a hard look but didn’t speak a word to me.
 
The officials whisked me away before I could ask about Emily. And I was ushered into an administrator’s office to handle my processing. They laid out the same statements as I had heard before, and then said that I was free to go. When I enquired about the fine of 1 000 gold, the administrator looked confused at me and stated that it had already been paid. He got a large book and showed me a ledger which stated that my fine had already been completed in full.
 
When I was released, Emily’s house was my first stop. But it was her father who opened the door, who demanded to know why I had come. I told him that I wanted to see Emily, but he refused, saying that I had no standing to see her. After I made it clear I wasn’t leaving without seeing Emily, he relented, bringing out his daughter. At first I was glad to see that she was safe, despite a few telltale scars on her right arm, running up her neck. But I got chills when I saw the coldness in Emily’s eyes. Then she said that she also didn’t understand why I was here, there was no reason that Keralon’s most promising upcoming mage would waste time on a peasant boy.
 
I wish I could say that I confronted her nonsense or gave some kind of witty comeback, or even any words at all. But the truth is I just ran away, with tears in my eyes.
 
When I returned to Cairn Fussil, I locked myself in my room for three days. Amarra kept her distance, just having magical servants bring up food to my room at regular intervals. Food that I mostly left uneaten.
 
To Amarra’s credit, she never asked what had happened. She never forced me to do anything. When I finally left my room and told her that I was leaving Keralon and her tutelage, she accepted it without question. Amarra has said that I can return and pick up where I left off whenever I want, but that I can take all the time I needed.
 
So my bags are packed and writing this letter will be the last thing I do in Cairn Fussil. I don’t know where I will go or what I will do. I just don’t want to be here anymore and I can’t return to Tarn a failure either. Maybe I’ll come back in a few years.
 
I hope your studies with Greta are going well. I wished I had made the time to come over and visit you in Canalside. It always seemed like I had plenty of time to do so, until time ran out.
 
Take care.
 
Your brother,
 
Luke