Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening Read online

  Arrendis did some research and found a few vague references. He remembered feeling disappointed when Arrendis told him that throughout history those like Vincent were regarded as less worthy wielders of magic, practically useless individuals who occasionally performed sword tricks. It seemed like the end of it. At the look on his face, the old wizard told him not to despair, for no magic is ever really what it seems. He was convinced that through hard work, scholarship, and active attempts to explore it, Vincent could become far more than someone who juggled swords at a fair.

  He warned that it would not be easy. Aside from the mental and physical effort Arrendis promised to put him through, even to continue training for what little Vincent knew how, there would be some harsh attempts at experimentation to stretch Vincent’s understanding of his own magic. There was much he would have to learn about Gadrale Keep and much he would have to discover about himself on his own.

  And there would be barriers.

  He was honest in telling Vincent that because his gift was for an obscure magical discipline that was neither highly respected nor well understood, there would be those who wouldn’t take him seriously. Worse yet, there would be those who might stand in his way. Arrendis could at best only offer him guidance, not instruction. Because of these reasons, there was a chance that his admission into Gadrale would be rejected by the Council of Masters.

  Vincent was a stubborn child. He helped his father on the farm because there was need and because he would be punished if he didn’t. He never wanted to be a farmer. Even as young as he was, he saw this as his only chance for something else. He had wanted so badly to learn at Gadrale that he had begged Arrendis to let him stay and earn his keep by doing odd jobs.

  Arrendis laughed and told him that he was growing fast: he was already learning to bargain. His mentor didn’t know if Vincent’s additional offer would be enough to convince the council to change their minds if they weren’t interested in retaining him, but out of kindness, he agreed to plead Vincent’s entry on his behalf.

  It was a long uphill battle to convince the masters. They didn’t see what they were supposed to do for someone who could not be taught by them. Arrendis was persistent, and finally the masters capitulated, but only because they could put Vincent to work on the campus. Without having asked for the duty yet, they placed Arrendis in charge of Vincent’s attempted teaching since he was so set on his entry in the first place. After that, Vincent was his responsibility.

  Arrendis was his oldest and best friend. He was not like Vincent. He was a wizard with many talents but unfortunately none of them were what Vincent had. Though he was not strongly specialized in any of his gifts, he had a flexible mind. Perhaps it was this that made him one of the greatest mentors Vincent could have hoped to have.

  The old wizard had taught him most of what he knew and helped him to learn for himself whatever he could not teach. There were no teachers for what Vincent had been born with. No classes and no fellow students. There was only Arrendis who had taken him under his wing.

  Vincent’s strange gift was that he had the ability to alter any object made of metal through physical contact with it. A sword was typically the thing he carried and used due to its inherent utility as a weapon comprised of metal. Because of this and because his gift was so rare as to not be named, at least not one that he knew of, within the keep he was called simply “The Swordsman.” Vincent would have been just as pleased with a metal-rod staff like those favored by some atmomancers, but Arrendis had long ago taught him that relying purely on magic was foolish. Magic could fail. One’s concentration could falter or be taken up by something else even when realizing an additional threat. Being able to fight without it, if he could, was important.

  The old man was like family to him. Arrendis had been a surrogate parent in the absence of his own, watching over him and teaching him just like he had promised Vincent’s mother and father he would. An anxious pain of regret soured his insides. Vincent was grown now, yet all that care seemed to have been for naught. He didn’t deserve it, and it had been wasted on him. Now he had to simply pay the courtesy of telling this to his greatest teacher and friend before he left for good.

  Vincent got up and returned the plate and fork to the collection window on his way out. Arrendis’ quarters were also his office and his study. The room was on the sixth floor of the fortress: the last not devoted to defense and thus did not include archers and retaliatory siege equipment like ballistae.

  Those were located on the roof above, which just so happened to have it’s own wide, pointed roof of light-blue stone shingles, shielding it from arrows and boulders while providing a panoramic series of openings for shots fired by defending troops. Gadrale Keep had been remodeled and expanded upon over the centuries to become one of the most formidable strongholds throughout the lands. However, the increases in its size and stature were due more to the necessity of making the structure large enough to accommodate the needs of both the mage academy and the king’s army. In the early days, the fortress had been smaller, only a mere outpost for blocking and stemming occasional Orc incursions from the Badlands. Since that time, the campus had been built around it, mostly to the north, and a city sprang up northwest of that.

  Vincent found the staircase he needed and began his lengthy climb. He took each step one at a time, feeling too depressed to go faster. While he climbed, he took off his sword’s baldric that held the scabbard, pulling the black leather strap over his head. He thought that he should at least leave the weapon with Arrendis; he would know who to give it to so that it was returned to the king’s army. Vincent continued climbing while holding the weapon in his left hand; he couldn’t wait to be rid of the damn thing.

  The army. He looked back on those six years of training with disdain, now that he knew what he had gotten himself into. Arrendis was instrumental in having him train with them at all. So many memories, and his combat training with the army was the least of it. The old wizard had been there for him throughout.

  Arrendis had helped Vincent by having him try to focus his power on all sorts of different things. Mostly metal objects, to see what his magic could do. When Vincent worked at the stables, Arrendis had him try to use it on horse shoes. One time when they had gone to the dining hall together, Arrendis had used utensils to help test Vincent after they ate. Whenever Vincent destroyed anything, be that horseshoes or silverware, Arrendis had always taken responsibility for it. Instead of letting it become a problem, Arrendis had turned it into a workable solution. He didn’t allow the cooks to throw out the ruined metal, and insisted that they be given to Vincent to continue his training, thus maintaining Vincent’s education and the kitchen drawers.

  Eventually, Vincent had learned how to use his power with enough finesse and precision that he was able to repair and return the things he ruined. He remembered smiling at Tabitha’s stunned expression when he gave her back the reformed silverware that he had ruined as a child. The old kitchen matron couldn’t believe how new they looked. By then Vincent had also grown large enough to wield a sword.

  At one point, Arrendis decided that Vincent should no longer be confined to simple grounds-keeping, and had petitioned the masters for him to be promoted to some other form of duty. The Academy Guard seemed most ideal. When they discussed it with the council, it became apparent that there was little Vincent could do against a foe with magic. It was then that Arrendis called for a recess in the deliberations and pulled him aside. He told Vincent that he needed a sword; it was the only way that he could have something to focus his power into while still giving doubters the appearance of being armed. There was a great deal of truth to the fact that without something metal, Vincent was indeed unarmed, and so he had agreed that it was a good idea. Then Arrendis suggested that he should also have a formal training with it. They brought these things to the council’s attention once it reconvened. The masters accepted the offer of allowing him into the fold not only after he was taught and equipped but could justify h
is magic prowess as well.

  He didn’t have to travel far to receive his combat education. The encampment outside of Gadrale was where the recruits being assigned to garrison the keep had trained. However, Vincent had gotten into trouble because the army didn’t want to train him. They took this stance because he had rightly refused to enlist in the army as part of the unit and wear the armor. At first, they didn’t understand that he was a wielder of magic and not a normal volunteer for military service. With Arrendis’ help, he was able to avoid becoming a soldier yet still train with them and forgo such restrictions. Vincent was given this leniency on the grounds that he was technically not a soldier of Ryga but a wizard that was going to be relegated to defending the academy. Though some were not happy about it, the army still relented and allowed him to be admitted for instruction.

  At first, Vincent had just stuck to practicing conventional swordsmanship along with all the other recruits. Because he did not openly display his magic, the soldiers he trained with gave him a hard time. They had picked on him and asked why he was so special that he could be there but didn’t have to be one of them. Vincent was only fifteen at the time and so thought a demonstration was necessary. He showed them first by flaring his sword and letting them see the flames on it. They were impressed, but then one of them asked, “is that it?” Then Vincent asked one of them to hold out a sword so he could strike it. He cut right through it instantly, melting it on the edges where he did. When they asked him if he could do the same with armor, Vincent asked who wanted to volunteer in order to find out. Not one did.

  After that, the soldiers didn’t need much more convincing that he was indeed a wizard and accepted him. In fact, the commanding officers and sergeants said they liked him more than regular wizards they had served with because he was not so mysterious or arrogant. He was a wizard who would fight in the thick of it along with them, one whom they could at least understand.

  Within the army unit everyone had referred to Vincent by the nickname of “fireblade” and were glad to have him along. They still teased him of course, and were often crude, but at least they respected him. Since wizards and other people with magic outranked them, the officers and soldiers all found it amusing how they were the ones who had to teach a wizard. Especially since the ordinary wizards were always acting like wise sages whose divine duty it was to teach everyone else about the world, whether they merited that veneration or not.

  Vincent had continued to train conventionally while experimenting on the side with focusing his magic into the sword. The training was intense, and he had worked far beyond hard to become an expert even when fighting without the aid of magic. He had strived to become the best, and constantly tried to improve upon himself afterward.

  It worked.

  Later at the age of twenty-one, when he was officially recognized as the best swordsman in the unit (in the conventional sense), he considered the time ripe to return to the Academy. After he demonstrated some of what he could do in another meeting with the masters-simple freezing, heating, or the setting on fire of his blade-he was finally allowed to take up duty guarding the keep. He had been doing this for two years.

  And yet all of it, everything he had worked so hard for, had been for nothing. He had failed his duty when it mattered most. Killing people was never something he thought he would have to do. He thought that the mortal terror and pain of near death should have meant something. It didn’t. They got what they came for anyway and succeeded in validating the misgivings of those who didn’t want him here in the first place.

  Inevitably, Vincent’s feet at last carried him to the sixth floor of the keep. He didn’t want to tell Arrendis what was troubling him so much and why he had to leave, but he felt he had to. He owed him that much.

  The hallway that led toward his quarters loomed in his vision. On this floor, smaller light orbs providing less light were affixed to black metal sconces on each side of the hall. There was typically more illumination on this level as a whole from window openings; therefore, greater means of providing light were unnecessary. The air in the fortress well above ground also smelled much fresher than what Vincent was used to.

  Within Gadrale Keep, the door to each person’s quarters did not require a key. Every lock was comprised of a gold colored pad on the wall near the door, engraved with the image of a flower with its leafy petals all coming out from the center. The doors were unlocked with a touch of the owner’s hand to the pad, and the spell built into each was keyed specifically to that person.

  Whenever Arrendis slept, he closed and locked his door, but whenever he was awake, his door was always open, both figuratively and in truth. Vincent could see the opening on the left side of the hall toward the end and could tell that it was in fact open now. He felt the tiniest bit grateful that he had not wasted the trip.

  As Vincent approached, he stopped just before the door’s edge and took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. When he turned to look inside, he saw the old wizard sitting hunched over his desk up against the left side of the wall, furiously scribbling something on a piece of parchment. He glanced occasionally at something written on an open book next to him while a small light orb floated several feet above, bobbing up and down slightly as it hovered. The pungent smell of ink on parchment permeated the air.

  The whole desk was cluttered with piles of books and other materials. Toward the back of the room, there was a wide window with its wooden shutters completely open to the cool morning air. The sunlight coming through was almost hitting Vincent in the face. A good distance to the right of the open window, Arrendis’ bed rested in the corner. Just in front of the window, a ways to the left of the bed, stood a waist-high wooden pole from which a hawk often perched on the crossway extensions at the top. Arrendis practiced falconry, training a bird of prey to return its latest kill to its owner, and often cooked and subsisted on what it brought him. In return, Arrendis always made sure his hawk had food whenever game was scarce. Right now, the perch was empty.

  Vincent reached up his right hand to knock several times on the open door. The bones on his curled up fingers made a sharp sound on the wood. Arrendis stopped for a moment, seemingly lost in thought, and then turned to look his way. As soon as he saw Vincent standing there, he made a slight jump in surprise. “Well young man, I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. You seem to have recovered nicely.” He looked down across the length of Vincent, his eyes stopping on the sword’s scabbard being held in Vincent’s left hand with its leather straps tangled about. A frown creased his brow before he looked up at Vincent once more. “What can I do for you?”

  Vincent managed to keep his eyes dry while struggling to keep his voice steady. The moment seemed unreal to him, and the words came out on their own as if they weren’t his. “I’ve come to return this to you, master. I’m resigning from the Academy Guard, and I won’t be needing it any longer. It was my deepest honor to have known you, and I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me over the years. I’m only sorry that it was all in vain.” Arrendis’ eyes blinked behind his glasses, and he appeared truly shocked as Vincent walked up to him and handed him the sword. Arrendis held it in both hands and looked down at it. Despite Vincent’s best efforts, his eyes began to glisten. “Goodbye, my friend,” he managed before turning around to walk out.

  He only made it halfway toward the door before Arrendis finally spoke. “You seem deeply troubled,” he began. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you like this. Before you go, might I make one small request?”

  Vincent answered without turning to look back. “Anything. What is it?”

  “May I ask why you are leaving us? It has something to do with what happened down there the other night, doesn’t it?”

  Images and sensory perceptions of the horror, fear, blood, and revulsion flashed before his mind’s eye again. He scrunched his eyelids closed and released a distraught breath. His anguish surfaced anew, and he still couldn’t bring himself to turn around. “It i
s not something I care to discuss. I’m sorry.”

  “Too late, you already agreed to grant my request. Now you have to fulfill it.”

  Vincent turned to face him. His voice at last broke somewhat. “I am not sure that I can continue on in this capacity any longer, master. My aspirations were all childish dreams. My sword, a toy. Now that I have seen what it is really like, to take the lives of others and have their blood on my conscience, and to be nearly killed myself, I feel that I have made the wrong choice of profession.”

  “Oh? And what profession will you choose now?”

  “I…I don’t know, master. But anything is better than being afraid all the time, or feeling like this. I don’t ever want to go through that again.”

  At first, Arrendis didn’t say anything; he just looked down at the sword he was holding in his lap while he nodded. “I see,” he said. “Tell me then, whom would you like to go through it for you? Maybe I could take your place. I’m an old man and not very quick, but I suppose I could still try to stop the next thieves when they come.”

  Vincent felt his insides ripping apart. He had thought his mentor wasn’t going to give him a hard time because of the trauma he had experienced. He had thought wrong. “Master, I…”

  Arrendis looked up at him. “Well if not me, then perhaps one of my students would suffice? They’re only about seven. Or one of your relief guards? If they bother to show up, that is.”

  “Master, please don’t be like this…just let me go.”

  Arrendis sighed with a deep breath while he looked down once more at Vincent’s sword, speaking without further subterfuge. “Vincent…you’ll find that certain things in life are not only hard or unpleasant but downright awful. Even more so because they are unavoidable.” He paused a moment to let his words sink in. “You’ll also find,” he began, “that there are people who are not only mean or cruel but really quite wicked.” He looked up from the sword, right into Vincent’s eyes. “The people you killed could only have been those. Their use of the Seal of Cheated Light alone, shows that they have no respect for the lives of others.”