It was an odd sensation, because at first, all I felt I was doing was mental manifesting exercises which didn’t really fill me with confidence. But after a little effort, I started to feel something. Nothing to do with my eye, unfortunately, but a definite sense of an energy well inside of me. I hoped it was the mana the mage had spoken about, but there was no way to tell until it healed my goddamn eye.
I had to stop again as our fifth cart of the day was wheeled in. I looked up to the sun to get a feel of how long we’d been working, and reckoned it was still before noon and we’d easily meet the quota at our current pace.
When I looked back down, however, I saw the chargehand returning, and with him was the Archon Overseer and Keala the mage.
You can tell a lot about people’s mood by their walk, and the Overseer’s red-faced march told me this was likely going to be a painful meeting. Especially considering our only other meeting resulted in a broken jaw.
“You,” he barked, finger pointing like a spear. “I don’t know what your game is, but you have crossed the line. You might be well thought of by the Warden, but this is my camp. You do not attack my workers. You do not verbally abuse my chargehand, and you certainly do not pester my mage for advice on how to do magic!”
I stood as nonchalantly as I could, hands loose by my sides, and a slight stance I hoped they didn’t notice. I wanted to seem relaxed but ready to move.
“I’ve done everything that has been asked of me. I’ve worked diligently for the good of the mine and to increase my own level. I’m not sure what the problem is, Overseer.”
It seemed my words fell on deaf ears. He had come here for violence, and violence was what he would dispense no matter my words. With a growl, he went to backhand me like he had the first time. I was ready for it, and swayed just enough. His outstretched fingers whistled past my nose, a quarter inch of air between them.
“Does it make you feel powerful to beat new recruits for no reason? Or is it just me?”
Somehow, the redness of his face deepened a few shades, but he had no answer for the question, beyond sending another backhand my way. This time, he followed it up with a quick flurry of punches that had me backpedaling with nowhere near the amount of control I’d have liked.
How I managed to keep my feet and not get caught was a mystery to us both, and I knew I wouldn’t avoid a second round of attacks. At Level 26, he could kick my arse faster than I could say, Sorry, I’ll haul rocks.
I put up my hands up in an attempt to calm the situation. “Look, hey, stop. I’ll keep quiet, I’ll not ask your mage any more questions. I just want to put rocks in carts until I’m strong enough to train elsewhere.”
Sadly, there was no empathy or compassion in the Overseer. My words just seemed to spur him on. I parried a powerful right that damn near broke my forearm, then sidestepped a kick to my head, snapped out with blinding speed.
I responded with a sweet right uppercut just below his ribs, completely un-telegraphed and carrying all of my strength. Despite his level, he grunted at the impact.
Then it was over. I suspected he’d been holding back. Now I knew it was true. His next attack was unblockable, unavoidable, unbelievably painful as he struck in the sternum. I sailed backward in an arc, struggling to breathe from the blow.
I scarcely had a moment to get my bearings as I landed, before he was standing over me snarling with anger.
“And don’t think you’re getting healed for this.”
The words came out in a gasping, disjointed mess, but the message was, “The Warden wanted me leveled.” It was a mistake.
He answered with a solid kick. I covered up with my arms, but something cracked in my right forearm, and the force of the blow sent me back a half dozen paces, bouncing along the stony ground in a pitiful heap.
Before I could scrabble up, he was on me again, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Genuinely fearing for my life as I went airborne from another ferocious kick, the moment I bounced to a stop, I attempted to heal myself again. I focused on that pit of energy inside of me on the broken arm and compressed sternum with everything I had.
The shadow of the Overseer loomed again. “Mine collapse,” he growled. “That’s what I’ll tell the Warden when he asks how you died.”
I should have been scared, but his words only brought anger at the injustice. Eleven years, I survived living with Earl. Eleven fucking years of beatings, I survived, only to die to this prick. I needed to heal. I needed to survive. I needed to make this cowardly asshole pay.
A churning in my sternum brought me to my knees as a sudden, incredible gust of wind engulfed me. A faint shimmer of silver blended with the dust whipped up from the ground. Even with my vision obscured, I knew that the Overseer was no longer close.
I felt a wave of relief as someone or something had saved me from his wrath. As the hurricane died down, I heard screaming and commotion.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I managed to get my head up from the ground to take a look around. The closest people to me were on their arses. The Overseer was about twenty feet away from me. Jaw slack, eyes wide.
“How did you do that?”
I looked around confused as to who had asked the question. It was the mage with an equally shocked look on her face.
“W…what?”
“You did magic. You said you didn’t know any.”
“I… did magic?”
“Yes, you did magic! What’s this about?” The Overseer was up on his feet again and looked uninjured.
I noticed he wasn’t coming after me anymore. If anything, he looked wary.
“You shouldn’t be here. Stay right there and don’t do anything else. I need to speak to the Warden.” He stormed off, shouting at the Chargehand to get everyone else back to work.
I lay there gasping for breath and utterly dumbfounded. I hoped the mage would at least come back to heal me. I hoped that somebody would stay close enough to tell me what had just happened.
Neither of those things occurred.
I was still where they left me when the Overseer returned with the Warden and the Augur, and felt a surge of relief to see the two men. I reflected almost immediately at how ridiculous that was. These people weren’t my friends, my saviors, nor anything else. Funny how quickly perspective could change.
There was every chance that they’d just kill me over the perceived trouble I’d caused.
They came to stand over me, and the Augur healed me straight away with a disdainful look for the Overseer who pointedly ignored him.
“What happened to not causing trouble, Adam?” the Warden asked as I writhed on the floor from the healing. I could feel just how much more powerful the Augur was than the Mine Mage as his energy coursed through my bones.
“I’d give up on me,” I groaned. “Do yourselves a favor and send me back home where I can’t cause any more trouble for anyone else.”
Anso laughed. “That’s quite the sense of humor, considering your current situation.”
“I dunno. They say humor is the best medicine. Though I prefer magical healing if I’m honest.”
Anso nodded. “Surely it’s better to behave and not need healing at all?”
I pushed myself into a sitting position, feeling a thousand times better than I had a few minutes ago.
“Yeah, you’d think” I replied drily. I didn’t go into the unfairness of my current situation, nor the crime of institutional bullying that had been committed against me, because quite frankly, no one ever gave a shit. “So what now?”
He offered me a hand up and I took it.
“What now is that you have apparently unlocked your mage’s path.”
I rubbed my head. “Yeah. I heard something about that, but I haven’t got a clue what happened.
He looked impatient for the first time. “Well, would you do me the honor of checking your stats? Or we can wait ten minutes for Augur Stanis to root through you, head to toe?”
“No, no. I’m happy to look.”
Name: Adam Henshaw
Title: —
Level: 16
Class: Warrior/Mage
Stats:
- Toughness: 19
- Mental Acuity: 13
- Harmony: 16
- Total: 48
Progress in Class:
- Warrior, Level 3: 15/40
- Tradesman, Level 0: 0/10
- Mage, Level 1: 10/20
Mage Skills:
Spirit Burst (AoE) Level: 1
Range: Self (5-foot radius, scalable)
Unleash a torrent of raw mana centered around yourself. Anyone within a 5-foot radius is forcibly expelled from the area and receives both physical and magical damage. While powerful, this spell is especially taxing on the caster as it uses raw mana at a rate of 100 mps.
Radius of attack increases in line with Mana pool.
I had somehow unlocked both Warrior and Mage at the same time. It made no sense. I’d fought the Unalaran Vyrnsoul Pero on Unalar, and I’d fought the other workers here the previous night and hadn’t unlocked the path. But then I supposed I hadn’t fought back against Pero in any meaningful way. I had neither scored a damaging hit he didn’t gift me, nor won a victory.
Against the workers here, I had done well, and that was shown in the Toughness boost I received. But none of them were even ascended, and I guessed that would probably make a difference. Here, not only had I just fought a strong ascended warrior, I had technically won the fight after using Spirit Burst.
I grinned at my increases. Still a long way to go, but depending on what happened next, my day was definitely going in the right direction.
Anso and Stanis were still waiting for me to tell them the news, and I saw no reason not to. “I’ve reached Level 3 on the path of the Warrior. And Level 1 on the path of the mage. I’ve unlocked a skill called Spirit Burst, and it looks pretty powerful.”
“Indeed, it is,” Augur Stanis said, his bitter expression giving away his feelings on the matter. “Did someone talk you through the process?”
The question caught me by surprise and I laughed. “You’re joking, right? Here in this shithole?”
If looks could kill, I’d have keeled over on the spot.
“No, Augur. No one has taught me magic here. The Mine Mage told me that if I wanted to heal, I should focus on it. Everyone else has tried to kill me. Or at least given me something to practice healing on. It seems I’m not a natural at it though.”
“Truly?” the Warden asked, looking far more impressed than the Augur.
“Truly,” I replied bitterly, and cast a look across the people around us.
The Overseer and the Mine Mage looked horrified. The Chargehand had unsurprisingly disappeared, and the workers had gone back to work, though they were glancing over like meerkats sensing a predator nearby.
“Then it appears we must accelerate your training.” He rubbed his chin as he looked at me. “We won’t get you into Danan Academy, but perhaps Irala will take you. The Dean is an old friend of mine.”
“When you say academy, you don’t mean an actual school, do you? Classes, kids, teachers?”
He frowned at me. “I am speaking of Warrior Mage academies. There are six in the whole of the Union. There, you will learn the fine art of balancing combat and magic so that you can join the elite of House Garazal’s warriors. You will be surrounded by others, who have the perquisite base stats in both Harmony and Toughness to excel at both.”
“You will learn a number of other things there,” Augur Stanis added. “But you have shown a strong ability to develop Harmony, and manifesting any power is rare, let alone an Aetheric power.”
I didn’t know what Aetheric power meant, and I hadn’t expected any kind of praise from Stanis. While his expression certainly didn’t look like he was giving praise, it was definitely in there somewhere.
“Of course,” Anso said. “You will be starting at a huge disadvantage. Academic years are 32 cycles long, and you will be joining the first year two-thirds of the way through. You will be the weakest there by a wide margin.”
I met his eyes, and nodded. “Sounds awful. Can I ask, will I be beaten and tortured daily at the academy?”
The cheeky bastard had the nerve to look offended, but slowly his face softened. “No. I suppose not.”
“Then sign me up. I’m done with this place.”