Part 1
This story was made using the solo RPG: The Magus, by momatoes.
My name is Mari. I had a family name, many years ago, but once I chose to abandon my family’s path in the world, to strike out on my own and master the mysteries of the unknown, I thought it best to forsake any connection with this past.
Magic is a forbidden thing. The high churches burn witches and warlocks, while the high sorcerers — too powerful to be stopped, even by the armies of the united Kingdoms — are quick to destroy those who appear too eager, ambitious, or dangerous. There is no confusion as to why; Magic is a powerful and dangerous thing. The fae and enchanted creatures of the wild use magic freely, and their corruption causes daily strife. The dark mage-lords of old destroyed kingdoms with their power, and the High Sorcerers are too powerful to hinder.
I must have been a fool to start down this path; but the book amazed me. To think that such power, the power to shape the world to your own will, existed in something as simple as ink and parchment. The witchhunters brandished the book over our heads, proclaimed it the work of demons and worse. They showed us paintings and fetishes of ghastly and grusome nature. My parents thought to frighten me, much as the witchhunters thought to frighten all their audiences.
I was not frightened. That night, while the hunters were quenching their throats at my father’s tavern, I slipped out through my bedroom window and crept through the night to their wagons on the outskirts of town. Perhaps they were fools, thinking the townsfolk were nothing but cowardly peasants. Maybe the guard had slipped away as well, to find their own drink, or a warm bit of flesh. Maybe they simply forgot to leave someone to watch their wagons.
The book was locked in a wooden box. I found a knife and pried open the lock, and stole the book away without even opening it. I made my way back home and climbed back through my window, shoving the book under my matress.
I never slept so well before, nor slept so well again.
The hunters were supposed to leave in the morning, but they stayed for five more days, hunting for their book. Good fortune, neither I nor my family was suspected. Before long, the witchhunters had no choice but to move on, thinking whomever had taken the book, they had likely moved on by now. They promised to return soon and hunt again, but they never did. Now, as strong as I have become, I wonder if they realized what a child’s toy the book truly was.
I spent many sleepless nights studying the pages, struggling to learn its secrets. I understood but a fraction of the words, and the diagrams made little sense to my young mind. I didn’t give up, however; I poured myself into the book, hoping that when I surfaced I would dredge up some of the powerful magics that lay hidden in the ink.
When at last I did, I left my home the next week. I did not tell my parents what I had done, or what power I had found. I was tired of the meager life of a peasant. I saw my father abused and debased by the King’s soldiers and the taxes on his tavern. I saw my mother berated by drunkards and beaten for her confidence. I saw good men and women pushed flat because of the whims of mighty Lords and Ladies and Sorcerers.
Now I know better, but when I was young I hated them for their weakness. I swore I would become stronger than anyone, so no one would ever push me around. I left to become a great sorcerer. I forsook my name to protect them from the witchhunters and other sorcerers who might come after me. It was some small kind of protection, but it was the only kind I could give so young.
I wandered west at first, practicing the arts of magic during the night, sleeping during the day. I followed the road, eating sparingly from the few supplies I had managed to pack. I was not completely ignorant of surviving in the woodlands, and managed to keep myself alive, if not comfortable.
I wandered for many months, finding odd jobs in distant towns and villages to keep myself fed. I took on the guise of a wandering acolyte, a newcomer to the Church of the Blessed. My imaginary mentor was a cruel man, who demanded I undertake a pilgrimage to a shrine in the west, alone, and with nothing but my faith to keep me warm. It was a tall tale, but if any disbelieved me, they made no sign. I performed odd jobs for meals, clothing, or a place to sleep. It sufficed for several months.
Then, one day as I was walking down the road, I saw a woman kneeling by the side of the road. As I approached, she looked up at me with a look of stark relief. “Oh, dear traveler,” she called, waving a hand, “I beg for your aid, but a moment of your time.”
I was not unwary, but the woman was nearly old, with wrinkles only just beginning to crack her adult beauty, and whisps of grey hair surfacing from a sea of black. Her clothing was poorly mended, but well made. She did not seem a danger to my young and foolish eyes.
I am fortunate she was not. Her name was Trella Grindstone, a widow for some ten years. She was mending a small roadside shrine the like of which I had never seen before, and had required another pair of hands to help her with the repairs.
“Bless you,” she said, as the last stone was set in its place. “Krelli is not a vengeful god, but she does tend to get quite jealous if I’m not careful.”
I had never heard the name Krelli before, so I asked the woman who she was. “She is Divinity of Roads, Travelers, and those without shelter,” she told me. “She is part of a very old pantheon that used to be worshipped in this area before the Entarian War. After this region was conquered, the Entarian Church burned every shrine to the ground and branded all practicioners as heritics. They returned the land after the war, but the Church remained, and the people lost the practice of their faith.”
“But you didn’t?” For a moment I wondered if I had found a kindred spirit, a woman who was risking death to praise the gods she wished as I was risking death to learn magics.
“Oh, this all happened generations ago,” she told me. “I am a historian and scholar. I found records of the Tenfold Pantheon some time ago, and I’ve been trying to piece together the rituals and rites from old documents.
More than a kindred spirit, then. She too had no teacher, and so was teaching herself a tabboo practice from books and scraps of ancient knowledge.
Trella invited me to her home, and I readily agreed. She told me her name, and of her dead husband over a meager meal of tea and bread. Her husband had died a soldier in some war or rebellion to the north. She had refused to remarry, content to spend the rest of her days surrounded by the books and scrolls in her makeshift library. “It may be hopelessly romantic of me,” she smiled as she looked off into the distance, “but I never really saw the point in marrying again. I had my love for as long as Polket — God of life, death, and rebirth — allowed me to. I cannot spite them for that.”
When she asked about myself, I did not tell my practiced lie; I saw no value in pretending to be from another faith. Instead I told a half-truth — that I had run away from an abusive home, and was searching for a place I could call my own, and build a new life.
She offered me a place to sleep before continuing on my journey, and I gladly accepted. That night I could not sleep as I tossed and turned and tried to decide whether to continue on, or to ask Trella if I could stay a while. If nothing else, the books she had could possibly provide me with further guidance on my studies.
In the end, I decided to ask Trella if I could stay for a time, to both peruse her small library and help in any way I could to repay her kindness. She seemed delighted at the suggestion, and so for several months I shared her house, spending my days tending the yard or working in the nearby town, or studying the books in her library. The more I read, the more facinated I became by this strange and wonderful world. She had books on flowers and trees, books about animals and insects, books about stones and how rivers moved and even some on the secret ways of the guilds. Books about making iron or tanning hides. Books about brewing ale or making candles from wax.
I kept up my practice from my own book, late at night after she had gone to bed. I had looked long and hard through her library for books on magic, but only a few volumes provided any minor insight, and they were written by Royal Witchhunter hands.
The most useful book was a diary by the old Royal Witchhunter Primus, Fenlark the Bloody. In it, he went into solacious detail about rituals he had disrupted, profane acts he had prevented, and provided far more information than might have been prudent. His descriptions of magical instrumentation and unholy sigils provided me with keys to unlock hithertoo unknown secrets in my book, and as such my abilities grew in strength.
I felt giddy at learning more. As the weeks went on I grew complacent and careless in my hubris, and so one night I did not notice until it was too late that Trella had awoken in the dark, and was watching my studies. She had seen me clearly, what I had done, and what I could do. I was certain, in that moment, that she would throw me out of her house, or perhaps even call the guards to come and burn me alive.
Instead, she gave a gentle smile and told me to not stay up too late before heading back to her bed, yawning.
I didn’t know what to do or how to think. Perhaps she was simply lulling me to a false sense of security, and I would wake up with a soldier’s blade at my throat. Perhaps she hadn’t really seen what I had done, or had dismissed it as a dream. It would have been wise to leave at once, but something in her voice made me stay.
When I woke up the next morning, there was no sword on my chest, nor shackles on my wrists. Trella said nothing to me for the whole day until at last, at supper, I could bare it no longer. I begged her, demanded to know why she had not summoned the witchhunters to take me away.
“What kind of host would I be, to sentence a youth like yourself to death for no more than studying a book?” Her smile was kind, almost motherly. “You have been helpful for me, and I have never met another who reads books as hungrily as I. Besides, Grenja, God of Hearth and Food, considers it a sin to pit two guests against each other. I will not bring anyone into my house who would harm another, especially if they will do so without concern or trial.”
She lowered her spoon to look me squarely in the eye. “As long as you live in this house, you are safe, no matter what.”
Such kindness I had never seen before, and I am not ashamed to say I wept at her generosity. I resolved then and there that I would do everything in my power to repay her kindness a thousand-fold when I became a true sorcerer.