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No members of the Cerberus Assembly spoke negatively about Trent Ikithon’s experiments, at least not openly. The mage was brilliant, no one could question that, and sometimes brilliant minds ran in strange channels. Everyone had their hobbies, their little quirks. Maybe they gave an inward sigh when Trent picked more students from the school’s roster for “special training,” knowing that they would probably never be seen again, but it could not be helped. If it meant that someday the Empire could conquer the men and beasts of Xhorhas, could expand their borders, well, then it was worth the lives of a few children. Many such sacrifices were made for the Empire.**********Bren sat in the middle of the circle that had been inscribed in the dirt of the training yard and stared at a similar circle across from him, the wards meant to protect, to contain, but also to change, transfer, transform. The creature within was beautiful, a bird the size of a hawk that burned with elemental fire, the flames shifting in the pre-dawn light as it sang. It sounded like a masterful bard playing a flute, if the flute itself had been made of fire. Bren could have cried for the beauty of it, but mages did not cry, Master Ikithon had said so. Still, it was a magnificent sight, and a magnificent song.The vial in Bren’s hands was warm, almost hot despite the enchantment on the glass to contain what was within. The phoenix blood inside was almost too bright to look at directly. Bren wondered how much drinking it was going to hurt, and what would happen to him afterwards. Astrid hadn’t been able to sleep for a week for the pain of her jaw widening to hold the two extra sets of serrated teeth that had grown in. Eodwulf had blinked in and out of the Material Plane uncontrollably for three days after drinking the blood of the blink dog, and had only stopped because he had passed out from dehydration.“Bren.” Master Ikithon’s voice came from behind him, cutting through his own thoughts and the phoenix’s lovely song. “You are aware of the time.”It wasn’t a question. “Yes sir,” Bren said. “Thirty seconds until sunrise.”“Excellent,” Master Ikithon replied. Behind him, Bren could hear Master Ikithon’s quill scratching as he took notes. There was a shuffling sound like something dragging in the dirt, though whether it was Astrid’s spiked manticore tail or Wulf’s furred one, he could not tell. Bren uncorked the vial he held, counting down the last few seconds in his head, tilting his head back to drink just as the sun crested the horizon.The blood burned the inside of his mouth and seared his throat, as hot as lava, as hot as if he had tried to swallow the sun and he felt the vial drop from suddenly nerveless fingers and into the dirt. Tears of pain trailed down his face and he felt them steam and evaporate on his skin. He could feel the phoenix blood inside him as if it were trying to burn its way out, and he smelled smoke as his clothes began to smolder.“Stay back!” Bren heard Master Ikithon yell. “Don’t disrupt the circle!”Bren wondered distantly which one of his friends had moved towards him, Astrid or Wulf. He looked down at his hands, which were wreathed in fire that was spreading up his arms, over his chest, down his legs. His skin didn’t blister or char, but that didn’t make the pain any less. He was still burning. It was still agony. He thought he might have been screaming, but he couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the flames. He felt himself curl up on the ground, as if that would help, as if anything would help, and prayed for the pain to stop.Bren burned for an endless time. All there was was the burning. There had never been anything else. Only burning. Only pain, which flickered and flared like a bonfire, then suddenly reached a crescendo that left him breathless, mouth open in a silent scream. He felt his insides shift, muscles and bone grinding against each other an instant before the heat tore through his back, before he felt his own blood stream over his skin.It was sunrise again when Bren finally stopped burning. He lay on the ground, gasping in the dirt, and he would have thought he was dead except for the fact that he could hear himself breathing. After so long feeling only pain, he couldn’t feel anything at all.“Bren.” Master Ikithon’s voice. “If you can hear me, open your eyes.”Bren opened his eyes slowly, blinking in the light of the morning sun. Across from him, the circle that had contained the phoenix instead contained an egg that rested on a pile of ash. There was ash surrounding Bren in his circle as well, the remains of the clothes he had been wearing.“Subject’s irises have changed color from blue to orange,” Master Ikithon said out loud as he wrote notes in his journal. “Eodwulf, give Bren your robe so that he may cover himself. Bren, are you able to stand?”Bren rose to his hands and knees, stumbling as he got himself upright. There was something on his back, a weight of some kind, something warm and strange and foreign. Bren turned his head, catching a glimpse of Astrid standing there, her eyes wide and shining with concern and awe. Then he saw the wings, feathers glowing like the embers of a fire, red and yellow and orange. He reached back with one hand to touch them, expecting to be burned, but there was only a dull warmth.“We shall have to see if you are indeed capable of flight or if your wings are cosmetic,” Master Ikithon said as Bren turned back to look at him. Wulf was next to him, his pointed ears laying flat against his head as he handed Bren his robe. It took more than a few moments for Bren to don the robe, partially because he was so exhausted he could barely think straight, and partially because the wings were in the way. Eventually he figured out how to fold them against his back, but it was an effort. “Your clothing will have to be altered,” Master Ikithon said. “No matter.” He pointed at one of the targets in the yard. “A firebolt, to start with.”“Sir?” Wulf spoke up, his ears twitching. “He can barely stand up. Wouldn’t it be better if—““It would be better if you remembered to speak when spoken to.” Master Ikithon said calmly as he turned toward Wulf. “I thought I had taught you that lesson.”Bren watched as Wulf’s ears flattened against his skull and his tail tucked itself between his legs. “I am sorry, sir. For speaking out of turn.”“I shall see you in my study at noon, Eodwulf. Maybe this time the lesson will stick.” He turned back to Bren. “A firebolt, to see if there’s been any augmentation to your magic as I have hypothesized there would be.”Bren nodded and raised his hands, opened his mouth to speak the words that would call the fire to him. All that came out was a hiss as he clutched his throat against the sudden searing pain caused by trying to speak.“Try again.” Master Ikithon sounded impatient, his quill tapping against the page.Bren’s hands shook as he tried again, harder. This time it was more of a croak than a hiss, but it still wasn’t words, still wasn’t anything the magic could wrap itself around. The pain was excruciating, like swallowing hot, broken glass.“Hmmm.” Master Ikithon pulled a vial from his pocket, the crimson liquid a welcome sight. “Drink this and try again.”Bren drank the healing potion gratefully, his pain fading as he swallowed the alchemical mixture. “Thank you, sir,” he tried to say, but all that came out were sounds like a log burning in a fire, crackles and hisses. It didn’t hurt, but that was the only improvement. “Unforeseen side effect,” Master Ikithon said as he wrote in his journal. “Magical injury to the vocal chords. Perhaps injection of the blood instead of ingestion…”“I can’t speak!” Bren tried to say. He was panting, his heart beating wildly in terror. If he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t cast spells. If he couldn’t cast spells, then he was useless. Master Ikithon had no patience for those he considered useless.“Bren. Calm yourself.”There was the smell of cloth burning, and Bren felt heat on his back as his wings smoldered.“There are ways to cast spells without speaking,” Master Ikithon said cooly. “You will learn them quickly.” It wasn’t a question, it was a command. Bren made himself straighten up, made himself nod.“You may go to your room. I’ll send Astrid along with the books you will need to study. If you set your bed on fire you will be moved to the basement where you will be less likely to burn down the house.”Bren made himself nod again. He barely felt like he was attached to his own body. Shock, probably. He walked back towards the cottage and up the stairs and it felt like some sort of fever dream. He didn’t remember sitting down on his bed. He didn’t remember crying. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he opened his eyes again the world outside the windows was dark, and he knew that the sun had set hours ago.“You’re awake! Wulf, he’s awake!” There was the sound of a book snapping closed, then Astrid was sitting next to him, a book in her hand. A moment later, Wulf sat on Bren’s other side, moving stiffly, no doubt the result of Master Ikithon’s “lesson.”“I’m fine,” Wulf said, answering Bren’s unspoken question. “It’s nothing.”It was an old lie, the same lie they always told each other, which somehow made it twist around to an awful truth.“What about you?” Astrid asked. “How are you feeling?”“Fine,” Bren tried to say, then immediately started shaking when nothing but nonsense sounds came out.“Hey,” Wulf said. “It’s going to be okay. That’s what you told us when Astrid and I were learning to… adjust. This is like that. We’ll help each other get through this, like always.”“That’s right,” Astrid agreed. She gestured towards a tray that Bren hadn’t noticed, and now that he was no longer so tired, he realized how hungry and thirsty he was. “You eat, and we’ll tell you about what we were reading while you were asleep. Did you know there’s a whole language where people use their hands to talk?”Bren hadn’t known, but he learned quickly as the days passed, thankful for his excellent memory. He barely slept, eating only when Astrid or Wulf prodded him to, but that was common when Bren was focused on learning something new. He picked up signing in Common quickly enough, then moved on to Sylvan, which was more complex, as much of a dance as it was a language. It was all Wulf and Astrid could do to keep up, but they tried their best.It was fear of what Master Ikithon would have done with him and Bren’s own love of learning that caused him to learn the theory of how to cast spells silently after barely a week of study. It turned out that more than a few mages had written books on silent spell casting, both as a strategy against spells of silence and as a means to cast spells in secret. Some of the mages were deaf or hard of hearing themselves, or had become mute through accident or illness, and had refused to give up a life of magic, developing their own techniques. When Master Ikithon called him back to the training yard, Bren was nervous but also excited to try out what he had learned.“You’ll be fine,” Astrid signed at him as they walked across the yard together, her tail thumping excitedly against the ground. Bren remembered the first week after Astrid had transformed, when she had accidentally poisoned him with her tail spikes. It was a rare manticore that had poisonous spiked tails, so it had been a surprise to them all.“You’ll be better than fine,” Wulf signed, his tail wagging, only to stop suddenly when Master Ikithon quickly crossed the yard to stand in front of the three of them.“I will say this once. I have never needed to learn sign language, as I am fortunate enough to have both my ability to hear and to speak. As such, I expect the two of you to speak out loud in my presence, and for you, Bren, to write things down when you need to speak to me.” He handed Bren a pencil and a small blank book. “Is that understood?”“Yes sir,” both Astrid and Wulf said.Bren nodded, careful to keep his emotions off his face, though he felt his wings twitch and grow warm against his back. Sign language was useful, quicker than fishing for a book and a pencil in most situations, and he liked it. He would have rather have had his voice, but there was something about the nature of the movements of his hands as he signed that he truly enjoyed. If he had known that communicating in such a way was possible before he had lost his voice, he would have wanted to learn it anyway. It would have come in handy during times at home and at school when he had gotten over-stimulated and gone non-verbal for minutes or hours at a time.“Now, to the task at hand. Let’s try this again, shall we?” Master Ikithon pointed at a target in the middle of the field. “A firebolt, please.”Bren nodded and raised his hands, eyes focused on the target, fingers moving quickly through the incantation. For the briefest of moments he was afraid that it wouldn’t work for all his study, but then he felt the warmth in his veins of the magic responding to him. The warmth turned to heat, and he couldn’t help but grin when the power left his hands, relief turning into astonishment as he saw what his magic had produced. Instead of the small flame that was usually conjured by such a spell, he was instead looking at a ball of fire that obliterated the target, setting both targets next to it on fire as well and scorching the grass in its wake.“Gods above and demons sideways,” Bren heard Astrid mutter.“Acceptable,” Master Ikithon said, but the way he was writing very quickly in his book made Bren think it was more than just acceptable. “Let’s see what else you can do.”Bren was put through his paces from noon until sundown, his head swimming with both exhaustion and new knowledge by the time he was done. All of his fire spells burned as hot as those of a mage twice Bren’s level, according to Master Ikithon. Bren seemed immune to damage from fire, mundane and magical, and when he had instinctively thrown up his hands to block the firebolt that Master Ikithon had commanded Wulf to hurl at him, they found out that Bren could control flames as well.“I’m sorry,” Bren signed to Wulf after dinner, when they were out of Master Ikithon’s sight.“It’s fine,” Wulf said with a pained smile as he shrugged his burnt shoulder. He had managed to dodge quickly enough to avoid a full impact, but only just. “I know you didn’t mean to.”Like most injuries that occurred during training, it was up to the students to take care of themselves. Astrid put salve on Wulf’s shoulder as Bren flopped down on his bed, exhausted and sore, the muscles in his back aching from overuse, his wings twitching from strain. Still, Bren didn’t mind the pain terribly, all things considered. It turned out his wings weren’t merely a cosmetic change, like Wulf’s ears and tail, or Astrid’s multiple rows of teeth. He could fly. Not for very long yet, and not gracefully, but who cared?“Bren?”Bren opened his eyes and looked up Astrid, who was standing next to his bed with a hopeful expression.“I was wondering—I didn’t want to ask you right away because everything was so—“ Astrid waved her hands vaguely, her tail twitching like a nervous cat. “Can I touch your wings?”Bren considered the question for a moment and then nodded. It didn’t seem like an odd request to make, though Astrid wasn’t like Bren, who constantly sought out and was often distracted by interesting textures. Wulf’s ears were a particular favorite of his.Astrid sat on the bed and stretched out her hand hesitantly. “I can feel the warmth coming off them,” she said softly. “Like after the fire in the fireplace goes out, but you can still feel the heat in the stone.”Bren tensed a fraction when Astrid’s hand actually came in contact with his feathers, then immediately relaxed as her hand started to move, all the tension unwinding from his muscles. It felt good in a way he didn’t have words for, but it made him think of being in his bed back home during a snowstorm, under the quilt his mother had made for him, warm and safe. “Bren, can I—?” Wulf started to ask, but Bren was already nodding enthusiastically. Wulf chuckled as he sat down on the other side of Bren and started to stroke his other wing. “Must feel good then, like when you rub my ears.”Bren nodded again and smiled, feeling warm and drowsy and cared for, all the way down to his bones.********There were downsides to Bren’s transformation as well, beyond the fact that all his shirts had to be altered. He no longer had any tolerance to cold, be it from a magic spell or an early autumn breeze. Winter had been a particular torture for him as Master Ikithon had made Bren train outside twice as much as Wulf and Astrid so that he might overcome his weakness. He had spent hours standing in snowstorms, fingers cramped with cold so badly that the only way he could cast spells was by remembering precisely how the spell words sounded, to the point where he could hear them perfectly in his memory as if he were speaking them out loud. It was harder to cast spells that way, taking more mental effort and expending more magical energy, and often Bren would spend hours after training shivering as a migraine raged through his skull.Bren had also discovered that getting his wings wet felt about the same as getting his face wet did, which meant it felt terrible and was something he tried to avoid doing if he could help it. He realized that if he let his wings get hot enough the water would evaporate quickly, and it was the only thing that made training in the rain even semi-tolerable.In the rare times that they were in mixed company, Bren simply used magic to disguise his wings from others, either his own or from the ring of disguise that Master Ikithon had given him, just like the ones that Astrid and Wulf wore when they needed to be out in public. It had been easy to disguise himself when Bren had gone home to see his mother and father, to make his wings vanish and turn his eyes from campfire orange to the blue they had been at birth. What had been harder was to dodge his parent’s hugs for fear that they would discover his wings, which Master Ikithon had forbade him from revealing, of course. He had also had to let them assume that his silence was part of his usual tendency to go for long periods of time without speaking, as opposed to something permanent. He had taught them some basic sign language, and had told them all he could about school, that he was doing well, that he was going to do great things for the Empire. His parents had been so proud of him. He had loved them so much.Then came the night when Bren heard them talking about treason, about uprising. He remembered sitting on his bed, tears streaming down his face even as he felt his heart harden in his chest, as his parents simply became two more dissidents that would have to be dealt with. It was the same for Astrid and Wulf, and none of them questioned the timing of it, how all three of them had gone home and had all overheard their parents speaking of rebellion, how Master Ikithon had not seem at all surprised by the news. It would be another thing that Bren would hate himself for later, another log to toss on the fire of his self loathing.It hadn’t seemed real, what had come next. Wulf murdering his parents while Astrid and Bren watched, Astrid poisoning her parents with the spikes from her tail while they sat at dinner. It was like every other execution Master Ikithon had ever had them perform. Rebellion had to be quelled, for the good of the Empire. It was just that simple. Until it wasn’t.***********“Bren, it’s done. We have to go.”Astrid’s hand fell on his shoulder, but Bren couldn’t bring himself to turn away from the flames. It had been just a house when he had put the cart in front of the door. It had been just a house when he had called the magic to him, the people inside two traitors when the fire had left his hands. Then there had been a scream. And then another. His mother. His father. The house the three of them had lived in together. The chair by the fireplace where his father had taught him to read from the only book they had owned. The kitchen where he had helped his mother make marzipan pigs for the new year. They were burning, everything was burning what had he done WHAT HAD HE—Bren was running towards his burning home before he even realized what he was doing. The fire wouldn’t touch him, he could save them, he could—Wulf appeared in front of Bren, too quick and too close for Bren to dodge. Bren ran into him at full speed and felt Wulf’s arms close around him a second before the world blinked, then blinked again, then again. The house was distant now. He thrashed in Wulf’s grip.“They were traitors, Bren.” Wulf’s voice was hard. It didn’t suit him. Bren could see Astrid running from the burning house to catch up with them. “They don’t deserve your love, or your pity.”Bren felt anger rise within him, felt the fire answer his call as his wings ignited, as Wulf shoved him away. Bren prepared to launch himself into the air, only to fall to his knees when he realized that he could no longer hear his parent’s screams. Too late. He was too late.The fire from his wings ignited his clothing and spread across his back, and Bren was dully surprised to realize that it hurt. No fire had burned him since his transformation, but then, he hadn’t wanted it to. The fire knew him better than he knew himself. The fire understood that he wanted to burn, that he was supposed to burn. The pain was a welcome agony.“Bren! Bren, stop it!” Astrid’s voice was a whisper compared to the roar of the fire. Bren couldn’t bring himself to look at her, instead he looked down at the flames licking along his arms, burning his hands. Tears rolled down his cheeks and turned to steam. He was burning. He was dying. He was—*********Trent Ikithon stared down at his two students, both of whom smelled like smoke and whose eyes were red, as if they had been crying. They stood in his study, staring straight ahead, waiting for him to speak. They had been silent ever since he had teleported them back home.Trent had been watching them, of course, had scried as Eodwulf kill his parents, and Astrid kill hers. They had acted quickly, swiftly, without hesitation or remorse. He had thought Bren would do the same, and he had, up to a point. In the end, however, the one who he had thought the strongest had been the weak point in the chain. Trent’s hands clenched tighter behind his back. All that time spent training the boy. Wasted. “Bren was weak,” Trent said finally. “He would have betrayed us, betrayed the Empire sooner or later, with that weakness. It is better that he showed us that now, before the three of you had become true mages of the court. Let him be gone from your minds and your hearts from this day onward, and do not speak his name where anyone may hear it, even amongst yourselves. Am I understood?”“Yes, Master Ikithon,” both his students said promptly.Trent looked at them both with a critical eye, but he had a feeling that this was one lesson that might actually stick with them without any need for a reminder later. “You are dismissed,” he said, sitting back down at his desk and reaching for his notes before his students had even left the room.As a potential leader, Bren had been a failure, a disappointment. As a test subject however, he had been excellent. Trent already had a list of prospective students to pick from, and another vial of phoenix blood waiting. He’d try injecting it next time, though he wondered if the effect on a person’s veins would be similar to what the blood had done to Bren’s vocal chords. There was only one way to find out. Still, that was for later. “….subject immolated himself,” Trent wrote in his notes. “Much like the phoenix whose blood he shared. It is possible that, just like the phoenix, he will rise again at dawn. Perhaps he can still be useful.”It was a simple matter to teleport himself once more to the site of Bren’s former home, the timbers of which smoldered in the twilight. Trent turned away from the house, since it was unimportant, and instead walked towards a swath of earth that had been burned, the ground coated with gray ash. Trent reached into the ash and picked up the ring of disguise, muttering a spell before looking at the ring and then putting it in his pocket to be disposed of later. The magic had been burned out of it by the heat of the fire.Trent waited patiently as the twilight sky grew paler, as the light of the sun crested over the hill. He didn’t flinch in surprise when the ash ignited as the first rays of the sun touched it, only watched intently as the ash burned as bright and hot as if it had been soaked in oil. There was a brief, blinding flare, and when Trent could see again, there was Bren, lying in the grass. He was naked, and his wings had gone the color of flame blackened timber. When he opened his eyes, they were still orange, but there was no light in them.“Bren?”Bren didn’t look up at Trent, didn’t even act like he had heard him.Trent reached down and pulled Bren to his feet. Bren stayed upright, looking straight ahead, his breathing steady and even. There was nothing in those eyes, no light, no intelligence. When Trent slapped him, Bren didn’t flinch or react in any way. A casting of a spell to detect thoughts confirmed what Trent thought might have been the case. There was nothing going on in Bren’s surface thoughts, and nothing going on below the surface as well. There may have been something of Bren deeper than that, but Trent didn’t waste his time probing further. He knew what a broken mind looked like. Trent considered his options. If Bren had come back whole, it would have been a simple task to modify his memories some more, reshape him, repurpose him. He wouldn’t have brought him back to Astrid and Eodwulf, not when Bren’s death could be used as a lesson, a teachable moment, but some other use could have been made of the boy. But no, he had come back broken, and there was no guarantees that his mind might return to him. It would probably easier to just kill Bren and dissolve his ashes in acid. Still, Trent hated to have all his hard work and effort be wasted. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have anywhere to put the failed experiments that still had potential. He put a hand on Bren’s shoulder. Bren did not look up.“I had such hopes for you,” Trent said as he readied the teleport spell in his mind. “I never thought you’d end up in the Menagerie.”A moment later and the two of them were gone, leaving the charred bones of a house and of the people who lived in it behind.
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Selene Werlithellyn wandered the halls of The Menagerie, humming a little nonsense tune. She had dim memories of singing in crowded taverns, of wandering the land, free under the sun and sky and stars and flowers, spreading music wherever she went, the love of a god of magic and art glowing warm in her heart. That had been before. Before before before. Now there was only after. After she had sang songs that someone hadn’t liked. After chains. After a man with eyes like the void behind stars had forced her to drink the silver unicorn’s blood. After the pain, all the pain, the spiral horn growing from her forehead, her feet hardening into hooves. After the words that had sank into her mind, another set of chains. “Do not try to escape. Use your magic only to heal.”Selene had tried to break the chains inside her, had tried to go against her orders, but every time she had tried, the mental agony had left her weeping on the floor of her room for hours. After awhile she had stopped trying, had done what she had been bid. She healed the other students that had come and gone though the house out in the country, the secret place where the man with empty eyes lived. She had felt all their pain, even after they had been healed. She had healed traitors to the Empire, feeling their anguish as they begged and pleaded and wept, and she had wept with them, knowing they would soon be broken again. She had felt everything so strongly. So strongly.Then came the day they had taken her to the aftermath of a great battle, where there were so many wounded that Selene could hardly move for the pain that had flooded her. The empty eyed man had told her to show everyone what she could do.It had been too much. Too much pain and misery and anguish. She had felt every wound, every broken bone as her own, every rattling breath echoing in her lungs. She had tried anyway. She could heal so many people, so many all at once, but their pain had remained, etched into her bones. She had just wanted to get away from the pain, just for a moment. That’s all she had wanted. Just a second of peace. So she had spoken the words of a spell that would teleport her away, two rules broken in an instant, the backlash of the geas thrust upon her tightening the chains in her mind. Something had to break under the strain. Something had.Magic didn’t sing in Selene’s blood like it had used to, and most days she couldn’t feel anything at all. Not her own pain, not anyone else’s either. Mostly she wandered the halls, and sang little songs, and the staff left her alone, as long as she went back to her room when she was told. They had other inmates to deal with, the ones that screamed and cried and weren’t quiet at all. It wasn’t like she could leave. Even on days when she could feel the magic in her stirring, the place had too many wards surrounding it. Yesterday had been a bad day, where Selene hadn’t been able to move for sensations of all the wounds she had ever healed, all the emotional turmoil she had ever felt from others. Today was better, though her movements were still stiff with the old echoes of pain remembered, and her head still ached. She wandered downstairs, pausing before taking the very last step. She knew the shape of everyone’s feelings and there was someone new here, someone curious and mildly anxious. She tilted her head, and a moment later two people wearing guard uniforms came into view. One of them was the new person she had sensed, a heavily bearded human man with dark eyes, and the other was her favorite guard, a half-elf like her. His name was Jamzaren, and he always smiled just a little when he saw her and radiated feelings of both affection and sorrow. He’d had a daughter once, was all he had said when Selene had asked why he was sad.“Hello, Unicorn,” Jamzaren said with his usual sad smile. None of the staff were allowed to know the inmates real names. “Are you feeling better today?”Selene nodded, not taking her eyes off the stranger. He was staring at her, at her silver hair and violet eyes and her pearly horn, and he was starting to have feeling towards her that she didn’t like at all. The stranger smiled nervously. “My name is Gregor,” he said, as if she had asked. He took a step towards her and she tossed her head, her hooves chiming off the stone floor, warning him off.“Did they tell you what happened to the guard you’re replacing?” Selene asked, then continued before Gregor could say anything. “He tried to have his way with Basilisk, and he thought he was safe because she’s blind. But basilisks are venomous, and I guess he hadn’t known that. He was dead in five minutes.” She had felt his agony as he had died, and it was a pain that for once she had not been sorry to feel. “My horn is very sharp,” she said, tossing her head again, and smiled when the man’s lustful stirrings stopped as quick as the snapping of a lute string.Jamzaren was looking at Gregor, radiating wariness. Good. He would watch him more closely now.“I—I wasn’t—“ Gregor stuttered. He reached up with one hand, twisting the pendant that lay around his neck, the smoky gray stone etched with runes that all the staff wore.“Unicorn barely has enough magic most days to heal a hangnail, but she can read your feelings like most people read books,” Jamzaren said. “So let’s get this straight. If Basilisk hadn’t done the man in, Master Ikithon would have. He doesn’t like people damaging what’s his.”Selene shivered, thinking of Trent Ikithon’s empty eyes. She had called him Master before because she had to. She would not now, not in her own head and not out loud. Indeed, Trent didn’t want any of his former students molested or damaged, though he was just fine with hurting them himself. When he did it, it was for the good of the Empire.Now Gregor felt scared. Selene smiled, pleased. “And now that that’s settled,” Jamzaren said gently. “Unicorn, would you like to help me fetch Phoenix? He needs exercise.”Selene’s smile stretched into a grin as she trotted down the hallway. Phoenix was the inmate who’d been there the longest. He was her favorite, because she hardly felt anything from him at all, usually just mild distress during his thrice weekly baths, or a faint joy when she sang to him. It was sad, in a way, but Selene selfishly enjoyed his lack of strong feelings. It was so peaceful.“The other inmates come and go,” Jamzaren said from behind her, speaking to Gregor. “Master Ikithon comes by and….” Jamzaren cleared his throat. “He reevaluates them periodically. Then they either go with Master Ikithon or…”Or they were killed. Banshee and Siren and Phase and Chimera had all died while Selene had been here. She had felt their deaths while she had been locked in her room, powerless, weeping. One day she knew that Trent would come for her, and she hoped that she could at least die with his blood on her horn. But that wasn’t a thought for now. It was a later thought.“Phoenix though, he’s Master Ikithon’s favorite, if the man can have favorites. Phoenix does what you tell him, and the rest of the time he just sits there, quiet, unless it’s bath time. Hates getting his wings wet, makes these gods awful noises. We’re supposed to tell Master Trent right away if he so much as twitches a finger on his own, but that hasn’t happened in all the time I’ve been here. Ten years and he’s as empty as he was the first time I saw him.”Phoenix wasn’t empty, Selene thought as Jamzaren unlocked Phoenix’s room and opened the door for her. Phoenix was sitting in the corner, hunched in on himself, rocking ever so slightly. He was full of things, they were just really far down where most people couldn’t see them, couldn’t feel them. Even Selene could barely feel what Phoenix was feeling, but she knew something was there.“Hi Phoenix,” Selene said cheerfully as she knelt down in front of the man, putting a hand on his arm. He stopped rocking, but he didn’t look up at her, his eyes hidden by his reddish-brown hair. “It’s exercise time!” She tugged at him gently. “Let’s go for a walk, okay? It’s beautiful outside, way better than being in here.”Phoenix didn’t move. That happened sometimes. There was the rustle of movement behind her. “Should we—““Give her a minute,” Jamzaren said. “It makes her happy to try. She’s pretty good with him.”“C’mon,” Selene said, taking his hands in hers. “I’ll sing for you while we walk. I know you like that.” She tried to think of something she hadn’t sung for him before and a memory stirred in the back of her mind, something soothing in Elvish that she hadn’t sung in a long time. She didn’t realize it was a spell until the first words left her lips and her hands began to tingle in his.*********
It starts with burning, the fireball leaving his hands. It ends with burning, his body being consumed by flames. The middle varies. Sometimes he goes into the house to try and save his parents, only to find their charred bodies lying by the hearth. Sometimes their bodies lie still. Other times they clutch at him, still begging to be saved even after the flesh burns away from their bones.
Sometimes all he can do is watch, kneeling in the grass as the house he grew up in and the parents who loved him and who he had loved and betrayed in turn collapse into ashes, burning tears trailing down his cheeks.
The worse times are when he saves them. He saves them and his parents hold him and tell him he’s forgiven and then they turn to ash in his arms. That’s the quickest one. Sometimes they flee the Empire, go to live on the coast, and Bren grows from a young boy into a man, no one questioning his wings or his strangely colored eyes. He becomes a fisherman, living a simple life, supporting his folks in their old age. One day he comes home from sea, whistling, opens the door to their home— only to have it be their simple farmhouse once more, and it’s on fire, he’s on fire, and his parents are screaming.
Every time it starts over the horror is as fresh as the first time. Every time he hopes for a different outcome. Every time he is disappointed, but he understands. This is punishment, and it can never be enough.
Sometimes there are other things that penetrate the smoke and the flames. The feeling of water on his wings. Glimpses of sunlight, or of gray walls. Someone singing. Someone is singing to him now as he kneels on the grass, as he burns….
He’s in his bedroom. He’s in his bedroom and the house is quiet except for his parents murmured conversation. This was the night that was the beginning of the end, the night he heard them talking about uprising, about revolution, treason. He had gotten out of bed and listened at the top of the stairs. He remembers that.
Master Ikithon is standing at the side of his bed, one hand on Bren’s chest and the other on his forehead. The deep pits of Master Ikithon’s eyes are his entire world, his voice the only thing Bren can hear.
“I was never here. You woke up in the middle of the night, alone, went to the top of the stairs and overheard your parents talking about their dissatisfaction with the Empire, about treason and rebellion, and then you went back to bed.”
Master Ikithon teleports away and Bren sits up in bed, tears streaming down his face.
**************
“Phoenix? What’s wrong?”Bren focused on the person in front of him, keeping very still as his thoughts raced. This was different. This wasn’t the smoke and the fire and the house. The walls were gray, and everything had a brightness to it, a solidity that only came with reality. There was a young half-elven woman in front of him with curious violet eyes and silver hair, the pearly sheen of the unicorn horn growing from her forehead nearly the same color as her skin. Bren didn’t know how he was alive when his last solid memory had been of him burning. He didn’t know where he was, or who this person was that was touching him, except her voice was familiar, the same voice as the singing he often heard in his… dreams? Nightmares? Delusions? Memory. That last part before he had woken up had been a memory, a true memory to replace the false one. He had killed his mother and father based on a lie and how had he not known, not seen the truth before? He was still to blame, that hadn’t changed, he had gone home that night with murder in his heart up until the deed was done, too late to take back, but now there was another layer. Now it was even worse.The young half-elven woman pulled back her hands from his, tears streaming down her face.Bren didn’t move, just struggled to keep his expression blank as two more people stepped into the room. They were guards from the look of them, both of them wearing uniforms and some sort of pendant with runes of passage and warding etched upon them. One of them, another half-elf, knelt down next to the woman.“Unicorn?”The woman, Unicorn, gave out a little, hiccuping sob.“He’s so sad,” she said quietly. “Confused and sad and scared and angry.”Bren had no time to wonder just how she knew what he was feeling, because the other guard, human by the look of him, was staring at him with large dark eyes. “Does he— do his wings always glow like that?”Bren felt the heat at his back, his wings starting to smolder with the intensity of his emotions. He had hoped that he might have been able to fool his captors into thinking he was still… however he had been before. Docile? Harmless? But no. He got to his feet as quickly as he was able, swaying slightly.The other guard looked at him and swore. “Hold him!” He yelled at the human guard as he drew the unicorn woman to her feet and thrust her behind him with one hand as he fumbled in his pocket with the other.The human guard started to make a gesture that Bren knew very well, the beginning of a binding spell, and Bren could not let that happen. His spellbook was gone and he had no material components, but there were a few spells that he knew in the blood and breath and bone of him, and fire had come easily to him even before he had drunk the phoenix’s blood. His hands moved in an old, familiar gesture, the firebolt leaping from his fingers.The human guard didn’t have time to scream before he was struck, the fire burning him down to the bone in an instant and setting the wall behind him to burning as well. The sight of it made Bren want to be sick, and he felt his mind slipping back into the smoke and the flames that had haunted him for who knew how long. But he could no longer afford the luxury of his madness, not when the unicorn woman was screaming as if she herself had been burned, not when the half-elven guard was pulling a copper wire from his pocket and there was the sound of heavy boots pounding on the floor.“Master Ikithon!” The half-elven guard yelled. “The Phoenix is—“Bren lunged for the guard, no plan in his head, no room in his mind for anything but fear at the mention of Master Ikithon. There must have still been the heat of the fire in his hands, because the guard screamed and dropped the wire when Bren grabbed his wrist, and blisters rose on his neck when Bren snatched the amulet from him. Then Bren was running, blindly dashing down hallways and down stairs, dodging guards as he went, the few that tried to stand in his way.Luck must have been with him, because one of the doors lead to the outside, to sunlight and green grass, and Bren had a second to wonder why it hadn’t been locked or guarded before he saw the barrier around the yard, a dome that shimmered with a subtle purple hue. Bren gripped the amulet in his hand more tightly before leaping into the air. If he was wrong about one of the purposes of the amulet, he would smash against the barrier, break himself in the fall, but he didn’t brace himself as the barrier rushed closer, as the muscles in his back nearly spasmed in agony. How long had it been since he had flown?The barrier passed over him like smoke, but Bren didn’t allow himself even a second of relief as he flew higher into the sky. A glance below and behind him revealed nothing but a vast forest stretching below him. No magical barrier, no building. Bren turned his face away, heart pounding, gasping as he flew as fast as fear and his wings could take him. He had no idea what day it was, or where he was, except for the fact that north lay behind him. He flew south as long as he could, until his wingbeats began to falter, and after a graceless landing he ran instead. He no longer had the stamina or strength that he had possessed before he had died, and the thin slippers he had been wearing when he had escaped were worn through in what felt like minutes. Still, he ran until nearly dusk, finally collapsing in a little clearing beside a small stream. He drank from the cold, clear water, shivering, curling his wings around himself for warmth as best he could. It felt like early spring, which meant it was still too cold outside to suit him, and his clothes were simple gray linen and not very warm. Bren’s mind was filled with questions and the fog of exhaustion. How long had he been in that place? What had happened to him after the night he had killed his parents? Had he actually died, or had that just been part of his madness? For he had broken, he was sure of that. That place he had been being kept in seemed like an institution or asylum of some sort, and there had been at least one other person who was part beast, same as him. Were there more of them there, broken like him?He stared down at his hands, at how pale they were, how they trembled. They were broader than he remembered. He reached up and touched his face, recoiling when his fingers touched what was surely a beard. He remembered Wulf gently teasing him about being sixteen without even having the slightest hint of facial hair. Wulf. Astrid. Were they still with Master Ikithon? Were they instead in that place he had just escaped from, broken like he was? Did they know what Master Ikithon had done to him? Did they know about the false memories? Would they believe Bren if he told them?Bren shivered again, one hand clutching the pendant that he now wore around his neck. He had recognized some of the runes as a protection against scrying, but no magic would help him if word got to the wrong ears about a person with glowing wings walking around. He would need a coat or a cloak and warm clothes and shoes and food and a place to sleep and a plan—-Bren drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself as a silent sob escaped him and the first of many tears began to fall.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was nostalgia that had shaped Nott’s choice to steal the bottle of cherry wine. The Itch had wanted her to steal something, and she had seen the bottle and remembered enjoying a glass of wine with her husband on summer evenings, back when she had been a halfling, a person, someone who could be loved. She had thought no one had been watching her as she tucked the bottle of wine under her ragged cloak, but then a heavy hand had fallen on her shoulder, and when she had tried to run the bottle of wine had slipped out and shattered at her feet. The smell of cherries had followed her all the way to jail.The guards hadn’t killed her, which had come as a surprise. In her old life as a halfling, she would have had rights as a citizen of the Empire. As the goblin she was now, she was a monster that could be killed on sight. They had roughed her up when they had stripped her of her possessions, her lockpicks and her flask and the pouches filled with coins and all manner of shiny things, but they hadn’t killed her. Instead they had thrown her into the jail’s single cell and left her there, a pot to piss in and a pile of rags in the corner all there was to keep her company. Nott alternated between picking at the lock with her claws and pacing and muttering to herself. Why hadn’t they killed her? Did they have plans for her? Maybe her death was to be a public entertainment of some sort, a stoning or a hanging. Gods, she needed a drink. If she had a drink maybe her hands would stop shaking and she could think. The lock on the cell door was poor, she could have picked it with a hairpin if she’d had one. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? A few hairpins tucked in her matted hair, maybe a lockpick sewn into the hem of her cloak or hidden in her boots, those would have been useful. Instead she had been running blind for months, not thinking about anything smart, anything useful and she needed a drink so her head would be quiet.The pile of rags in the corner shifted, and Nott’s mouth began to water. Were there rats in this cell? She hated the fact that she enjoyed the taste of rat, cooked or not. It was a goblin thing, not a halfling thing, a reminder that every day she was losing a bit of herself. But she was hungry, and raw rat was better than nothing. She crept closer to the pile of rags, pausing as they shifted once more. When the movement settled, Nott pounced, all teeth and sharp goblin claws.There was a hissing, crackling sound, like a pine knot popping in the fireplace and the pile of rag scrabbled to the corner, hands reaching out to push Nott away. Nott shrieked and jumped back, skittering to the safety of the opposite wall.“You two play nice!” One of the guards shouted from the other room.“I’m sorry!” Nott gasped out, not at the guards because fuck them, but at the frightened person huddled in the corner, bandaged arms covering their face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought you were a rat!” Gods, that sounded stupid, but it was the truth. The crackling sound subsided as the person lowered their arms. Had they been making that sound? That wasn’t a sound humans normally made, but then Nott wasn’t sure her cellmate was human, not with eyes that were as orange as a ripe pumpkin in a field. Those eyes looked at her from out of a face half covered in a scraggly reddish brown beard, which almost hid the hollowness of their cheeks.“My name’s Nott,” Nott said. “ Nott the Brave, though that’s a bit of a joke. I really am sorry about the rat thing.”The person stared at her from across the cell and then gave a little nod and huddled further into what Nott could now see was a well worn and stained traveling coat.“Too good to talk to a goblin?” Nott snapped. She could still smell the spilled cherry wine that had soaked into the bandages that covered her feet and it only made her long for alcohol even more. Her hands started to shake and she tucked them under her armpits so the stranger wouldn’t see. She still had pride, sometimes.The stranger narrowed his eyes and touched his throat before shaking his head.Nott thought of the sounds the stranger made before. “You can’t speak?”The stranger nodded, and Nott felt even more wretched than she usually did. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to— but you can hear me?”The stranger gave her a look that seemed to say, I’ve been responding to your questions, haven’t I?“Well I don’t know! Maybe you can read lips or something.”The stranger huffed and shook his head quickly.“Yeah, I’m no good at that either,” Nott said. It was just one of many things Nott wasn’t good at. Hiding and sneaking she was good at. Her stealing and running from guards skills needed work. They lapsed into silence then, Nott hugging her knees to try and control her shaking. She needed a drink. If she could just have a drink she’d stop being so scared of whatever was going to happen to her.There was the sound of someone snapping their fingers and then something furry brushed against Nott’s leg, causing her to shriek again.“Quiet down in there!” One of the guards shouted.Nott clamped a hand over her mouth and looked down. There was an orange cat with black stripes and spots streaked along their fur, their bright golden eyes staring back at her. As she watched, the cat rubbed against her leg again, purring.“Um hello? Where did you come from?”The cat walked over to the stranger and rubbed against him, purring even harder. The stranger smiled and scratched behind the cat’s ears, obviously familiar with the creature. “Is he your cat?” Nott asked. Maybe the animal had been hiding in the stranger’s coat. It looked like it had a lot of pockets, and it was almost too large for someone as stick thin as the poor man was. She wondered if he had been caught trying to steal food.The man nodded, and snapped his fingers softly.The cat disappeared and Nott had to stifle another shriek. “You’re magic!” She whispered instead.The man nodded slightly and snapped his fingers again, the cat reappearing in Nott’s lap.Nott automatically started petting the cat, giving her shaking hands something to do. Magic was terrifying. It had brought her back after she had been drowned into a body that was all wrong, a punishment for killing the leader of the goblin tribe that had captured her and her family. But if magic had done that to her, surely magic could fix it. Maybe if she helped the man escape, he would change her back?“Can you make other things?” Nott whispered. “They took my lockpicks, but if I had a wire or a hairpin or something…”The man shook his head and held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.“Not a lot of magic?” Nott guessed.The man grimaced with a half shrug and a nod.Nott tried not to look disappointed. “I guess that makes sense. If you were very powerful you wouldn’t be stuck here.”The man nodded with a frown as the cat jumped out of Nott’s lap and went back over to the man. They stared at each other for a long moment before the cat made a mmmrp sort of sound and walked between the bars of the cell and down the hallway.“Wait! Someone will see—“ Nott started to say, and then broke off, distracted by the stranger’s eyes. They had gone orange from corner to corner, and she had been wrong to liken them to something so benign as a pumpkin. The color shifted from orange to red to yellow, like the coals of a banked fire.“Hey, it’s that cat again,” one of the guards said. “How do you keep getting in here, hmmm?”“Cats get everywhere,” the other guard said, his rough voice sounding a little bit fond. “It’s a cat thing. Still, you can’t be in here, kitty. Sorry.”There was the sound of the cat meowing, then the opening and closing of a door, then silence.“I hope that was part of your plan,” Nott said. “Assuming any of that was a plan.”The stranger just stared straight ahead, blinking occasionally. At one point Nott crept close and waved a hand in front of the stranger’s eyes, but his face remained blank and still and he didn’t flinch when she snapped her fingers by his ear. For a moment she wondered if he would feel it if she tried to take a button off his coat before deciding against it. The coat looked like it was held together by dirt and hope, removing any bit of it would probably cause it to unravel into threads and dust. Besides, he was possibly trying to help her escape. At least, she thought that was what he was doing. She didn’t know a lot about magic or about humans, if the man was human. Maybe he normally just had strange little catatonic fits.An hour passed, the guards walking down the hallway to check on them and bring them two watery bowls of gruel that Nott only just considered food. Nott wolfed down hers in three swallows and was messily licking the bowl when she heard what sounded like a faint meow from the other side of the wall. The stranger snapped his fingers again, his eyes regaining both iris and pupil as the orange cat reappeared. There was something in its mouth, something shiny, and as the cat trotted over to Nott and dropped the something at her feet, she could see what it was. A wire.“Good kitty!” Nott whispered, scratching the cat behind the ears, then looking up at the stranger. “Did you tell them what to look for?”The man nodded and tapped the side of his temple before picking up the bowl of gruel and drinking it, since it was more liquid than solid. Nott found herself thinking it wasn’t nearly enough food for a growing boy, then shook her head. He was probably an adult, if the beard was any judge, and yet there was something in his eyes that made her think of her son. Her son, who had started taking things apart and putting them back together when he had been only three years old. Her quick and clever boy whose face she could barely remember now, as if the memories she made in this body were replacing the old ones. Would she wake up one morning and not remember her old life at all?Nott shook her head frantically to banish those thoughts and picked up the wire from the floor of the cell. “Do you know where they’re keeping our things?”The man nodded, pointing at his eye and then at the cat, who was licking the empty bowl.“You saw it… because your cat saw it?”A nod.Magic was weird, Nott thought as she bent the wire into the shape she needed and approached the lock. Weird and useful. “Once I’ve got the door open, we’re going to need to distract the guards. Can you do something… I don’t know. Flashy?”The man took a deep breath and held up his hand. As Nott watched, flame bloomed from his fingers like a dry piece of kindling catching fire.“Oh wow, okay. Sure,” Nott said. Terrifying, magic was terrifying again. “That’ll work.”********Bren ran through the fields on the outskirts of town, out of breath already and so far from being able to stop. He could still smell smoke on the breeze and the angry shouts of the guards chasing them. If he could make it to the woods he might be able to lose them. Or he could just fly away, which he didn’t want to do because the less people who were telling tales of a man with wings the better, but if the alternative was being captured again or possibly killed…Next to him the goblin (Girl? Woman? He wasn’t sure) was struggling to keep up. She was fast, but her stride was much shorter than his. He’d have been able to outrun her if he’d had anything resembling proper sleep or decent food in the past few days, instead of shivering in a cell and eating thin gruel. He would have thought she would have wanted to get as far away from him as possible, but there she was, still doing her best to keep up. He could fly away and leave her behind. She’d served her purpose, gotten him out of the jail cell and back to his books, which were now jammed into the inner pockets of his coat. His precious books filled with stolen paper, what few spells he had found and learned or relearned over the years scribed on them with stolen ink. He hadn’t had nearly enough time to hunt for spells, not when so much of his energy involved finding food and shelter, especially in the winter months. The goblin has clever hands. If you befriend her, she could steal for you. It could have been Trent’s voice saying those words, except Trent never would have observed a goblin long enough to come to those conclusions, Bren was sure. And the practical voice in his head wasn’t wrong. His work would be easier if there was someone helping him. She would get his protection, for what that was worth, and he would get her clever hands. A mutually beneficial arrangement, if they didn’t get recaptured.It was hard to take off his coat while running, but Bren managed it, stretching his cramped wings as he tossed the coat over his shoulder for the moment and scooped up Nott, who thrashed in his grip.“Let me go! What are you—“ That was as far as she got before her questions turned to shrieks as Bren leaped into the air.Flying was one of the few pleasures Bren had left, which meant he only flew when necessity dictated. Below him both town and guards and fields fell away, becoming smaller and less important. Soon they were sailing over the woods and yet Bren kept flying, trying to put as much distance between himself and their pursuers as possible. Nott had stopped screaming and thrashing and had thrown her arms around Bren’s neck, shaking and muttering into his shoulder. “Oh gods, oh gods, I’m going to die up here, don’t drop me please don’t drop me!”Bren wasn’t worried about dropping Nott, now that she had stopped squirming. He was more worried about the fact that flying took a lot out of him, and he hadn’t been starting with much to begin with, Nott’s extra weight not helping matters. He flew a little closer to the treetops as he frantically searched for a place to land, sighing with relief when he saw a clearing through the trees.The landing was a little rough, and Bren stumbled when he hit the ground. Still, he hadn’t dropped Nott, who leapt down from his arms only to turn and stare at him. Bren knew what he must look like, filthy and ragged, his feathers as ruffled and unkempt as his hair, and yet Nott was looking at him like he wasn’t the lowest creature in all of Wildemount.“What are you?” Nott asked.There were a lot of answers to that question. He was a murderer trying to undo a mistake. He was a coward who cringed when he had once stood tall, a powerful boy grown into a powerless man. He was hungry, and tired, and tired of being hungry. He was selfish, because he wanted the company of this goblin girl even though he didn’t deserve to be anything but alone. He was a person, but he wasn’t entirely human, not anymore.Bren folded his wings and shrugged back into his coat, reaching into his pockets and pulling out the book he used when he had to write things down for people. If she stayed with him, he would teach her how to sign, to make understanding him easier. For now though, this would have to do. Hopefully she could read.“I’m sorry, I meant who are you,” Nott said, actually sounding sorry. “I don’t even know your name.”Neither did Bren, but by the time he opened his book and found a pen, he had thought of one.“My name is Caleb Widogast,” he wrote. “Thank you for helping me escape.”“I should be thanking you! You and your magic cat! We’d still be stuck in that cell if you hadn’t gotten me that wire!”“The wire wouldn’t have done any good without you. I have no skill in picking locks.”“We make a pretty good team,” Nott said, and Bren (who would have to get used to being called Caleb), realized that he wasn’t going to have to convince Nott very hard at all to stay with him. It was there in her trembling voice, in her pleading eyes. She would stay with him just so she wouldn’t be alone anymore, so she could be a little less afraid.“We do, don’t we?” Caleb wrote, and pretended that he didn’t feel the same way she did. He was looking for a partner, not a friend. He didn’t deserve friends.Sometimes people got what they didn’t deserve.