Vhalla ignored the crumpled parchment for the rest of the day before reluctantly picking it up, folding it, and placing it beneath her sash as the closing bells rang. Sareem linked arms with her, walking toward the mess hall, but Vhalla quickly excused herself, encouraging Roan and the young man to go ahead. She wasn’t hungry and meals were the first thing she sacrificed when her mind was full.
Alone in her room sitting in dim candlelight, Vhalla inspected the note over again. Every word sent red heat to her cheeks. Before she could stop herself Vhalla was reaching for quill and ink.
Of the phantoms stalking my waking hours, I don’t know which one you are, but you know nothing. I am no sorcerer. If this is Larel, you may speak with me in person as you did last time. I am not about to indulge someone so cowardly that they will not even sign their name. I am reading books on magic purely for—
For what? Vhalla’s quill paused. Why was she reading the book the sorcerer had handed her? There wasn’t any point to it. It wasn’t as if Vhalla would—or could—ever use the knowledge it contained.
—personal intellectual improvement and learning. Go bother someone else.
She dropped her face into her palms. This wasn’t who she was. Vhalla muttered a curse under her breath. She did not speak harshly to strangers—or even those she knew. This was the Tower’s fault. Were it not for their persistence with wearing her down with every waking hour, Vhalla would not be so exhausted. She crumpled the note once more and threw it into her closet, trying to ignore it.
Her exhaustion was not helped by that same recurring dream. Every night she chased shadows and asked hazy figures for names, only to have her words vanish into wind.
The next morning she shrugged on her apprentice robes, not even trying to run a brush through her hair.
Grabbing her reply off the closet floor, she resolved to give this sorcerer a piece of her mind. She hardly cared if she offended some random apprentice in the Tower of Sorcerers. The note went inAn Introduction to Sorcery,and Vhalla expected that to be the end.
She was wrong.
The person exceeded her expectation in their stubbornness.
Yarl,
I am not stalking the halls. I do not slink or dodge. I am waiting to see if you are even worthy of my time. I am not a phantom with little better to do than keep an eye on your wellbeing. I amthephantom in the darkness.
However, if your last note and desperate attempts at research really are any indication, you are not worth an iota of the ink on this page. Perhaps you should do the sorcerer community a favor and Eradicate yourself before you embarrass us all?
That should have been the moment when she stopped writing. That should have been the moment when Vhalla threw her hands in the air, marched to the Tower, and demanded to be Eradicated. At least, after looking up that eradication meant the removal of a sorcerer’s powers and not some horrible death sentence.
But Vhalla had little that she called her own. She did not have clothes, gems, or precious metals. She had never even eaten fresh fruit other than what her mother had grown around their farmhouse when she was a girl. Vhalla did have one precious thing though, her knowledge. And she would be cursed before she would let an apprentice of the Tower show her up intellectually.
To the one who declares themselves The Phantom, Perhaps I should demand to be Eradicated! I read
about the War of the Crystal Caverns; the magic unleashed there was not only capable of warping men’s minds and bodies into abominations but it is also written that the magic was set free by sorcerers’ meddling. It was a two-year war against monsters that kept my father from my mother and I as she lay sick and dying. War and horror spawned and fueled by magic.
Perhaps the world should be Eradicated!
Vhalla had never been more certain that she should rid herself of whatever magic she may possess. Everything she had always been told was right, and it only took half a book on the history of the Empire’s most mysterious war to understand this. Magic changes things; magic made more men die at war, magic could turn a human into an abomination.
Vhalla shoved the books back on the shelf in self-righteous anger.
Anger fought a battle with amazement when this person was stubborn enough to pen out another reply.
Yarl,
You were reading about the War of the Crystal Caverns? Was your interest in history sparked by your introduction to magic or your misplaced vendetta against it? In either case, allow me to elaborate on your reading. Perhaps, in this, you may be right. There are good men among the wicked in this world, donning the fleece of the innocent. He who set free the power that warps the hearts, minds, and bodies of mortals was certainly wicked. The actions of this man should condemn only him, not all who wield magic. It was also because of sorcery that the war could be ended and the power resealed in the Crystal Caverns. Soldiers – your father – came home because the magical warriors of the Black Legion.
Consider that when you wish to be Eradicated. Are you going to be the sorcerer who could have saved lives but chose instead to be no one? When a sword is thrust into someone’s gut, do you blame the sword or the knight who wields it?
When will you stop being afraid, read, and learn more about who you are?
Vhalla stared at the note. She did not know what was more agitating. This person’s tone or the fact that they were right. Vhalla confirmed their claims by actually finishing the book she started the day prior. The Black Legion, the war sorcerers of the Empire, had been integral to sealing the Caverns and their dangerous magic once more.
Were those sorcerers any different from any other soldiers? No, her quill paused for a moment, hovering over her blank page. Were sorcerers very different from the people she callednormal?
Phantom,
I’ve moved away from the introduction; I want to learn more about what sorcerers do, what magic is. I found a book on magical Affinities. As I understand it, the early sorcerers in the West believed that magic came from the Mother Sun in the form of her elements, so they harnessed and trained those elements. This is why Crones were the only ones with fire Affinities, called Firebearers.
