The Magician 41

"How dare you do this! Agreements were made, sworn on unbreakable oaths. The family you've left behind here will suffer UNCOUNTABLE tragedies! I'LL INSURE IT!"

Orison woke up under a sense of nearly unbearable repression. The red, blasted landscape wasn't even close to the top of his attention grabbing details list, however. He was laying beside two mummified corpses and one of them was looking at him.

Barely resisting the urge to scream or start gibbering in broken minded horror, he looked over and saw that his 'father' was arguing with another man. It was the man on the other side of the brimstone gate that had shouted the threat at his father.

The dark Marshlander said, "You still think I'm Takris or one of his family members? You deluded fool."

On the other side of the gate, the man flickered briefly. He suddenly looked pale and a lot less full of bile.

Satisfied that the man knew who he was talking to, the dark Marshlander continued, "Nurturing instinct may not come naturally to our kind. But, that doesn't mean we don't care for our young at all. Count yourself fortunate that I don't hold you accountable, Atamus. The little dramas of this place have begun to bore me."

The man on the other side of the abyssal gate looked over towards Orison and then sighed. "Does my son's soul still exist? If you'll answer me that and tell me what ever else you might know of his fate, I swear on my true name to cease all plotting against you and yours."

The dark Marshlander laughed. "The one observing through you wouldn't swear that oath, which makes yours meaningless. Still, it does no harm to let you know that he exists. In truth, he is more wholly himself than he has ever been under you tainted guidance.

"An underworld goddess who recognizes him as spiritual father will ensure he is nurtured well. A rather pleasant outcome, considering he began his existence as an accidental parasite and ended his current life as a corrupted spiritual one. That he was innocent in all this, matters to me not... at... all."

Atamus said, "I know how it seems but they do better together than apart."

With a warning growl, the Dark Marshlander said, "That's because you stole what you thought were the best parts of my son and exchanged them for what you thought were the weaknesses of yours. It's your lack of ability as a thief that made them both incomplete but capable of surviving alone. Leave before my resolve wavers and I kill you."

Atamus sighed, not the least concerned about the threat.

Never the less, he looked defeated. "I've tried and tried. I've grown too weary to fight any longer. Perhaps Piran will be fine without my help."

He faded away like an after image.

The dark Marshlander turned to see that Orison had awakened. "Your pet is with the seer and Duran, the boy who was with her. Not to worry. I have new pets for you until you can reunite with your first one. They're not as lively, I know. But, with a little affection, they'll be up and wagging their tails in no time."

Orison looked dubiously at the two mummies. The second one's eyes still followed him.

The dark Marshlander handed a black opal ring to the boy after loading the two mummies in it. "I don't know whether you've discovered it or not but you have a space inside of you. Until I say otherwise, don't put anything into it. Use this instead. "If you do it anyway, I'll remove your space. Better that you don't have one than feed the strength of the thing in the center of your soul. It's going to be hard to catch your spiritual bloodlines up to it as it is."

***

In a period that only felt like a few days, the young mage followed the dark Marshlander around the Abyss as his father slowly dismantled the place from the outside in. Most of that time, he was in a deep trance as his soul was fed shadow smoke purified spirit essences to help it heal. Over time, his father's disposition mellowed out some as the Marshlander's scale tips shifted from red, through midnight purple and finally into a black opaline luster.

The mummies in the young mage's ring went through some fairly drastic changes as well. The bald, eastern monk was returned to life with the help of a little wooden carving they carried and the other fleshed out into a frizzy redheaded woman. She couldn't be called beautiful but had a certain, undeniable charm. He was a sometimes funny but mostly annoying man who somehow made himself useful enough to not be abandoned.

Somehow, the eastern monk grew stronger by leaps and bounds every time Orison stretched after a trance but Lily didn't. He claimed it was because of some principle of dharma that was bolstered by helping the boy's father 'purify evil'. One day, the young mage woke from deep trance to find that the monk and 'purified' himself out of their lives along with a large portion of wealth seized from the 'evil' that had been destroyed.

Oddly enough, the Marshlander chuckled about it. "He should have taken the whole pile of junk if he planned on sneaking off. As if I'd leave anything just laying around that I actually wanted to keep."

For their last two days in the Abyss, the Marshlander left Orison with Lily while he went to conquer the center 'mud hut'. From a distance, the boy and frizzy haired lady watched the dire looking fortress made of thorny protrusions get demolished. In fascination, they watched as the Marshlander returned with damned souls shackled to a wagon the size of a small house.

"Thanks for babysitting. Take what you want and leave the rest for the next batch of miserable wretches who take over this place," the overbearing man said before taking a few minute's nap, a testament that it hadn't been as easy of a job as he made it look.

That night, Orison witnessed some interesting sounds coming from an intact palace room next to his own. It excited him in some ways he wasn't used to but it also depressed him for a reason he equally didn't understand. The next morning, Lily and a good portion of the 'junk' was gone.

Looking satisfied, the Marshlander brought his son to the abyssal will's resting chamber. "Why so glum? Did you fancy her or something? She's older than me and that's saying something. Ah, my boy. That was only an avatar. The person she's made from actually has an interest in you but that's for some time down the road, I'd wager. You might be fifteen but that's a little green, even for some of the more 'eccentric' old monsters."

Orison's eyes got wide. "I'm twelve!"

"We've been here for three years. I put you into deep trance for most of it and you weren't the only one in need of recovery. I was forced to take nibbles off of human souls to survive where I was before this. That's not healthy food for beings like me and Amoril damn well knew it," the man's statement that started off with a chuckle, ended in a grimace.

"I nearly succumbed to food poisoning... so to speak. Why else do you think the world will would send a bumbling mortal to finish the job," he added.

Orison looked at his father sharply and said, "So, when you said you fought with Bauldur, you meant literally... You're the great, world ending dragon everyone's half convinced doesn't exist?"

"Inside, yes. I'm also borrowing a watered down descendant's body. He gets his spiritual bloodline kindled for his troubles. So, don't give me that judgmental look... Maybe there's some impurities I still need to smoke out of you?" he said.

The young mage shook his head, taking a more neutral expression to hide his dread.

A different kind of satisfied look replaced the one the Marshlander was wearing earlier. "Before we handle our last piece of business here, I have a story to tell you and an important decision for you to make. In truth, I hope you take the easy road. As I told Atamus not long after we first arrived here, nurturing instinct doesn't come naturally to our kind. Doesn't mean we don't care about our young. We just have different ways of seeing things from an instinct point of view."

After a deep exhale of shadowy smoke, he said, "A long time ago, I was visited by an elf and her maid. Both had a presence of the blood of the 'Architects' in them. This was when Amoril was still young and hadn't yet decided to rob its inhabitants of their spiritual bloodlines through different methods.

"While my student Atamus entertained the maid, the lady seemed far more interested in entertaining me. She presented me with a spiritual stone that her maid had found and asked me if I knew what it was. I did not but my instinct told me that it was a nourishing item for those capable of consuming it as it was.

"I was truthful in the telling but she was curious if there was a way for her to benefit from it. It was at that moment I realized that she already knew the significance and use of the stone but was trying to play coy. I don't know what she had originally came for but the answer I told her did not match what she had expected. I had only intended to shock her sensibilities but I was the one who would be shocked by her answer.

"That's the story of how you came to be. The story of what happened afterward is not as simple. To keep from dragging up a past that no longer matters, let's leave it at the lady giving birth to a healthy boy and the maid giving birth to a sentient gem. The rest is envy and covetous greed.

"Not long after, the world will began making some questionable choices. To protect you and herself from the effect of those choices, the lady placed you and herself in a magical sleep intended to last until the day of quickening. That's when the world will would shift its focus on rising rather than robbing its inhabitants of potential to fuel its own ascension.

"Depending on what choice you make, you'll learn first hand why the world was able to subdue me while I was careless or you won't... You already possess the potential in your soul to have great freedom. Were I not to lift a finger more, you could rise to great heights and if you didn't like the restriction of reality against you, then simply search for another place to be..."

Seeing the man grow silent and stare at him with a complicated look, Orison took the risk and prompted, "Or..."

Frowning, the Marshlander said, "You could sacrifice your ability to be accepted into the highest echelons of power. You could cut off your ability to access a Greater Reality's assistance, expanding your awareness to limited omniscience in exchange for favors and protection. You'd also get stronger restrictions when entering realities weaker than yourself.

"For all those sacrifices, you aren't given anything else in return. I've heard that the spiritual essence responsible for your spiritual birth between me and your mother, came from an outsider... directly. Doesn't some echo of that being's desires still dwell within you?

"The being you once were a part of gave everything for the chance to be a being subject to laws, to experience a reality with structure and order. It sacrificed being a law unto itself to gain that. Surely you have some echo of that resolve in you still? You wouldn't want to sacrifice even more possibilities for a mere portion of both sides, right?"

Orison said, "Is it the, uh, path you...walk, fly...travel?"

"Yes," the man said moodily.

"Could you choose some other path?" the boy asked.

Once again, an affirmative.

"Okay," Orison said.

The dragon hiding in a Marshlander said, "Okay, what?"

"I choose what you have but don't really want to offer," the young mage said.

The man looked surprised, not because of Orison showing interest in the second path he baited the boy to choose but because the wording meant that an old promise had to be kept without the loopholes he tried to use.

The dragon inside thought about the weakened neutral and celestial will orbs he had just fought so hard to collect along with the abyssal will orb that he had picked up so easily much earlier. He had been told about their location for a specific reason but with a little lawyering, he could have used them for himself. That was no longer possible.

Unwilling to suffer a loss without at least the hope of a return, the dragon in Marshlander form said, "It's customary for a father to gift his son a precious treasure to begin his horde. If that whelp reaches majority, it is also customary for that son to present his father with a treasure of equal or greater value to earn his father's approval and to prove he is worthy of inheriting the heaven's favor."

The boy nodded and asked, "Do mother dragons do something similar for their daughters?"

Thrown off his stride yet again, the dark Marshlander said, "It's not exactly the same but the spirit of it is, I suppose. They exchange wisdom."

"Harder to steal a horde of wisdom," the boy said.

The dragon in disguise chuckled. "We could do it that way if you want."

"Why not both!?" Orison said with a cunning smile.

The dark Marshlander rolled his eyes and stopped speaking with the boy. He had a feeling from his bones that the more he tried to cheat his son, the more he'd end up being cheated, just like he had been with the boy's mother so many years ago.