Old Addiction

While everyone was temporarily gone from the camp, a Lich stared down at Doevm.

"Doevm," a voice whispered in the dark tent. "Doe~vm." It called again. Skeletal hands shook Doevm out of his peaceful sleep. "Wake up!"

Doevm sat up and stared at the Lich: "What do you want this time? I'm trying to sleep."

"They're gone." The Lich pulled the spatial ring out of Doevm's bag and held it out, "This is your chance. Now that you're a human, you have a whole new element of magic at your flesh-covered fingertips. It's a new world, a new magic." It rubbed the ring and the rat corpses shot out from it. "Look at all of these. They're treasures. With your knowledge, you can figure out how to use healing magic from these. You only need to practice some magic."

"Go away." Doevm said. He put his head back down.

"I can feel our heart beating." The Lich said. "We both know you're interested. You've broken your promise before. Just do it one more time. Just once and I'll let you go back to sleep." Doevm shut his eyes, but the Lich opened them. "Listen to me!" It shoved one of the rat skeletons into Doevm's face, who swatted it away. "Fine," The Lich left the rat skeletons on the floor and disappeared.

As Doevm waited to go back to sleep, he couldn't help but think about the rats sitting feet away from him. He swallowed and closed his eyes more. Minutes felt like hours. He tried to ignore them, but he felt stares from their hollow eyes. He had nothing else to do, so why not give it a try? It would just be for a minute.

'Don't go back there,' Doevm thought to himself. 'I swore I was done with magic. I could learn about healing magic from those skeletons, and I could go ask the monk to take me in, but that's not what I want in this life. Those two times I used magic were just flukes. If it's not a life and death situation then I'm not going to unseal my mana, but...'

'What if healing magic saves my life. It will be helpful. What if I lose a part of my body that prevents me from fighting? What will I do then? On the battlefield, what if I must use magic to survive? People will find out I'm a mage and lock me in the magic association. If I instead use a quick healing spell and hide, no one will have to know.'

'But you know once you start, you can't stop,' Doevm's head kept tossing and turning in the grass. He creaked his eyes open and looked at the skeleton. 'You can't stop, so don't do it.' He reached out and grabbed one. 'I'll just put this one back in the spatial ring.' As if his body fought with his mind, his mana unsealed by itself. His breathing was shaky as he got the spatial ring with his other hand.

'Maybe just a few seconds. Some more inspection can't hurt.'

'No!' His own voice was getting weaker, and the other was getting louder. He squeezed the skeleton to his chest. A tiny strand of mana left his hand. All his thought faded and replaced with actions. Around Doevm's eyes, spells to enhance eyesight examined the skeleton's broken limbs. He sat up and gathered the other skeletons as well.

He placed them left to right in order of biggest to smallest. Each severed or crushed limb was set on the side. He felt around the cuts on the points connecting joints. 'Several cuts with a dagger were made there, implying they were the subject of the healing session. That might mean Oliver is currently at the level where he's healing tendons and limbs. The other rats have very small cuts on their ribcage, but there are only a few. They are also expertly cut as well. If it wasn't for my enhanced eyesight, I would never be able to spot the difference. Healing bone could be level two or part of level three. I'll need to examine more subj-'

"Doevm, what are you doing?" Frey asked as he opened the tent flap. "You're a magici-"

"Sleep!" Doevm blasted sleeping powder from his wrists into Frey's nose, not bothering to be as discrete as he was last night. The giant collapsed right on top of the rat skeletons. Doevm sighed and held his forehead. 'What am I doing? This was too risky. I didn't even notice a mortal approach. What if Oliver and Ashtehar were close? I just risked it all because I couldn't control myself.' A few magic circles later and Frey's memory was wiped of the last minute. Doevm cleaned away the bone shards and laid back down. He could have sworn he heard laughing in the night.

…

In the morning Frey filled Doevm about Oliver and Ashtehar's training regimen. Doevm just shrugged: "I thought it was worse than that."

"Ashtehar kept beating him after the training regimen. It was horrifying to watch."

"Ok," Doevm shrugged as he packed the grass into his bag. "What do you want to do about it? Do you want to take Oliver away from the war monk who can kill us in seconds? Do you want to confront Ashtehar in a duel for Oliver's hand in marriage? What do you plan to do with the information from last night?"

Frey had been packing the grass up as well. His jaw dropped as he stared at Doevm. "What is wrong with you? Ashtehar is evil."

"Yes," Doevm kept on packing, "I knew that. All those war monks are."

"Then why are we traveling with them? We should get as far away from them as possible." Frey kept arguing as if Ashtehar and Oliver weren't sleeping in a tent within listening distance. He stood in Doevm's way, annoyed by his relaxed remarks.

"Frey, sit down." Doevm sat down on his bag and Frey did the same. "Now tell me what you believe evil means."

"Something bad." Frey shrugged. "What does this have to do with anything?"

…

"Evil," Arthur said as he came face to face with Doevm for the first time. His sword wasn't the one filled with holy magic and his armor was only leather. It was like an ant was standing up to a bear. Doevm didn't even hear him at first and kept reading the book in his lap. "You must be evil if you stand against the hero. I will save the village."

Doevm's laugh echoed off his library's walls: "Listen mortal, evil is not simply a state of being, nor is good. I have done nothing to those villagers, nor will I do anything. If anything, you have come here and caused me to be angry at the village. From an unbiased standpoint, you are evil, and I am acting in self-defense. You are the hero, but that doesn't mean you are good, it means you side with humanity. For a hero, you're pretty stupid."

"Foolish monster," The ignorant to-be-victim said, "You can't kill me. I'm in the right. Now prepare to die." He raised his sword and charged in.

After a very short and anti-climactic battle, the hero lay on the floor with his spirits broken. Doevm had just amplified his breath with wind magic and literally beat the hero with a single breath. "How can I be defeated?" Arthur cursed, as he held what was left of his sword, "I'm the hero."

"I can tell you how you lost," Doevm said as his skeletal foot rested on the once-proud hero's head. "But first you have to give me something."

"I'll do anything." Arthur begged. "Please, just let me live."

Doevm stepped off and offered the hero a hand: "Teach me how to fight."

…

"It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong," Doevm began his lecture, "if you don't have the power to back it up. This isn't some fairytale where good triumphs in the end. Oliver is one person. We're off to fight a war and go kill people. When we come back, we'll be labeled as heroes, but we killed people. Does that sound right to you? Your parents abandoned you and are probably living it up somewhere else. Does that sound right? Stop complaining. We are going with them because I don't want to walk. That is all, nothing more, nothing less."

"We're just going to ignore what Ashtehar is doing to Oliver?" Frey looked at the other tent, where Oliver had just woken up and left.

"Yup, as soon as we hit the battlefield, we will part ways and forget we ever knew him." Doevm pat Frey on the shoulder and held the far side of the tent, "Now help me with this will you? We reach the battlefield today, and I want to rest while we travel."