“Mother! Mother!” His desperate cries echo through me cave breaking my concentration. “What boy?” Barking, I look up out of the crystal at the sight of my son clutching his arm as blood pooled onto the hard stone floor. His face was pale, but not absent of anger. “That b***h cut off my arm! My f*****g arm.” Scurrying over to him I examine his wound, the questions I had about the boy pushed to the back of my mind. “Lay down on the floor, if we don’t stop the blood you’re going to die.”
Laughing, he sits on the ground in obedience, for once without replying with a snarky remark. Examining his body, they were in rags, and the smell of a craft rolled off of him. Looking intently at him I mixed my herbs into a bowl grinding them quickly into mush, “who did this to you?”
Closing his eye’s, he let out a breath, perhaps trying to calm himself. “The Liberators, a young girl wielding a black blade.” Humming to myself I applied the mixture to his missing limb, stopping the endless blood flow. “You were right, we were attacked by the Liberators. All the slaves at Row’s Peak are either dead or have escaped.”
Pausing the wrapping of his arm for a moment I continue with the bandage, subduing the rage that slowly crept over me. “What of the beast-men? How many of them do you still command?” He looked away without saying a word, perhaps tired from the walk here. I didn’t press the matter further, for it was only a minor setback. Our souls were bonded together now and the boy couldn’t escape no matter how far he ran.
What keeps buzzing in my mind was the residue that came from his body, it was that of a craft I haven’t seen before. There were indeed 49 crafts and I only knew a handful of them. I could count the number on a single hand, yet it was a lost art. Since the dawn of magic, crafts were long forgotten often confused with being magic. Yet a young girl was able to use the craft? An art form long forgotten hundreds of years ago, it didn’t make sense. Through my many lifetimes, I haven’t encountered a single person who could use it, let alone still believed in the stories.
Moaning on the ground the boy continued to roll around, he was always a big baby when it came to getting hurt. “Stop moving, you’ll undo the bandage!” I bark, wandering over to my trunk I dig through all the junk I’ve collected over the years. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” I grumble. In the bottom of my trunk, I pull out the ancient jar, memories surfacing in my mind of a simpler time as I place it on the table.
Eye of a Bloodrow, a common ingredient in a locating spell. Simple to use, yet vague only giving the direction of who you’re searching for. The deserts of Layfront were vast, but not unending. With the king’s guards at the border it was a small task locating the boy, however capturing him was another matter. He was with the Liberators, and they possessed a user of the Craft. A user strong enough to cripple my son and slaughter the beast-men force. If she was similar to me it would be very troublesome, but if she is a new user that would be a different story. Smiling I place the eye in the center of the table, lighting the candles, I begin drawing the ancient symbol.
“Boy, get up! You’re not dead, make yourself useful and come here,” I snap. Jumping up he wanders over still clutching his arm, he moaned slightly only grinding more on my nerves. “Stop whining, It’s only a scratch!” The boy boasted strength but didn’t truly possess it, another trait he inherited from his father. Unlike the slave, he possessed true strength, that of will, mind, and body. It was foolish to have my son try and break such a man, I could see that now and cursed myself for lacking such wisdom after living in this land for so long.
Finishing the symbol, I begin the chant for the incantation of locating. Each craft specialized in chant, once called prayers to the gods asking for permission to use our gifts. The intentions you possessed while requesting this power, noble or evil depends on the god you follow. If your craft was one of the noble you could not use it for evil, the conditions varied but they always followed the rule of prayer.
“Seek the man from another land,”
“Whose will unlike another.”
“Eyes of one unfazed,”
“The heart which cannot lie.”
“A mind that’s forged in steel”
“And flesh that’s void of color.”
The eye pulsed red as it lay in the center of the table, picking up the dry eye with a grin, it looked west towards the sea where a single village lay. In that village, we would find the boy, but also the craft user. We would need more information and man power if we are to take him. “Wickum, gather as many beasts that are still under your charge, I’ve found the boy.” Looking at him he lay asleep as he sat beside the table, still clutching his missing limb.
Such a useless boy, I thought staring at his face. There was no need to rush into battle just to lose more men and possibly my only son. For now, we will prepare for the attack, if this Craft user was indeed an ancient like myself, I would need every spell Zazel has granted me. Even that might not be strong enough to stop this unknown girl, she did, after all, stop my son. He may be useless at times but he was far from incompetent, having the beast-men under his control was no easy feat. Even with the small influence I still possessed over them, they were a prideful bunch.
Storing the eye, I look into the crystal for clues, any sign for the days to come and what fortune awaited me. Yet the ball remained swarmed in clouds, the premonition of disaster. Since they had captured the boy the crystal only showed disaster, nothing more, nothing less. It left me uneasy but not undetermined, slowly the clouds began to clear. Staring intently at the image my eye’s widened in disbelief. Because what the ball foresaw was something that disappeared before the age of magic, before the stories of the moons and Craft.
It was the image of the long-forgotten oak, whose branches stretched to the skies. Branches that gave birth to the moon, to the stars. The fruit that gave both life to the faithful, and damnation to the rotten. Whose roots connected the worlds of the righteous and ugly, to the future and passed, yet disappeared from the present. The grand creator showed in my crystal ball and in its trunk, a mark lay carved, a mark I had touched with my very fingertips, I dared not look away as a realization occurs,
“Perhaps the boy is far more important than I realized."
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