Prologue: Bonds Broken

Escape is now naught but an impotent dream

For in the rushing night, we are woken

And stay awake amid crashing waves

A boat sails in sight, all bonds broken

--Tellin Naral, Humankind Adrift (excerpt)

My name is Carl Markos.

My father was a whaler. From when I was young I remembered his broad, creased face grinning down at me, proudly swinging from the stay of his ship, Orphea. He was good at his job, one of the best, in fact. He fed his family, took me and my brother, Aron, on his travels occasionally, and regularly attended the Church of Wind and Water (whose patron deity’s blessing was all he considered necessary for a honest life.)

We lived in the town of Ikilm, which was my mother’s hometown, though not my father’s. While my father was very often absent, removing the life and blubber from the Great Whales of the Verich Ocean, he proved to have far more influence on my character than my poor mother.

I was born cursed with great intellect, you see. Many would dismiss this statement as overbearing, exaggeration or sheer ego, but it is simply truth. Many more would criticise my use of the word ‘cursed’, but I believe it to be well justified.

My father and I shared a love for mathematics. I remember sitting in front of the fire with him, scribbling angles and bearings and circles on oiled ship-paper, while the black, dank smoke of the lanterns formed dancing shapes above us.

I would constantly pester both my parents and my brother with questions they could not possibly hope to answer, from the common “Why is the sky blue?” to “How do I know that my life is not just a dream?”

My father reacted well to my queries, and pondered them. My mother, on the other hand, often got frustrated. I remember she once hit me quite ferociously when I asked her whether an idea or a gust of wind was more real.

My brother, always athletic and very much the natural-born leader, simply dismissed my questions. He was the sort of troublemaker that you knew would grow up into a most honorable man, but were always wishing that he would do it faster. I envied him; his sporting prowess, his uncaring attitude; and, later, his easy way with young women. When we fought (which was often, according to my brother’s preference), my speed and coordination were superior to his, and rarely let me slip away or get in a surprise hit, but he would mostly hold me against a wall and hit me. No one ever intervened. A fishing town is a hard place to grow up.

I absorbed all my father had to say about triangles and bearings, and also all his knowledge of waves and seasons and gulls and their eggs. But it was not enough to sate my thirst to know, to see, to understand the fundamental, the transcendental.

Karsh caught my eye the moment he entered our town. I was around eleven years of age, and I remember wandering the markets, as I was wont to do. Karsh wandered into our town the way an unsure young man handles a newborn; slowly, as if concerned that he would hurt it. He was grizzled, carrying a thin staff and watching the crowds of fisher-folk with weary eyes. I recall following him to his room at the town inn, only to find him studying a tome on pure mathematics when I peered through the keyhole.

I loved this man, his quiet confidence, his mystique, his power, so unlike the brute power Ikilm so valued, the power my brother had always possessed.

Being me, I was to nervous to approach him, and was resigned that Karsh would simply be another opportunity I had not the courage to grasp with both hands. As chance would have it, however, he also saw me. He told me later that it was my own perceived weakness that prompted him to seek out my father and ask him whether he could take me on as an apprentice Practitioner of the Art.

I expected (and even half-hoped) to leave Ikilm with Karsh and travel the Verich coastline, but we stayed in Ikilm. Karsh said he wanted me to learn the basics of the Art before he took me anywhere else.

I was a fast learner, and picked up very quickly the twelve elemental glyphs and the Seven Fundamental Laws of the Arci. What took most practitioners three years took me a half-year. For the first time in my life, I felt pride.

The first time I cast a Sol rune upon my fingertips, I felt my belly lift in elation in a way I’d never felt before. I had power, real power, not a power that would fade as I aged or a power based on my body, but the power of the mind, of my own intellect.

I feel my pen straining to reach the inexcusable actions that darken my name, but to write about them before describing the relationship between me and Karsh would be crime.

My father was an honest man, and I begin now to see that he had more wisdom and resolve in his finger than I fear I will ever have. But Karsh was the father I had always wanted; he shared my drive to learn, to understand. I begin to suspect now, with the wisdom of hindsight, that we shared a darker desire too; a desire, cultivated in me by the long years of bullying, to dominate others, and take from them their pesky and cruel free wills..

Perhaps most importantly, his mind was as nimble as mine, and we bounced ideas off each other; splicing a mind rune into a force rune with a Progression base, we thought, would cause people around us to slowly be forced to the ground. As it happens, we discovered a way to flatten a chicken into a inch-thick disk.

As I said before, I had a talent for magic, and had mastered my first spell in a month, and knew the Fundamental Laws in three. This made me a figure of mystique in the town - for the first time in my life, I was attractive, wanted, and desirable.

Unfortunately, my newfound attractiveness peaked as I hit the age of fourteen.

Wyla was pretty, but, more importantly to my 14-year-old brain, my brother had been enamoured with her for years.

She was in her fifteenth year, and it was a simple matter for me to inspire awe in her green eyes with a few tricks of the Art.

But it wasn’t her eyes I was after.

We were young; and, as all that are young, we thought we were invincible. Our time together brought us mutual satisfaction; that is, until nature ran it’s inconvenient course, and brought us down from the sky, pulled us back to earth. A rounding belly seems so hopeful, but for me all it inspired was a crushing despair, and a distaste for Wyla that I was intelligent enough to recognise as unfair and irrational.

I asked Karsh to purge Wyla’s belly, but he refused.

“I will not end a life,” was all he said. I could tell he was disappointed in me, and that hurt most of all.

In my mind, my life was over. I would never travel the coastline, never spread the runes to those who could use them, never learn to splice Progression into a Mind rune, never learn to build a Evolution rune off a Force rune base.

All I wanted was freedom, and here was this child tying me down.

I was, in other words, lacking in all empathy and goodwill.

Nine months past. Nine months of constant beration and suffering. Nine months of slowly simmering resentment, needling comments and harshness.

I say these things not to excuse my actions, but so the reader may, perhaps, better understand them. Karsh had long since left, leaving me with Wyla’s growing belly.

Aron, the world’s most loving brother, said four words the day the baby was born. Four words.

“How’s the s**t’s brat?”

For those unfamiliar with the art, the simplest of the basic runes are those that deal with the creation or redistribution of energy. These runes are known as Elemental runes, and two of them, ice and force, I use frequently to this day. So, it took a bare minimum of effort to freeze the blood in my brother’s left hand.

“Never,” I said, “call them that again.”

Because something had changed when I saw my son’s face. I wasn’t ready for the kind of responsibility that he represented. But, I had landed myself with that responsibility anyway; and he was, for want of a better word, beautiful. His cheeks glowed, his tiny hands grasped my thin fingers.

He was mine.

Until Wyla took him away from me.

“I want you to leave the town,” she told me. “I don’t want you near him. Leave, and earn money for yourself using your stupid art. But send some back to here. You have a responsibility to support us. But I don’t want you near him.”

I don’t want you near him, she had said. I didn’t ask why, though today it seems obvious that she had heard about the way I maimed my brother. Perhaps Karsh even told her.

I left. I journeyed to Miricella, a town renowned for it’s WindWorkers, whom I had hoped to learn from. As it turned out, none of them needed nor wanted an extra pair of hands to manipulate their tricksy runes (as weather runes are wont to be). I stayed in Miricella for almost a year, doing odd jobs, expanding my craft. For a while, I worked for a Kinetimancer, who taught me many uses for the Force rune (which I still consider one of the most useful runes). I used the Patterning rune to repair objects, and gave people lights that would never burn out (nor be extinguished by rain or wind) by utilising Sol, the Sun rune.

One day, I was assaulted by three men in an alleyway. I’d never fought anyone since I began to learn the Art magic, and was surprised (and, later, concerned) by how easily I adapted my art to combat. One man rushed at me with a knife, while two others stood back. I dodged his slash (I’ve always been nimble and fast, my body as much as my mind) and responded by splicing a Mind rune into a Degression base. All three men fell unconscious, knocked to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut.

A week and a half later, I was sent a letter from my father, informing me that my son had been killed.

The letter stated these words so plainly, but somewhere between my eyes and my brain they ceased to become words, and were instead knifes of rage boring into my skull.

Intellectually, I knew that I was barely  with associated my son, but all men feel the desire to protect their children. It is, perhaps, one of our strongest drives, maybe almost as strong as the drive for vengeance.

I returned to Ikilm a changed man. I was no longer a slight, nimble child. I was no longer a horny adolescent with a talent for the Art magic. I was a weapon, with words of power on my tongue and the twenty-four base runes at my fingertips.

My rage was only heightened when I saw my son’s corpse. it was a tiny, pathetic thing. Though only two, he had obviously inherited my prominent, chunky nose and lanky black hair. That much was obvious despite the dried blood that cloaked his body.

I searched for the killer. I met with my father and brother, of which the former had retired and the latter had began to hunt the Great Beasts in his stead. As my father's hair had greyed and his eyes clouded over, his mind too had faded, and it took him the most of a minute to recognise me. I searched for the killer. I asked Wyla what she knew, but she refused to speak to me. I searched and searched and searched, Words of Power between my gritted teeth.

I would have killed.

It would have been easy. A shard of ice, like the one that had maimed my brother. A Force rune with a Direction base and a Division extension. A Matter rune with almost any volatile seventh harmonic. Any and all of these would have killed a man.

Finally, Wyla agreed to see me.

She had only gotten prettier, all curves and olive skin; but when I looked at her, I felt no stirrings, only regret and guilt at what we had wrought.

Her next words broke me, as I am still broken today.

“Your brother killed him. I watched it.”

There was no greeting, no questions about how I had fared in my year-and-a-half absence. She, at least, realised that I was a weapon, and she wanted me to kill my brother. She was not talking to her lover, but to an arrow or knife, a mere instrument in her own vengeance.

I confronted him beneath the fig tree that stood in the north-east region of our town. I recall the gentle green light filtering though it’s leaves. So beautiful.

“Why?” I didn’t greet him, no more that Wyla had greeted me.

I appreciated that he didn't lie or feign ignorance for a moment.

“You took my happiness when you took my hand, Carl. Nah, f**k that. You took my happiness when you took Wyla from me. She was supposed to be mine, d****t. But still. A hand for a son, eh, brother? You took my dreams from me, my ability to be a Captain. Now I can't handle a halyard, ”

I shook with a rage that frightened me.

“What’re you gonna do, take my other hand? F**k me, you couldn’t ever beat me in a fight, and being good at drawing shapes in the air won’t help you. I could beat you bloody with two stumps. Just like I did you b*****d kid. I killed him with this flesh.” He shoved his left forearm in my face, the useless hand long-since amputated.

“I beat him over and over until he stopped moving, while the s**t watched. I can’t believe I ever wanted that w***e. And once he was still, I hit and more. Blame me if you will, but this is all on you.”

I almost killed him then and there.

I think it was the fact the Wyla expected to end his life that stayed my hand more than anything else. I may rarely manage to be a good man, but I always am a stubborn one.

I spliced Mind into Regression, and left my brother sleeping beneath the beautiful light of the fig tree. May the god of Wind and Water give him the strength to overcome his deeds.

And give me the same strength.

I am not a religious man, but as I left Ikilm, left behind my father and old, old mother, left behind the whales and rough men, left behind the spot where I first cast Sol, I prayed almost much as I wept.

I have not yet returned.

It is time for me to make up for what I did to my brother and my lover. I am Carl Markos, and I wield the Art magic, the one hundred and twenty seven glyphs with a fluency that will grow every day.

I will change the world for the better.

Reviews

[Mila]

Hello! So glad to meet a fellow high fantasy writer on here, I was so afraid that there wouldn't be that many of us! Excellent taste in genre :)
This was a very enjoyable read. Your development of Carlos was fantastic, even just in this the beginning. I feel as though I can connect with him already, so great job on that!
I did notice a few things that I thought I'd point out. I hope they're helpful to you!

1. "...took me and my brother Aron on his..." should be "...took me and my brother, Aron, on his..."
2. "...oiled ship-paper, while the black, dank..." the comma before "paper" is not necessary. It adds in a break that disrupts the already nice flow that you have with your story. Now, the comma after "black" is alright just where it is.
3. " My mother often got frustrated." I think you meant to make a comparison between his mother and father's reactions to his questions and, if that is the case, then I would suggest starting this sentence with "however" or "on the other hand" or something like that so it makes the comparison clear on how his father appreciated the questions while his mother didn't. It is a great juxtaposition, by the way, in that how one intellectual mind doesn't shy from questions that aren't easy to answer while another just doesn't bother because it is beyond our capacity to immediately understand. I feel like you almost inadvertently made a passing comment on general society in that small comparison between his mother and father, so I applaud you for that! :)

All in all, I didn't notice much that was worth mentioning critique wise. For the most part, I was simply enjoying this amazing work and I can't wait to read on and see what else is there! Good job in keeping the reader attentive and catching our attentions. Well done! :)

[Taal Vastal]

Thank you so much for this review! I agree with all your comments, and the juxtaposition and comment about society was one of the things I set out to do with this story. As a young person and an intellectual, I cop a lot of flack, so I wanted to create a character that people in a similar situation to be could empathise with.

This review was absolutely excellent, and I would ADORE it if you could review further chapters! It really would help a LOT, especially considering the semi-unconventional nature of the book's structure.

[Jared Grace]

How come I haven't seen this book? It's awesome so far!

[nostal]

All in the name of constructive criticism, and (hopefully) all for the better, here are my quips:
- The progression is disjointed: I felt no sense of maturation while reading. Admittedly, an undertaking like this-a prologue of this scope-can be tricky.... but, I just feel like you've tried to cram way too much backstory in; maybe naturally let things trickle during the course of the novel?
- This character is king of uninteresting. I mean, he reads like a typified fantasy character cutout. And surely you can put a greater effort into his appellation.
- The dialogue: "nah, f**k that," succinctly summarizes my sentiment.

Once again, bear in mind, I'm just trying to provide some constructive feedback. I do like your writing.


I will read on..

[Mazie]

I thought this was very good! a great start to this story, very interesting. I thought you ave very good vocabulary, wonderful use of words. I have added some suggestions / constructive criticism to help enhance and improve your already great book :) It is up to you whether you listen or not they're just suggestions!

Just some phrases/words that may need to be looked at (in my opinion, you may not wish to change them, I added things like AN, AND, A):
as I was wont to do; When we fought (which was often, according to my brother’s preference); the relationship between me and Karsh would be A crime.; drive to learn AND understand; AN inch-thick; needling comments and harshness.; responsibility that he PREsented; I was barely with associated my son

Also, I felt that during the fight scene, there wasn't a lot explained. I feel like there could be a bit more description with that regards (like the reason behind it) instead of just saying it happened . In general, I think adding facial description might also enhance it, and help the reader picture it even better. You don't have to rush a good thing, though i know when you're excited about writing something, sometimes you just wanna continue on with the story, but I think adding a bit of description wit that respect would help it :)

Again, great start to a great book, I enjoyed it :) Keep it up!

[Margaret Norway]

I really enjoyed reading this. Carlos is a distinct character that you developed fully and succinctly; I knew his person instantly and wanted to know more about him. I like that you provide his past early on and have built a great foundation for the rest of the story to grow upon. Every paragraph flows smoothly into the next and I like that single-sentence paragraphs are in between the longer ones. The language you use has a quality that makes the reader feel as though they are in a time long passed.

My only suggestion is that while this serves as an excellent prologue, I think - especially as you title your chapters (which I love) - that you could title this as well and it will fit really well with the rest of your chapters.

I will certainly be reading more, thank you for sharing!

[Taal Vastal]

Thank you so much for the review!

I have titled the Prologue, calling it Bonds Broken, and added a piece of poetry by Carl's most beloved scholar, Tellin Naral.

Again, thank you for the review! I really appreciate people taking the time to give me their thoughts (especially their criticisms!!!)