The Fall of Magic (The Second Season of Elsewhen)

PART ONE:

AMEDIA’S

MESSENGER

I’ve determined to put banishment to a vote. Stormcloud paused a moment. "I can’t simply allow you to go as a lamb to slaughter, Banty. Surely some Wizards can be made to believe you. Your story is compelling — certainly I can’t help but believe most of what you say is correct."

I appreciate the gesture, Lightningbolt said in quiet answer. Life and freedom mean a great deal to me. But I do not for a moment believe that even one Wizard will take my side.

Oh come, surely— Stormcloud sagged at his former apprentice’s pained look. Can you at least accept that even one vote in your favor would count as a hopeful sign?

Lightningbolt chuckled sourly. Every foul thing that has happened to me is a result of a sign, Master Forturian. Certainly my dream of Amedia’s will was a sign. So yes, I do believe in signs. Whether one favorable vote, though, would be a sign of hope or merely a sign that somebody hadn’t been paying attention … well. Lightningbolt gave a ghostly smile and, after a long moment, a half-shrug. Of that, I’m not so certain.

I am sorry, my friend, Stormcloud said gently.

—Interview of prisoner Banterell Lightningbolt

by Grand Wizard Forturian Stormcloud

on the eve of Lightningbolt’s trial for heresy, AY 7383

BLIGHT

... His defenses down for a moment, the fireball struck Blight square in the chest. He heard the other young Summer Apprentice candidates, huddled behind the red-haired upstart who’d thrown the creation at him, gasp in shock as he was immediately engulfed in a blazing inferno. Just before the flames enfolded him, blinding him from his quarry, he saw the girl gulp as well.

Silently berating himself for his lapse in concentration, Blight drew a breath and used a brief surge of his own Magic to push aside the girl’s handiwork. He could see the eyes of the youngsters widen as he slowly stepped out of the flames, then doused the fireball-created inferno with a careless motion of one hand.

His gaze firmly fixed on the one young Wizard who’d had the temerity to stand up to him and forcefully oppose him, he struggled to keep his face as still as possible. A trace of expression still managed to creep across his features despite his best efforts: A look of infinite sadness. That a Wizard so young, and with such obvious potential, should have to die …

"Whoever you are, young Wizard, he said to her, softly speaking for the first time since his arrival at Thunderhead Castle, you are very powerful. You might have had a bright future. He shook his head, the sadness now clear on his features. I am truly sorry."

Pinning the young Wizard with his gaze he reached a fist toward the sky, then abruptly opened it in a gesture of summoning. The full fury of his Magic hurtled outward, embodying much, much more power than he had used in his first assault on the Apprentice candidates.

The other candidates were nothing. He had already slaughtered hundreds of adult Wizards that day; he could kill young waifs such as these at will, without even really trying. But this one, this red-headed girl … whoever she was, she would require more. More effort. More power. He would have to employ the same powerful thrust that he had used to dispatch Grand Wizard Stormcloud: A Magic so powerful, yet so primal, that as far as he knew no other Wizard could stand against it.

A couple of the youngsters screamed as the forces gathered; others tried to scramble away ... but much to his amazement the red-haired girl stood her ground, actually looking defiant as she seemed to steady herself for his thrust. It occurred to him, even as he readied his strike, that she might have had some training in Magical defense. Still, that preparation should amount to nothing against the power that he was summoning.

In the space of a few heartbeats the forces had gathered, and Blight loosened the lightning at the one opposing him, as he had repeatedly done over the past half-hour. He knew in his heart that it was a death blow, knew that the brash young girl in front of him was doomed … knew that she would be but one more enemy crushed in his determination to fulfill Amedia’s will.

Yet even as the lightning flew he was astonished to see the girl show no fear, to merely stretch out her hand, reaching for the deadly bolt as it flew down from the sky. An instant later, seeming as an afterthought, she screamed out those words Blight recognized as an answer for normal lightning: Finio ymber.

Blight knew in the core of his being that those words should make no difference, that a young novice should have neither the skill nor the power to avert the lightning that he had summoned. It would smash into her even as it had into the Grand Wizard, dispersing her Magic and shredding her life, leaving nothing but a shell which could be crushed as easily as one would crush an insect.

Yet as he watched, the girl — clearly more powerful that he had imagined — intercepted the bolt.

She clearly knew or sensed that she couldn’t douse the lightning, not summoned and guided as it was by a power more experienced than her own. Instead, her action caused the bolt to split, forking it around herself like a snake coiling around its victim, compromising the lightning’s strength. Blight attempted to reinforce his weapon; the girl immediately countered, conjuring a vortex that began to draw the writhing streams of energy into itself, forging them back into a powerful, coherent whole ... a whole subject to her will, not his.

It became a struggle — a battle within a battle — as Blight wrestled with the upstart over possession of the surging energy. With a sudden urgency he matched his will and his desperate need to fulfill Amedia’s bidding against her impassioned determination. Blight could feel the girl’s growing exhaustion and thrilled for a moment at the taste of victory ... until, without warning, the girl somehow found the strength to release a surge of her Magic.

In an instant, his connection to the lightning was broken. She had gained full control.

He recoiled in shock as the young Wizard’s Magic supplanted his own. He tried to withdraw his Magic from the mixture, to extinguish the lightning — but it was too late. The young girl now commanded the entire elemental.

Blight stared, disbelieving, as she molded the power, shaping it until all the energy, all the venom, all the power the lightning had embodied floated just above the palm of her hand. The result eerily resembled the fireball she had cast at him shortly before; it was as though time had reset itself, sending the two of them back and allowing the girl a second chance at success.

In cruel slow motion the girl then raised the ball of lightning, and hurled it at him.

The earlier fireball had caught him unaware, managing only to bathe him in flame for a brief while: A mere annoyance, ultimately ineffective. This ball of fire — of lightning fire — smashed into his chest like a rampaging bull. The combined energy of the lightning, the girl’s power and the remnants of his own Magic seized Blight like a rag doll. He was thrown … not just off his feet, not just across the courtyard ... but high over the courtyard wall.

As he passed over the wall he felt himself begin to burn — from the lightning against his chest, of course, but even more from the agony of defeat at the hands of a child Wizard. In near desperation he summoned his Magic to him and transported himself home.

BANTERELL LIGHTNINGBOLT

Light exploded on a remote island beach, brilliantly white in the deep dark of early morning. The phenomenon had become an oddly common occurrence during the preceding few years, during which time the island had become the abode of, in addition to tropical plants and a few small animals, a man called Blight. Blight was not his real name, of course, but an appellation he had borne since unwittingly causing the deaths of Wizards Anton Firewind and Weylin Harvestminder five decades before. Firewind had been head of the Wizard Council, a powerful but fair and respected foe. Harvestminder had been Blight’s only real friend. Blight found it somehow fitting that his true name, Banterell Lightningbolt, should have died along with them.

Most of the light had been the physical manifestation of Magical transport, what most Wizards referred to as a Transfero spell. Though he had transported countless times, was indeed the only regular user of the dangerous conveyance, this time Blight found himself staggering from the portal in both shock and in pain … because this time the transport had been an act of desperation. This time a fair portion of the brilliance came from a ball of lightning which had attached itself to his chest. The lightning had been hurled at him by a young apprentice girl he’d been trying to kill, a novice Wizard who had somehow found the talent and the power to turn his own Magic against him. Her effort had blasted him into the air and forced him to hastily jump himself away from the fight and to this island half the World away. The tiny speck of land had originally been his place of banishment. He now considered it to be his home.

As a result of the young girl’s defense, Blight had not achieved his goal of complete annihilation at Thunderhead Castle. The girl and a few of her fellow trainees still lived, along with a couple of teachers … slightly more than a dozen survivors out of the hundreds of Wizards who had gathered for the First of Summer festivities. A mere drop in the bucket. He knew that he should be pleased the plan had gone as well as it did.

But right then Blight found himself too drained, too much in pain to be pleased about anything. He staggered forward a step, then fell to his knees on the damp sand of the tropical beach. The lightning had finally begun to dim; with a groan, he grasped the residue with his Magic and hurled it away from him toward the ocean, where it sizzled briefly before finally dying in the briny water. With the lightning’s demise, darkness reclaimed the beach.

Blight drew several deep, shuddering breaths, trying to block the pain. The pain refused to lessen. It had to be more than just the lightning, he finally decided. A careful check of his torso produced enough stabs of anguish to tell him that there were damaged ribs in addition to the lightning burns. He sucked in an involuntary breath and ground his teeth at the hurt.

I have got to be more careful, he muttered as agony from the self-diagnosis began to dull. He wasn’t getting any younger, after all, and now that he knew there was someone out there with that much power … well, completing his duty would be harder than expected.

He clamped shut his eyes, squeezing out a tear over what he had done and what was to come. His duty. The obligation that Amedia had laid upon him brought a deeper pain than either the lightning or the damaged ribs and caused him to hurt in places not even time could heal. His World had demanded that Magic be eliminated ... charged him with bringing about that strange end. Out of obedience he had slaughtered the hundreds of Wizards gathered at Thunderhead Castle in celebration of Summer; hundreds more would need to die before he was through — most of them at least distant kin to him.

He reminded himself that those who had died, and those yet to die, had all stood against him, stood against the wishes of their World ... but it was cold comfort at best, made colder by his memory of the one who had been first to die. Grand Wizard Forturian Stormcloud. Stormcloud had been both mentor and friend in the long-gone days of Blight’s youth — and in the dark days of the trial, his only defender. Of all the deaths, he regretted Stormcloud’s the most.

The pain in his chest eased but refused to end. Nothing short of sleep would heal the ache, but peaceful sleep would not be his again for a long, long time — if ever. He was resigned to that reality. Still, now that his plan had been launched he knew that he must remain relentless in its pursuit. That could not happen if he was unable to function or even think because of the pain. Desperate, he finally grasped a thread of healing Magic and wrapped himself in a false sense of peace. Soon he fell forward onto the sand in a sleep-like trance ... not truly asleep, not truly at peace, but in a state where it might be possible for his body to heal. It was, right then, the best he could hope for.

He came to choking on sea water, the incoming tide lapping into his nose and mouth. Instantly awake, he surged to his feet and began a sodden trudge inland, heading home.

The structure that he called home was a far cry from the rude one-room shelter he’d made do with when first exiled to the small island. Over the years he’d expanded and improved it until what began as a shanty was now a comfortable residence.

It was still no palace. The eclectic accumulation of rooms was bright and airy, though, and — most importantly — kept the frequent tropical rains away from his possessions. Most of the construction had been done early on, when he’d still believed he was stranded there with no access to Magic, never again be the Wizard he was born to be. The Council prosecutors had been quite clear about it: the Spell of Exile would permanently bind him to the island, they had said. The forces of Magic which Amedia provides for the whole World do not reach the island. He would, as a result, have only the brief lifespan of a Plain man rather than the extended existence Magic affords to all Wizards.

As the long years had crawled past he had come to realize it was all a lie. He was not bound to the island. More important, he could still perform Magic.

That had come as a surprise. Early on he had tested his prison, trying to summon Magic with words and stances as all Wizards were taught to do. Each attempt had failed miserably. The island clearly did sit at a singular spot that the World’s Magical currents failed to reach. He had been banished to this island on the premise that he would be powerless without those currents of Magic.

That would certainly have been true for any normal Wizard.

What Blight came to understand, though, was that he was not a normal Wizard. Amedia, the source of all Magic, had blessed him with a rare and special gift known as Instinctive Magic. Instinctive Wizards didn’t need the general currents of Magic; Magic was within them, always and everywhere.

The Wizard Council had denied for centuries that such Magic could even exist. In the end, that official blindness had been his salvation. After months of careful testing Blight came to understand that, not only could he still perform Magic, he could do so with more ease and more power than ever before. To his mind it was the final proof that Amedia had indeed chosen him as its messenger ... proof of the vision that Amedia had given him. The promise is fulfilled, had been the vision’s words. We are now prepared for the technology that was surrendered so long ago. The flaw in our ecology has been resolved. Humanity needs Magic no more.

The flaw had been discovered as soon as humans had reached Amedia. An overabundance of oxygen rendered the use of technology untenable. Without technology they could not leave to seek another world. They simultaneously learned that the World of Amedia was a living, thinking organism, a sentient being that offered them a trade. Humans would temporarily shelve their technology; in return, Amedia would gradually adjust its atmosphere. Until that adjustment was accomplished, humans would have access to Amedia’s life energy — a force which could substitute for much of the missing technology. People would come to call that force Magic.

Amedia had also vowed to send a messenger to the people, once the flaw was overcome. Blight’s vision had named him that messenger.

Except no Wizards would listen. This wasn’t surprising; after five millennia as the effective rulers of their world, none were willing to give up Magic. They laughed at him. They denounced his motives. They denied his sanity. The Wizard Council cast him as a villain, portraying him as a monster to Plain folk, a pariah to Wizards.

The inevitable result had been death: Firewind and Harvestminder. The deaths were accidents but the Council had placed blame for both of them squarely on Lightningbolt. He had been shackled, tried in the Celestial Chamber — more of a lynching than a trial — and in what had been considered an act of mercy, banished from Amedian society. Execution had been the intended punishment, but Grand Wizard Stormcloud had somehow talked them down from their bloodlust.

Lightningbolt did not intend to be so merciful.

Memories of the past fled as he reached his front door. Panting from the exertion of the walk, he sagged against the door frame and glanced down to take stock of himself. His Wizard robes, so recently immaculate white, were now filthy, a dramatic scorch mark adorning the chest area. He was soaked from sweat and the tide; there was still tenderness about his torso and ribs. Infinitely patient, as he had learned to be over the years of his exile, he continued to lean against the building until his breathing slowly returned to normal, then pushed his way into the house.

He was greeted by his books. There were hundreds of them, stealthily collected once he had realized that Magical transport worked for him in a way only possible for an Instinctive Wizard.

At first he had gathered books as merely things to help him pass the time. Soon enough they had become his life-line, a window to a World of Magic that was never taught at Wizard College. From books he had learned that, even as people depended on Magic ... Magic, in return, depended on people. As long as harmony reigned in Amedia, as long as Wizards followed the normal cycle of birth, life, and natural death, the currents of Magic would remain unsullied, pure and powerful.

On the other hand, if violent, unnatural deaths were caused by Magic — by the clear misuse of Magic — Magic would wither and die. The effect would slowly spread from the site of those deaths until Magic was gone. How fast it happened depended on how many were killed. Reluctantly, Blight had determined that this was his only choice in fulfilling Amedia’s charge to him. He would kill Magic by killing Wizards.

He prepared a light meal and slowly settled into his favorite chair. The Magical trance he’d fashioned the night before had helped; he no longer worried he might die from the ache in his chest.

The ache in his heart would be slower to heal.

He was not a killer by nature. As a youth, he had never even thought to injure a fly. Now, the hundreds of deaths he had caused weighed heavily on him, and the specter of having to cause even more death made him long to kill himself instead. Such relief could not be his, though. His charge required that he live to see World’s work completed. Whether his sanity would survive that long remained to be seen.

He sighed heavily, and let his thoughts drift back to the day before. The screams ... the blood ... the horror. The silence at the end when all were dead. There had been many, many powerful Wizards in attendance of the First of Summer festivities at Thunderhead Castle, Wizards from all walks of life: Healers. Designers. Organizers. The entire faculty of Wizard College … and none had been able to stop him, nor even keep up with him.

None, that is, save one young apprentice.

Blight pondered, recalling her image to his mind: a riot of freckles on a young, un-lined face. Gloriously red hair. Bright green eyes blazing with power. She’d stopped everything he threw at her, had even seemed to anticipate each move he’d made … and in the end, she had used his own power against him.

Who was she? Not just another apprentice — the strange way she had glowed, quite similar to the glare of power he had always associated with Grand Wizard Stormcloud, gave lie to any claim of ordinary. Had Stormcloud sired an heir after all this time? Her power, her instincts, made that seem possible — but it somehow felt wrong. There had been something more than that, more than just her power, more than just her training. Her very presence, at the precise moment Blight had chosen to complete Amedia’s work, simply screamed to him of something much larger being involved.

Was she Instinctive, as he was? Had he delayed so long that Amedia had sent yet another messenger to carry out its will?

Sent a messenger to stop him?

No. He would not, could not consider that possibility. Not after the events at Thunderhead: Not after the deaths. Not after having killed Forturian Stormcloud. The horror of that moment still gripped his heart like a vice.

No. Simply, no.

He blanked his mind as best he could while finishing his spare meal, then rose and began to search his books for answers. Whoever and whatever she was, the girl had power. He must be ready. The World would settle for nothing less.

PART TWO:

PICKING UP

THE PIECES

True, Amedia did not die ... indeed, in the larger scheme of time, the injury Blight caused was the equivalent of an insect bite. On the other hand, even insect bites can hurt; left untreated, they can fester into something far worse, far more dangerous.

Yet who was available to diagnose and administer a treatment? Forturian Stormcloud, Grand Wizard of Amedia for nearly half a millennium, was dead. Dead also were all but one of the Wizard College faculty, whose understanding of Magic could have immeasurably aided the World’s cause. What remained were the dozen members of the Wizard Council — the very body which was, arguably, culpable for those events which led to Blight’s rampage.

Of course, other Wizards survived as well, but they had little power in the world of politics, little say in how the immediate injury should be dealt with. What they possessed was an inexhaustible supply of grit and determination, and a deep dedication to serving Amedia and its people. To them, there was only one possible course: To survive. To persevere. To keep Magic alive.  

In the aftermath of the disaster they had little time or energy for much else.

—From A Chronicle of Elsewhen:

The Year That Never Was,

by Maikela Gentlehaze,

Primary Historian, School of New Wizardry

A JOB TO BE DONE

23rd Augustus, 7437 – EY Day 54

One thing we must always remember, Astra, Wizard André told me as we approached the latest cottage on our list of people needing help. We are still Wizards, first and foremost. We must always put the needs and welfare of the Plain folk of Amedia at the top of any list.

I nodded, silent as I walked beside my mentor. I understood he was reminding himself, as much as he was reminding me, of the reason we had slogged through so many houses and cottages in so many towns over the past few six-days. I’d long ago lost count of how many Hearthfires we’d lit, how many scrapes and cuts and bruises we’d healed, of how many illnesses we’d remedied with our Magic. I continued to do the work — to light and heal and summon and mend — because there was simply no alternative. There was so much need on Wizard’s Reach. The pitiful handful of us who survived Blight’s attack were attempting to do the work of hundreds, working so much with so little rest that I had begun to believe none of us would ever again get enough sleep to preserve long-term memory.

Nor was I entirely sure that was a bad thing.

Oh, I remembered the joy of my triumph in the Summer Apprenticeship competition. I also remembered being born and growing up Plain, one of the very people I was now helping as a Wizard. But I would just as soon not remember the sights and the sounds and the smells of my battle with Blight, or of the ongoing nightmare that my life had become.

A brief image of Blight flashed across my mind, prompted by my dark thoughts — in particular, the look of surprise and pain that had crossed his features when I’d turned his own Magic against him, blasting him with the lightning he’d summoned in an effort to kill me. Neither one of us had died, of course. I knew in my bones that he was out there, somewhere ... recovering, planning, getting himself ready for whatever was to come next. I only hoped that his memories of me weren’t any fonder than my memory of him.

Inexplicably, I found myself relieved that Blight still lived. In that brief moment before he’d summoned the lightning that was supposed to be my doom, he’d looked at me with what seemed to be sadness. I am truly sorry, he’d said, words that still echoed in my memory, one of the many memories I would gladly surrender to lack of sleep. All my instincts insisted that someone who was truly sorry for doing evil had to have a spark of good still inside them ... maybe trapped, maybe suppressed, but it had to be there. There had to be more to Blight’s story than just evil.

Except, I’d found no one else willing to believe it.

I pushed Blight from my thoughts once again as my mentor banged on the door of the cottage which was our first visit of the day. Time to focus on the job at hand. The cottage seemed smaller than my own Plain family’s home, and was much farther away from a town than our home had been. Though my thoughts had been far afield as we walked, I couldn’t help noticing the fruit and nut tree-filled orchards we’d passed through on the way to the rough-hewn door we now faced.

When the door didn’t open right away Wizard André glanced at me then took a step back. We are Wizards, he called out. We have come to heal in response to your request! This time there was an immediate commotion inside the home, and the door opened for us moments later.

Welcome, welcome Wizards! said the ruddy-faced man who threw open the door, almost bubbling with excitement as he waved us into the cottage. These troubled times, I’d begun to despair that a Wizard would ever again come to my house. I mean, we’ve never asked for much, being so far away from everything as we are here, but—

Sir, Wizard André interrupted him, as you noted, the times are troubled and there are very few of us left to serve. Can we get to it? Your request said your son was injured?

The man nodded, his head seeming to bob between his heavily muscled shoulders, and turned to lead us through the home’s Hearthroom and toward the bedrooms. As we followed, I saw the anxious-looking faces of his wife and other children tracking us and wondered if their anxiety was for their ailing kin, or for the presence of strangers in their home.

He fell from high in a tree while gathering fruit for harvest, the boy’s father told us as we reached the his son’s bedroom. We Arborkeepers have been orchardists for generations. Rawn here’s been up trees hundreds of times, but this time something just went wrong. We’ve tried to make him comfortable, but nothing we could do would set the leg straight again.

My mentor pushed past the distraught father; as I trailed him into the room I felt my heart begin to race and my stomach to twist. The boy sprawled on the bed before us looked as though his left leg had two knee joints, one of them far, far too close to his ankle to be the work of nature. He seemed unconscious, but hints of pain still flickered across his features and his face gleamed with sweat far beyond what even the hot summer weather would account for.

Did you give him something for the pain? Wizard André asked, a bit quieter than he had been a moment before.

We gave him some brew that I made, yes, Arborkeeper replied. It eases the pain some and makes him sleep. But he needs to be healed, Wizards. Not only do I need him for harvest time, I can’t stand the thought of my Rawn having to go through life crippled like this!

Wizard André stared at the boy for a long moment, then drew a deep breath and sighed it out noisily. "Of course we’ll heal him, good sir. But this will take a bit of time. Could you leave us alone with Rawn? We need