MAGUS INFINITE

I came down on the road outside the village, near the place where the familiar ruts split around an old stone, and I stopped there, not moving for a while as my legs did not want to take the next step, and for once I did not argue with them.

My heart was beating like a drum, and I felt a bit sick in my stomach, since I could not hear any sound from my village; there was only silence in front of me, and as I finally looked at my village, my breath caught in my chest.

At first, I focused on this stone that I usually climbed and jumped from, nearly chipped a tooth the last time I tried that stunt... and the stone was still there.

My dad told me that this stone had also been there when he was a child, and he had also climbed it. I was fixated on this stone because it just sat there in the ash, while everything past it was gone.

∞

My village was small, eighty-one houses, and it was a surprise that there had been an Acolyte who had passed this village and taken me to the Academy; a place like this rarely saw such esteemed visitors.

Someone had placed my village to the touch, and of all the houses here, I could barely count nineteen shapes that were still recognisable as houses and a great deal of blackened nothing where the rest had been.

It was days old, as the fires were long out. Ash had settled and been rained on and dried again. Whatever had come here had come and gone and had not thought about this place since.

There were bodies in the lane, and a clinical part of me took over, and I began to record their names in my head; I knew all of them, even if their bodies had been burnt, my soul was able to find the familiar features that not even the fire could erase.

I did not see anyone here who had been harvested like the poor souls at Tarth’s gate, and maybe this was a mercy, but no one should die by fire; not even beasts deserved such a fate, and I could only hope that they were killed before they were burned.

At this thought, a weird laugh almost emerged from my mouth, but I gritted my teeth and moved on... my house was ahead.

∞

Even though I did not wish for it, the Moon Fox was beginning to stir, and I felt the connection between us deepen as she woke up.

She unfolded onto my shoulder, now with four tails, and her fur glowed with a silver sheen; there was no way anyone would look at her and think she was a being of this world, as she was as if moonlight had been carved into the shape of a fox.

Perhaps she had read my memories and knew everything that transpired, and so she remained silent. Ah, of course, I did not want the fox to wake up to spare her from this sight of carnage, but I had forgotten that she always had access to my memories.

Then, very softly, in Mel’s voice, she said, ”Is this the place?”

I was silent for a moment, then I nodded, ”Yeah.”

She pressed her head under my jaw, hard, and stayed there.

”I’m sorry I was asleep,” she whispered.

”I’m glad you were.”

”I know.” A pause. ”That’s why I’m sorry.”

∞

I don’t know whether it was by luck or the designs of a cruel fate, but my house was one of the nineteen that was left standing.

Its roof was half gone, the door off its hinges and lying in the yard, one wall scorched black up to the window and untouched above it.

The workshop was attached to the side, my father’s, where the leather was. That had burned properly, all the way down. Nothing in there shapes that might have been the bench and the metal parts of his tools, the awls and the round-knife and the buckle-punch, lying in a rough rectangle where the bench had held them for thirty years.

I stood in the yard and looked at my house for a long time before I could make myself go in; the warm presence of the fox on my shoulder gave me strength.

I have died hundreds of times, and faced a demon in the body of a Sovereign. I have Tribulations knowing that I was going to die very painful deaths, and yet, entering my house was harder than all of it, and I want to be honest about that... I don’t know, I guess, it felt very important for me to lay it all out as it was.

Then, I went into my home.

∞

The front room was relatively undamaged when everything was placed into perspective, except for the ash and the light coming in where the roof should have been; I could almost pretend that nothing had changed.

Two chairs were by the hearth, the table, on its side, and there was a cup on the floor, unbroken, which struck me as obscene; I don’t know why that is. I cannot pretend I was in a good mental space, but I think a cup should not be whole when everything else was gone.

My mother’s sewing basket was by the good chair, but it had been tipped, and the thread spilled out and gone stiff with rain; I almost bent down and began tidying it up.

Her needle hoop was on the arm of the chair, reminding me of the charm that I had hung around my staff while I battled demons and died more times than I can count.

Knowing that dwelling more on this little detail would only bring me pain and was just delaying the inevitable, I pushed forward.

∞

Mum and dad were in the back room, together, and they had died there. It had been fast. I made myself look long enough to know that, because I needed to know.

There was this fear inside me that the Sovereign would have chosen to hunt down my family, but I guess I overestimated my worth to a being like that.

Whatever came through here had come through fast and had not been interested in them. He was between her and the door.

My dad had died protecting my mum; I could see that. When something came through that door, he had put himself between it and my mother, and that is where he stayed.

I knelt down on the floor of the room where I was born, and I stopped being an Arcanist for a while.