The Archmage: Intermission (Assorted, Part One)

This next bit will probably read a lot smoother as a book than as a serial, but I really want to give a sense of just how big the magic really was. So there will be three parts to this intermission. If you get annoyed of it by the third day of it, I'm sorry!

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Darrel Baker was a sensible man. When the pillars of light had struck, he had immediately decided that it was magic. 

He glanced around, and people on the street didn’t seem to be hurt or dying, so he promptly ignored the pillars of light, just hoping that they wouldn’t linger too long. Mages always seemed to take a long time to get anything done, even ordering a pastry, or had ridiculous demands, like expecting him to have a full stock at fourth bell in the evening. He didn’t like them, but he tolerated the money they spent on his shop.

By the time that they vanished, he had already returned to his job and was selling a pie to a kid who was on break from the factories.

He’d put the matter so out of his mind that he didn’t even think of it that night as he prepared himself for sleep. At least, not until he started dreaming. 

A man appeared in his dreams and introduced himself as Evander Tailor, saying that he wasn’t really dreaming, and this was some sort of dream message to announce himself as a new archmage. 

Darrel rolled his eyes. If the noble brat wasn’t even going to buy something from him, and was going to barge into his own dream, he didn’t see why he should listen. 

“You can see the magic around me, the fact that I’m an archmage, and you might judge me. But you shouldn’t. I may be an archmage, but I’m not a noble,” the Evander Tailor said. 

The scenery around Darrel blurred, and he intuitively knew that these were memories, authentic beyond any doubt.

He was in an orphanage, nursing his hands. They’d just been struck with a wooden spoon, and a steel-haired woman scowled down at him. He – no this was a memory from someone else, it wasn’t him – fled the room and back to the tightly cramped bunks, where he hunkered down and cried. 

Darrel felt only the tiniest amount of sympathy. That was how the world worked. Why should he feel any sympathy. 

Other memories played out, some nonsense about magic and nobles, and more that Darrel really couldn’t care less about, so he ignored all of it. The kid had almost killed himself with magic – so what. People died every day. 

“There is no difference between that and a miner who died of black lung, because in order to feed their family they had to work more than the safe amount. More than that, the miner who died did so in the nobler way. I got lucky, while they’ve had to fight for the right to die,” Evander said. 

That gave Darrel a touch of pause, but then he went back to tuning it out again. He didn’t see any reason this had to do with him. If poor kids who tried to become mages killed themselves, that was a tragedy, but people should stay in their lane, not try to become mini-nobles. Besides, the kid had become an archmage, so it wasn’t that bad. 

Darrel tuned out the appeals to emotion that the kid was making, then watched as the kid talked more and more about some magical invisible pillars and birthrights, and all the nonsense that he didn’t care about, then he moved onto politics, talking about importation.

That actually drew a touch of interest from Darrel. The imports of more fruits from Dutare and Ignamais had allowed him to expand his pasty selection a little bit, even introducing a fried hand pie with a sweet cheese and fruit that sold really well. 

Then the kid claimed that the only reason that Darrel had to thank was the fact that this was supported by Archmage Dormer and Talik. 

“Now hold on, I vote a senator in,” Darrel tried to say, but the memory-dream kept talking. 

The kid was playing memories from his time in Zheren, showing passages of legalese and explaining how everyone made more money, except the rich people there made less. Darrel didn’t think that would be possible – if everyone made more, the economy would have to collapse, and nobody would make anything. 

And then the kid hit him with a series of memories. Coffee shops, hotels, orphanages, book stores, and more…

But the one that struck Darrel harder than any other was the memory of the grocers market. 

There was… So much selection. Large yellow fruits with spiky tops, oblong green fruits with lots of black seeds and red flesh, purple fruits with yellow-red insides. There were more fruits and vegetables for sale there than he’d ever even heard of. 

And it was just a grocers market. It wasn’t some sort of massive importation store.

The kid started talking about politics then, laying out the political system that Zheren used, and explaining how little the voted in senators really mastered, and Darrel sighed, leaning forward and starting to pay attention.

Because if the kid was right, and the archmages were the ones who were really in charge?

Everything would change.

…

Elyia White was a seamstress in Lyon, one of the larger cities in Paerús, and had actually missed the appearance of the pillars of light. A nearby spice selling family’s child had awakened, and would be heading to Yesgol soon, and the family had commissioned her for a new set of clothes. 

It made her heart ache. She held nothing against Yesgol, or mages as a whole, but after her sister had failed out in year two, she’d been drafted into the army to pay off her detbs. Ostensibly, that wasn’t awful. Her sister was still a sorcerer, capable of producing miracles like levitation. Sure, she might not match up to some noble mages, but she’d come further than many people!

Until she’d died. 

A simple skirmish with some rebels down in the swamps to the west. Her sister had died, and the body had never been recovered. 

Elyia, an aster, had held out hope that maybe her sister had faked her own death, for almost fifty years before she finally accepted the truth of it. 

Now, all she could do was hope that her friend’s child didn’t suffer the same fate. She worked throughout the day, and only heard about the strange spears of light from the clock towers secondhand from customers, who feared it could be an attack, or maybe the king had finally arisen to the rank of archmage. She didn’t know. She certainly didn’t expect anything that night, when she fell asleep.

When Evan appeared in her dreams – she hoped he wouldn’t mind that she was shortening his name to Evan. Evander was just such a mouthful – she was surprised, but not shocked. Sure, speaking into people’s dreams was impressive, but so was levitating an object around a room. 

He was an archmage, but what did a title mean like that to her? She thought it was terribly impressive for someone so young, and wondered how far from archmage her sister had been. Far, she thought? 

When he began to speak about the orphanage, and about how lucky he was to have been adopted by a tailor, she smiled. She was glad that someone out there was putting a good name to her profession. 

“If I hadn’t gotten lucky enough to be adopted, I would have remained here until I was old enough to get a job in a factory, and then I would have died,” Evan said flatly. “I got lucky. And then I awakened my aura.” 

Elyia had never been much of one for romance, not feeling the attraction or seeing the point, but… Maybe she should do something similar. That would be nice – take in some apprentices, house them for a while. They could get a stable job, and avoid the fate of a factory worker. 

As he went on to show them memories of his time at Yesgol, Elyia’s heart began to ache, because she felt the connection to her sister through him. They both very clearly loved their abilities, and Evan had even almost died himself. She was glad he hadn’t. 

As he began to talk about how exposure to aura could help kids develop aura, Elyia thought that had to be a big secret behind the nobility. After all, her sister had suspected that there was something more than blood about the noble’s magic. 

Then a memory from a mountain top appeared in her mind.

“Each one of these pillars corresponds to noble estates, or other land. Each one of them is powered by people’s lives. Our lives. We are nothing but fuel for them to produce the next generation of rulers.” 

They had killed her sister. She couldn’t prove it, but she knew it to be true. Her sister had been deemed not good enough at magic, not skilled enough, and in the chaos of the battle, they’d sacrificed her life for the magic she had.

He talked more, about the noble system, about power and corruption, and about how she shouldn’t have to rely on a couple of good people at the top to improve her life, and should build a system meant for that. 

She could barely pay attention.

She’d spent fifty years hoping her sister was alive. If she’d died in a battle, that would have been a tragedy… But she knew better now. 

She couldn’t accept the nobility’s grip. Not anymore.

…