The HaRT Knight Decaverse

Heir of Magic

Chapter 02

Magic Theory

Dear D.
I’ve sent several letters to your contact in Dinas Alchimiour over the years, but I have yet to hear from you. While I understand your need to remain hidden while on your mission, I beg you to make an exception this once.
A. has done his best to keep his identity secret ever since he joined me back in Pileum City and as such, has refrained from using magic. However, ever since his last birthday, he has been having trouble stopping his magic from manifesting. In the last four weeks alone, he has lost control of his magic at least six times and the episodes are getting more and more terrifying. Last week, he lost his temper with Theophilus and he froze the ocean around the ship for several miles. It took us three days before we could dig the ship out.
While we all love A. and enjoy having him as part of the crew, I am growing concerned. Word has started to spread and I fear it is a matter of time until Cain learns of him and sends someone to investigate. Please, my friend, I am at a loss. I need your council.
As I write this letter, we are in pursuit of a group of pirates who have fled south of Kalonek Island. Once we have captured them, we’ll take some time off at the Amobiel Monastery and wait to hear from you.
Your friend
Goldie

Dante rolled the scroll back up and gripped it tight. He had read it repeatedly over the last month and hundreds of times more since the previous night when he had sensed the spike of magic energy he would recognize anywhere. Alexander’s aura was unmistakable, but this spike had been particularly violent and the old wizard worried about what that meant. With the help of the monks from the monastery—and his thaumascope which was locked on to Alexander’s magic aura—they had gone in search of the boy and the crew of The Golden Spear.
The softwood and bamboo sailboat of the monks had searched the waters for hours before the monk in the crow’s nest yelled, “Master Dante!”
“Yes, Kata. Do you see anything?”
“Flotsam to the northwest. I think I see someone moving there,” Kata yelled.
The ship changed direction and Dante, along with several monks, ran to the starboard side. In a matter of minutes, they began to pass twisted and ugly bodies floating among the wreckage of at least two ships.
“There,” said a female monk with piercing blue eyes.
“Flying frogs,” Dante said. Lying on a large piece of wood was the cevarion Bibi, holding on to Alexander.
At the sight of the prince, Dante reacted on instinct. Using the reddish brown thaumaturgic energy stored in his body, he created the magical pentacle key from memory above the castaways and snapped it open. The dimensional gate opened and produced a beam of red light that scooped the cevarion and angelian out of the water. The monks helped him to lay the two men on the deck and Dante snapped the gate shut, allowing the red energy to dissipate.
Alexander had grown considerably since the last time Dante had seen him. He was tall, closer to seven feet than six, and his muscles were sculpted to perfection. The laces of his tunic were undone, revealing the vicious scar in the center of his chest; the keepsake his uncle Cain had left him on the day he destroyed Tír na Angelus. His dark brown hair was chin length and looked like he had cut it with a butcher’s cleaver.
“My Prince, thank the muses you’re alive,” Dante said.
Alexander groaned and opened his pale, ice-blue eyes for a second. A look of confusion passed over his face and in a hoarse whisper, he said, “Dante?”
Before the old wizard could reply, the prince passed out again.

A glowing red haze framed Alexander’s vision. He was on the side of a mountain beside a woman with the bluest eyes he had ever seen. She pointed down to the foot of the mountain where a bald man stood over a woman—his uncle Cain and his mother. No, Alexander thought and tried to run to her, but no matter how hard he tried, he never got any closer to them. Cain looked up for a second and made eye contact. He smiled and his eyes glowed as he killed Alexander’s mother with a flash of light. The two of them turned to red smoke that parted and revealed Sharktooth lifting his ax over his head before bringing it down on Aenor’s neck.
Person after person died and every time, Alexander was powerless to stop it. The red haze intensified and grew uncomfortable.
Alexander opened his eyes and his mind raced to piece together his situation. He was on a stone bed in a spartan room. A pentacle of mahogany energy floated above him, giving off red light that felt like it exerted a physical pressure on his body.
Alexander whipped his head to the side as someone snored. Bibi was fast asleep on the other bed in the room. His mouth was open and his tongue lolled out as he snored loudly and his whiskers twitched.
“You owe him your life. If not for him, you would have drowned long before we found you.”
“Dante?” was the only thing Alexander managed to say. He had not seen the old septim wizard since he was five and left to join The Golden Spear. He had not changed one bit in all that time. He still tied his long gray beard into a knot and his solid brown eyes still glistened with compassion and warmth. “You’re really here. I thought that was just a dream, but it wasn’t. You’re really here.”
“I am, My Prince. It has been a long time,” Dante said. As his wrinkled old face turned up with a smile, his eyes twinkled.
Alexander forced himself to sit up so he could look around. “Where are we?”
“The Amobiel Monastery on an island a few miles off the coast of Wánggá,” Dante said. “I’ve been waiting here for you to arrive for a few days now. Then, last night, I felt your magic and went looking for you.”
The truth Alexander’s mind had tried to forget suddenly snapped back into focus and he said, “Shade. I lost control again, didn’t I?”
“I’m afraid so.” Dante nodded.
“Did you find anyone else?” Alexander asked.
“After we found you and Bibi, we fished twenty-two other people out of the water. One died before we reached the monastery and another two a few hours after arriving.” There was a pause and a flicker of pained emotion on the old wizard's face before he could force himself to say, “We couldn’t find Aenor though.”
Alexander closed his eyes. He had lost a fair number of friends since he joined Aenor but never so many at once.
“He’s dead, Dante,” Alexander said, and the tears began to flow. “They’re all dead. because of me.”
Dante grabbed hold of him and hugged him. He placed his hand on his head and allowed him to cry into his shoulder. “My Prince, it’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it was,” Alexander pushed the wizard away, having no desire to be comforted. I don’t deserve to be comforted. “I lost control again. I tried so hard to hold it back—to suppress my magic—but it kept bubbling over. I—”
“Alex, it wasn’t your fault. Bibi regained consciousness for a few minutes and told me what happened. He said that your ship breached the hull of The Shark’s Maw when you rammed into her. Lightning struck The Golden Spear during the fight and set her on fire. Both ships were doomed to sink and everyone was going to die. But because of you, because I felt your magic energy and followed it to you, at least nineteen people other than you and Bibi survived.”
“Nineteen.” Alexander gave a rueful laugh “Nineteen out of one-hundred-and-forty-four. Not to mention the captain, whom I had to watch die as Sharktooth cut his head off. It was just like when Cain killed my mother. I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
A long uncomfortable silence filled the room for a moment, in the quiet, Alexander could feel his sorrow fester into anger. Not anger at Sharktooth, the Abominations, or even the storm, but anger at himself for once again being so weak he couldn’t help someone who needed it.
“My boy, you can’t—”
Alexander cut across Dante as he said, “I can hold a storm at bay, pull lightning from the sky, and reduce a man to ashes. I should have been able to save everyone. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even lift a piece of wood off myself to save Aenor. Sixteen years of training and still I was powerless to save someone I loved.”
Alexander lost his temper and slammed his fist onto the bed and veins of magma spread through the stone of both bed and floor. Azure and ruby sparks danced in the air, accompanied by the overpowering smell of ozone. A low and constant roar, like a never-ending crack of thunder, filled the room as the entire island shook. The pentacle of mahogany energy above the bed warped and grew unstable.
Dante leaped to his feet and slashed through the pentacle with his oak staff and it exploded into a red cloud that tried to dissipate before bolts of blue energy shot from Alexander and consumed the haze.
“Dante, it’s happening again,” Alexander said, his anger from before now replaced by dread. “I can’t stop it.”
The old wizard grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “Yes, you can. I’ll help you, but you need to calm down a little first.”
Alexander just nodded.
“Good, listen to me and focus. Usually we would have years to teach you all the theory behind this, but we must settle for a crash course.” Dante took a breath to calm himself as well, then said, “The reason you’ve been losing control lately, is because you’ve been trying to hold yourself back, you’ve been bottling your thaumaturgic energy up inside you, meanwhile more energy constantly flows into you. Your body can only store so much magic before it overflows—or worse, explodes.”
“Then how do I stop it?” Alexander asked desperately as an inch-thick layer of frost formed on the walls and crawled onto the ceiling and floor.
“Close your eyes. Try to feel the energy inside of you. Envision it. You will notice three separate energies. The first is the thaumaturgic energy stored in your body. It’s inside your bones, your blood, and even in the air in your lungs.”
“I feel it,” Alexander said. In fact, he thought he could almost see the chaotic storm of red and blue energy inside him, writhing like two beasts in pain.
“Good. This energy is the power you draw on when you wish to use magic. It has fused with your own personal aura and become as part of your body, but your body can’t produce this energy. Try to feel where a separate energy is flowing into you. This energy comes from what is known as a Source. The Sources are the remains of the One Magic, the magic that created our reality. These Sources created all of life, from insects, to people, and thus, traces of their energy are present in all life. This energy inside of you is what connects you to the Sources from which your bloodline derives. Feel them and notice the strength with which that energy flows into you.”
This was a little harder, but once Alexander felt it, he was amazed he had gone so long without noticing it. “I feel it Dante, there is more than one, but I can’t make them all out. It’s like I’m standing beneath several waterfalls of magic energy, all of which is flowing through me, into me, and filling me.”
“That’s perfectly normal. Well, technically, I would say it’s more than above average. The concentration of the magic a person is born with varies; the more you’re born with, the stronger your connection and pull to the power of a Source—or in your case, four Sources. The stronger you are, the more rivers flow into you. It would appear you are so powerful, that it’s not so much a river but a torrent. But as long as you can feel it, that’s all that matters.”
“I can. But how do I stop it from filling me?”
“You can’t. You have no control over the flow from the Source. You can’t slow it or stop it—at least not temporarily. The only change you can manage is to increase the flow with training and hard work. Other than that, you have no control in the matter at all.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“You can feel the energy flowing into your body. Now focus and feel the energy flowing out. The power that is causing the surrounding chaos.”
This was by far the easiest to notice. Alexander could almost see the flows of energy that left his body in waves of red and blue aura. “I can feel it.”
“Good. Now, last of all, I need you to follow the path of the thaumaturgic energy from where it flows into your body and fuses with you to where it flows out of you. Concentrate on guiding it, but don’t hold it back, let it flow, only, instead of allowing it to do whatever it wants, tame the chaos and force it into order. Into your body, through you, from your feet to your head, and out through the palms of your hands.”
Alexander snapped his eyes open. Two apple-sized balls of brilliant lights formed in his hands. In his right, a ruby sphere, and in his left, an azure twin. He smiled and stammered, “I’m doing it.”
“Yes, you are. Very good, My Prince. Now, I will help guide you through the next part,” Dante said, cupping each of Alexander’s hands in his own. “I can only guide the energy that has left your body, you will have to dictate the rate of flow. Not too much, if you expel all the trace energies from a Source out of your body, you will permanently sever your link to it. For now, just match it to the flow of energy entering your body and add a little more.”
Alexander concentrated and did as the old septim wizard advised. It was difficult and imprecise work, like scooping water from a lake into a bucket with your hands, only you could only scoop a certain amount of water at a time and you had to guess that limitation yourself. But, despite its difficulty, he managed. The ruby and azure spheres grew to the size of melons before Dante wrestled control of them away from Alexander. It was an odd feeling he didn’t really care for, like someone stealing the breath out of your lungs. The two balls of energy lost their shape and flowed towards one another in streams that formed a red and blue spiral in the middle. In the center of the spiral, the wizard compressed the energy into such a small and focused area, that it began to harden and take physical form, like a flat elongated gemstone.
After a few minutes of this, Alexander began to notice something else. The energy inside of him that had been a chaotic storm was now a calm and systematic flow. In seven points through his body he could feel the energy collect into a whirlpool before flowing on to the next.
“Has the energy inside you calm completely?” Dante asked, sweat dripping from his brow.
“Yes,” Alexander said in amazement. Only then did he notice that the frost, magma, and shaking had all stopped. His magic was under control.
“All right, you can stop then,” Dante said. The wizard compressed the last bit of energy into the oblong disk before he fell back into his chair and wiped his brow while he breathed hard. The disk, meanwhile, just continued to float there in front of Alexander. Its color kept changing, depending on how the light hit it, shifting to either red or blue.
“You all right?” Alexander asked the old wizard.
Dante nodded. “That was a little nerve-racking. You have a tremendous amount of power, Alex. In fact, I can think of only three people I've ever met who could give you a run for your money in the power department.”
“I have this sickening feeling that my uncle is one of them,” Alexander said, pocking the disk and watching it spin through the air in front of him.
“Two of your uncles. Cain was not born with this much power, but he gained it, somehow. Your uncle Marcus, however, was born with the same amount of innate power as you. But his was darker and colder, more—wrong. The power you hold, however, reminds me of your father. He was perhaps the most powerful angelian to ever live who wasn’t from the royal line. It’s why he was the only one who could defeat Marcus.” Dante sighed. “And now, history repeats itself. Only this time, no matter what happens, your uncle has to be defeated without the one defeating him having to sacrifice their life in the process.”
Bibi gave a loud growling-snore and Dante’s mouth fell open. “Did he seriously just sleep through all of that?”
Alexander laughed. “Actually, that’s not that strange for him. A few years back there was this chaotic night where the ship was swallowed down a whirlpool to an underwater city. Before the next sunrise there was a big, loud procession through their streets, a bloody gladiatorial battle, a royal advisor who literally ripped a hole through reality to release an extradimensional monster, and an erupting underwater volcano. To this day, Bibi doesn’t believe any of that happened, because he spent all of it asleep on the ship.”
“Fascinating,” Dante said. “What if there was an emergency? What if the ship was sinking?”
“Oh, we figured out a way to wake him whenever we wanted.”
“How?”
Alexander cleared his throat. “Bacon.”
Bibi shot upright and looked around curiously. “Bacon, where?” His eyes fell on Alexander. “Lad, you’re up. Thank the muses. What’s that thing floating in front of you. And where is the bacon?”
“Sorry, false alarm,” Alexander said.
Bibi’s ears drooped, and he gave a groan of disappointment before he fell back onto the bed and was asleep again within seconds.
“We also learned we always have to have actual bacon, just in case,” Alexander added. He pocked at the crystal disk again and said, “What is this thing anyway?”
It took a bit of effort for Dante to tear his astonished gaze away from Bibi to see what Alexander was talking about. “Oh, that’s an argentari. It’s crystallized thaumaturgic energy that serves as a reservoir of power. My ancestors created the process to form them for emergencies when we need a little extra power for a spell.” He held up his right hand and three rings made of reddish-brown gemstones appeared as if from nowhere. “Because it came from inside you, it is essentially an extension of your aura, and thus you can control it the same way you control the energy inside you. If you want it out of the way, all you need to do is concentrate on making it invisible.”
The rings disappeared again. Alexander tried it. The thought had barely formed in his head when the disk disappeared. He could not see it anymore, but he could still feel it. A vortex of denser power floating in his aura.
“Argentari are usually shaped to resemble jewelry, but the angelians who tended to have a little more power than any other race of magic users, made their argentari elongated and flat and stacked them one over the over behind their backs,” Dante said.
“That’s were my people’s wings came from,” Alexander exclaimed. He had wondered about that constantly while he was growing up on The Golden Spear. His mother had always told him he would get his wings when he started to train in using his magic, but he had always assumed he would at least begin to grow them as he got older.
“Exactly. Every feather was a gemstone that served as stores of magic energy. From now on, as part of your training, you will practice argentari meditation every night. I’ll help you the first few times, but you should pick up how to do it on your own in no time, and in a year or two you will have your own wings.”
“My training?” Alexander said.
“Yes.” Dante smiled at him. “It is time you begin your magical education.”
“Are you sure?” Alexander said, beaming with excitement. “When you sent me away, you said I wouldn’t start training until my twenty-first birthday, when I reached thaumaturgic maturity.”
“I did say that, but I didn’t take into account how powerful you would already be by now. Your aura is still immature and unrefined, but it is more than strong enough to begin your training. I realized this the second I read the letter Aenor sent about how you’ve been losing control. Since then, I've made the arrangements to move up the meetings with your various teachers.”
“Aren’t you going to teach me?” Alexander asked.
“I cannot teach you everything you need to learn. I am only a septim, which means I am a descendant of the Voynich people. Thus, the Source I draw from is the Voynaheim Source which allows me the use of dimensional magic, also known as Gate and Key magic. This is the magic I will teach you. But you are of the blood of Angelus, and thus, you are connected to more than just the Voynaheim Source. You are connected to four of the nine Sources we know of; the Voynaheim, Dhaesí, Jördai, and Hesperian Sources. The thaumaturgic energy of each Source is different and the school of magic that each Source enables you to use is unique, and so I can no more teach you to use any of the other three sources than a fish can teach a wolf to breathe underwater.”
“So which branch of magic will I learn first?”
“When you were a child you showed a tremendous aptitude for ecoturgy, which is a magic that derives from the combined use of the Hesperian and Jördai Sources. You were no older than five when you performed a feat of pyroturgy. So we will begin with ecoturgy.”
“So, who will be my first teacher?” Alexander asked.
“Ecoturgy is a branch of Jördai magic which is rare. But the five prime races of this world were made by the Jördai ladies and thus can each use a branch of Jördai magic. Our first stop will be to Moondrake where you will learn Aeroturgy,” Dante said. “I’ve already sent them a message to request for a ship to come and collect us here. They should arrive within the next two to three days.”
“Three days,” Alexander said, feeling conflicted. He looked over at Bibi and his heart went cold. He had been waiting for this day for years now, to finally begin his mission to stop Cain and avenge his mother and people. While he was ready for that, needed it even, the idea of saying goodbye to Bibi and the other surviving members made him feel like crying.
As if Dante had read his mind, he said, “You can’t say goodbye to the others, Alex. I’m sorry. The only one who knows you survived is Bibi. The others will all be told that you drowned.”
“But—”
“This is for the best,” Dante cut across him. Things are about to get dangerous, and the fewer people who know you’re alive, the better. For them and you. You’ve been away for a long time. You have no idea how terrifying your uncle has become. He has amassed what is probably the biggest army since the end of the War for Anarchos. Half of Primoris is under his control, and he hasn’t even needed to lift a finger himself.”