Mortal Magic: Broken
Starkhaven

This time I woke up before the others at dawn and if it wasn’t for my extreme headache I would have been very happy about it. It wasn’t often that my head was pounding like that but this time was worse than any other. I remembered from last night that we were near the river again and I willed myself to stand up and got to it. The pain was a burden and much irritating but the dizziness was something else. I couldn’t even take one step without the world spinning around and threatening to make me fall.

Steadying myself on every three I could replace I heard the sound of running water and discovered the direction I had to go. Within a few minutes I was in front of the river and kneeling at the shore. I splashed some water at my face and felt the heat I wasn’t even aware was there go away. The fall in my head’s temperature helped a bit but I had to do more than that to feel better so I decided to lie down with my head in the water and barely my nose above it. The water was cool and refreshing even though the pebbles on the ground were uncomfortable but it was helping with my headache. I wasn’t sure how long I had been sitting there with my head in the river but when I sat up Yuto was already awake and was coming my way.

I got my hair away from my eyes and raised them up and to the back of my head. “You seem to have come back to your old self again. What were you doing in there”? He came closer and kneeled in front of the river beside me and splashed some water on his face before filling three flasks, two we had taken ourselves and one was Maia’s. “My head was pounding like I had a war going on in there so I used the water to cool it”. He hummed his answer and then he got on his feet to look at me. I was still not used to the slight difference in our height since I was used to people being at least as tall as me, but the way he was taller than me by a few inches I felt like he was towering me sometimes.

His gaze never left me as he was examining me, searching for anything that would give away anything out of the ordinary. It took him a few moments to move his gaze to my head and that was where it stayed for a while. His face twisted in curiosity and concern. He came to me slowly and raised his hand to take a strand of my hair to look at it before he spoke. “Have you seen your hair today”? That was an odd question; even for him. Sure my hair must have been messy before but I now they were just wet. I shot him the best questioning look I could muster but he just kept waiting for an answer. “No. Why are you asking me about my hair all of a sudden”?

“Make a knife and I’ll show you”. This was becoming more and more weird by the second and he was starting to worry me too. I projected a knife as he asked me to in the air in front of him and he took it in his right hand. Without hesitating he cut a small part of the strand of hair he was holding in his left hand and showed it to me. What I saw was impossible though. The hair he gave me had the color of silver, and they came from my head. My hair was naturally black, not silver as what I was holding in my hand right now.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until Yuto told me to breathe and then I released the breath I had been holding inside me. He was looking at me expectantly but instead of talking I turned around and tried to look at my reflection in the water. Even in the running water I could see the faint image of myself in its surface and I could clearly see the difference of color in my hair. On the left side of my head there was a silver strand of hair that was never there before. I would remember seeing it for sure and I was dead certain that this wasn’t there when we left Brickbourne one week ago.

I took that part of my hair in my hand and examined it but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. If my hair turned silver there was most likely a good reason for it, good cause there is one but surely it would be a bad reason for me. I got up again and put on a calm expression to reassure him that it was nothing to worry about and he asked me again. “What is going on? Is something wrong, anything at all”? I was sure there was nothing physically wrong with me both from Maia and myself now but I had to check something. I felt for my mana and realized that I had way too much mana stored inside me for it to be normal. It could be that all that mana I had stored while unconscious had affected my body somehow. “Nothing, I just have too much excess mana that I need to get rid of. That could be the reason my hair turned silver”.

I could see he was not convinced but there was nothing we could do besides me releasing mana to the world around me to hopefully prevent this from escalating and making trouble. I immediately started releasing the mana inside me like I did with every blood moon and I felt the air around me getting warmer. Yuto felt it too, like I was emitting heat which then spread and disappeared. That was when we saw Maia getting up and coming our way. After she washed her face to wake up she asked me about my hair too with concern clear in her face and eyes. I reassured her too and then we dropped the subject and hit the road once more.

Like Maia said the night before in a few hours the trees started to lessen and we exited the long forest with the sun burning over our heads. I had to admit that I kind of missed the shade the trees provided us with up until now. Despite that I never complained about the scorching sun as we crossed the seemingly endless see of grass we entered. The path diverged many times along the way but we kept on the main path as Maia knew the way and she was the one leading us. Sometimes she even commented on what lay in the other oaths we saw. They lead to all manners of places, like cities made of white and stone, villages built on the treetops of an ancient forest, and underground settlements in the caverns of the continent. Those caverns she said were the most beautiful things to see in this place and she hoped that someday she would get to see them herself. The stories she told us about those places were so captivating that I found myself longing to visit them myself, but I knew that I had more important things to do now. Maybe when this was all over I would travel with Ashe to those places, and maybe we could take Maia with us. And Yuto would definitely want to go back to his family.

I was daydreaming for quite some time and I didn’t even realize it when the topic of the conversation changed and they were both asking me something. I shook my head to clear my dreamy fog and then focused on what they were saying. They both laughed when I did but I kept a blank expression as I don’t even remember the last time I laughed. It must have been something trivial back then, and now the memory of my last laugh was eluding me, and a smile doesn’t count that much. When they saw that I was looking at the very least sad they stopped and just asked the question again. “So what is the plan? Do you just replace him and then ask him or is there something more”?

That was right; I never told them just how I was planning to get the information out of him. To be honest I didn’t know how to do it. He was a master magus, one of the few extremely skilled magi in Ea and surely he knew how to fight. But I was clueless as to how he fought since no one witnessed such an event from what I learned so far. “It’s bound to be more complicated. He is a master magus so that makes him more dangerous than anything I have ever seen. And to my understanding no one knows what magic user he is, where his affinity lies or the artes he uses”. I kept walking while I explained to them the situation and they listened closely and without interrupting me. “And unlike me, he probably knows everything about my abilities. He was the one who ordered the magi guard to take me to the arena and they were all loyal to him. They kept telling people about our abilities and I surmise those people were gathering information for him. And I was the only one they mentioned every single time”.

He must know everything I can and can’t do, and that makes a frontal assault reckless and dangerous, more like suicide. So I had to come up with a plan to figure out what he can do before I engage him. “The plan so far is to provoke him into using his magic and once I have a general idea what he can do I can take him out and take the information I need”. I paused for a few moments savoring the possibility that everything could go smoothly like this and then finished with the last part of my plan. “And then I will kill him, slowly and painfully. Then I can go and replace my sister”.

Neither of them said anything at my last words as I was looking forward and had this relentless determination to see this to the end. Those were the last things I said on our way to Starkhaven. Early in the evening, when the sun was just about to set and the clouds and the sky were bathed in that bright orange, we saw the first signs of the city walls. From that distance they looked small and frail but as we got closer we saw them getting bigger and bigger. Before our view was obstructed by the sheer height of the walls I saw that probably at the center of the city or at the very back there was a huge castle.

Build from stone and towering even the walls themselves, with roofs like towers and real towers circling the structure. Windows all over the place and at the top of the frontal area of the building colored glass decorating the stone in various shades of green and red and blue and many other colors that made up a mosaic that took your breath away. And when we were close enough to the crown city I could smell the salt in the sea. We had traveled to the edge of the continent and the castle itself was built near the sea.

Yuto explained that the walls were closing the whole city and the palace inside but there was a beach on the back side open to the citizens, but there was a certain part of it after a few giant rocks that was for the royal family and whoever they deemed worthy or was high enough in the hierarchy. He was sure that the master magi were allowed there in the hot days of the summer. Rumor had it that the king of Starkhaven was also a master magus and that his line was the only still living line of master magi. The title was passed from father to son as the males were usually the strongest and then to the next son in the line after they had been trained enough.

“They also say that the royal family has a unique ability that they never demonstrated. Kind of like what only you can do, something similar at least maybe. They say that that ability is so strong and takes so much that the members of the family that develop it never live for more than 50 years. The current king is the only one who has the ability and has lived to become 55 even after all that he has been through”. So the royal family was more or less cursed with power that killed them slowly but sooner than other people. Such a sad thing it was to know that your destiny was to die young. And of course live in the middle of a war for a power that you never asked for.

I kept those thoughts to myself as we came to the city gates. Four guards were stationed there, two keeping watch with spears in hand and two making sure that everyone had papers if he was here for business or something like that. There was no one else in line to enter so one of the guards came directly to us to do his job apparently. “Are you here on business”? We were but not the kind that was considered legal anyway. Before one of us was able to answer Maia took the lead and spoke first. “Yes sir. We are here to buy herbal supplies for a shop in Brickbourne. Here are our papers”.

She took two sheets of paper parchment from the inside of her vest and she gave them to the guard. He looked at them suspiciously and read silently whatever was written in them before he gave them to his fellow guard who took them and went to the wall and took out a stamp from a pouch in his belt. After using the stamp he put it back in the pouch and came back with the papers and gave them to Maia. “You have passage for three days. If your business takes more than one day and you need someplace to stay there are inns down the road with appropriate accommodations for reasonable prices. Enjoy your stay”.

We thanked them and then moved on to get to the other side of the walls where we were surrounded with buildings early on. Sure enough there in the immediate area of the wall there were barracks for a small number of guards and soldiers for their breaks and all that, but the houses of the citizens were barely different from the barracks. And it wasn’t that the houses were simple and small at all, just that the barracks were built with the same archetype as the houses here, like real houses even though they must be crumped sometimes.

Everything was made out of stone and looked new. The level of detail they must spend on retaining the structures was amazing, not even one of the buildings was not in perfect shape. This place was completely different from Redgard and Brickbourne. There wasn’t a single place where the people were suffering from poverty and such, like this was a safe haven for everyone. And there where many kinds of people, here too, People with white skin, others with darker tones. Tall people easily 6 feet tall and short barely 5 feet with blonde and black hair. Even with weird characteristics on their faces like their eyes were more like they were cut into their faces or wide foreheads and too long faces. Everything you could imagine in a person you could potentially replace here and many of them had ink brandings on their bodies and faces and they even had gold pierced into their skin like earrings.

I liked this place more than anything I have seen so far. There was no discrimination here and the people seemed happy here. Maybe I could come and live here once this was all over and build a life where I no longer need to use magic. I could stop being a hunter and do something else that didn’t evolve any kind of killing any more. I pushed those thought away for another time and realized that I could only have that when I was free of this oath.

We made our way to the nearest building with the sign inn on it but Maia seemed to want to go somewhere else. “You know that one is slightly expensive; there are others that can be more reasonable with their prices and the accommodations are in par with the best”. Yuto and I looked at her for a moment but then I realized that I actually had no money, and Yuto didn’t either, so even if we were to stay at an inn, it would be because Maia gave us the money. That was something that I not only didn’t like but it made me so embarrassed that I had to look away faster than I could think it. Yeah sure I was practically homeless but that didn’t mean I had to take money from her too. I had better go sell those pelts fast before I start feeling like I have actual need of that kind of help. I had survived alone since I was seven and now this.

She took us further down the road and we took several turns before we stopped near what appeared to be a large inn considering the three story building in front of us that stretched as far as two of Maia’s house. There were numerous wooden windows on the walls of each floor and the stone walls seemed to have natural decorations from the decay of time, but they were actually manmade; most probably using magic. The inside had wooden boards on the floor and the walls and it seemed like everything was wood themed. The registry was a big almost luxurious desk twice the normal size and there was a hand bell on top along with decorations and plants and a big book. Behind the registry there was an old woman that seemed to be looking into the book and making adjustments, or corrections or recordings and man that was placing various keys on the wooden cases on the wall. The woman was wearing a causal white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a red woolen vest on top. The man on the other hand was wearing just a shirt with the sleeves like the woman’s and since I could actually see what he was wearing below from this side of the desk I saw a he was wearing also a black pair of dress pants.

Maia made the register and conversed with the woman before she came to us and told us what they discussed. “It seems like they are almost full with the event next day for the king and the master magi. There is only one room with two beds but if we take it she is willing to lower the price and give us an extra pair of pillows and a blanket”. That stuff actually happened at inns? Personally I wasn’t bothered by the fact that this place was full and the room was for two. But if we stayed here I wasn’t going to be the one to sleep in a bed so they had to figure it out themselves. They looked at me though like the decision was mine to make. I wasn’t their boss or something and I wasn’t paying for the room yet they were waiting for me to tell them what to do.

Sighing I shook my head at them and spoke. “You are the ones who will take the beds so if we stay. I slept on the floor longer than you think it’s nothing new for me”. Still they looked at me expecting and it was getting annoying at this point. “Why are you looking at me? I’m not the one with the money here for Ea’s sake”. That came out a little louder than I expected and I actually had to lower my voice after the first three words but they seemed to take the point. They started talking and I was trying to tone out the conversation as I was looking around.

There were tables around and many people were eating and many things smelled great here, but I wasn’t hungry so I turned my focus elsewhere. I saw the two staircases on both sides of the desk that lead to the upper floors and the same wooden themed continued there too. There were some paintings on the main hall where we were and a fireplace that wasn’t lit since it was warm enough already. There wasn’t anything worth noting in my opinion so I focused on the others again. I tuned back in as they were deciding and I heard enough to know that we will be staying here. Maia returned to the register and to pay and take the key and then we were escorted to the room we were given by the man I saw handling the keys.

When we reached the room on the third floor and made our way to the very last room in the long hall he opened the door and gave the key to me as I entered last. “This is a fairly quiet room so you will be able to sleep relatively well. Forgive us for the unavailability of another room or bed but there is nothing to be done this late before an event for the royal family”. The man’s face was sincere and I believed that he was indeed sorry for that problem as he called it but I shrugged it off. “The baths are common on this side of the halls on every floor, just three doors from here on your right for the men and on the on the left for the women. They are cramped at noon but in the evening and later there are not that many people. Meals are served on the first floor 10 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon for lunch and 8 in the evening for dinner. If you need anything please don’t hesitate to ask”.

I was standing at the door listening to him as the others were doing the same inside and after he left I got inside and closed the door behind me. I was tired from all this conversing and the traveling and my head was starting to ache worse than my feet at this point. The room was not that big but it had enough space for the two single beds along with bedside tables a closet and a table at the wall with two chairs. The single window was next to the table opposite the door and two feet right from the door was the closet and the beds. I looked out from the window and the sun had set already and the darkness had enveloped everything with the stars shining in the sky and a half moon proudly shedding its light to the world.

Within an hour Maia and Yuto went to sleep and I was still awake sitting on the chair and looking out of the window. I barely could keep myself from losing consciousness from the pounding in my head and it was hot in here. It must have been late enough for everyone to be in their rooms and surely in the off chance someone wasn’t the baths were surely empty. Maybe some cold water on my body would help me calm down enough to sleep.