Magic, Tests and Veystrix

  After spending the rest of his time trying and failing horribly to activate the other three rings, he had nothing to show for it by the end of his endeavour but for a frustrated look on his face and strained, itchy eyes. The next day, along with the four rings, Marcus had a piece of black coal picked from the fire pit the group had used to roast their meat from the butchery. Holding out the ring, Marcus tried to read the runes curved into the metallic surface, but unfortunately, the letters of the cryptic magical language were too small to read with his eye alone.

  Whoever had made the ring’s enchantment was a master, someone with skill enough to write small, delicate, runic letters on a small surface. Or the person could have simply used magic.

  With letters this small, he wondered how he was going to copy the spells from all the rings. He looked around, trying to find something that would help him see the small engravings better, especially if he wanted the arcane spell form.

  He looked around some more, and slowly, he started coming to one dumbing conclusion. ‘I don’t think there is a way I can examine these spells.’

  And just as he was beginning to give up, in his mind, while his eyes kept moving over the broken walls, windows, and floor, they came to a sudden halting stop. There, on the window, a mossy plant sat, and a droplet of water sat on top of it, magnifying the mossy veins of the plant’s leaf.

  Marcus rushed over to the plant by the window seal, holding one of the rings in his hand, not caring which affinity it held.

  An idea had struck him then, primitive it may have been, but it could possibly work.

  He stopped by the window, raised his hand, and slowly, carefully bent the thin stem holding the leaf, letting the drop of water land on the ring. Slowly, he moved back to the space in the middle of the room, and slowly, he went down to his knees.

  Marcus grabbed the piece of burnt coal and started etching every circle, every squiggle of runic letters and line from the ring to the floor. And after an hour of slow, deliberate hand movement and bent knees, a position he had to be in to intricately copy the spell forms off the ring. Marcus placed the ring back on the ground, and he rose to his feet. He felt a shock in his joints that made him stumble for balance. Marcus stretched his back, feeling the pain in his body lessening and a little lighter on his feet.

  “So what is this?” Levin asked, stepping out of the shadows and grabbing the ring off the ground. Is it enchanted?”

  Marcus should not have been surprised, really, but the voice that suddenly came out of nowhere had him taking a pause and looking around in the dimly lit room.

  Everyone knew about the veystrix, everyone knew about the wet boy assassin and their shadow magics, but in the end, no one expected them.

  No one expected a dagger in their back. no one expected to have their missing bag of coins missing, and yet it happened more times than the normal folk thought.

  And Marcus was one of them. When he saw Levin standing there, he was angry. But if he could avoid this fight, he would. After all, it was the half-goliath standing in front of him who had knocked him out, and that was something he wanted to avoid this time.

  The other boy may not have been as tall and wide as other goliaths, but his skin was greyish, and he had the markings of a goliath running down his right eye and down to the side of his cheek.

  “Did Ivor send you?” Marcus asked.

  “Do you really think Ivor can tell me what to do?” Levin scoffed a gesture that turned out to be rather mocking.

  Of course, Ivor could tell him what to do, but the other boy did not need to know that. Although the old half-Aasimar half-Goliath could tell him what to do, he never did. He often let the young goliath go his way, only advising when asked.

  Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want then?” he asked, looking around, wondering how the boy had gotten so close without him noticing. Had he been watching him?

  “This ring. is it enchanted ?” Levin asked, ignoring Marcus’s question and squinting at the engraving as he thoughtlessly stood over the drawing of the spell form Marcus had taken the effort to draw for hours.

  “Just put it down and be on your way,” Marcus nearly growled as he watched Levin inspect the ring.

  In a city where the rich and powerful lived lives of luxury in the high walls of their manors high up on the mountain, the orphans, half-bloods and poor were forced to fend for themselves. Spells were restricted in most Mountain Cities, and where these laws didn’t apply, those cruel enough did whatever they had to for what little power they were allowed.

  They killed, stole, lied and threatened where they could to take control in the dark places the nobles ignored. And Marcus feared the reason why the veystrix was here.

  “Old man Ivor... You should listen to him. Forget all of this,” Levin said, looking around and gesturing at everything around him. It would be better for you than risking your life.”

  “And what about Thornan.”

  Levin shrugged nonchalantly,” the old man doesn’t care. I... don’t care.”

  “You can fight him can’t you.”

  Levin’s nonchalant smile disappeared, and he looked at Marcus with cold eyes. “There are rules. I can’t involve myself with another Veystrix. and lets say i did. what would be the point, your not worth it.”

  ‘That and i will probably be left for dead in an alley somewhere half dead and weak. and a weak veystrix was no better than dead one.’

  “But you can fight. I heard what Thornan said and we both know Clara won’t give up without a fight.”

  Levin stepped out of the runic circle and went down on his haunches, examining the Katch paper and the other rings.

  “It doesn’t matter. This is the way we live, if she fights. Thornan will win,” the Veystrix looked up at him, “and if you think you can be some chivalrous knight, then Thornan will win against you too.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?”

  “Leave them. Thornan will win and the worst thing that can happen is he sells the girls to the brothels and maybe the boys survive after a few broken bones.”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “And you won’t help even if you know what will happen.”

  “I can’t,” Levin shrugged, moving to pick up one of the rings. But a hand grabbed his shoulder, causing him to look up at Marcus. “Get your hands off of me.”

  “Put it down and get out,” Marcus said, his hand not leaving Levin’s shoulder.

  Slowly, Levin rose, and Marcus held onto his black coat, seemingly unwilling to let go. Levin wrinkled his nose in disgust, and in the next instant, Marcus staggered back his hands on his gut.

  “You are weak,” Levin said, moving to grab Marcus’s hair and pulling him up.

  “Fuck you,” Marcus snarled, punching Levin in the face and sending him back. Marcus knew he was weak, and if he wanted to fight someone like Thornan, he needed to test himself first to see how strong he was here and now. He needed to understand what fighting a veystrix felt like.

  Levin seemed to smile with blood-covered teeth. “You can still fight. good.” He threw the ring to the side and lunged at Marcus.

  Marcus watched as the ring was tossed to the side. As his eyes followed the ring, he felt hands grabbing his neck and pushing him to the wall.

  ‘You are weak. What does he see in you?” Levin spat. His golden shimmering eyes looking up and into Marcus’s mismatched pair.

  The fingers around Marcus’s neck grew tighter, and he fought back, noticing the lack of air reaching his lungs. Marcus punched Levin’s face and tried to pull the hands apart and get them away from his neck even harder. But the other boy was a goliath, and they were known for their physical strength. The next time he fought a goliath, he would have to keep them from grabbing a hold of him, he noted.

  “You are not worth it,” Levin mocked. Having had enough blows landing on his forearms, he threw Marcus to the side, where he fell and hit the ground.

  Marcus looked around, and in front of the ring Levin had thrown to the side, Marcus crawled forward towards the ring. Levin grabbed him from behind, yanked his leg back and turned him over to face upwards. With one hand on his shirt tunic, the Veystrix proceeded to punch him in his face, every blow grinding against his nose, mouth and cheeks.

  After so many blows, Marcus felt his consciousness starting to slip. In a last-ditch effort, he reached out with his hand, searching for the ring.

  Of the four rings Marcus had been examining, only one of them would be able to heal him from his injuries. If he got his injuries healed, then he thought he could stand a chance.

  Every blow delivered made Marcus weaker by the second, and he could only hope it was the right ring he was stretching out for.

  —

  Levin had spent the day watching as the boy curved the runes into the floor of the broken-down manor. It was a futile endeavor. In a couple of hours, the aether would pass through the formation and cause it to weather away.

  Unlike the enchanting the old man wanted to teach the boy, all written forms of magic eventually weathered away like rocks in a river’s path, causing the spell’s formation to disappear. So, what the boy was doing was a waste of time. So, what was the point of him drawing the engraving from the ring? If the boy had a grimoire, that would have been another case entirely.

  After Marcus was done with his drawing, Levin stepped out of the shadows, letting go of the spell he was holding and grabbed the ring.

  Levin inspected the ring, putting on a show for the other boy.

  Levin was a thief and a good one at that, but he did not intend to take the ring. There was no thrill in just taking the ring. He needed it to be challenging the, stalking them, watching and monitoring, all this would have given him some fun. But stealing from a filthying it wasn’t fun. He was simply acting,

  Behind his actions, his goal remained the same, to test the boy, as Ivor had told him.

  The fight, however, was going as expected. He goaded Marcus, trying to get him to react, yet all the other boy could do was put up a futile resistance.

  During the fight, Levin was careful to keep an eye on the shadows, always keeping Marcus within arm’s reach to knock him out in case the shadows started to move unnaturally.

  Levin watched as the boy moved towards the ring he had thrown. He did not know what the ring did, but acting with experience, he moved to stop him, especially if the ring had an unknown spell that could harm him. So he didn’t let him get close to it. He grabbed Marcus by his tunic and rained down blows on him.

  ---

  Marcus’s hand felt around on the floor, yet every strike to his face had him flinching, losing ground and vision of where the ring had fallen. and unfortunately, Levin was not slowing down. But suddenly, he felt it. he had clipped it with one of his fingers and failed to hold onto it.

  Marcus decided to give it one last go, he gathered the dredges of strength left in his hand and punched, then stretched with the motion.

  He grabbed the ring in his hand, and as soon as he did he turned and raised his hands instinctively to protect himself and a force of arcane aether pushed the Veystrix back. the goliath flew through the air the force acting on him more then gravity, pushing him in the air and causing him to fall into the shadows of dim room.

  It was not what he was expecting, but Marcus felt the buzz as he pushed his arcane aether into the ring and felt it be amplified, pushing Levin away.

  Marcus rose abruptly to his feet and looked around, his fists held high as he stood ready for an attack. An attack that did not come. The shadows stayed still, nothing moved, and all was quiet.

  There was nothing but the sound of his heavy breathing cutting through the silence.

  —

  A while later, after his fight with Marcus, Levin found himself seated on a bench in the rat’s guild. There were no filthyings in this section, and if anyone bothered to check, this was where the strongest and most gifted of the street rats who worked alone spent their days.

  “What happened to you? You look like one of the noble wagons ran you over,” Nadja said, walking over to the bench and settling comfortably opposite Levin.

  Nadja was a Veystrix, quick-witted with a silver tongue. She was quick with words, and if one got distracted by her thick lips and honeyed words, they would discover the dagger in their back too late. She had dark hair with streaks of white that she often dyed black with lantern oil and charcoal to hide among the humans.

  “Nadja,” Levin granted in greeting, stretching his arm out and trying to fix his sore back. ‘I didn’t think he could use arcane magic.’ he thought silently to himself.

  Nadja watched. She looked at his unsteady hands, feeling at his ribs, and frowned. “What really happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” Levin said, massaging his knuckles and pausing the same question to her. “what happened to you. Is that a new dagger?”

  “Yes,” Nadja unsheathed her dagger and rolled it across her fingers with the familiarity of a Zarynth assassin.

  “I got it from one of those noble brats from the third wall,” she put on a smile. “You should’ve seen him. brat thought I was Zarynth and wanted me to kill another of those scholars.”

  “You know we aren’t allowed to kill in the third wall.”

  “Don’t worry. the boy was too naive,” she raised her hands. “No blood was spilled, I told him he was wasting my time and I was gonna take his balls.” She looked at Levin with a grin befitting a mischievous cat in the dim candle-lit room of the rats guild, “or he gives me his enchanted daggers and his coin.”

  “Are you sure that was wise,” Levin asked, stretching his arms back.

  “Please. a wealthy fool like that probably won’t be looking for me anytime soon. he will be too ashamed to tell even his mother.” She waved a hand along with his worries for her away.

  While listening to Nadja and her tale with one of the noble scholars, from behind him, Levin heard the sound of approaching footsteps, heavy and loud as they got closer. “What do you think you were doing?” The deep, gravelly voice asked-- if Levin did not know better, he would have thought the voice belonged to a man and not the oversized goliath boy standing behind him.

  “Thornan,” Levin sighed, “what do you want?”

  “Word is... you’ve been around the Broken Manor.”

  “Don’t worry about it, my business is my own,” Levin said, looking up at the larger boy.

  At this point, Everyone in the small corner of the cave-building the Rats Guild was built into had stopped whatever they were doing and were glancing at the pair.

  “That’s my mark,” Thornan glared down at the smaller Half-Goliath Half-Aasimar.

  “As I said its none of your business. if it’s their coin you want you can have it. if you want to play around with them that’s your choice,” Levin said, his eyes never leaving Thornan.

  “What’s stopping me from breaking your hands.”

  “You can try,” Levin warned, a thin fog appearing an inch from the floor around him.

  “Boys, boys,” Nadja interjected, “why don’t you stop this contest of seeing who’s got more balls? The boss is watching.”

  Both Thornan and Levin looked to the side, finding the cold eyes of Victor, the rats guild master who was leaning against the door to his office watching them intently, unlike Agmak and Clara, who were filthyings, Victor never stopped the fights between his Veystrix. after all he wanted only the strongest. And sadly for him, The two boys relaxed and walked away. It was a shame, really. The veystrix simply knew each other too well.