In which lies are told

  “Magic? What would a fellow like you know of Magic?” - Archmage Olin Trent, speaking derisively to a curious apprentice.

  It was on an unusually clear and warm Autumn evening that we began our tale, on the worn and bumpy road to the village of Duroyed.

  At least, Kel thought, ‘It certainly feels that way’, wincing as his posterior was rudely and abruptly reintroduced to the brisk carriage’s seat by a particularly mean-spirited little pebble getting in the way of the large, rickety wagon’s protesting wheels.

  No, that is not hyperbole. Unfortunately, it really was a mean spirited pebble, I’m afraid.

  As a late addition on the twice yearly trip to the city of Blackpool, there had been one seat available at the end of the two benches in the wagon, and as it trundled on, Kel was seated at a perfect angle to spot that same pebble shrinking into the distance suddenly appear to crack from being run over. But, late, somehow. Five. Seconds. Late.

  Then the cracked pebble shifted and bulged, a grinding whine barely audible over the carriage’s rump bruising pace, as the round grey stone unfurled, shattering eggshell thin scabs of compacted dust and spattering a dead moss tinted, oily fluid onto the ground.

  Otherwise broken only by two brilliant points of jade light for eyes, a smooth ‘face’ made from the largest side of the partially buried stone arose. Two lanky, mantis-like limbs of graphite grey rock, unfolded from behind this face, each ending in a broad flat scythe of razor sharp stone that matched the height of the creature, glowing rivulets of that mossy oil dripping from the now upright insectile limbs, droplets flaring into wisps of translucent neon smoke as they hit the ground.

  It stood squatly on tri-jointed birdlike slate legs, crystalline shards of quartz forming talon claws, it’s solemn face calmly twisting to a curious tilt, seeming to stare into Kellin’s very soul even as sharp obsidian horns began to sprout from it’s ‘face’.

  Suddenly, the hatchling lept almost the entire distance to the speedy little cart in a single bound, flinging itself at gut wrenching speed with a loud whipcrack of its two disproportionately large arms fully extending faster than the eye could see, hurtling towards its prey with reckless abandon.

  It sailed through the air, the viscous oil still clinging to its body began to glow, and the air seemed to swirl, taking on a yellowish green hue. Etherious streams of iridescent smoke spiralled towards a point behind it’s expressionless ‘face’, backlighting it as moss began to grow in strange patterns and swirls on it’s unblemished stone body.

  Hovering lines of brilliant green light snapped into place around it, mirroring the mossy patterns, and a ragged cowl formed, woven of yellow tinged moss and translucent jade light, billowing in the wind.

  When it landed, less than two metres from the wagon, the neon glow dimmed to a fraction of its previous strength.

  Realizing it had fallen short, halfway down the small earth spirit’s mannequin-like face split in two along an almost invisible seam, and with one blood curdling screech, heckled the wagon, bemoaned her occupants and presumably the general sorry work ethic of ambush victims these days, revealing a mouth filled with row upon row of hundreds of glistening needle-point bone-white marble teeth coated in more of the sickly green oil.

  Kel’s long years of training had only left him with one possible recourse. His mother had shown him an ancient technique for handling these monsters many years earlier.

  A quick two fingered salute for the pest, and the four inch tall munchkin could take that one to its local retailer, thank you very much. The little bastard probably just wanted their eyes.

  Lowering his hand, Kel eyes swept the faces of the other occupants of the wagon for any trace of a reaction as his thoughts lingered on the gifts his mother had given him, as the ornery sprite scuttled away in a series of rabbitlike hops.

  Regardless, never only do one thing, he thought, his lips a thin line, If you’re always working the Plan, the plan is always working. A brief glance told him most of the other occupants were far too preoccupied to have noticed his modest intellectual debate with the earth sprite.

  To Kel’s randomly wandering gaze, with the exception of some bugs, a particularly adventuresome mouse and an all too familiar crystal hanging from the ear of another passenger, there was nothing much of immediate interest about his seven or so fellow passengers. He already knew two of them.

  Eryn and Bryn, the infamous brother sister duo act of Clan Oh’Ahra, the mayor of Duroyed’s charming and lovely spawn, who's better half sat opposite Kel, and beside him, her brother’s arms still held up by his sheathed longsword, snoozed in what looked like a well fitted grey leather cuirass, unfazed as it seemed all warriors were to travel discomfort. Neither of them were wearing their seatbelts.

  One unfamiliar man in a luxurious scholar’s travelling robes and a familiar crystal to complete the square, and four craftsmen, if their blue dusty overalls were to be believed, formed another at the far end of the benches from Kel, apparently all busy with either their packs, or the respective tools of their trades, or quietly chatting, but they seemed tense.

  Stiff.

  A jittery whetstone here, a dropped pencil or playing card there. The most obviously scared of their number was a bald stonemason, just as obviously from the town of Meric. His arms, muscles as thick and gnarled as a hawthorn trunk, jittered and shook as he still struggled to put on his seatbelt, several minutes after their departure.

  ‘Really?’ Kel thought, questioning himself, ‘As though you would be any calmer if you had such a massive visible target on your back, in front of an Elf. Gods know there isn’t much keeping your breathing going but the meditations.’

  Unlike the craftsman, a Meric native with skin of such monotone sky blue it was always slightly uncanny to look at, Kel had no obvious Weirmark.

  ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.’

  Instead the weave of cosmic forces’ eternal dance ‘blessed’ him with a knack for manipulating Flux; the cosmic source of Change itself.

  No doubt for some esoteric arcane reason like the position of the stars, the colour of his eyes, or how many flipped coins had come up heads in a mile radius in the last twenty minutes at the moment he first tried magic. Or all three.

  Memories of twinkling blue lights in the canopy of a forest clearing flashed through his mind.

  Taking a shaky breath through his nose, Kel instead remembered the burnt odor of the blackened smear where ten-year-old Mareo Dunn had once stood.

  The poor kid’s arm had Warped; half-transformed into a violet snake, which spat some iridescent rainbow bubbles and then instinctively turned on its unwitting host, clamping its venomous jaws into his neck when he was distracted.

  His eyes had lingered on the colourful little bubbles even as his last breath departed for greener pastures. The Peacekeepers had burnt the remains on the spot, an exorcism through obliteration.

  Warp could not be tolerated.

  ‘Fortunately, we’re protected by the protocols, right?’ He thought, very innocently. No sarcasm to be found. ‘By our Noble Elven saviours. They’ll keep you safe.’

  Kel wondered if the stonemason felt very protected. Elves had very little interest in, or patience for, internal human affairs. Most humans had very little interest in interacting with the obviously Weirmarked, those changed by one of the myriad magical energies out there, but news of a small town of people’s skin turning blue was fairly mundane, at least in the grander scheme. You could however, always find some people who would throw stones at victims of arcane incidents. Fewer, but still some, who would do worse.

  A sardonic grin slipped out before Kellin could stop it.

  ‘Hells, you’re no better, you'd ask him for any clue he had to what happened to his people in a heartbeat, Flux could work wonders, right? And you’d at least get some more practical research experience. Would you even care how much you could hurt him with false hope, the scorn from his only real peers? Rule one of the plan is don’t make bad investments, Kel.’

  He’d taken several trips with his brother Marc to the nearest town of Athlorn, towards which they were currently headed, but unfortunately for any magical research trips, Marc, pragmatic to his bones, had never seen the need to go further afield…

  ‘Wait a minute, that’s not right, we could have easily gone to the town of Meric ourselves, it’s less than a week of travel and could have helped the Plan, why would I have never suggested taking a trip to v-

  Marc would have agreed in a heart bea-

  What’s-

  ‘He’d have demanded we go-’

  ‘He’d work the Pla-’

  The ninth occupant of the wagon’s brilliant eyes had opened, a geometric fractal clearly visible in his luminescent irises as he caught Kel’s gaze, ‘Wait!’, the design writhed and spun, collapsing in on itself and reforming ‘Shit!’, in a kaleidoscope of bright patterns. Blinking the patterns of now burning light out of his eyes, they did not fade, but seemed to weave together into one larger pattern, in which Kel saw the most curious shade of pink.

  ‘Stop loo-’, a pink he was sure he’d never seen before.

  ‘Mental effect, I need to-’, a decidedly odd pink.

  Several seconds later after his thoughts stopped being largely pink oriented, as Kel was just about to consider locating where his previous train of thought had wandered off to, he was cut-off from his musings by a loud outburst.

  “Tell me something, son of Meric, whatever happened to your people? No matter, regardless of however you broke the Protocols, I will find the solution to your Hex, and become Oshin Hexbane, master of the mystic arts, scourge to all Witches.” There was a smug smile plastered on the face of the only other scholarly looking passenger as he glanced towards the Elf, their chaperone, and Kel felt like his jaw might actually hit the wagon floor.

  ‘I see what you’re trying to do, you knife-ear fellating bastard. Witches' been hitting the supply lines hard lately, huh?’

  ‘How is it that you’re zero for three on the ‘decent travel companion’ score card, Kel?'

  'And one a mage to boot.'

  'By the Crylic gem dangling from this suck-up’s ear, he’s at least got a decent grasp on using his Light focus. Wonder if he’s using Flux, but he's either got immaculate control of it or your senses are duller than usual.’

  The still nervous mason muttered, “No idea.”, and for a moment a shiver of recognition ran over Kel’s thoughts as he thought the mason had read his mind. It passed, as the hesitant but determined artisan continued his reply in a low, rumbling voice.

  “We all just woke up one day… like this.”

  Then, the melodious but slightly shrill voice of Eryn began to ring out, its origin at arm’s length opposite Kel on the other padded carriage bench. His brain disagreed with his ears on the topic of how loud she was, and lost painfully.

  ‘It’s just a bit of a headache, get over it.’

  To be frank, he felt much of his consternation came from the fat lot of good the padding was doing to help his now aching posterior.

  In fact, it was only as the wagon bumped over the small ridge separating the road to Duroyed from the main Athlorn road, a much busier thoroughfare, that Kel realized what was happening, even as Eryn stopped speaking, her voice a warbling hiccup, getting more and more frustrated with each discordant attempt.

  ‘Her voice isn’t normally that annoying. I don’t usually get headaches for no reason. There should be more give in this padding. Motion is being unequally stifled. We’ve hit a wonky Slow field.’

  Eyes refocused outside the cart, everything seemed to be moving slightly faster than its usual pace to Kel, with some distant objects seeming to form streaks and smears of colour as light bent and shifted.

  ‘The Road Shrine must be unstable, unless you’re observing outside the field of effect there shouldn’t be any dissonance between timeflow on the inside. Which means this is now a class 2 event. Game time.’

  Every member of the travel party followed the Protocols they knew like the back of their hands. Members who woke up one day to find the back of their hands were blue notwithstanding. Kel slowly placed a palm on Bryn’s shoulder, the still snoozing fighter’s body tensed, eyes shooting open, pupils darting to meet Kel’s. Otherwise, he remained perfectly still.

  ‘Potent training. You wouldn’t wake nearly as calm. Well, the show must go on. Time to perform Kel.’

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Reaching a hand delicately under his soft cotton shirt to grasp a leather cord hanging from his neck, Kel took a deep breath, and reached out. Everpresent, like an additional invisible limb, were the twisting strands of chaos, flowing through everyone and everything, the Logos of Change, Flux.

  To his limited human mind they swirled and glittered, dancing emerald starlights felt more than seen, clustering together in more chaotic things. People lit up and even the light breeze felt as dense as a sandstorm. Kel paused to observe some corkscrew through the carriage's wheels, weaving rhythmically between the spokes as the wheels turned.

  Thick lines of Flux, dense enough to seem almost white with power to him, wove and ribboned throughout the carriage and into the sky, each one a seam between bubbles of different time-flow, and seemed to extend at least as far as Kel’s ability to sense Flux, which was admittedly not much further than that.

  ‘But that’s a later problem’

  With a mental twist and pull, Kel created a line of the primordial energy, looping a spool of the invisible ether through the middle of the Crylic gem at the end of the leather cord, a blue glimmer lit up, an apparent replica of the glowing crystal hanging decoratively from Oshin’s ear.

  ‘But I somehow don’t think it is.’

  Suspended within the clear stone, Kel’s light gem’s true luminous focus was a Flux Logos resonator, a magical material which for one reason or another reacted to the presence of Flux by producing Logos of a different kind.

  The resonator itself, which in spite of any casual re-examination over the last thirteen years, Kel had no better insight than: ‘Still kinda looks like pictures of jellyfish you’ve seen’, was one that produced light in exchange for being fed Flux in a specific manner.

  At what was, Kel suspected, a heinously bad exchange rate, but it got the reaction going. And what Flux could evoke, it could also empower, as change sought expansion.

  The entire gem, it’s mass-produced facets a beginner’s visual guide for the aspirant mage to mentally contain their Logos, seemed to pulse as Kel focused, blooming with brilliant cerulean-tinted light.

  'And any ornery specks of Flux eyeing the ‘world beyond the crystal’ can kindly fuck off.'

  Pulling the leather cord free of his head, Kel spun it around his hand with a dextrous flick, catching the luminous gem between index finger and thumb with a reflexive snap as it finished its short spiral, a satisfied grin briefly appeared as his thoughts raced.

  ‘And for your next trick, something actually useful?’

  Tapping Bryn’s shoulder, and meeting his gaze once more, quirking a brow to make sure he was paying attention, Kel raised his Light focus into the air, and rapidly began to pull Flux from the tip of the crystal, moving it as he did so. Without sufficient Flux, not only could the light Logos not move with the crystal, it also couldn’t diffuse very fast, which left a thin wisp of cerulean light behind it in the air.

  He wrote quickly, lacking the skill to hold enough Flux from the trail for more than a few seconds, not while still spooling some through the resonator. If the small light in the jellyfish’s body went out, so too would the trail. His eyes glanced at Oshin, even as he finished the three character message.

  ‘What now, you cocky prick?’

  “C F 2.”

  Bryn’s eyes widened and then narrowed, a small nod his only response, the simple code one he and every other child learned, the first and most basic of the Protocols.

  The identification table.

  CF2, or Chronal, Field, Class 2. A time field, unknown or unstable effect, potentially dangerous. Keep unnecessary movement and noise to a minimum until you can leave the effect or it abates. Interfere with the effect in any way you can, it will likely disperse.

  He continued writing, “A I 1”

  Nods met his gaze. If looks could hurt, Oshin’s glare would have had Kel arriving at Blackpool in a basket.

  Active interference, one. He would do what little he could to mitigate the effect.

  Kel released most of the Flux under his control, leaving only a dim blue glowing gem and a silent carriage, and then reached out and mentally wrenched, bending the sinuous seams of writhing white-green Flux apart, the disjointed pockets of time seeming to diffuse into one another within the carriage, a bubble of relative normality forming. The tension slowly eased half a minute later. After all, no one was dead.

  He took a deep breath.

  Naturally it was at this precise moment that Eryn chose to resume speaking, clearly convinced of the vital nature of her outburst.

  “Is it… Thank Mirf'eie I don’t sound like a freak anymore! Ohmygosh you simply have to go visit the temple district, the temple to our lord is out of this world, obviously, and I’m sure they've got a cure for the sinmark that plagues you. When I got the...”

  Because this was definitely worth breaking Protocol for.

  ‘And if a sound wave hits a temporal front at the wrong angle, speed, or frequency, it’s only what, a one in twenty that one of us is blown apart from the shockwave. You’ve taken worse odds, Kel. It’s not worth the fight.’

  Oshin smirked, and her brother seemed content to do nothing, except nod appreciatively every few seconds at his sister’s unending tirade. Bryn had always been a reasonably pragmatic brother too. Kel bore the scars to prove it.

  “And, obviously when I’m living in the temple, you see I’ve actually been selected to become a devotee of Mirf'eie, it’s kinda a big deal, I could totally make sure you get seen for your gross blue skin. But don’t, like, try and come with me, I’ve got some friends there who are expecting me.. Uhm.. like, alone? Anyway, so being a devotee of Mirf'eie is going to be so incredible, I hope-”

  ‘You’ve gotta give her something. You hope the city’s going to be different too. Just maybe not the same way she does.’

  Kel let out that breath, eyes glazing over as they raised to the sky, refocusing as the Road Shrine that was the source of their current predicament rolled into view a minute later.

  The relic still stood proudly, the ancient society whose refurbished roads they now rode upon clearly having been master builders.

  After all, they built machines like the one currently blinking with crimson light from one of its triplicate hemispherical glass faces at the roadside, dozens of trinkets, gifts and coins, hovering in the air beside it, sacrifices to the Shrine; too Slowed to visibly move.

  Current scholarly consensus agreed that this society had such powerful magic and such advanced technology that they altered time to increase travel speed. Not even gnomes were crazy enough to try that. Probably.

  “-so anyway, they said, you have this gift for Pathos, your voice is heavenly, we need you, and so yeah it wasn’t like super hard for me or anything, but like they said that’s really rare-”

  Kel internally groaned, cursing the shrine, Eryn, and any higher authority responsible for his present circumstances. It was quite a list. This one time, he suspected, the journey past the Road Shrine really would feel supernaturally long.

  ‘Hopefully you won’t have to put up with this kind of shit in Blackpool. Yeah, it’s an Elven city, but at least they know what they’re doing. No space or time fuckery. No magical mishaps. No Eryn and Bryn. Blackpool, home of the Voidstone Academy. You’re going to get on well there. That’s the Plan.’

  — Blackpool, 366.25 days later —

  Smoke still curled from the smouldering crater, dark purplish obsidian scorch marks encircling where Voidstone Academy had once sat in the distance, the hemisphere of empty space where ground used to be, now mostly covered by cranes and scaffolding, reconstruction occurring at blazing pace.

  After all, it had only been three days since the explosion.

  Kel was sat cross legged on a park bench, a thin ribbon of purple and black smoke rising over his shoulder from the distant wreckage, his surroundings forgotten, enraptured by the letter held delicately with one hand.

  It read the following;

  Kellin Oakhonour of Duroyed,

  Due to the untimely death of your patron, as well as the circumstances surrounding your pending expulsion from the Voidstone Academy of Arcane Studies, the Academy board has seen fit to issue you with your certificate of completion, bestowing upon you the title ‘Wizard’ and the accompanying rights and responsibilities, including licence to sell Magic and it's byproducts.

  The board grieves with you in this sensitive time, and is willing to resolve the loss of your patron’s sponsorship, including all tuition and material cost, at a restrained pace.

  However, until your outstanding term payments, in addition to damage costs incurred at the expense of both you and your patron, whose debt you inherit, are fully resolved, your licence will remain unissued.

  The amount, in full, comes to 5018 Gold Aro, and 64 silver Elaro.

  Please contact Stoker and Thralls should you require the full cost assessment.

  Should you possess a Mark of Service, or wish to repay this debt through other means, such as a term of service in the Wardline or enlisting in the Imperial Forces, please return this letter to its delivery construct with the appropriate box ticked.

  Kel glanced at the illusory sparrow that had delivered the letter, which shuffled awkwardly and seemed to shrug at him. It appeared superimposed on reality, a drawing brought to life.

  It even had a little navy blue mailbag and cap.

  “Well, there’s always the Plan. Which was to enlist.”

  “But the Plan is dead. And then there’s you.”

  Resting in his other hand, a small, iridescent bronze trinket shimmered, a strange hissing and ticking audible from within. A Mark of Service.

  He didn’t want to use it.

  He couldn’t use it.

  Looking up, Kel took in his surroundings for the first time in hours. He had found himself at his usual park bench, opposite some new housing construction. He looked up to see a young gnommish family, husband and wife, laughing as they hammered in the final fence post of the house.

  A rare smile split his face, which then erupted into first a chuckle, then a giggle, and then a maniacal cackle.

  “5000 gold? Sure, because that’s doable.” he said, in a tone that could be very easily mistaken for sarcasm.

  The little animated sparrow seemed unimpressed.

  “Yeah, well, what do you know?”

  — The Athlorn road, 366.23 days earlier —

  — Roughly 30 minutes after Kel’s ‘defeat’ of the Earth Sprite—

  Externally groaning, for a change of pace, Kel stretched his sore legs, the ride through the Slow field having done very little to help his certainly bruised rear.

  They had pulled off to the side of the coal-black Athlorn road as soon as they had passed beyond the field’s effect, the self-propelled wagon coming to rest with a tap of an inset metal disc at the carriage top, beside their white-robed chaperone, ringed in a yellow glow.

  A chance to stretch, and destress. Kel had taken off his seatbelt in a heartbeat, eager to escape the stifling atmosphere within the vehicle, if only for a few minutes.

  Oshin hopped down from the seats and sauntered over to where Kel was standing beside the carriage, the disgust in his eyes was plain as day.

  “Who the hell do you think-” he spat, as he closed the distance, before suddenly being cut off.

  With a yodelling wail and a whistle of parting air, that same angry little earth sprite landed in the middle of the impromptu rest site.

  Rising from its landing, Kel immediately spotted something small, round and glistening in one of its claws.

  ‘The scuttlebug managed to trade someone for an eyeball, isn’t tha-’

  Kel spun, his eyes roving.

  ‘An earth sprite would sell its own mother for a few eyeballs, if they had mothers to sell, meaning…’

  Someone bought something from that earth sprite. Something that would be worth the trade of an eye. Something, like, say…

  Kel relaxed, as his eyes met a face clearly freshly missing an eyeball. And several more faces. All menacing. All belonging to armed and ruggedly armoured bodies. Rapidly closing in around them.

  It was fine. Just bandits. Who had clearly bought their location from the earth sprite.

  Then, one of the bandits slapped a purple gem embedded in a black metal plate bolted onto her chestplate, lines of purple energy raced across her studded grey armour and into her two swords of the same inky metal.

  Their edges lit up with a crackling fuchsia, even as her form seemed to shrink and then bulge, how distant she truly was becoming impossible to gauge.

  Six more of the bandits began to glow with purple and blue lights of various shades.

  Oh, these bandits seem to be outfitted in Spatial Ethos gear. That explains the Road Shrine acting up.

  All eyes turned to the ninth member of their party. Their white-robed chaperone. The Elf. The Imperial Elven Peacekeeper.

  Who Kel had very studiously been avoiding thinking about. Who the stonemason still would not look in the eyes. Who Oshin had been so carefully sucking up to. Who Kel was fairly certain had read his… expression earlier.

  The noble elven officer stood, a dull silvery pallor in it's skin contrasting sleeveless slitted chrome white robes, light reflecting off the surface of the liquid metal fabric.

  Graceful, slender, hairless arms swept from behind two glaringly white capelets, one hand adorned in a thick, chrome-white band around the knuckles which lit up with wood-grain lines of golden light, his military identification and arcane defences all in one. In the other was an Aean spell cannon, a gleaming white proto-wand designed for casting any of a dozen different spells. Like the obliterating ray that erased Mareo Dunn.

  With a wave of his banded hand, geometric lines lit up on the carriage, symbols and structures of a defensive lilt began glowing, the lights seeming to extrude upwards, raising a pyramid of yellow light above their heads which then flashed from view, only a slight haze of bent light marking where the carriage's dwarven wards had engaged.

  The peacekeeper’s mouth stretched open, just slightly too far to be called smiling, teeth slightly too sharp to be human, and every sound, even the mild arcane hum of the ward seemed to wane, a tense silence taking hold.

  “Do not worry, children. Everything is going to be fine.”

  This, for those not paying attention, is one of those lies you were warned would be told.