I; Sigel, Home of the Magi

  I dreamt a dream of fire. Of flame and ruin. I dreamt an end to all things, an end to everything that ever was, an end to everything that should ever be. I dreamt of the end. The bitter, wrathful end.

  For a certain, I thought the dream would never end. Sometimes, here and there across everywhere, it would be silent. A creeping silence, withered inside and out. Nothing more than dread silence and the ever maleficent dark. Yet soon enough, as if sure of itself bereft of my hopes, it would come again.

  Building, again and again, like a melody reaching its climax. Screams of blood and woe would rape my mind, scatter my body and wreak despair upon my soul. And it would never stop…

  Until it did, leaving me to the dark and the cold once again.

  Over and over and over and over. Never ending, never ceasing. An endless cycle, on and on again. I dreamt the end, and in doing so I became neverending.

  It was centuries. Years. Months. Aeons. Seconds and minutes. It was eternity. But somewhere along the way, as if heaven itself sought to soothe my suffering, the silence became the dream’s whole.

  A waking silence became my lot. There was no sight to see, nor scent to smell. Neither touch nor taste was mine to know. Yet I could hear: I could hear men and women with the most grand and austere voices talking about me. Talking over me. Talking about what to do with me.

  “You must kill him!” my most hateful opponent would plead with a voice like iron and rust. Too many times, he’d say this. He’d caution this. More than once, twice or thrice. Too many times. Too many times to be forgotten.

  But another voice dripping with a golden sting would always stay his hand. “Never before have we seen such an awakening. Not even Cel’s was like this. Such an opportunity is this that I will not have crushed on the basis of some superstition and the ever-lingering malaise of fear!”

  “And so you’ll do it again?” the iron would mock and question. “Was one demon not enough? You saw what became of Sandel, yet you would allow this… this filth to flower once again?”

  “Aye,” the gold would reply. “Aye, I did and I will. He’ll be watched, ever dutifully, and if Cel’s stain is to be seen again… you can have your blood.”

  I must’ve heard these words a thousand times. Barely a difference, barely a change. The same voices, the same men, and yet throughout it all, my mind only wondered one thing: what happened to Sandel?

  My home, if barely one could call it such a thing, but it was the only one I ever knew. The home of my mother and the home of my… my mother…

  I knew that much, at least. I remembered that, if nothing else. My mother was dead.

  Dead, burned, buried. Was she buried? Did whoever rescued me bury my mother next to that tree? The place she wanted? Did they? Would they? Would they even care to? No one… no one ever really cared about us. Why would they now?

  So it was this cycle of doubt, fear, paranoia, peace and silence that I was to repeat for another thousand leagues of wrought time. Was it weeks? Probably years. It certainly felt like years. The same conversations, the same attacks, the same defences, over and over again. Until suddenly it ended and I awoke from my slumber.

  My eyes weakly shuddered, if for but a moment, before bursting alive to a world of warmth. The heat of candlelight danced upon my face while my body was warmly nestled within the confines of rich, unfathomably comfy furs.

  I looked around at the room I had slept in, packed to the brim with bookshelves on every side. The walls were engraved with thousands of ancient, storied sagas.

  Tearing the fur blanket off, I shifted to the side of the bed and stretched my left arm.

  Where am I? I was dressed in the most rich clothes I’d ever seen: a beautiful, magenta tunic tightened around my waist with a black rope. Who changed me? Who brought me here? What is this place?

  Hunched on the side of the bed, I took a deep breath. A breath of life, of lustre, of pure, cleansed air.

  To my left, upon the bedside table, was an odd mirror wrapped in glorious gold. Taking hold of it, I held it to my face and saw myself staring back. Changed.

  My hair, thankfully, was the same as it ever was, a light brown, if somewhat touched by the faintest strands of auburn. Yet my eyes were wrong. They were pink. An odd and eerie pink, dancing within a thousand tadpoles crimson and scarlet.

  “It happens to us all,” a golden tongue comforted.

  Instantly recalling the voice from my dream, I looked down the bed towards the wooden door, now open, and saw an old man with a great, grey beard garbed in hooded black robes. His eyes, a clean, unfiltered gold, watched me with nothing but warmth.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Who are you?”

  “Not ‘where am I’, is it?”

  Great. I’ve never been a fan of people who dodge questions like that. Just some vain attempt to appear interesting. “I’m sure I would’ve got to that. Where am I, then?”

  “Sigel,” the old man informed me with a smirk, walking into the room and trailing his withered, yet strong hand along a shelf. “Formerly Sigelia, once upon a dreary time. You were brought here after you awoke to the Magia of Fire.”

  “I awakened Magic?”

  The old man raised a brow, a slight smirk on his face. “Most remember it vividly… you don’t, then?”

  I shook my head. “I just remember…” I remember my mother, her brittle body, curled and bent, burned beyond recognition. I remember my mother and her head, and nothing more.

  “It makes no matter,” he expressed, “you should be thankful. Some never get over it.”

  After a short, painful silence, I remembered his first words. “What happens to us all?”

  “Why,” he chuckled, tapping his cheek. “The eyes. Hair too, sometimes… although it’s become increasingly rarer.”

  A voice that drips with gold… golden eyes: “So you’re some Gold Wizard?”

  The old man croaked a hearty laugh. “I forgot you peasants call us Wizards! It’s been so long. But yes, I’m a Golden Magi.”

  “And I’m…” Fire, he said. Magia of Fire.

  “Not a Magi,” he preemptively corrected me, tilting his head. “Not yet. But you awoke the Magia of Fire.” Flicking the spine of a red tome, he mused to himself: “I must say, it’s rather curious you’ve pink eyes.”

  “What are they meant to be?”

  “Red,” he curtly answered, slowly making his way to the base of the bed. “Or orange, sometimes yellow. Pink’s not too odd a deviation, mind you, but it is curious.”

  Pink’s basically red, isn’t it? Just… queerer. “What’s curious about it?”

  “Never you mind,” he shrugged, holding out a hand. “Curiosity will serve you well here.”

  I placed the mirror back onto the bedside table and took his hand, rising from the bed. Instantly, my bare legs were hit with a cold draft.

  The old man did a light nod and turned towards the door. “Come.”

  Looking down at my feet, I let out a light chuckle. “I don’t suppose you’ve boots for me?”

  “You’ll be supplied your uniform at the dorm. It comes with sandals. Boots, on the other hand, are for a lesser class of men.”

  I followed him out of the room into a great hall. High above us, stained glass windows bearing the majestic heroes of ages past filtered golden light into thousands of colours as they beamed across the hall.

  Right as I was about to ask the old man who they were, I realised a glaring error in my knowledge. “What’s your name?”

  With his hands behind his back, the old man stared up at the heroes, his golden eyes brimming with reverence. “I am Sig the Fourth, Headmaster of this Academy.”

  “Common name, huh?”

  “Ha!” he barked. “Yes. I suppose it is. Tell me, during your time at the village,” the old man began, raising his eyes to the grand glass as we walked. “Did he ever speak of the ‘Age of Stagnation’, your elder?”

  The Age of Stagnation? Elder Gregor wasn’t fond of me enough to talk much about anything, but I can’t recall him ever mentioning such an ‘age’. “I can’t say I have.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he remarked, a slight smirk appearing under his grey beard. “Few know of the concept—but I thought if any in your village did, it would be him.”

  “You knew him?”

  “A little,” Sig whispered. “Better than you, I imagine. He was a wise man—as wise as one of his standing could be. Either way, the Magi of Sigel, for aeons unending, have classified the ages into two eras. We’re currently in the Age of Stagnation… we’ve only ever been in an Age of Stagnation… and we’ve been in it for far too long. An Age of Gold is needed.”

  The Age of Gold - it’s certainly an auspicious name. “What separates them?”

  “It’s in their names,” he answered. “The Age of Gold is the age of one—one nation, one man, one God. An age of Magi and Men, united under the arcane might. Whereas the Age of Stagnation is the opposite—as we have now: several nations, superstition runs supreme, soon-to-be Magi themselves are slaughtered by the hundreds in Angles, Lincaia and, recently, Montgar. Only this fair Kingdom of Raelad remains hospitable to us.”

  “And what is an age of men alone called?”

  “It’s never been,” he laughed. “Curious your mind would wander to such a thing. Regardless, we’ve a knack for squeezing through the cracks of persecution. Thus, we have no name for it.”

  “And why is it called the Age of Gold?”

  The old man stopped. “For it is a golden age. Why else?”

  “Hmm.” Looking around the hall, I noticed the distinct lack of anybody. “Why’re you telling me this?” Why alone. Where’s my foe of iron gone?

  “Why do I tell you this? Just an old man’s murmurs. Nothing more.” He raised his hand and clicked his fingers, and with it the wall beside us opened and revealed a wide circular room carved of stone the shade of black ichor. “This shall take you to the base of the tower. From there, I trust you’ll find your own way.”

  I slowly walked into the room, yet stayed my feet a moment. “What happened to Sandel? Call me… curious?”

  “Terrible things,” he replied. “But it was not your fault. You did not awake of your own volition, none saw the signs. It is nobody’s fault, but especially not yours.”

  And yet I did. Whether or not I care much about anyone besides… mum… you cannot kill someone in whatever lapse of sanity you might call an ‘awakening of magic’ and then, so naively and so vainly, claim ‘It was not me! I did not do it!’

  But he would no doubt try to console me or some other pointless shit if I pressed on, so I nodded instead and entered the room. Like it was alive, the door closed and the world began to lower itself.