“So, why exactly did you feel the need to delay this conversation?” Murdin sat on one of his couches in the living room of his house. Sen sat opposite him.

  “It’s a bit of a story,” Sen replied.

  The man arched an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. He crossed his arms across his chest, or tried to, but winced before letting his arms fall loosely across his lap.

  “I was afraid, mostly.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  The question felt like a turning point. Sen could either tell the truth, or he could try to work his way around it all. Lying like that sounded exhausting, and an easy way to lead him down a path he didn’t want. Distrust would make it harder to continue learning under Murdin, if the mage ever found out. And that assumed he would believe him at all.

  Sen decided to go for it.

  The story fell from his lips like a river. Sen began from the morning of his last day, and continued on, detailing the horde of monsters, and eventually the giant, massive darkness that had ended everything.

  He felt tears begin to fall from his eyes, but he didn’t let himself stop. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to start again. Murdin’s concern grew as the story continued, and his eyes opened wide with alarm as Sen recounted how he woke up in Tane’s body, memories mixing together.

  Despite his obvious alarm, Murdin allowed Sen to continue - but the set of his arms and the cast of his eyes made it clear he was fighting his reactions. The story didn’t take long. He woke. He fought. He died. He woke again, and then he asked Murdin to be his apprentice.

  Murdin’s hands clutched at the couch beneath him. He sat, tense, looking at Sen and searching for something. Sen couldn’t say what.

  “I begin to see why you were afraid,” Murdin finally said. His tone came out delicately, reserved, as if attempting to choose the right words. He left much unspoken. Sen’s story sounded like just that - a tale. Not something that could fit into reality.

  Sen only tried to give him a small smile, but it felt more like a grimace on his face. “This world you died in,” Murdin began. “It is the same as the one we live in? You lived here before the Crossing?”

  “Yes,” Sen replied.

  “Then…” Murdin trailed off, realization dawning on him. Sen died during the Crossing. That meant the life that Murdin and everyone else here now had came at the expense of an entire world of people.

  “This is hard to believe.” Murdin stared at the floor. His jaw sat open, tongue occasionally trying to wet his lips. His mouth worked, grinding as he tried to find the words to continue.

  They sat in silence for a while. “This all seems unbelievable, and yet… I saw a sort of proof with my own eyes. Can I see you do that again? Summon fire into your hands?”

  Sen obliged him wordlessly. He stuck his hand out, and with a slight draw on his mana, drew the rune for fireball in his mind. It appeared in his hand with no forewarning, and Murdin jumped at the sight. “Incredible,” he whispered.

  Sen held it like that for a short time before letting it go, the flames dissipating into the air. “To be frank, Tane - Sen? - I don’t know what to think of all this.”

  “Tane is fine. Sen is fine. Whichever you prefer.”

  “Do your parents know?” His tone implied a certain question in it, one that bit at Sen.

  “It’s not like Tane died. He still exists. We’re the same person. There’s just… more to us,” Sen finished, frustration in his tone. This is what he was afraid of. People would think he had killed Tane. Replaced him, like some sort of monstrous creature taking his place. “But no. They don’t know.”

  A pained look came over Murdin’s face. “It is probably for the best you hadn’t shared all of this,” he said. “I certainly can’t fault you for it.” He paused for a moment, taking a breath.

  “How about this. Let’s leave all of that behind, for now. Tell me more about this magic of yours. How is it different? How does it work? What can it do?”

  Sen was taken aback at the sudden change in demeanor. It was like Murdin had shed his own skin, swapping out nerves and concern for the gleam of genuine curiosity.

  He wasn’t quite sure where to start, so he decided anywhere would be fine. “The magic used to enchant objects is not the only kind of magic that exists,” Sen finally said. Murdin looked at Sen, waiting for more. It was the first time he’d seen the mage look totally interested in a subject.

  “What else can you do with this magic?”

  “Well, it depends on what runes you know,” Sen began. He started with the basics, mana.

  “Hold on,” the mage said, holding a hand up. “Mana exists everywhere?”

  “Everywhere,” Sen confirmed, “just like the air we breathe. Everything with a soul produces it naturally, and unless they have incredible control, some of it naturally falls into the world around us.”

  “I see,” he said, tapping his chin. “Please, continue.”

  Next, Sen moved on to runes, and how they were used in scrolls. “So, if I understand you correctly, you have the ability to create different elemental magic simply with the power that your soul gives off?”

  “Yes, more or less. It’s not quite that simple, but if you know the runes for a specific spell, and have the skill to cast it…”

  The look on Murdin’s face made Sen laugh out loud. He couldn’t help it. The old mage, with his lined face, looked for all the world like a sad old dog at the news Sen had just given him.

  The man glared at him even as he apologized. “I’m sorry,” he chuckled. “Just, the look on your face,” he said. “You looked so disappointed, I couldn’t help it.” The mage crossed his arms, and this time didn’t let any pain stop him. “Well, you see how it feels when you realize all the work learning to properly engrave an enchantment is outdone by someone who can just conjure magic with no work at all.”

  “That’s not true,” Sen defended himself. “It takes just as much effort to properly memorize the runes needed to cast these spells. It took me months to memorize fireball well enough so that I can cast it.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Once again, Murdin seemed to swerve instantly, his attention piqued by the new topic. “So, how do these runes work? Can you show me one?”

  Sen couldn’t help but grimace at that. “Yes, but I’ve… sadly, I never had the chance to learn more than a handful of runes. It was common to copy spells from a reference.”

  Surprisingly, that didn’t temper Murdin’s enthusiasm at all. “So, you’ve lost probably as much knowledge as we did during the Crossing.” A sad look came over his face. “I am… sorry. For your loss. I never knew. Nobody did. I don’t… The gods…”

  His face blanched. “The gods…” he muttered. “They must know. They probably—”

  Sen stopped him with a raised hand. “It’s fine. It’s probably better if I’m the only one who remembers what was lost.”

  A strange look crossed Murdin’s face. “How could that be better?”

  “If everyone knew their new lives were bought at the cost of every life this world already contained,” he said, “would that not cause either chaos or angry? It probably wouldn’t be the gods who suffered from that knowledge.”

  Sen recognized the look on his face now. Sadness. Pity. Murdin’s face seemed tired, then, a look that Sen had rarely seen on him despite the lines, the clear age wearing on him. He had never looked so tired before.

  A slight nod. “Did you lose anyone?” He asked softly.

  Sen stared at him. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t, because it took everything he had in him to hold back the tears.

  Yes, he wanted to say. My sister. My master. The few who I counted as friends. My parents.

  Murdin stood, perhaps seeing something on Sen’s face. He crossed the room to him, and gave him a hug.

  The tears ripped free, a flood down his face, and a small part of him collapsed, deflated. The small viper in his mind had been, for the moment at least, defanged.

  ***

  When Sen recovered - with no words spoken by either him or Murdin, though Murdin had brought him a small basin of water to wash his face with - he took a sheet of paper and began inscribing a rune. It was a simple light rune.

  It still troubled him that he’d somehow lost all of his skill when casting light. Or, rather, that the skills he had refined didn’t seem to work the same way, no matter how he approached the problem.

  Murdin watched with rapt attention as Sen detailed the rune. Light itself had a somewhat simple rune. The difficulty came from a necessary level of precision that Sen still struggled with, even with hundreds of hours experience crafting it. He worked slowly, ensuring no parts moved astray.

  The difficulty with most runes came in two different aspects. Those parts varied depending on the rune, and the spell that rune worked with, but almost all of them could boil down to a scale of one or the other. The first was precision, which needed exacting detail in the placement of each part of the rune relative to the other parts.

  The second was the form itself, and all of the small details that made up the big picture of the rune itself. Light had a large circular area, then a spine that crept out from it. To him, it looked almost like a flower, with many small rays shooting out from its bud. Overall, it was an easy rune - he had simply neglected actually learning to inscribe runes to the level he should have.

  Sen shuddered at the thought of the shock rune, which carried a fractal pattern that not only scaled up in size, but required utmost detail. If any part of it was out of line, the entire rune could become useless. It had taken him months to refine it enough to be useful.

  Murdin glanced up at him, but when he didn’t stop working, returned to the slowly growing rune. Light had a number of curving lines, and several hundred small flicks that crept off from its central arc. Slowly, the rune came together, until finally Sen finished the entire piece with a flick of his wrist.

  “This explains how you learned to copy glyphs so easily,” Murdin mumbled not quite under his breath. “This makes glyphs look like child’s play.”

  “This rune,” Sen finally said, “is for a light spell.”

  “What color of light?” Murdin asked inquisitively, hand touching his chin.

  “All of them,” Sen said as he activated the spell on the paper. A slowly flashing ball of light appeared from the paper, colors changing periodically. Sen had managed to slow how fast it changed, but hadn’t managed to stop it from changing at all. Internally, he sighed at the disappointing show of skill. Murdin, however, didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, and so stood with mouth wide, excitement pouring out of him like a child finding a new toy.

  He looked at Sen, then back at the light. Then back at Sen. He continued like that for a moment longer, before finally speaking. “Incredible! With glyphs, it takes a specific design for every color. Intensity, length of time… it all changes the final product. And with this, you can do anything.”

  Sen dropped the spell, leaving his eyes to adjust in the relative darkness. The paper lay on the table, burns seeping out from the inked rune. It wouldn’t work again, and he would have to create another.

  “Is that normal?” Murdin asked.

  Sen nodded. “Inscribing a spell into a medium like paper usually ‘burns out’ the paper’s ability to channel mana into the spell. Paper usually lasts for only one cast, while something like stone or gemstones can last multiple times.”

  “That sounds surprisingly similar to glyphic enchantments,” Murdin remarked.

  “It does, but I don’t think they’re related much, if at all.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The power of something like this,” Sen gestured to the expended scroll on the table, “comes directly from mana. The medium - paper, in this case - doesn’t actually do anything except hold the rune in place. With a glyphic enchantment,” he said while holding out a warmth stone that lay on a nearby table, “power comes directly from the object itself. Somehow. Mana is only used to ‘link’ the glyphs to the object. Uh, somehow.”

  “Somehow, I get the feeling you both know and don’t know what you’re talking about,” Murdin chuckled.

  Sen shrugged. “That’s true enough. I was only an apprentice of my magic. I would have made journeyman in another year or two, but I had a solid enough understanding. Mostly, I think my understanding Fiddian magic needs work, but…”

  “Fiddian magic?”

  “That’s what I’ve been calling glyphic enchanting. I didn’t know what it was called. Incidentally, we don’t have a name for my magic. It was always called magic. Maybe Ceriddian magic?”

  Murdin shrugged, then moved on, uncaring. “A moment ago, you suggested that glyphic enchanting used mana. How can you be sure?”

  “When I made the glyphs that prepared parts of the wardstone, I had one that didn’t want to activate.” Murdin nodded, following along. “At first, I struggled to activate it. That happened because I had too much control of my mana, and the glyphs tried to take it to form their ‘link’ with the stone.”

  “Interesting,” Murdin said, trailing off. “Does that mean…”

  “Yes,” Sen responded. “I believe it does mean that anyone who was thought to be unable to use magic actually can create glyphic enchantments. They simply have to learn how to control their mana.”

  Murdin sat down at that, a sad look on his face. “I wish I had known,” he said softly to himself.

  Sen gave him a moment. Murdin had lived a long life. It wouldn’t surprise him if the mage had run into at least one or two people who’d been thought to be incapable of using magic. It didn’t take much of an imagination to guess how those people were treated, if their ‘condition’ were known.

  The average person might think it wouldn’t be a big deal, considering how many people never learned anything about magic. Unfortunately, the group that found out about such problems would be more likely to be someone who had immersed themselves in magic. Finding out they couldn’t create enchantments would make them an easy target for. Not only that, if they got far enough to find out, they probably had a sudden and irreversible need to find a new path in life.

  “Well,” Murdin finally said, “what’s done is done. Can I ask you to teach me the basics of that sometime? Controlling your mana? I would… I would like to be able to help those who run into a stumbling block like that.”

  “Of course,” Sen replied.

  Murdin clapped his hands. His face changed, erasing the sadness on his features. “Now, where were we? Tell me, how did you kill that garoush? Did you use any of this magic of yours? I’d love to know how…”