The Mage Teacher

The sight of the face without a mouth kept running through my mind every time I closed my eyes. It had caused me to begin twisting and turning. Her words echoed far around and deep in my mind. Each of her words pierced me, cutting me continually. The horrific sight of her, paired with her words that cut like knives caused me to stay in perpetual fear.

Finally my eyes were forced open, awakening me from that terrible dream. Unlike with most dreams that normally fade away almost immediately after waking up, this one had been different. It didn’t fade away. Instead it felt so clear, it was as though I was still dreaming about it.

Looking around the room I was staying in, I saw that it was partially ripped to shreds. The curtains had tears in them, and part of the warm, soft bed sheets I was in had also been slightly cut. Maybe I pushed myself a little too hard trying to learn wind magic yesterday night. I got most of it down, but I’ll need to practice it some more. This room may be a bit more costly than it was initially now that I was certainly going to pay for the damages.

Well at least now I had more than enough money to pay for it. But still, eight hundred thousand copper per night is insane! I wouldn’t have even been able to afford a room even if the guard at the gate hadn’t taken a fee. I may have to consider giving up this room after tomorrow night since the price would start getting out of control.

Remembering I had planned to meet Hibiki at four, I decided to start getting ready using the luxuries of this expensive room. While it was still early, I knew I could at least stop by the library ahead of time just to wait. I also had something I wanted to check up on while I was there.

Since I had an idea on how to push healing magic further, there was no point in looking for more magic to learn. After all, I didn’t want to learn from all these terrible books. None of them even really teach properly.

What I wanted to look into was how a mage takes in an apprentice. I know I wouldn’t want an apprentice yet; I still wanted to do things by myself and with Fae when I meet her again. But I also think at some point I would like to teach an apprentice of my own. Reaching the bathroom, I could see the large bath, the sparkling toilet, and lovely sink. The sight made me rush to try everything in this bathroom.

After spending two hours in the bathroom, I was finally ready and still managed to have some time like I planned to. I left my room, only slightly opening the door so that I wouldn't expose the destruction inside to anyone. Skipping my way out of the inn, I was met with the same gorgeous sight of the capital once again.

“Ah. Once again it’s such a wonderful day. I could get used to staying here.” I spoke out loud as I stretched my arms.

I made my way towards the library, admiring all the beauties on my way. There were carts of people selling their wares with smiles and the demihuman children were playing around with one another. I even saw a lot of people talking with each other and laughing about something.

I arrived at the library a bit later than I meant to, but still entered as though I had gotten there perfectly on the time I had wanted. I waved to the woman I had seen yesterday and seeing me, she quickly approached.

“Why are you back already?” She asked.

“What do you mean? I’m here to return these books and look at new ones.” I answered, confused.

“No one ever uses the library this much, It’s awfully suspicious.”

“What a waste of a perfectly good building.” I responded to her statement.

With a sigh, she took the books I was returning and went off somewhere in the library. Assuming this was confirmation to keep using the library, I made my way into the labyrinth again. This time it seemed to be far more confusing. The signs for the book I was looking for in this case did not guide me clearly either.

It was most likely in the magic section, so I painstakingly made my way through to find it. After possibly spending more than five minutes looking, I finally found the section of magic I had seen yesterday. I began looking through the shelves for the type of book I was looking for. The titles seemed very confusing and not related to anything I wanted. Eventually I found something that might’ve been similar to what I was looking for.

It was called “The Mage Teacher” and it seemed to be a picture book. I took out the book and kept looking through the shelves for anything else that may serve better than a children's picture book. While I had found something else, I still didn’t have much hope as it was titled “Fairy Tales, Beasts, and Learning Magic”. Still, I decided to pull out the book and stopped looking at the shelf as I had already wasted too much time doing so.

I took a seat at the table nearby and I started with the larger book that also had a larger title. I skipped straight to the learning magic section and flipped through it quickly, hoping to find something. However, it appeared as if any hope I had for this book had been misplaced as it simply taught the basics of learning magic and nothing more. Such a useless section! Like the other books about learning magic, it doesn’t teach properly and it doesn’t even go over specific elemental magic, just theory.

Trying to find any value in this book, I flipped through the fairy tale section, hoping to at least find something interesting there to make up for the time I invested into finding this book. As I sped through the chapter, I found one with a title that seemed to catch my interest, if only for a moment. It was called “The Rot”.

Hmm. It was an interesting title at least. I guess it’s worth a little more attention. The fairy tale began by speaking how The Rot was not natural but artificial. Its creation had likely been a grave mistake but it was unable to be properly dispensed of afterwards. The Rot was a dark substance that replaced what looked like the water of a lake. When The Rot had its prey in its grasp, it would pollute them. If the prey had managed to get away fast enough, only their blood would suffer from rot.

However, if they get away a little too slowly, their skin would start decaying as well, putting their lifespan and free thought on a timer. If they could successfully infect another living thing with the disease The Rot had given them, they could be cured from the disease. However, if they couldn’t do that in time, they would lose their sense, and with decaying flesh and bone, they would become an Agent of Rot. Their role was similar to The Rot’s, however, they would die after infecting another. Where they would die they would create a brand new lake of Rot, so that it would spread around more.

Then there was what happens when a living thing stays in The Rot for too long. Each thing it consumed would simply decompose into the spiteful creation, causing it to completely erase the poor thing from the world. A fun fact about The Rot, is that each time it consumes a pure hearted being, it’s colour lightens slightly.

Well that was certainly interesting. I guess this book does have some value after all. Even if The Rot isn’t real, at least it was a well written idea. I could easily scare the children of the village with something like this. If it is real then I’m just happy that I didn’t encounter it.

Come to think of it, I did kill a Chimera. Maybe I could find something about that in the beasts section? I quickly went through the book and looked for the beast whose life I had ended a while back. Finding it, I began reading. The beast seemed somewhat boring as it only consisted of different animals, and while it became increasingly rare as time went on, there wasn’t anything else too special about them.

As I was about to close the book, disappointed with how boring the last chapter of the book had turned out, I noticed something. It said in the book that hunters fight Chimeras en masse just to receive their prized scarlet blood as a trophy for display.

The Chimera I killed however, didn’t have scarlet blood. It’s blood was black, and was destroying the ground it touched. Why did it have black blood then? A thought occurred to me, but I just as quickly pushed it out of my mind as I did not want to acknowledge the possibility I had just thought of.

I realized I had gotten a bit too invested in the book and was starting to be late for my meeting with Hibiki. As I began to get up from the table, I remembered I still had one more book I had pulled out. While not the most excited to read it, I could easily finish a picture book before going. After all, it was a book for children.

I sat back at the table and opened up the book. I flipped through the first few pages to get an idea on how many characters there were. There only seemed to be two for this story, plus a narrator. In the spirit of picture books, I began reading aloud.

“In the great capital of Milarch was a mage and a young boy who was her apprentice.” I spoke for the narrator in a voice that resembled an elderly man.

“Good work. Keep it up and you’ll keep learning in no time!” I gave an excited voice for the teacher.

“Really?” Lending a far more timid voice to the apprentice.

“Of course! You have great potential.”

“Let me try again!”

“The days went by and they kept practicing. Then days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years.” An older voice spoke monotonously. “As time kept going, the teaching the apprentice received slowly became slower and slower.”

“Teacher, why don’t you teach me anymore?” A timid voice asked.

“It’s better to slow down our pace. You’ve already learned a lot.” A dulled tone from the teacher came forward.

“The apprentice started to dislike his teacher more and more as she taught less and less. One day, it had finally caused the young man to snap!” The narrator spoke with more vigour.

“Please teach me! it’s been so long since you taught me!” The once timid apprentice spoke with anger.

“Seeing the rage in her apprentice, the teacher decided she would teach him his last lesson tomorrow. As the sun rose the two had made their way outside.”

“Alright, repeat what I do.” The teacher commanded.

“Okay!” The apprentice eagerly responded.

“The teacher summoned a great wave of water that washed away an entire home. The young boy tried to copy what she had done, but had failed two times. The teacher asked him to give up for today, but the apprentice wasn’t ready. With the last of his M he summoned forth the spell perfectly, and seeing his work pay off, he passed out.” The narrator narrated.

“So I guess you are ready then.” The woman spoke, stroking the hair out of his face.

“The next morning the boy awoke to find a ring on the counter with a letter.” The letter described what the ring was and where his teacher had gone. Tears streamed down his face while reading the letter.” The narrator commented.

“I’m so sorry, teacher.” The boy spoke regretfully.

“The letter had spoken of how the jewel on the ring was created by the life force of the tea…” My voice for the narrator cut off abruptly.

Realizing the parallels to the end of my story to the book, my hands began shaking. The book fell out of my hands, flipping to the next page where I could see what had become of the teacher in the story. A pile of ash.

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“Ugh. Where did all this stupid ash come from? It’s such a pain to clean up.” A memory of my mother’s words came rushing back to me at the time, filling me with more despair at what may have happened.

“I’m sure Fae would be proud if she were…actually nevermind.” The memory of the words from Iris pierced my heart.

My mind had just now filled in the words she had stopped on.

“I’m sure Fae would be proud if she were still alive.” I spoke in a despairing tone.

The words now exiting my mouth caused the colours around me to quickly become flushed from my eyesight. All other thoughts in my mind had been replaced with something else which wiped away all rational thinking.

It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.

It took an eternity before a different thought forced its way through the mix. I sold the ring which Fae gave me. The only one Fae would have ever made. The realization of this caused me to run out of the library, knocking the chair down as I sprinted away.

I sprinted and sprinted and sprinted and sprinted and sprinted until I finally made it out of the library. My mind had become far more perilous than any sea. I ran through the Capital, looking for the shop I had sold the ring at.

On my way over, I spotted a guard and asked him about Fae. He simply responded by telling me the Crimson Mage had not come back to the capital.

“How could you?’

“Monster!”

“All you do is destroy!”

“It’s all my fault.”

“It’s all my fault.”

“All you do is destroy!”

“Monster.”

“How could you?’

“Monster.”

“It’s all my faul..”

“All you do is destr….!”

“How could y….?’

“Monste…!”

“Monst…!”

“How cou…..?”

“It’s all my f…..”

The thoughts had been plaguing me as I ran. They had been repeating so often in my head they had jumbled themselves up and distorted, causing any thoughts to stop coming to my head altogether.

Finally arriving at the shop, I pushed past the large crowd, not caring about anyone in my way. Seeing the large man at his forge working away, I quickly ran up to him and grabbed him from behind. Feeling the force of my hands, he quickly turned around and gave me a confused look. I was out of breath and couldn’t create words so I only huffed and puffed at his confusion.

“What can I do for you Celestia?” He finally asked.

“R-r-r---r-r-ing.” I push out from my exhaustion.

“The ring?”

“Y--y-yes.”

“What about it?”

“I n--need it b---back.”

“I’m sorry Celestia, but it’s already gone.” Flint responded to me in a worried tone.

The despair had fully set into my eyes. I released my death grip on Flint and stumbled my way away from him.

“Celestia a-are you okay?” Flint had been confused and shocked by everything happening.

Saying nothing in response to him, I stumbled my way out, not caring for whoever was in my way. I couldn’t walk straight at all. I swayed from side to side and tried to go anywhere else.

“It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.” I continued muttering as I kept trudging down the path.

At some point I had walked so far that I had reached the gate of the Capital. My eyes were hollow. None of the light from the sun remained. None of the vibrant colours I once praised, were there. Nothing remained.

I stepped out of the capital but was stopped. I didn’t care and tried not to listen to the rabble around me. They spoke anyways like the annoyance they were.

“His lordship, Clauffer Von Verse, would like to speak to you.” One of the men stopping me declared.

I didn’t care one bit for what he or this Cougher guy wanted to say. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. Yet in this lack of care I decided to follow along with him. Or maybe it wasn’t so much a decision as it was what my body decided to do with the lack of consciousness in it.