Home

I have never had a home, not since I was taken away from my own and it collapsed. 

My parents came from a noble line but had nothing left to show for it but their magic by the time I was born. Worldly possessions and other material benefit slowly seeped away from generation to generation, until it got to the destitution of the bones of the home. 

There was a strong magic vane where my grandfather's grandfather's father decided to build his house.  Over the decades various dukes, brothers and other functionaries tried to negotiate with first my grandfather's grandfather's father, then my grandfather's grandfather, then my grandfather and finally my father. 

My father, at the urging of my mother, finally started saying yes. He rejected offers to buy the land outright or any plan to build anything permanent over the magic vein, but did not turn away those who came to ask to stay temporarily, for specific applications of the magic. 

One of the first boarders I remember was a knight. I remember his armor had a couple of patches of silver still left on it, tarnished and dull, but was otherwise the rusted iron of the base plating. He had come to sit at the vein and dip his sword, then pull it out and press it to his armor. 

I was already big for my age, and my mother told me I would be as big as the knight one day. I wanted to know what the armor looked like when it had been pure silver, and when my mother told me I could be as big as that beast of an iron can that sat in our courtyard, I could not imagine myself as a knight. 

I remember my father commenting that a warrior and a knight were not the same thing. 

I don't remember many of the guests. There were knights and minor mages and brothers and apprentice priests. My father did not permit anyone who might have the power to ask for more to come close enough to the home to even try. So there were no warriors. 

When I was eight there was a minor mage who stayed for several weeks. I don't remember much about him, but I remember the magic he taught me. 

Magic veins could be found almost anywhere, but they had to be there to be found. Once found they were relatively easy to keep open, with the right metallurgical work. The vein of my father's home also cut through rich dirt, which made the magic you could pull from it more potent.

While it doesn't require any kind of special dexterity to bring a collector object to a magic vein in the correct way to transfer the magic, there was always a little bit of run off.

The minor mage showed me how to collect that magic on the tip of my fingers. This could be done to produce all kinds of minor illusions, like circling or cloaking, or even a little bit of conjuring. Nothing that couldn't be done better with a collector. 

But the fingertips, the minor mage showed me, were just a bridge to pull the magic directly into my mind. Not the magic, the ether it traveled through to be in our world and it's world. I didn't know so much about magic yet. 

He also showed me the inside the brain magic. The magic that traded memories for dreams and for visions and for projections and for realities. 

I would see people consumed by their own brain magic for the rest of my life. 

He destroyed the memory that took me from my home and when he was done with me I was alone on the streets of a foreign city. I didn't know who I was or where I had come from. I only knew my name. 

I don't know how many days I spent tumbling through the street like the trash. It was hard to tell what was in the brain magic and what was real but eventually I found an alley to sleep in behind a convent where some sisters of a local order of the single God would wash my bedding and sometimes even feed me. 

School was almost unheard of at that time and in that place. I had had a tutor at home who came a few times a month and knew my basic letters and numbers. 

I first learned to steal there, but never from the sisters, because they had given something to me. I had found a high place to sleep in in the alleyway, and began by stealing from the men who tried to encamp to sleep below. 

I didn't like the way they looked at the sister. That's what I told myself. 

I found pickpocketing from the important people always ignoring me when I begged just as easy. 

Eventually I found the marketplace. I had seen some older children selling wares at a corner near the convent once, and thought I could sell something if I could find something worth stealing. 

There was a stall between two fruit stands that sold jewelry and trinkets. The merchant was fat and laughed a lot and had tried to talk to any woman who made eye contact as she passed, promising to offer a discount worthy of her smile.

I watched and waited until one of the women took the fat merchant's offer and walked closer, hiding behind her and slipping between her legs to get under the merchant's table. 

There was a basket of pretty stones I thought I could grab, if the woman spoke to the fat merchant long enough before he repulsed her, and get away with. 

But the farmer from the fruit stand next to the fat merchant and his jewels found me when one of his apples rolled out of one of his crates and under the table next to me. 

-Hello, he said. 

I knew I had been caught, but he smiled and reached his arm out. 

-Thank you for grabbing that for me, he said as he helped me from under the table and shoved the fruit into my hand.

-Thank you, I replied. 

-They're all fake, he said as he looked over to the stones on the fat merchant's table. 

He asked me if I wanted to help him sell his fruit, and offered me a basket of the apples to take. They were ten bits each, he said, and I could keep anything I got over that, but I had to bring the rest back if there were any. And the basket. 

I took the basket of apples and made off. I sold all of them in an hour, finding that people were happy to pay more the further out from the market I got, because it meant not having to go there. 

I was pretty far from the market when I sold the last apple, but he'd given them to me, so I didn't want to steal from him. I returned to the market with the basket.

The farmer laughed, grabbing the basket from me, and then asked my name. 

-Joao, I said, and didn't say my last name because I'd forgotten exactly how to pronounce it. I'd always had trouble with it. 

-Yoral, the farmer said, and shook my hand. How about you take some assorted fruit? he asked as he started to fill the basket with a couple of the other fruits and vegetables he had.

Yoral explained they weren't his produce, so he'd let me keep a few of the bits that he'd have kept for selling them for his neighbors. 

I took my time this time, going even further out from the market, and eventually found a woman of a house who had use for everything in the basket, selling it for three times what the farmer had set as his price. 

It seemed like so many bits. I gave a couple to the poor box at the convent, bought a new pair of shoes, and had to steal the confection I thought I could buy because I'd already run out of bits. 

I came back the next day, but I never made as much as the first time. When it got cold, Yoral asked if I wanted to come to the farm. He needed an extra shepherd, and he said I could stay in the barn.

I returned my bedding to the sisters, and decided to tell them where I was going. They had tried the first winter I was in the alley to find my parents, but came from a town with a common name. The sisters said the way I mispronounced my name could have also made it harder to find where I was from.

They asked for the name of the farmer and said they knew Yoral, but warning me of his neighbor and her two daughters. 

I stayed in the barn for several years, learning other work on the farm, but never met any of the neighbors.

It was Yoral's daughter, Yorala, four years older than me, who the sisters ought to have warned me about. 

For a long time I didn't know he had a daughter. She had been going to one of the few schools at time, all the way in the Imperial capital, two countries over from us. Yoral did not invite me into his home much, and she had never been there when he did. 

She found me in the barn one night. She had come in with two friends who had come with her from their school. It was one of the new holidays, and their parents couldn't accommodate them so they came along with Yorala.

She had found a small vein of magic in one of the outer fields. I had sensed it when Yoral had sent me out there to pull weeds one day, but I hadn't practiced magic since I first woke up on a foreign street and it didn't look like Yoral knew about it. It wasn't being held open. 

But Yorala did. She had a sickle with her they had collected the magic with, a flask and some weeds they had cut. They rubbed the tip of the bundle and one of Yorala's friends could immediately see me. 

-He has a strong magic, the friend said, and I'd remembered having heard that, and the feeling of my fingertips over the minor mage. 

-He's my father's boy, Yorala explained, pulling me into their circle. The farm hand. 

They asked me to help them kindle the weed for their magic, and a great fire erupted. I thought the barn would burn down, but Yorala's friend, the one who had seen me immediately, made a shape with the sickle to conjure buckets of water onto the flames. 

I'd seen conjuring tricks on the streets but this was so much water. Yorala's friend looked exhausted afterward, and Yorala and her other friend had to hold her up. 

-Strong magic, she said again, and took a deep breath of the white smoke the water and the flame had left behind. 

I stayed up with them the entire night. The other friend knew circling, and they all knew the kind of daring games made more fun by getting to redo them until they're right. 

We climbed to the top of the barn and Yorala wanted her friend to do the circling as we jumped off the roof until we could get ourselves into flight. 

Circling was the way flight was first discovered. 

-Okay, her friend said and did the circling with her totem. She ran to the edge of the roof of the barn and leaped off, letting go of the totem just before she would hit the ground to bring herself back to the roof, totem in hand, making the circle complete. 

Now any of us could jump with the totem and return with the circle. We all tried and eventually Yorala got the closest, we could still see her level when she returned where she started. 

Yorala wanted more, and the next night told me to come with her and her friends to the vein itself. I told her I didn't know where it was but she called me a liar and struck me.

-Anyway, she said, I know where it is dummy. 

I went with them and it had not been quite where I thought. Yorala's friend who had seen me immediately the night before jammed the sickle into the tree behind the weeds, collecting the juice that was coming out into her flask. 

Then the magic opened up. But wood magic is stale because the inside of trees is dead. It made sense that they'd brought weeds the night before. 

This continued for a few more nights but then mercifully the three of them returned to their schooling. I didn't want to know what they were studying. 

Afterward, Yoral asked me if I wanted to marry his daughter. I laughed it off and told him I wasn't worthy. Anyway, I wasn't. And I had no interest. 

Over the next few seasons Yoral persisted that I marry her. There was only so much school she could go to. 

-She is not learning anything useful, he said.

One day the Imperial Army came marching past Yoral's farm.

Yoral greeted them kindly and offered them to stop for a meal or drink. He called me out to help.

The captain explained they'd found a magic vein on the neighbor's land, and I knew it must have been the one the sisters told me about. 

They would be staying to open it up and build a forge for the local guard, whom the country's King had neglected. 

Not long after that, Yoral demanded that I marry his daughter. 

I had not told the Imperial Army about the vein on the outskirts of his land. It was very close to the neighbors. I don't know if I kept it to myself out of pity or because I thought the Imperial Army already knew and it wasn't worth their trouble.

It would have been a pain for him. 

I had another option. I went to the encampment the Imperial Army had set up on the neighbor's land and said I wanted to enlist, under one condition, that they send me as far away as possible. 

There was a major mage there, and he sensed the strength of my magic immediately.

-Try this, the mage said, handing me a crystal. 

It was the first time I had seen one. They were the strongest collectors, and could wield kinetic magic.

But everything was in the brain magic and the mage pushed my fingertips into the crystal while calling one of the guards over, then knocking him out with one punch.

-Send him to the nearest training camp, the major mage told the captain. 

-I want to be far from here, I repeated. 

-It's far enough, the captain said. Everything is far. 

I spent one season at the training camp of the Imperial Army, where they stripped me of everything, so that I could become a warrior for them, wielding the magic to strengthen my blows and absorb theirs in my mind. 

I don't remember much about the training because so many of the memories were burned in the process of it. 

But I served the Empire with great distinction. I was there, at the Bronze Gate, to repel the Barbarians and their ash magic. I was there when the great army of the Empire marched through the continent to consolidated the countries of the Emperor, so that every King and Prince would bow to him. 

None could hide from us. We pursued the hoarders of magics, herbs and metallurgies across the continent and beyond. 

My magic was great. My magic is great. It is a warrior's magic but I'm not a warrior anymore. I never was. 

They had perfected the violence of the magic. And they had perfected it in me. 

I served the Empire with great distinction as a murderer and plunderer. And it's all a blur. 

They almost took my life for it. I remember that. 

There was so much plunder, and it all had to be transported to nearby capitals, and some, always, all the way to the Imperial capital. 

And it was all counted. The army had counters, who used the circling to ensure an accurate count. No one would steal from the Empire. 

I was tasked to watch over a home Into which all of the town's treasures were brought into, because it stood on a hill but had been the home of some old gardener. 

I enjoyed sitting outside and watching the view, even when there were still pillars of smoke. 

When the counters returned, they said there had been several crates of loot missing. I don't remember what. I remember I didn't steal anything. I only needed to steal for the Empire. 

The sentence was death. I saw the axe I was to be beheaded with before one of the Imperial high priests stepped in to stop it. 

I had a strong magic, he said. 

They let me go but I refused to stay and fight anymore. I wanted to go home. 

My magic is strong. They said, we'll let you go, but don't use it. 

In my campaigns across the continent I did find the town my family was from, on a map showing us a route that went a different direction. 

I decided after getting away from the Imperial Army with my life that I would try to find my parents.

It was then I learned that my mother had taken her life not long after she thought that mine had been taken, and that my father had spent years looking for me before finding himself stranded on the other side of the continent, where he joined a monastery and wrote to my uncle, who told me everything he knew.

But he was not really my uncle and didn't want to have anything to do with me. I went wandering. 

I even left the continent to find out who I was or where I could find a home. 

Everywhere I saw the fruits of our work for the Empire. Fearful people living in ruins. Broken minds addled by magic, eating even ashes to get a sense of something. 

It was there that I started trying to help, to use my magic to try to bring people's minds back together. I thought mine had already been lost anyway. 

The things I remember don't matter as much as the things I don't. 

I remembered the vein in the dirt at the home of my father and I remembered watching the people eat ashes. Ashes we had defeated, but we had nothing better to offer them.

I had to return to my continent. I didn't know what to do. 

I knew I could return to the Imperial capital. Despite the wrong done to me, I had a record of distinction with the Empire. It had to be worth something. 

I needed to do something. By the time I got there my mind and body were broken. I had fallen off my horse. 

I arrived in the Imperial capital a beggar. I had murdered, I had plundered. I had broken myself. 

It had all started innocently enough, on the street tumbling like trash. Everything comes down to something. 

There I was again, tumbling in the Imperial capital. I was bigger than a boy now and a life behind me but there were so many more people.

I served the Empire with distinction, I told them. Anyone who would listen.

Everything was getting so much more brutal. What could I do to stop it? My magic was strong. 

I met Avila the first time here, or I saw him the first time. I heard him. I would meet him later.

One of the preaching priests. I'd met one or two when I stayed in the alley behind the convent, they were always very kind and I knew I'd disappoint them. 

I heard him doing his preaching. He told a story about a soldier in one of the foreign Kingdoms, who saw that they were plundering innocents. He turned on his men to stop it and they killed him for it. The preaching priests loved martyrs. 

The story was not about me. The soldier had a name. I don't remember it. I remember asking someone next to me who was preaching. Brother Avila. No brother of mine. 

What had I done?

I stole and I lied and I plundered and I murdered.

And I watched. 

I went tumbling through the street. I could feel the pain. The wrath of it.

It had started raining and to get dark. 

I met myself face to face in the rain.

It's never going back to what it was.

Some city guardsmen had started yelling at some poor woman who had gotten in the way of something or other. 

-Stop, I yelled. 

The woman looked to me and the city guardsmen laughed. 

I could do something. The in the brain magic. I let it out, watching the city guardsmen lunge at each other before they did.

My magic is strong. They said, we'll let you go, but don't use it.

Why not?

 -Get out of here, I told the woman. 

More guards would be coming. They'd roughed her up bad. I could take it for her. I don't remember what she looked like. It got burned away when she got better. 

Then the city guards with the bigger armor came. Nothing in their minds. Thick helmets.

I remembered the knight. I could never be a walking can. The silver was just the coat of it. It's too soft to be armor. It's good for magic. 

-He's gone mad, I heard one of the city guards say.

-He served the Empire with distinction. 

That time I laughed.

When the magic gets turned back on anyone, it hits hard. I'm anyone. That memory burns, but it sticks.

-I give up, I told one of the city guardsmen, throwing my hands up as the robe flapped under my arms. A warrior. Submit.

They pummeled me and pummeled me. I gave up. They pummeled some more. 

I lay there and I was finished. Just do it, then. The pain is always everywhere, until the last. 

One of the city guardsmen grabbed me by one leg and then another grabbed me by the other. 

They dragged me by my legs down the street. I wasn't tumbling anymore.

Leave me here. Let me go. 

I watched the sea of feet drag past me.

I had finally gotten to the Imperial capital and it looked right upside down. 

I already knew which way the jail was. I'd been there a few nights earlier as a vagrant. A new word for living. 

But they kept dragging me down the rough street. Past the jail. Block after block, or maybe they'd been circling. I couldn't tell anything anymore. 

He's gone mad, they said. Who?

Who? Why?

Too much of the magic. Or not enough. 

My magic is strong. My magic was strong. I'm not. 

I remembered the sisters. I couldn't remember my mother. My head kept tumbling down the street as the guards dragged me along. 

My mind was strong enough. I could see where I was going before I got there. 

I was going home. 

I was going to the asylum.