Albatross

Southwest of where the final battle against the Demon Lord took place, there was a province called Vyndel. Like many of the provinces in the southern region at that time, it had a severe lack of manpower during the war against the Demon Lord. As such, it too was met with a plague of bandits, beasts, and eventually, the remnants of the Demon Lord's army after the end of the war.

Vyndel was nothing special. It had small towns and villages, most of which subsisted on farming, lumbering, and raising livestock. They had little in the way of luxuries and the denizens had poor education. It was the countryside amongst countryside, where people were born in it, but few would come voluntarily. Even so, for the denizens, it was where they were born and raised, where memories of family, friends, and loved ones reside. For Albatross, it was home, one which she could no longer return to.

During the war, young and able men were drafted to fight on the frontlines, leaving the small towns and villages on the outskirts largely defenseless. In those days, bandits and beasts roamed freely in these lands, looting and ravaging as they pleased whilst the armies fought at the frontlines. Though soldiers would come and hunt them every so often to protect their supply chain, the army could never get rid of the bandits and beasts completely and they always returned in force. A large-scale operation to fell them all in one swoop was in the plans, but due to the mounting casualties on the frontlines, there was never enough manpower to execute it.

The villagers, poor in wealth and education, could only stay put, fighting off the threats as best as they could while praying that the war ends soon. They knew that there were no livelihoods to be found elsewhere should they move.

As the war appeared to be coming to a close, the bandits and thieves began to realize that their golden age too was ending. Making the most of the final days, they banded together and swept across the countryside like a swarm of locusts, looting and plundering till there was nothing left. Vyndel, being one of the provinces on the outskirts, suffered the same fate as the others.

Realizing that they no longer stood a chance, the villagers finally began to migrate, deciding that starving to death elsewhere was preferable that what fate awaited them had they stayed. Their realization, however, came too late, as the bandits were already nearing their doorsteps by then.

For Albatross, the memories of that time were a mess. She remembered people moving from one place to another frantically. She remembered her mother, a bulge on her belly as she approached the last months of her pregnancy, stuffing her into a wagon filled to the brim with others. She remembered the wagon she was on pulling away as her mother slowly faded into the distance. Back then, she didn't understand why they didn't just get on another wagon. It was only later did she realize that there must have been too few to carry them all and that some had to be left behind.

After that, she remembered arriving in a city. The place was huge and filled with people, more than Albatross had ever seen in her life. However, the city was cold to them. She recalled the looks of disgust cast their way when she and the children were begging on the streets. Due to the war, supplies were scarce, even more so after the ravaging of the countryside. The city did not want the extra mouths to feed.

As fate would have it, Albatross was eventually picked off the street by a mage who saw potential in her and brought her to the Mage Tower. However, when Albatross showed that she was unable to wield Aether, the mage was deeply embarrassed and as retribution sent her to the workhouse within Lancea, where she would be made an apprentice-in-name, where she would be stripped of the name given to her by birth and was given a name more fitting for her new role, Albatross. She was even told that she should be grateful that they even let her have a name; it was as if they saw her and the other apprentices-in-name as nothing more than animals.

It was only sometime after did Albatross discovered that she was, in fact, a late bloomer, her affinity with Aether awakening much later in her development than most. By then, however, she dared not reveal her talents. She had become privy to too many secrets by then.

Due to the curse applied to them, the mages let their guard down around the apprentices-in-name, seeing them more as drones to do their bidding than people. Albatross, of course, was no exception.

Though she had little understanding of the curse placed on her and her fellow apprentices-in-name, she realized that only those untrained or talentless with Aether were cursed. The regular apprentices, at times privy to just as many, if not more, secrets than her, did not have such a curse applied to them. It wasn't that the masters were soft on the true apprentices; the mages Albatross knew weren't so soft-hearted. Always, they were wary and paranoid, even towards their own apprentices. Especially if it were their own apprentices.

Having learned over the years that as a mage condenses and gathers more Aether within their body, the greater the magic resistance within their bodies becomes. Albatross reasoned that the masters might have thought it pointless to cast the curse on the true apprentices as the curse would simply not work over time due to the apprentices' growing magic resistance.

Albatross also realized that a technique was being cast on the apprentices-in-name once every month during their so-called 'health check-ups.' It could be that they were reapplying or strengthening the curse that had been weakened by the apprentices-in-name's innate magic resistance during these times. If it were the true apprentices, they might have to reapply the curse at even shorter intervals, making it a major hassle.

With these hypotheses in mind, Albatross began to train in secret, slowly condensing her Aether over time, determined to get rid of her curse. She could not tell anyone of this either, because if the mages learned of her abilities, they surely try to get rid of her. After all, unlike their own apprentices who were mostly privy to only their master's secrets, Albatross knew secrets from too many factions and had no loyalties whatsoever. Recruiting her into one faction would put many others at risk, making both her and the faction that took her in a target.

Worse yet, if they were to suspect her to be a spy from outside, somehow hiding her abilities from the elders and her resistance to the curse to obtain and leak their secrets, a likely scenario due to their paranoia, they would no doubt torture and interrogate her. She decided that if worst comes to worst, she'd rather go out on her own terms than suffer that fate.

Albatross had seen what the mages would do at their cruelest and feared the worse for herself. Even so, she wanted to leave, and to leave, she must get rid of this blasted curse. Even while fearing for her life, Albatross kept training.

However, having to work during the day and train during the night was taking a toll on her. Her condensation training wasn't going smoothly either. While Albatross had significantly increased the aggregated Aether within her body since she began, she noticed a significant lull in her development in the later stages.

Albatross reasoned that simply absorbing the Aether in the air was no longer enough. She needed to find a richer source of Aether, something akin to the Aetherglow herbs sought after by the apprentices.

It was around that time did she receive an offer she could not refuse. It was more of an order, but Albatross wouldn't have refused either way. She was to be the exclusive courier for a new apprentice, one under one of the elders no less. Albatross had heard rumors about them, about how they were this supposed super prodigy, that they impressed the elders so much that they made an exception and took him in outside the recruitment period. It seemed that the elders intended to keep their identity a secret and limited their contact with the outside.

Albatross figured that if she managed to get close to this prodigy as one of the few people they get to interact with, it may bode well for her in the future. And so, when she met Theodore, she decided to make the best of her situation and exploit the new apprentice to the fullest. She wasn't going to die in this god-forsaken city. She was going to get out of this city, she wasn't going to let the mages do whatever they want with her, and she was willing to do anything to reach that goal. Or so she thought...

***

End of Chapter 46

***