The Old Mage

The court fades, leaving you at the table. Looking down, your own shimmering silver form begins to firm together, the body of a young human woman rising from the mist. You're wearing a simple set of magician's robes, ones you recognize as such somehow beyond your understanding. The other people at the table begin to fade and diffuse into the air, melting away toward their cores, leaving only balls of multi-colored light where they once sat. All but the mage, who looks at you eagerly. The table begins to shrink, leaving only the two of you and the judge.

"So it is, the possession of this new body falls to the pair of you."

The table shortens and folds inward on itself, making the room ripple and readjust. The **** pulls you and the mage together, melting his old form into your own. You remain in front of the judge, just one person surrounded by the balls of light. Each of them slowly draws in, crawling into your ears with tingling electricity. When you and the judge are all that remains, they nod.

"So it is."

The room cracks, the sound of rushing water seeming to fill the cabin with the torrents of an ocean. The judge shimmers silver one final time, giving you a flash of the image of a great dark figure, writhing with an unknowable amount of tendrils. It fills you with terror beyond imagination, reducing you to an insect in the face of a god.

You lurch awake, cold sweat seeping into the collar of your mage's robes. The sun has begun to rise on the forest. The castle towers up above you, a sharp cliff edge hiding the bulk of it from view. You are down on a sandy shore, the outlet of the passway pouring into a dirty-looking stream beside you. It pours out into a lake, around which are a set of thick woods. The day is young, peaceful. You pick yourself up and dust yourself off. You hadn't noticed your body before collapsing, to see it now, it's a perfect mirror of what the old man described. A cloud-like mop of frizzy ruby hair hanging somewhat dirty around your head, trapping heat agonizingly well. Under your robes you can feel tight skin, a certain lightness in your step, unmistakably female features on your chest and between your legs. They still swim somewhat in a semi-numbness. The youthful energy and meagerness of your features give the impression of somebody just recently striding into their adulthood.

"If we are going to share this body, perhaps you should become accustomed to my voice."

You freeze for just a moment, recognizing the voice of the mage from the dream.

His voice seems like he's holding back laughter at your expense. "Have you so soon forgotten the sound of my voice? That is my body you're carrying around."

You hadn't really anticipated carrying somebody around with you when you woke up.

"The others are all here too, but you and I are the... main characters, so to speak. You and I should learn to get along, we're somewhat inseparable now."

A memory flashes into your head, it is hard to say whose it is. Whoever it is, they know at least a good amount about how this area is laid out in theory. There's a large gap where the castle now is, the river that runs from it to the lake is as well. A map, certainly and fortunately, but an aggressively antiquated one.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself, it seems you have no proper name, but some of us still do. My name is Ardenne, is not was, I have not yet lost myself to the ocean of the afterlife. My preparations and magic in life prepared me for that dark journey, and now, here I am again. A name is a temperamental thing, a thing as much earned as it is appointed. I could dub you Ardenne, but you have not yet become Ardenne."

He has no shortage of passion for elaborate words and speeches. There are three key things that he tells you in the space of his introduction. Firstly, that magic is the secret key that controls all things. Secondly, that his willingness to help you will be based on how he feels you are pursuing things that benefit him. And thirdly, that you should head south. Of course, the time it takes him to tell you this is such that by the time you actually start moving south, you feel the anxiety of having delayed too long already burning inside of you. By the time you slip into the southern treeline and out of sight of the castle, he's begun to tell you an embellished version of his life story that threatens to drag on for hours, if not days. Of course, embellished is a good way to describe it, it seems almost tailor-written to avoid giving you strong detail about what he wants or what he might ask you to do in service to him. For now, you move south, better to be rid of the castle behind, even if it is in service to the requests of the old fogey. The forest slips to either side of you, the air inside warm and damp.

"Ah!" He cuts himself off, "You wonder why the air changes so quickly. It is a field, most likely. One constructed by the witch in that castle to keep her lair secret. Many magic-users do it, keep the changes small but wide-reaching. Make approach inhospitable, it doesn't need to be impossible. She makes the approach uncomfortably temperate, punishes the heavily armored. She's not afraid of other mages, but she doesn't want to deal with an army."

All of that from a small increase in heat and humidity, "What did you do?"

"Ah, you have a voice! Granted, the one I wanted you to have. How much of your will is your own remains to be seen. I worked in the grand college, I had no need for anything this far-reaching. Though, I will admit, my door was harder to find for some."

"Is that where we're going?"

"Ideally, yes. You need to become far more powerful than you are now if you want to stand any chance against that witch back there. The college can help you, I know the secret keys, find it and we can plan for our defense against her spells."

Why would you ever want to go back there? Better to put the place in your memories and find your own way.

He seems to read this, "I will be truthful with you and I will be brief. Based on your limited memories, even I cannot know what she intends to do, what I do know is that the magic processes she is trifling with can destroy all of reality. Try as you might, there will be no hole deep and dark enough for you to hide in when it comes time."

"How can you know?"

"Conduits, my dear, are no small matter. To create a single one is to create a vessel for pure magic energy, not a thinking and feeling being. To make a homunculus is one thing, they're relatively simple creatures. No offense. Conduits have one purpose, to enable spells that you cannot achieve alone. To have no other mages who will aid you, to need conduits, you likely plan something which would... lack sympathetic ears. The first rule of magic dear, best to assume the worst until proven otherwise."

"How long would making a new set of conduits take?"

"To make simple conduits, a decent mage could make one in a week. These were no ordinary conduits, you were no ordinary conduit. Sit, hold out your hand."

You take a seat, putting your hand out in front of your face.

"Curl and uncurl your fingers, picture electricity arcing between the tips."

You do, you sit there for several minutes, curling and uncurling your fingers. It succeeds in making you feel tremendously stupid. Sweat is beginning to soak into your robes, you would do just about anything to get up and leave.

"You are doing well, picture the electricity shooting up your arm. If you are having trouble or feeling uncomfortable, it could help to take off your robes."

It takes you a second and picturing his smiling face in your mind to catch his dirty suggestion. You continue for another several minutes, picturing it is easy, nothing is actually happening though. The old man tuts in approval. A bird comes and lands on your arm.

"Good, good. Now blink twice at the bird."

The bird explodes, painting your robes in gore.

The old man lets out a long wheezing laugh. You're left stunned for a while as you blink and wipe the viscera off of your face. "That never gets old!" He squeals. "You have power in you alright, that was meant to just set the bird on fire."

You stand up and keep storming to the south, letting the old man's laugh trail into your mind.