The mories whirled in his head.
Half ford images: Forests hed never seen. Towering old n standing on altars. Landscapes blasted by war and teeming with monsters. A floating mass of dark.
Scents ca next: scorched at. The rusty, sour stench of blood. Others he could not decipher. Then sounds completely alien to his ears: cries from beings that were neither mortal nor animal.
Ti held no aning.
His mind spun faster and faster, teetering on the edge.
And then, it was over.
The pain disappeared, leaving him gasping for breath as the golden glow dimd, wavering like a candle in the dark. As soon as he could think again, his mind began to race. Confusion and fear threatened to overtake him, but he pushed it down.
Think, he gasped. Adapt.
He had a sinking feeling.
Your mother...she had a hard ti bringing you into the world.
Thats what Mrs. Lu had said; maybe that ant his mother had taken a long ti in labour birthing him. If so, then by law, he might have been eighteen by sunrise, but he wouldnt have lived a full eighteen years until soti late in the day.
Or, late at night.
And if he had really just passed into manhood, then logic would an only one thing could have happened to him. Dread filled him. He didnt want to look, but he had to. With a trembling hand, he reached up on his desk and fumbled for his knife.
It clattered to the floor.
Shaking, he picked it up and slowly hacked at the shoulder of his shirt.
Please be nothing, but if it has to be sothing, please be The Sage, please be The Sage, he muttered.
With one eye closed and one eye squinting open, he held up the knife to catch the reflection of his shoulder in the steel.
No, he gasped. Both eyes flew wide open.
Reflected back was a glowing mark. A Heros Mark, but not the staff of The Sage, nor the horned helt of The Champion. What stared back at him was a mocking grin from the twisted face of a jester with bulging eyes and a belled cap on its head.
The blade fell from his fingers.
The Fool.
Hed worked so hard. Hed pushed himself to get into the greatest school of wizardry in the entire world. Hed lost his parents. Hed taken care of his sister. Hed endured a bully of a boss for more than a quarter of his life.
And for what?
Uldar had reached down from his oh-so-mighty place above and branded him as The Fool?
Oh go to hell, Alex growled.
The rage hit him with full force. He stopped thinking.
Think. Adapt.
Think. Adapt.
Think. Adapt.
His mantra brought him back, but he had no idea how long hed lain on the ground, throwing out every curse word at Uldar hed ever heard. But, it was pointless: it wasn t like the god was around to hear him. Only he heard his own protests.
And maybe that was a damn good thing.
Okay. He clutched the desk and dragged himself back to his feet. Okay. Lets think about this. Lets think about what we know.
His heart was thudding as he threw himself down in his chair. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Okay. So. You got the Mark of the Fool. Worst mark you could get.
He talked to himself; it helped him focus.
That ans so church officials are gonna drag to the capital and make fight monsters with a bunch of strangers. Each of them are gonna be hand-picked by Uldar and have damn crazy powers. So, where does that leave ?
He needed to write this down. The glow of the Mark had faded until it was only a dull outline on his skin. He needed so light. Concentrating, he began constructing another spell array in his core to conjure another force ball.
Then his brain exploded.
mories flooded him, cramming their way into his mind like wild dogs on a piece of at. Every mistake he ever made while practicing magic ca back along with every single setback and mont of frustration. They destroyed his concentration and the array began to twist.
Ah shit! he grabbed his head. The spell array warped. Panic surged through him: if the array ford with its shape so twisted, then the mana feedback might blast him unconscious. Even worse, the circuit might form wrong and make so wild magic erupt out of him. The image of blowing up the Lus inn and watching a second ho burn down, nearly made him pass out in panic. He abruptly shattered the array before it could do any damage.
As soon as he let go of his mana, it all stopped.
He puzzled at the sudden silence.
What the hell? He slowly brought his hands down. What was that?
Frowning, he tried to speak words of power.
The flood returned.
Every mis-pronunciation. Every wrong word. Every stupid mistake hed ever made shoved their way into his mind until his words were a stream of useless gibberish.
Grimacing, he stopped speaking. The flood stopped, leaving his mind calm. It took him a few monts to organize his thoughts. Then a terrifying possibility hit him. Oh no...no, no, no.
Quickly, he dug out one of his candles and lit it; when the tiny fla caught on the wick, he dragged a book from his bag and slamd it down on the desk.
A History of Our Heroes and their Opposition of the Ravener, by Finnius Galloway.
Alex flipped to the second appendix: each generation of heroes was listed with their originating towns, where theyd died, and their most important deeds. At the back of that was a definitive statent on what each mark did, compiled from the descriptions of multiple heroes of previous generations.
Alex flipped to the Mark of the Fools entry and began to read out loud:
The Mark of the Fool is a useful, but pitiful mark. While The Champion is granted incredible strength, speed and the martial skill of all his predecessors, The Sages mana pool expands many tis, and The Saint gains a divine connection to Uldar himself, the Fool gains no great gifts. In so ways, it is the opposite of the greatest mark: The Chosen. The mighty Chosen gains lesser versions of the three preceding marks and the ability to synergize them all, but The Fool gains nothing. In fact, the Mark of the Fool actively interferes with any action related to Combat, Divinity-
No, no, no. Alexs blood turned to ice.
or Spellcraft-
His words trailed off. Interferes with spellcraft!? He was going to Uldar-damned wizard university! He glared at the thing on his shoulder. The thin, glowing jesters face seed to cackle at him while it utterly destroyed his life.
Trembling, he forced himself to finish reading. If he didnt, he mightve lost his mind right there and then:
-but in return, The Fool gains vastly accelerated learning of any skill unrelated to these areas. Thus, The Fool can beco the Heroes guide through the wilderness, learn to operate watercraft, scout enemies, repair equipnt (though they cannot craft great weapons), and take care of horses. Such things are needed on every adventure. Previous Fools have also beco fine painters, jugglers, musicians and mastered other such skills. And yet many parties have defeated The Ravener even after their Fool has been killed, betrayed them, or is otherwise absent. Uldar, however, is infinite in his wisdom: Fools serve as the heart of the Heroes Party, which is perhaps why such marks find their way to young folk of good nature and good humour. Perhaps that is also why the deaths of previous Fools have motivated Heroes Parties like the deaths of no other mbers have. Thusly, even absent, a Fool can bring a Heroes Party to greater heights. If a Fool is reading this now, I encourage you not to despair, for though you might not be greatly rewarded by history, fulfilling ones duty is a reward on its own.
Yeah, thats easy for you to say. I wonder how many of The Fools thought that Uldars wisdom was infinite, Mr. Galloway. Alex slamd the book shut and shoved it away in disgust.
So that was it? Alex Roth: big brother, revenge enthusiast and future wizard forced into the role of nanny, clown and sacrificial lamb? No matter what he wanted to be before he got so Mark he didnt ask for?
Oh sure, he muttered bitterly. Ill just give up my whole life so that writers can pity , I might die and in the end theyll just build a statue of that makes look like the guy parents think about when they tell their children not to talk to strangers.
And while Im off risking my life, Im abandoning Selina and giving up all hope of attending Uldar-damn wizard university! Wait, speaking of risk... let check sothing.
He dragged the book back toward him, flipping through the records of previous Fools and counting the amount of entries that read disappeared or tragically killed while-.
He shuddered when hed gotten to the end.
Half of them didnt make it out of the final fight with The Ravener, and the survivors didnt do much better. So were maid, so made a fortune in the arts, or beca good rchants, but their reputations chased them for the rest of their lives. It was like that for all the Heroes, but having the reputation of Epic Champion was a lot better than being the guy nad The Fool and being known for being useless. Most of them had left for other lands, it looked like.
This just got better and better.
For one crazy mont, he considered trying to cut the mark off with his knife. He shook off the thought for what it was: irrational. And the last thing he needed was more irrational right now.
Right. So: accelerated learning of any skill unrelated to these areas.
No Divinity, Magic or Combat. What did that an? He snatched up his pen and flipped to a new page in his record book: the handwriting on all the charts was ssy. He might have been a quick study with a pen, but his letters didnt look pretty, no matter how much his teachers had tried to correct that.
He wrote a sentence: I, Alex Roth, am the unluckiest person in the entire Kingdom of Thaland, and it ca out like a chicken scratching across a page after sticking its feet in ink. Narrowing his eyes, he started writing again below the chicken scratch. This ti, he focused on trying to do better.
If he was right-
The flood of mories ca back, but in an entirely different way: every single lesson he had been taught on writing. Every mont when he had written sothing in a slightly neater way. Every triumph ca back in great detail, laying out how hed achieved each previous success at bettering his writing. While the mories of his magic failures had been chaotic and ruined his concentration, these mories neatly organized themselves in his mind, as though guiding his hand as he wrote.
By the ti his pen had dotted the period, he was staring at the best looking writing he had ever produced. It looked like soone else had grabbed his book and wrote the second sentence for him. Carefully, he tried it again. The mories ca back. This ti they were joined by images of him writing the sentence he just had; everything hed done right just now floated up in his mind, guiding him to do even better.
The third sentence was slightly neater than the second.
He repeated the experint a few more tis, each ti improving his handwriting in slight incrents. The neater letters also grew easier for him to reproduce without thinking so hard.
So, thats how you work, he noted and started neatly writing down his findings:
The Mark uses mory.The Mark will bombard and distract you whenever you do anything related to what the other heroes are supposed to do: fighting, magic and working holy acts. It does this by using every failure or mistake youve ever made and flooding you with it until you cant concentrate.The Mark helps you when youre trying to learn sothing outside of those: it gives you everything that youve ever done or heard of thats right and presents it in a neat, little package. This lets you build easily on every success youve had and avoid things that made you fail in the past.
He tapped his pen on the page, thinking back on what had just happened. He wrote down sothing else:
Question: Does it make it impossible to use magic?
Alex sat up in his chair and closed the book. The wood creaked beneath him. He blew out the candle, dropping the room into darkness. Last thing he needed was more distractions.
He took a deep breath and steadied himself.
Concentrating, he began to construct the array again. Slowly, this ti. The flood ca back, attacking him with every single failure hed ever had. It pushed its way into his mind, but instead of pushing back, he let it co while holding the partially complete array inside himself.
Think. Adapt.
Think. Adapt.
Think. Adapt.
He repeated his mantra while letting the distracting mories roll off, just like he had done with all the grief of the past four years. Patience guided him as he monitored the stream: as each mory forced its way into his head, he let them pass and built the array a little more in the brief instants between. Slowly, it neared completion.
Then he started to speak the words.
The flood flowed faster, interfering with his speech.
He shut everything out. Every noise. Every distraction both in and outside of his head, just as he had when he was first learning the spell. The flood was just like McHarris bakery or the inn on a busy night: it was loud but if you went slowly and carefully
you could get past it.
Then he had a thought that was so significant that it burst through the flood:
What if it wasnt just about getting past the noise?
As he finished the array, he started to pay careful attention to every failure the mark was spitting at him. He examined each mory, trying to analyze them through the chaos. So ca too quickly to pick up on. They were just noise, but others let him see his failures clearly.
Let him see how he failed.
For the few failures he figured out, he did the opposite of what he had in those mories.
The array ca out slightly different from his earlier ones, and when he grounded it and completed the circuit, he felt an imnse rush of mana.
Voom.
He opened his eyes to find a bright red glow illuminating the room. Another ball of force floated at the tip of his finger, and he nearly scread in triumph.
It was bigger than any hed made in the past: about one and half tis the size with a much brighter and more steady glow emanating from it. Creating it was slower. It had been more difficult. But it had been better.
He shook with excitent; one could learn from failure too.
Alex opened the book and wrote an answer beneath his question:
Not impossible.
It could be done, and that just ant it was hard. He could work with hard. Working for McHarris was hard, but hed done it. Learning the beginning magic from rotted books in the church library was hard, but hed done it. Helping his sister and the Lu family was hard while studying and acing every evaluation at the church school was hard, but hed done it.
And what was the common thread with all those? Hed done it all for him and those he loved. He threw a dirty look at the history book. It wasnt for so god that tried to tell him what to do, Heroes that didnt need him, or a populace that would think of him as a joke. His sister needed him. He needed himself.
He could still use magic; it was just slow and difficult right now, but it wouldve been impossible without the powers of concentration hed developed by learning how to deal with his grief. Hed need ti to truly learn how the mark worked. Explore it. Develop it and himself, and use it to learn sothing helpful.
He wouldnt get that ti if he was off playing servant to a bunch of Heroes.
Which left one option: Looks like youll need to write disappeared under the entry for another Fool, Galloway. He stood and clenched his fist. Because Im getting the hell outta here.
There was sothing important that Galloway ntioned about seeking out Uldars priests. If he had to seek them out, then that ant they didnt just know where he was.
But theyd likely start searching soon.
He needed to get out of Thaland as quickly as possible. Hed need to cover up his mark, wake Selina and get-
A...lex?
He froze.
His head turned slowly as though his neck were attached to a rusty lever. A young woman stood in the doorway, her long, black hair tied back. She gripped a key ring in calloused fingers.
Theresa Lu.
His oldest friend was gaping at him, with eyes darting between the red ball above his finger, and the jesters face on his shoulder.
I she said. I was coming to talk to you, but I heard you saying all these weird words through the door, then I saw a red light. I asked if you were okay, but you wouldnt answer -
Oh shit, hed tuned out everything.
-and I got the spare keys and let myself in...and
She trailed off.
He took a deep breath. Alright. Ti for Plan A.
Lying.
Okay, so. He straightened himself up. This is not what it looks like-
It looks like you got The Mark of the Fool.
-okay, so its exactly what it looks like.
Well, Plan A was dead. Oh well, Plan A sucked. It was thought of by a guy nad The Fool; of course it sucked. Ti for Plan B, then.
...too bad Plan B didnt exist.
So, uh, his mouth went renegade while his mind raced. Thing is, uh...you know-This...this is the worst birthday Ive ever had.
If youre leaving. She stepped into the room. The door creaked as she shut it behind her. Then I want to co with you.
Alex blinked. ...what?
Reviews
All reviews (0)