Becoming a Mage In a New World

"Enter." Maros heard from beyond the door.

Reaching for the doorknob, he opened it without further hesitation.

Inside the room, a woman was sitting behind her desk, chipping away at a small stack of paperwork before raising her head to regard Maros.

"Maros." Her eyes fell upon Aryn in his arms. "What's this?"

"I need your help. His conduit shattered around eight hours ago." Maros tried his best to stay calm despite the stress flowing through his veins.

The woman, Priscilla Iris, was the headmistress of one of the two major magic academies in Gleryl, Dawnthread Academy. Also the closest High Mage to Heriin that could be reliably found on short notice.

She seemed to be in her 30s — though Maros knew she was far older, not that he would say that to her face — with long, curly brown hair and vibrant orange eyes that reminded one of the glowing embers left behind by a dying fire.

She had on an eye-catching light-blue robe with the likeness of the sun emblazoned over her heart and around the cuffs of her sleeve.

Her elegant, rounded reading-glasses caught a glint of the fading sun through the window behind her as she looked at the boy in Maros' arms, then back to his eyes as she set them down on her desk next to the unfinished paperwork.

"Eight hours? Shouldn't he be a corpse by now?" Priscilla asked, not expecting nor waiting for an answer.

She sat up from behind the desk and walked to the side of the room, where a couch lay in the corner.

"Set him down here." She waved the silent, and very nervous Maros over.

He complied without another word. Setting the shivering form of his son on the plush brown couch before taking a step back and looking expectantly at Priscilla's back as she leaned over and touched Aryn's head.

"How did his Conduit shatter? Better yet, how did he even crystalize one at such a young age?" She looked back at the ragged Maros behind her.

"Please, just help my son first. I can tell you after." He pleaded, beyond exhausted.

"I thought you had no kids?" The Headmistress looked at Maros in the eyes.

There seemed to be a tension rising as the two mages' eyes remained locked in silence.

A silence that soon shattered when Maros broke the stare and Priscilla sighed, removing her hand from Aryn's head and rubbing her own in frustration.

"Fine." She gave him a pointed look. "But you aren't leaving until I get my answers." Pointing to a seat near her desk as though he was a stubborn apprentice awaiting a scolding.

Maros obediently took the seat she pointed to, passing out as soon as he touched the cushion.

***

Headmistress Priscilla Iris POV

With a sigh, Priscilla focused the full depths of a High Mage's senses over Aryn's body.

"Oh?" She was pleasantly surprised.

His soul wasn't leaking out into the physical world.

The reason the destruction or removal of a Conduit from one's body is so often lethal is due to its purpose as a bridge between the ambient mana in the surroundings and a mage's Will. Which can be considered a substantive part of their soul.

When a mage's Conduit is damaged — normally through combat, immoral experiments, or the practice of dangerous techniques — the weight of the physical world is allowed to seep into this bridge and damage the soul directly.

Under normal circumstances, the mage would be unable to resist the weight on their soul and lose consciousness within a minute or less.

When they do, their soul would then be expelled from whatever space lay beyond their Conduit — Priscilla was no expert on the soul and its matters — and the mages soul would either be crushed under the weight of the physical world, or remain as a ghost of some sort, unable to cling to their dying flesh.

What caught Priscilla's attention in this particular case was not that the boy was still clinging to life.

An Apprentice Mage was more likely to survive than a full Mage due to the lacking stability of the connection. Their Conduit would completely collapse before their soul could be expelled or damaged too severely.

Most wouldn't survive the soul damage, but it wasn't unheard of to be lucky.

What really surprised Priscilla was the unnatural state of his heart. It seemed to her as though the boy had somehow managed to damage his Conduit while attempting to form a Mage Heart.

While an Apprentice Mage trying to form a Mage Heart is anything but unheard of, she was simply baffled by the level of fuck-up necessary to achieve the truly "impressive" feat of shattering one's Conduit entirely while doing so.

She frowned and thought a little more deeply into the matter, quickly realizing that that simply shouldn't be possible.

'Something like this can't be done by accident.' She looked over at the thoroughly passed out Maros.

She first suspected that this was a case of an ambitious mage running an immoral experiment in search of more power. But the effort Maros would have to exert to get here all the way from Heriin in only eight hours could not be faked so easily in front of the eyes of a High Mage.

No simple experimental subject could be worth the strain he had put on himself to do so.

'Which leaves two other most likely scenarios.'

Either the boy's condition was the result of an immoral experiment by a power-hungry mage and the culprit was simply someone that could hide from Maros' senses while doing so.

'Unlikely. Maros is nothing special, but his house is warded out-the-ass thanks to that old coot, Aryn.'

Or...

'The kid tried a dangerous technique then?' Priscilla pondered as she pulled a blanket over the boy to stop his shivering.

She didn't know what technique might have caused this, or how the boy would get access to it. But she suspected it hadn't entirely failed, or the boy would be dead rather than only have a bit of soul damage.

'I suppose I'll just wait for the bum on my chair to wake up and give me answers. The boy will be fine on his own given time for his soul to heal.'

The elegant looking High Mage sat back down behind her desk and began working away at the last of her paperwork while inwardly rejoicing that she could get her answers out of Maros for free.

A pleasant smile crossed her face as she signed a paper detailing the results of an inter-academy event that had taken place a couple months ago, indicating she had read it.

"Eat it Daren, my school's better!" She pumped her fist in the air.

***

Emilia Mayer POV

Emilia was panicking at the moment.

She was stretching by the pond after a pleasant morning run when she heard a loud bang. She had immediately gone to check what was going on, only to find her husband and son gone, a footprint on Aryn's busted door, and an open window.

'What happened?! There's no way someone could break in, right? It would take someone powerful to break in without activating the wards, and that wouldn't explain why Maros is gone too. There's no sign of a struggle bar the door either, and that was broken from the hall.' Emilia's mind worked overtime as she tried to piece together what happened.

She paced back and forth in her son's room before an open book caught her eye. It was sitting next to a few others she recognized as the ones Maros had handed to Aryn to read.

It was open to a page that she recognized. Maros had nearly killed himself a number of years ago attempting what it detailed. She wouldn't so easily forget.

The pieces started clicking together in her head, and she didn't like what she saw when they did.

'Aryn tried forming a Mage Heart...' Her eyes widened and her breath quickened.

Few things could rattle Emilia. She had slain monsters three-times her size, and men twice as terrible. But this was a different kind of fear.

"Please... Not again." She whispered to herself, grasping at her shirt over her stomach. She was hyperventilating, trying to focus on anything but the situation to keep herself calm and rational.

Unfortunately, as her eyes wandered the room in search of a distraction, all she found was the books her son was reading. She looked away, only for the clothes he had discarded messily on the floor to catch her attention immediately after.

She hurriedly left the room and headed down the hall towards the stairs. "I'm sure he'll be fine... Aryn will be fine... Maros will make sure he's fine."

She walked past Erica as the loyal maid went to check the sound shortly after her.

Erica said something as she passed through the hall and down the stairs, but Emilia couldn't tell what. She continued walking. Out the front door, taking a right when the path split, away from town and into the forest along the main road to a neighboring farm town.

She needed to calm herself down, and she knew one way that always worked.

***

James POV

He was getting that feeling again. The same one he got shortly before he abandoned his adventurer party, becoming an outcast and having to resort to banditry to get by.

It wasn't his fault. If he had stayed, he would've been torn apart by that abomination of a bear too. But the Adventurer's Guild didn't care. No one wants to team up with someone that would turn their back on you in heartbeat when things get tough.

But James didn't regret running. Being a bandit was better than being dead.

He wouldn't regret running now either. His instincts had never failed him before. He would trust them now too, and they were screaming at him to run.

So he did. Or tried to, at least.

As soon as he got out of sight from his fellow bandits — a small group of nine, excluding himself — his instincts switched from telling him to run, to screaming for him to hide.

He got under a thicket of bushes and roots without hesitation, smearing himself in the surrounding dirt and mud in the case that whatever was coming had a powerful sense of smell.

If James was one thing, it was a survivor. The last thing he wanted was for that to change today.

As he slowed his breathing and focused his ears on the surrounding sounds, he could make out the voices of his fellow bandits.

"Where did James go?" A male voice spoke first, probably Aaron, though it was hard to tell due to the distance.

"Probably takin' a shit or somethin', who cares? One's comin', get ready. Looks to be wearin' somethin' fancy and walkin' all sickly like." It seemed like Lucy, the only woman in the group, had spotted a target coming down the path.

James didn't twitch a muscle as the group of nine entered his view and readied their weapons.

They were about 20 meters away, standing in the middle of the path. Only barely visible from his position on the ground, but he could still make out what was happening.

"Stop right there! Give us your coin and any jewelry and you can go right on by." Aaron stated, conveniently leaving out what would be done if the person on the trail were to decline.

Whoever it was that Aaron was speaking to didn't respond it would seem. He repeated himself.

"I said stop and hand it all over!" James saw the glint of Aaron's saber through the brush as he pointed it down the path.

The one he was speaking to made their way closer to the group of nine, just into James' view.

He could see a full head of fiery hair, some admittedly high-quality clothes, and a strange, unsettling gait.

The figure moved as though they were ill, their head down, their right hand clutching their stomach, and they seemed to be muttering something under their breath.

James was sure he wanted nothing to do with what would happen next.

Aaron wasted no more words. He raised his saber high and lunged at the figure. If James had dared to blink, he would've missed it.

The red-haired figure lunged before the blade could fall. With a sickening crunch that he could hear all the way from his hiding place, a hand grasped both Aaron's neck and shoulder.

If only it were only that.

No. The red-haired figure both pulled and pushed.

*crack*pop*shliiick*

It took his entire being not to gag as he watched in horror as Aaron's head was torn off his torso, a few vertebrae coming with the stringy mess that remained of his neck.

He was not alone in his horror it would seem, as the other eight around the macabre scene froze and — without a word to each other — turned to run.

He would have done the same.

The group tried to scatter, but it was useless. By the time any of them could take their fifth step there was only one left.

Greg was the second to fall, he was right next to Aaron when his head was torn from his body. Within arm's reach of the figure, it only took a swing of the hand that had been holding Aaron's neck to paint a tree with the colors of the inside of his skull, Aaron's severed head hitting the ground in unison.

The rest were soon to follow, starting with Sernius. He received a hand through his back as he made his first step in the opposite direction of the figure, not even spared a glance as they made their way to their next victim, and the next, and the next, until only Lucy remained.

She lay on her back, scuttling away and begging for mercy. It was the clearest James had ever heard her speak.

"Please! I didn't want to rob you! I was just scared what they'd do to me if I tried to leave the group!" James heard her lie through her teeth from his thicket. She had been the leader.

*CRUNCH*

Either the figure caught the lie, or they just didn't care. Their boot was now surely stained by Lucy's brain-matter.

James was shivering. From the moment Aaron was relieved of his head to now, it had only been a few seconds. All of which he hadn't even allowed himself to breathe for fear that the figure would find him.

All his senses heightened beyond what he could imagine them to ever be, he heard the figure sigh as though a weight was lifted from their shoulders and whisper to themself over the thrum of his heart drowning out all other sounds.

*Sigh*

"He'll be fine, Maros has personal experience with this. Aryn will be fine." And what he now knew to be a woman walked back the way she came, not even bothering to wipe the blood and viscera from her face.

James stayed shivering in his hiding spot for another 45 minutes before he dared to behold the scene of carnage the woman had made the group of bandits into.

Limbs, bone, guts, blood. All strewn haphazardly in the surrounding area like a sloppy beasts feeding ground.

James turned to the opposite direction that the woman left in and started running, not looking back even once. He would leave for Greenspill at the first opportunity. He didn't want to have anything to do with Gleryl anymore.