Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 1: The Escape

I hope it’ll be a quick death, Archmagus Valens thought for the thousandth time as he felt the handcuffs bite deep into his skin. Fashioned from Rootmetal, a most terrible substance created by First of the Magi as punishment for mages, the manacles quieted the myriad songs of the ambient mana around him.

Men sat about the room, waiting as a mighty voice bounced back from the whitewashed walls, rendered and cleaned of any spots. The place had a damp, close feeling about it. There were no windows, as the study was deep underground, away from curious eyes for good reason, and the glyph lamps flickered weakly like a set of candles battered by a strong wind.

I did nothing wrong.

Valens rested his eyes on the files scattered across the barwood table, then glanced up and sighed as Archmagus Eldras, the Headmaster of the Institute of Resonant Healing, went on with the second part of his tirade. He had a way with words, but Valens feared that even a single file from the table would be enough to seal his fate.

“This is simply absurd!” Master Eldras was saying, demanding with a jab of his hand an explanation from the guards, even if he knew they had every right to make these arrangements. “This is no mere criminal you can wrap a rope around and hang for the public to satisfy their primal needs! This is the youngest Archmagus the wide circle of the world has ever seen, the genius who reached the Resonant Healer status at the mere age of twenty-two! And yet you seek to punish him just because, in his pursuit of knowledge, he scraped the surface of Warmagic? I shall see—”

“Scraped the surface?” came a voice, followed by footsteps as a pale, lanky man strolled into the room. There was a confident kick to his heels, a permanent sneer to his lips, and a gash so deep that it nearly split his nose in two. He glanced over the files on the table and gave a quick, disappointed sigh. “I’m no scholar, nor an Archmagus that can pry into the knowledge laid before me, yet my birds told me what I needed to know.”

“Your birds govern the integrity of the Inquisition, then, is it?” Master Eldras regarded the man with a deep scowl after a brief pause. “Since when do we pay heed to the nonsense of ignorant fools? Old friend, you must listen to me. My disciple has no intention to shake the foundation upon which we built this world. It’s merely a scholarly pursuit, a tinge of curiosity as to why he sought the ancient knowledge.”

“Careful, Eldras, you’re treading a fine line here. Do remember that your words can be used against you,” the lanky man said. “I see in your eyes the deep affection you have for this young man. Perhaps this is the thread he used to pull you into his little scheme. But you mustn’t let the bond between Master and disciple drag you down to the mud. We’re only here for the sinner.”

Valens shook his head. So they would hang him.

“That sinner saved thousands from the claws of death.” Master Eldras peered into Valens’s eyes before raising a hand toward the Inquisitor. “That sinner is a man this Empire cannot afford to lose. He’s a gift—”

“History never lies!” the tall man growled in a gravelly voice. “We learned our lessons with blood and bones, my old friend. Lessons I intend to remember as long as I keep this chair. I urge you to do the same, lest we lose the precious time we have spent rebuilding this world from scratch.”

He turned to his men, all looking zealously into his eyes, fingers eager around the handles of their guns. A single command, and they would bring Valens before an angry crowd, read the list of his sins for all to hear, and put an end to his life to keep the monotony of this world.

“Magic shall be used only for the good of people. Magic shall be monitored and kept under tight leash! If he can’t be satisfied with the gift of healing, then who can say where his ambition would end? I’m afraid we have no other choice but to quell this fire before it spreads to the whole world. Another lesson for the people. Another reminder that the Empire is and will be the Eternal Protector of the common good. Take him!”

Hands reached out toward him. Fingers curled painfully tight around his arms. They took him away from his Master, away from the room. Men pressed him, dragging him wincing down the hallway.

Valens let them. It was over.

His Master had told him once that this curiosity was dangerous. A venomous snake, slithering around his heart, urging him for more. Nothing would satisfy the need burning in his chest. It was a sickness. Many had fallen into its claws. History was full of lessons.

Valens smiled. He knew these halls well. Steps leading to the entrance floor. Walls adorned with expensive paintings. Pedestals hauling the weight of masters of old, their wisdom captured in polished marble. It seemed a fitting parade for a young Magus. Valens couldn’t have asked for more.

They dragged him up the steps, through the stone walls, out into the morning sky. The first lights of the sun kissed the horizon with gentle grace as trains hummed over the railways. So, he had a few more hours. They would take their time gathering a crowd; after all, no deed of Inquisition had been carried out in silence nowadays.

Perhaps, Valens thought, there would come a cry for justice from the crowd at his hanging. Perhaps the child he had saved the other day, or the officer who had lost both his legs in a skirmish, would offer a word for him. He had touched many lives in his eight years of practicing healing. He just thought he could do more.

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Warmagic. Battlemagic. The words alone had been forbidden, often uttered in whispers shaded under heavy hands. A grand topic that nearly broke the world a thousand years prior.

But then, it was obscure in its meaning. What was Warmagic? Wind Magi often used the currents to guide a storm, or the Earth Magi built ten-story buildings and ever-grand machines, commanding earthquakes with a certain finesse. Or Life Magi such as himself, stitching the gravest wounds with their delicate control over mana.

Turn them around, then these too could be used as Warmagic. Therefore, it made little sense as to why Fire was forbidden and the Void was sealed. Valens guessed that, with the surveillance of the Inquisition and their Rootmetal tools, they needed not to fear these elements.

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There must have been a reason. Valens was sure of it. Why would the First of the Magi decide to turn against the others? Why, in the old texts he’d found by chance, did he come across that same passage? Connected worlds. A warping ritual to the lands of beyond where the truth of it lay waiting.

“This is madness!” Master Eldras was keeping up with the group, gray beard dancing wildly as he tried to reach Valens. “A grave mistake!”

The guards paid him little heed, pushing Valens toward the Inquisition looming in the distance—a great tower, built with an ungodly amount of rootmetal. Its presence alone pressed hard on the dwindling ambient mana, ever reminding the Magi that not a single one of their steps would go unnoticed.

Down through the metal doors, into the dark dungeons. The air weighed on Valens like a leaden blanket, pressing him to the ground. Without the touch of mana, he felt as naked as a newborn, and just as helpless.

They dropped him in a damp cell and closed the bars shut all around him, leaving him alone there. The Magus Dungeon scarcely saw more than a few offenders, as tradition demanded they be hanged first thing in the morning. Never had one of them been granted a trial. The Inquisition made sure they had ample evidence to avoid that.

“At least let me speak with my disciple one last time!” Master Eldras’s voice rang in Valens’s ears. He couldn’t help the smile tugging at his lips. Stubborn, his Master had always been.

Valens waited. It was silent here, and dark. Odd that even in this dungeon, his mind replayed the scraps of his research, files and words scrambling about in a jumbling mess. They had been close. So close that there was only a single thing missing from the ritual. The Void Sphere hidden deep in the Empire’s vaults.

That had been the end of him. That was how they caught him and now there was a price to pay. A bloody price, indeed.

Still, his fingers brushed against the gemstones as he lifted his robe and checked his left thigh. Etched deep into his flesh were pebble-sized jewels, barely visible to an untrained eye. Recently charged with mana. Everything he would need for the ritual.

He had been so close.

“Valens,” Master Eldras’s voice brought him to the present as he glanced up at his aged face. The old man tried to smile, but it strained on his lips. Clasped in his right hand was an odd sphere, purely black and lustrous.

“Take this,” he said, reaching through the bars and forcing the sphere into Valens’s hand. His eyes snapped back at the dungeon halls, toward the guards waiting a few paces away, as if scared they would take notice. But they were busy yawning, too tired to pay him any heed. The whole place was made of rootmetal, the only sure way against any Magus. Spells wouldn’t work here. They had nothing to worry about.

“Master, is this…” Valens swallowed as the sphere gave him a strange feeling. It trembled in his palm, sending jolts of pain up his arm. “How? And why are you giving me this?”

“You are the finest disciple I have ever had the chance to teach,” Master Eldras said, and he smiled as he caressed Valens’s face. Tears welled behind his eyes. “You are meant for more. You’ve always been. Even the streets I had found you in couldn’t hide the spark of your soul. I can’t let you die. You can’t die, do you understand me?”

Valens shook under Master Eldras’s gaze. It was as though his Master was speaking into his soul, stirring a part of him he didn’t know existed. Valens hunched down, heart thumping in his chest, pressure building in his eyes. He clutched the sphere tight and leaned forward, wrapping his arms around the old man for one last time.

“You gave me a life, Master,” he said, tears trickling down his face. He couldn’t hold them in. Shameful. A Resonant Healer couldn’t give in to his emotions. It was a sign of inaptitude, a grave mistake for a man meant to deal with the most delicate wounds.

But here was the end of the road, and his heart turned deaf against his pleas.

“Thank you,” he said, voice shaking. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

“Enough, the two of you!” came a guard’s voice, impatient. “Master Eldras, please leave the prisoner. Don’t force our hands.”

Master Eldras let go of him and gave him a deep look. “You will find your true self in that world. Don’t let anything stop you. Trust your own heart. Trust your gift. And if you ever have the chance… Come back to me. This world needs saving.”

With that, Master Eldras left him alone in the dungeon, the guards accompanying him up the stairs.

A deep silence settled around the dark walls. Valens opened his palm and stared at the sphere, mind still fuzzy with Master Eldras’s words.

Can’t be... How?

He could feel the forbidden source stirring under the sphere, beckoning his soul with a promise he couldn’t resist. His fingers clasped tight around it just as the gemstones in his thigh resonated with its presence.

Four cores and three extremities. He had everything on his body, every single thing the ritual demanded.

Valens shook his head. He couldn’t leave his Master here. Void was his life’s work. They were supposed to complete the ritual together, but now--

Do I have any choice?

Dark walls and the lusterless surface of the rootmetal bars. Thumping steps of the guards beyond. Grinding of the rootmetal tools in the dungeon. The executioner’s axe. How many times had he seen it reap the souls of his friends? How many times had he witnessed a headless body crash into the ground in a spurt of blood?

I don’t… They are going to kill me.

Valens clenched his teeth as he felt the Resonance around him, and quested for Apathy. The invisible web of frequencies settled over his mind like a steely net. It cast away all the worries and fears clouding his thoughts, and then Valens gazed deep into the Void Sphere with eyes as cold as the dungeon’s walls.

I will return, and you will pay for your sins.

The sphere alighted, lights streaking across his face. Something yanked at his body from beyond the dimensions, Void’s sealed mana stabbing at his soul. An airy feeling filled his arms, and he felt himself weightless, drifting, the ground slipping away… away from underneath his feet.

The gravity took him off, and then he was facing an endless stretch of dark. Losing himself in the depthless maw of it.

He plunged into the unknown.

He screamed.

…..