CHAPTER 1: CAGE
I live in a town that hates magic. In truth, I may live in a world that hates magic. You could be thinking "It's not the magic you hate, but rather the fear of what it can do." Well, you would be partially correct in making that distinction. We hate the casters of magic. We hate that they use their magic to terrify and enslave us, but it is law that we never say so.
My name is Lawrence and I am what you might call mana-deficient. That is to say, like all humans, I have no ability to use magic whatsoever. Oh we certainly know of its existence and many of us have felt the effects of it first hand, but we remain incapable of creating or controlling spells. However, there are others in this world who live, learn, and breathe magically. We call them mages, and they are decidedly inhuman. Humankind's history, as it has been passed down in the village where I live, does not tell us how the two races evolved and grew alongside one another. Some popular theories are that mages simply appeared when the world became so filled with war and rancor that the only things that could be born were monstrous, evil magic-wielders. On the other side of the spectrum are people who think that mages are immortal and created humans as a slave race to perform labor, construction, all of the menial, laborious tasks they are too proud or lazy to perform. It is a popular debate in any alehouse or place where humans are allowed to congregate.
The mages themselves aren't so dissimilar from us, I suppose, if only in appearance. They all seem to be very tall, I have never seen a short one. They stand seven feet high or more. Their skin is usually unnaturally light, most often a light grey or even white, like the color of slush mixed with ice in winter. I have even seen some of the older mages with skin as white as chalk, white as the face of death. Their hair is similar, always light colors normally associated with advanced age. They wear long flowing robes, sometimes hats and scarves or cowls. The one attribute that takes the most getting used to are their eyes. They glow. It might remind you of steam rising. It's very unnerving... unnatural. The pupils aren't so different from ours but if you were to meet a mage on a dark street some night you would see those eyes and feel nothing but dread in the pit of your stomach.
Each town or city is ruled by a mage as they see fit. They are mayor, king, emperor, whatever they wish to be called by their human subjects. Subjects is a more apt word than I even care to admit. Humans for the most part go about their daily lives: working, eating, being social, making little humans. But all of that could be changed in a heartbeat if the mage decides to have a bit of fun that day and rain fire over a healer's dwelling or turn half of the humans into lions and the rest into pigs. We've all heard the stories, though I haven't seen spells like this for myself before. This towns has an enormous, bronze-colored wall extending all the way around. The mages would have us believe that the walls exist for our own protection, but we aren't quite as naive as they might think. We live in cages, and if we try to leave, the mages will execute us. The wall encircles our entire life and tiny world and is much too high to see over. The wall extends just far enough outward in my village that we have fields, a few forests and a small lake so we can still grow crops, harvest trees for building, hunt game, fish, and farm. I have lived here my whole life of thirty years. I've never been outside my enclosure and I've never seen more than the same couple hundred human faces. If I could escape, I would. I hate being forced to live like a pet.
The only thing that we can see beyond the extensive barrier is actually directly above, sitting on top of the wall at its highest point. We are told to call it the magedom. It's where the mage who rules over us resides. He calls himself August, if you can believe that, and from what I've heard, all mages have similarly odd names. I have been told of one named Void and another called Bringer. We rarely see him, perhaps once or twice in a month but his presence is still felt nearly every day. Sometimes there will be terrible lightning storms that suddenly appear above our town and begin to scorch the ground as they strike. It is disturbingly common to have snow flurries at any time during the year, along with rain, mudslides, droughts... think of a disaster and trust that we've endured them all. Even during times when we aren't being visited by unnatural disasters, we are always braced, ever wary of an impending attack.
August even has a monster under his control that heralds his arrival to us. It is a hideous creature called Sarthis. it is part lion, part bat, and something else I don't know. It is quite large, with a wide, black wingspan and some sort of long, prehensile tail with a cruel-looking stinger at the tip. It will land in the town square, usually an hour before August appears to ensure that we all gather to hear what announcements the old sorcerer might make.
Today started off like any other. The sun rose and we began to wake up and head out to our jobs and lives, such as they were. I began the day happy, for I got fishing duty today. It was likely one of the easier assignments, but it was being out on the lake on a warm day like this one that was most enjoyable to me. In our small, enclosed world it proved to be one of the few places where I could really be alone with my thoughts. Despite being by myself, it also proved to be one of the few times I wasn't consumed with boredom.
I sank my feet into the cool waters and leaned forward to look myself over. At just over thirty years of age I consider myself a good-looking fellow. I have a strong build, well, I'm no adonis, but years of some amount of physical labor have helped. My hair is dirty blond, a bit shaggy and comes down just over my ears. I have a short yellow goatee and decent jawline. If I'm being honest, I haven't really seen my jawline or chin very well as I've kept some amount of facial hair since it began to take shape over my face some years back. My eyes are blue as the sky. I'm quite tall, at a few inches over six feet. It's likely not terribly important what I look like, but in case you were curious, these are the facts.
Unfortunately for me on this particular day, I had only been sitting at the end of the dock, my fishing line and bare feet dangling in the water, for an hour or so, catching nothing, when I was interrupted by my friend Thomas. He was nearly out of breath as he ran to the end of the dock and doubled over behind me, catching his breath. Thomas was slight in build with reddish brown hair covering much of his face. He could be painfully shy though had always been comfortable with me.
"What's going on, Thomas?" I inquired.
Thomas stood back up and finished catching his breath. Presently he said, "Sarthis landed a little while ago, Law. Everyone needs to gather, August will be here within the hour!"
"Dammit." I spat. "I swear if he doesn't only visit on days when I sit down to fish."
"You know he doesn't." Mumbled Thomas.
"Last two times." I responded. "At least! Now let's go see what the old lunatic wants."
Thomas gave me a frown and said, "Please don't say things like that. You know he could be listening, he could be anywhere."
I waved his suggestion away with my hand. "That's nonsense. He's up in his tower, devising new ways to torture us, just like he always is, and today, we get to hear what they are!" I said bitingly.
"Jenna says he can turn invisible, that's all I'm saying." Thomas remarked in his defense.
"Well Jenna says a lot of things and I'd be amazed if half of them turned out to be the truth." I said.
I put away the bait and pole I had been using in the small shed near the docks, then Thomas and I made our way back into town.
He seemed nervous, which was probably just the right way to feel. Thomas was a nice enough fellow, several years younger than myself and one of only a few in the town I'd consider a close friend. He looked up to me, maybe even idolized me a little too. I had saved him during a mudslide many years before. I was in just the right place at the right time as he was being pulled under a house as it sank into deep mud to pull him to safety.
"What do you think he'll have to say?" Asked Thomas in an anxious voice.
"I have no idea." I answered, as I always did when he would ask this same question.
"Last time he said we needed to build a mine remember?" Thomas asked.
I nodded. "I remember."
But the clay and granite under the town is proving really hard to dig through..." Thomas trailed off, lost in thought. "Do you think he'll be mad?"
"I honestly don't know. Probably. It's not like any of us have ever been miners before, he can't really expect us to pick it up immediately." I tried to sound reasonable.
"Okay, maybe it's okay." Said Thomas. He seemed to perk up a little, and then we reached the crowd in the center of town. Thomas and I appeared to be about the last to arrive.
