Mage of Blackfire: Injuries of History
Many many years ago.
The Mage of Black fire limped across the craggy landscape, the bravado and adrenaline washing away with each step. The fight had taken a lot out of him. Damnable Inquisitioners, like roaches. Hard to kill and once dug in they were impossible to get rid of. Burn them away, burn their nest, burn their food, burn everything, somehow one always survived, always scratched enough together to keep surviving. And sure he’d left Grimsby alive to tell the tale, but the way he’d left him even if he did manage to call in the cavalry, get help, salvation it wouldn’t do the good he thinks it would. Changed for the worse by sickening dark magic. The thing the mage knew was blackening his heart like coal from the inside with every use. A price to pay he’d pay gladly to rid the world of those bastards who slaughtered with wanton abandon, slaying the talentless and hedge-mages like lambs, but dragging out the killing of practitioners with real talent with mock trial and frivolous pleasantries to make their cause look just, real, solid, as if it wasn’t a mockery of the very idea of fairness. Even when the sentence was already settled, it was already decided the verdict was guilty no matter the level of magic. Especially women. They got it the worst, more than a few battalions of "Inquisitioners" had taken advantage of their power to defile women before ‘sentencing’ them. Leaving nothing but dust in his wake when he found those kinds of men. Afterimages scared into the ground like the shadows of a sundial. You might think it was quick, that burning them like that was quick, but souls burn for a long time. Even a reaper can’t save them from that fate. Killing a soul, that was a heavy sin. Something no amount of redemption could wash clean.
The Mage gripped his side, and pulled it away, blood making the soot on his fingers run down his palm and wrist, staining deeper his ruined cloak. “Sloppy…” he hissed through his teeth as he returned his hand to the wound. “Need to find a place to rest…” he looked around, nothing so much as an outcropping of rocks this far away from the cliff face. But that was where the back up would come, come to save Grimsby, poor, poor Grimsby. A babbling mess, reduced to hearing the screams of his own men dying on repeat until he finally died, left injured, clutching a sword covered in the blood of his own men. Even if they believed he didn’t kill his own, they would never believe a single mage of the level the suspected The Mage to be could have possibly killed a score of men all alone, that level of brutal efficacy. No he would be called mad, staining his grandfather’s legacy deeper than The Mage’s stained robes, if that were even possible.
It wasn’t ideal but The Mage, after walking almost another full half hour, had to stop, the area was wide open and he stood out like a sore thumb, but he had to stop and do something about his injuries. The surface was too uneven to continue like he was, unable to fully lift his feet, dragging them would cause him to stumble out here, and falling on the jagged rocks, even at normal standing height could spell the end, or a desire for the end, cut and bleeding to death under a blazing sun, or with the sun setting freeze to death. And he did stop, when he found a bolder big enough to lean against. The Mage pushed his robe aside using his back to pin it behind himself. He slowly unbuttoned his clothes, drawing them away from the wound slowly, the semi-dried blood making them stick to the open gash, pulling at it as he freed them. Swallowing hard, The Mage pushed the pain down. If this hurt the next part would be agony. The Mage took two different colored dusts from his pocket. And placed them in the palm of his other hand. Closing them over each other he rubbed his palms together. “Estuans.” he whispered and slapped the hand opposite the wound against it. Sizzling sounds filled the otherwise silent air, and the smell of cooking meat filled The Mage’s nose. After a long moment, he ripped the hand away. The wound burned closed, a ragged scar in its place of cooked flesh. He could get it healed properly in a Dalish town. He took in several deep labored breaths, trying his best to meditate, just enough to bury the pain for now. Something to separate his mind from body. In, out, in, out, in, slowly out. A few moments later or what he thought was a few moments later he opened his eyes again, blinking away tears from his eyes and realized it had gotten darker, the sun low casting odd shadows on the jagged bits of stone that managed to rise from the ground like boney fingers. Every movement pulled at the tender burn. It was likely The Mage had done a lot of damage in closing the wound, likely more to come as he dragged himself from this place. Even more likely he’d just end up pulling it open or ripping the unburned flesh if he had to fight like that again. But he didn’t have time to think about it. The Mage slowly closed his clothes and rebuttoned them with shaking hands, and pushed himself away from the rock and steadied himself. He closed his eyes for one more breath, when he opened his eyes he thought he saw something. A shadow that wasn’t there before, it was too tall and too thin to be one of the Inquistioners. It had an odd air about it, for a moment he thought it was nothing then it moved, it only took a few steps before vanishing. The Mage removed his glasses, cleaning the unbroken lens as if it would help him feel sane. “Hallucinations…bad sign…” he said, pushing himself from the boulder. “I need to get home…” Hurrying his limping walk, turning his head back where he’d come, having felt the far away arrival of reinforcement. “Ah, faster than last time.”