Mid-Life Magic

“What even is the point of dungeons? Oof – what was that for? You made me –” Before the older woman could finish the question, the younger man who’s bicep she’d been comfortably leaning on had moved suddenly to pivot towards her.

“Mom!” He gasped in hushed tones, glancing furtively around to make sure no one was nearby. “You can’t say stuff like that. What if someone hears? You know how important they are.”

“Oh, pshaw.” His mother tossed her longer hair over her shoulder and dismissively batted a hand in his direction. “Nobody’s around to hear. It’s just us.” She assured him as he settled back into facing forward. After an additional moment of concern he warily sat back as he had been before, and his mother once again leaned her head against him next to her.

“Mom, I just…,” he paused cautiously and gulped around a lump in his throat and blinked as the wind stung his eyes with sudden grit. “I just worry. You know. Sometimes… Sometimes you say things before you think of the consequences.”

“I’m sorry for making you worry. It just seems silly that we aren’t allowed to question anything, isn’t it?” She patted his knee in a motherly fashion. Which amused him since her hands, which had been smaller than her son’s since he was seven years old, still had dye and paint stains on them. Sure, he’d watched her trying to scrub them off this morning. But she’d been rushed from her excitement that her son had finally come home from the academy for a visit between his studies so had done most of her work in half-hearted manner.

With a rueful fondness, he rested his own head against his mother’s as they leaned against one another. The position was mostly because it was more comfortable leaning on someone else, than sitting up straight as they watched the riot of dragons on the flight field off in the distance below. Beyond those dragons…

“The dungeons are important sources of magical artifacts and ingredients in the form of monster parts” he lectured patiently. The same old lecture he’d given her since childhood. The lecture every child who grew up in this kingdom was supposed to know. But his mother didn’t. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that she knew the reasons given, she just didn’t believe in them.

Beside him, his mother sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t roll your eyes at me with that tone of voice young lady.” He scolded indignantly and with mock severity. His mother stifled a chuckle which caused her to snort instead. Because he hadn’t needed to actually look at her to know that she was rolling her eyes at him. She always rolled her eyes at the dogmatic fervor that citizens of the inner provinces supported the kingdom’s use of dungeons. Also, he could feel her shaking with mirth before she smiled, knowing that she was going to annoy him.

Of course she did. That entire comment, which could have gotten her reported as treasonous if the wrong person had overheard it, had been said specifically to be obnoxious. The realization had the young man sending a prayer to the gods that they might, oh he didn’t presume to make demands of them, but they sure had been failing his prayers for her to be ‘normal’. No. Not normal. His mother could never be ‘normal’ in the inner provinces. But she could… maybe… be quieter about her Bellatorisian upbringing and foreign seeming opinions? You know, just enough to avoid being hanged?

Though both their gazes were fixed on the distance, Darius could feel that his mother was smiling her quiet, pride-filled love for him. So, despite the fact that she seemed to rejoice in making him worry about her, he smiled contently as well and absentmindedly grabbed a handful of dried nuts and berries out of the picnic basket on his mother’s lap. He munched happily in silence, watching the dragons taking flight and landing as they went through drills both on the ground and in the sky. Their riders guided the large beasts through their paces, flying in formation, practicing mounts and dismounts as Darius munched on sweet, salty, crunchy, nutty goodness by his mother’s side.

It wasn’t good that his mother spoke the way she did. Questioning. Questions like that could get someone in trouble. When he was a kid and it was just him and his mom, they were nobody. There wasn’t a soul in the world who would care what a lowly weaver and baker thought. But now…? He hadn’t realized when he was young how different she was for questioning. He’d had to work hard to break himself of the habit she had encouraged in him as well… son of a biii – the setting sun was just to the North of their view making him squint his eyes against the glare.

“Is it just me, or do they look different than they were when I was younger?” He heard his mother sniff and harumph but she remained quiet. “Mom?”

“Oh. Sorry. I was testing the progression of your skills. But yeah. I’d say the new crop of dragons is smaller than the ones when you were a kid by about a third. They’re definitely around half the size of the ones the riders used when I was a kid, and my parents said those were about half as large as the adults when they were kids.”

“Mom.” Darius scoffed. “First of all, quit exaggerating. There’re entire royal education campaigns to explain that it isn’t the truth that dragons have shrunk. Everyone knows that older dragons were just transitioned into being used for transport and are too large to be used in aerial dogfighting.” As if to prove the young man’s point, the wind shifted enough to bring the ferocious roars of dragons practicing their mid-air combat to the pair. Massive sheets of armor clanged explosively as two wings in formation clashed together. They snarled and growled, shrieking and howling while their riders shouted instructions at them. “Second of all,” he continued with the certainty of youth, “it is not true that they teach mages in the academy to read minds.” And no, he didn’t need to read her mind to know that was what she meant by ‘testing the progression’ of his skills.

“Just because you don’t believe something, doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Despite the lightness of her sing-song tone as she scolded him cheerfully, his mother kicked her legs in irritation a little bit where they hung over the edge of the bluff they were seated on. It was probably just meant to swing a little, but they had wrapped half the picnic blanket over themselves when it became apparent that the unseasonal chill in the morning air had persisted into the late afternoon. He placed a steadying hand on the picnic basket to prevent it from toppling down the long slop towards the training grounds below.

“You don’t talk to Marcellus like this, do you?”

That…

That had been the wrong question to ask his mother.

She gave him a side eye and a raised eyebrow.

“Do you really want me to start talking to you like an adult about your stepfather?" Her cool blue-green gaze withered the ill-thought scolding intent the intrepid son had for his mother. Suddenly he felt like a very young boy again who hadn’t done anything to make his mother angry, but she might be disappointed in his choices. Hollowed out and sinking. That was the feeling.

“Um. No? No. I don’t think I would like that.” Her scathing glare softened significantly at his meek reply, as if she hadn’t intended to come off so stern, and she patted her grown son on his knee again.

“Good, you don’t ask me grownup questions about your step-father, and I won’t disparage dungeons in public. But no, I don’t talk about stuff like this with him. He’s an armorer for Gods’ sake. A good one of course, you have to be exception to be allowed anywhere near the armor for the dragons and their riders. Do you think he would take kindly to me having anycriticism for the whole military industrial complex that pays for his way of life? I would never question the necessity of dungeons or the size of dragons in front of him.”

“Good. You shouldn’t. But also, they are necessary for training. Dungeons.” Darius quipped quickly and laughed as his mom gave him a mock irritated glare through a grin.

“Spoken like a good little mage apprentice in the academy.” There was no bite to her words, just her fondness for her son, and they continued watching the dragons on the field, the riders fighting and sparring, and the mock battles which seemed to shake the very earth and sky.

Support staff ran around the field between engagements. Healers seeing to both riders and mounts, armorers removing damaged armor and replacing it with new plate or chain while the old pieces were rushed away for repairs on the fly. Somewhere, in the enormous building for the forges, was Darius’ step-father, working away in the oppressive heat. After a while his mother spoke up again.

“I don’t believe that they can’t fly without the magic armor.” It wasn’t said contentiously, or even loudly. Just a random bit of conversation that would have been the equivalent of a night throwing down a gauntlet in demand of a duel if she’d said it to anyone else. Darius didn’t argue, he just listened, because she’d said it in that half-distracted way she had, the tone of voice half musing, half lost in memory, which he’d learned from long experience brought with it more wisdom than he’d seen in all his time at the Draconarix Academy School of Magecraft and Artificing. His mother would explain, he didn’t have to ask why she thought that.

“When I was young, I lived far away from here.” She began quietly and Darius felt the hopeful spark of new discovery that her statement had ignited, smothered with the realization that this was just another of her tales of unpleasant youth.

“I know.” He sighed. “Past the Draconis Promontory, beyond the Ferrumclad Spire, over the Sea of Caelumbra.” It was well known to him as he was also from the Dukedom of Bellatoris. She’d given birth to her son before moving to the inner provinces.

“Don’t get snippy. You haven’t heard this story yet. Or have I already told you about what lies on the other side of the Aetherium Heights?” It was the young man’s turn to snort, and he pulled a blade of grass up from the group beside him and played with it between his fingers idly.

“There’s nothing past the Aetherium Heights.” He wasn’t arguing, just stating a fact, but despite him knowing better, there was a flickering of that spark in his chest, of untold adventures and wild magic unknown by those too civilized to venture into it.

“Well, that’s just blatantly untrue.” His mom scolded with the scoff of one-who-knows-better as she lifted a hand, palm upward, her middle finger wiggling as it hovered her own blade of grass suspended in the air. It bobbed gently in place over her palm despite the stiff breeze trying to blow it away. Unable to help himself, Darius found himself stealing a glance toward the flight grounds to see if anyone had noticed.

Normally, if any mage trained by the academy had done such magic this close to the dragons and other trained military staff, including war mages, someone would have noticed. There should have been dozens if not hundreds of bugling dragons sounding the alarm. Runes and protective spells should have activated defensive barriers. Her small act, without the identification of Aeternus’, the signature of their country’s magecraft, shouldhave been impossible to hide.

Yet it wasn’t. Teach me how you do that! The desire burned through his soul, silently screaming for the knowledge. His mother wielded no great magics like he might one day, but she had what seemed small, simple abilities. She made charms that the unwitting mistook as nicknacks, because they could not sense nor see the magic in them. Her neighbors, family, and friends benefited from the curative, restorative, stamina enhancing potions that they thought were merely teas, or commons foods. And the runes and spells she literally wove into every article of clothing she made had protected Darius his entire life.

So, he waited patiently, longingly, as he watched his mother do a thing which seemed so, so very simple, but was more complex and sophisticated magic than he would probably ever learn from the academy. She was gazing absently at the blade of grass as she made it twist and bob slowly while the wind rushed past it. He longed to understand magic as she did to make that happen without tripping a single ward or even breaking a sweat.

“You,” without warning, as if she had become bored with the exercise, she closed her fist around the blade of grass and shoved it into her pocket and looked at him plainly and without judgement, “are not ready for that yet. However, would you like to hear the rest of my story?”

“I…” Darious shoved the protest down because he knew no amount of begging would make her change her mind. “Yes, please?” Making a show of being a good polite boy, the young man nodded and his mother smiled indulgently at his sass.

“Fine.” She mock-assented with a nudge of her shoulder, as if she’d had any intention of refusing to tell a story about her youth. Pshaw! “You can hear.” Her voice was accented. Slight. Different. Not one of the many accents commonly found in the capital nor in the Dukedom of Bellatoris where she’d left her childhood behind. “At the farthest edge of the Dukedom of Bellatoris, is the Aetherium Heights. Yes?”

He nodded at her as he listened then glanced to her hands which now wove with a long crochet hook a tapestry of yarn from the skein that spilled out of her pack beside her. He knew that if he looked just right at what she was doing as she told the story, he would see more of it. Because, as his mother always reminded him, words and intentions had magic and what was a story but words and intentions.

“And beyond the Aetherium Heights, they say is nothing.” His mother crooned, settling into her story as Darius let his eyes become unfocused so he could see those distant mountains rising, monochromatic at first, out of the fibers that twisted and looped in her fingers. It was a shallow image. Hidden and secretive, this weaving was not the bright tapestries that filled the rooms of his youth with foreign lands which she had woven for him from nothing more than music and the light from their fireplace when it had just been the two of them. That was before she married and her magic – which had felt grand, unstoppable, an unending adventure to a young boy - suddenly shrank to fit into the constraints of their new life. The respectable, unnoticed wife.

“The mountains there are called empty, but are filled with danger, and monsters? But are also the impenetrable wall that makes the Sea of Caelumbra so calm and safe from the larger ocean beyond.” And there he was again, in the wild windswept wilderness of his mother’s childhood. He could hear her laughter as she scrabbled over and up prominences of scorched black stone. The heat of the sun was more than matched by the heat of the rock as she was warmed by both above and below. At some places it was smooth as glass and just as sharp if broken, in others it was jagged. Sometimes the rocks flowed and oozed, frozen in place. All around was the harsh salt scent of deep ocean brought by the wind from beyond the Aetherium Heights.

It was a stark contrast to the briny fetid tidepool scent of the Sea of Caelumbra. Despite the monochromatic color of the yarn she was working, Darius could see that even the blue of the sky was bluer beyond the edge of the wall of rock which marked the end of a mountain range.

“They say, no one knows how far it goes on, but when I was a child, merchants traveled through the mountain range to trade. My father was born even beyond the deep ocean that’s supposedly the end of the world. But that is not the story I’m telling today. Today, I tell you that when I was a child, I saw dragons fly. Wild dragons. Dragons without armor who had never been ridden before.” There it was, in the soft white yarn she was working into loops and swirls, was a dragon. A young dragon. Barely more than a hatchling really. Blue, and black, and gray. Perhaps with swirls of white.

It flapped its wings beating furiously to gain altitude over a boulder. The endless blue sky stretched into eternity beyond it in the plain yarn. Past the uneven edges of the Atherium Heights that plunged into the depths of the unnamed ocean below. Sure enough, it had no enchanted armor to make it lighter or help it fly. Darius stared, raptly, at the miniature image his mother had conjured in the coils of her art.

So lost was he that he jumped back when a larger beast suddenly appeared out of nowhere, the same unnatural coloring as the fledgling, its wings pumping with great gusts. For a moment, the world was still and Darious’ heart soared with wonder and terror. Its eyes were enormous. Feet large enough to stomp a house. Mouth opening wide enough to swallow a cow whole.

Then it was all terror. A blasted stream of fire heated a path over his head and his ears pounded and rang with the deafening roar accompanying the dragon’s white-hot fire. It lurched over him, tail cracking the rocks beside his him. He shrieked, stumbling backward and nearly falling off the cliff face the vision had scrabbled up. The giant parent grabbed its little one in a large taloned foreclaw and dove away from the heights pulling with huge muscles that didn’t seem to strain so hard against the wind as they should have had to for a creature like a dragon to fly.

Lightheaded, the young mage put a hand to his chest, his heart beating rapidly as the shock yanked him from the scene his mother had shown him.

“How did… they can… it was so big!” His mother gave him that face she made when he said something particularly obvious and a little bit egregious.

“I told you so.” Smirking, she pulled a handful of something white and crumbly out of the picnic basket.

“Is that cheese?” He could smell it, tangy and heavily perfumed with, lavender maybe? Yeah. And honey?

“With pollen, silly.” Munching with relish, his mother stretched her free hand then began an unnecessarily complicated process of juggling the cheese between her thumb and different fingers of the hand which held it as she used her free hand to stretch the fingers of the one with the cheese, without just putting the cheese down.

“Did I scream? Or no. That, was that a memory?” The slow satisfied smile that spread across his mother’s tanned face was his reward for asking the right question.

“Yes. It is one of the many uses of this kind of art.” She gestured at the garment she was working on, just a scarf, nothing fancy. Yet now it would forever have the imprint of wonder, freedom, and the indominable wildness of that memory imparted to the wearer. “To save and transport memories as well as impart protections and other small desires.”

“Who is that for? Will anyone who wears that see that memory?” Because it would bring about a lot of uncomfortable questions if people his mother sold her creations to suddenly started having visions.

“It’s for you.” She grinned impishly. “Don’t worry, it just preserves the emocion…, emotits…, emola, Gods curse it!” Stuttering, she dashed the crochet piece-in-progress that she had picked up once again upon stuffing her last bite of cheese into her mouth, back onto her lap. “I can’t remember the stupid words. Feelings. This spell only transposes feelings. Courage, woonkder, adbentura, the bigness of everything.”

It happened sometimes, when she worked her magic. There was something about calling up the memories of her youth that transported part of her brain back there, and instead of speaking the language of their country, a language she had spoken for all of her life, she instead would stumble through those of other lands. Lands the crown and royal house of Aeternus swore did not exist.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated.” His mother apologized. And that made the young mage laugh. If a few moments of confusion about which language she was supposed to speak were all she had to pay as the price for doing magic even the strangest and most talented of the kingdom couldn’t cast.

“It’s alright, mama.” He glanced toward the dragons the flight lines again. Still, no one had noticed. There was a thought gnawing at him. A thought that had been gnawing at him for a long time. “Why didn’t you go to the academy? Or… or any academy?” The question had startled his mother, and she seemed to jump a bit.

“A lot of reasons. I couldn’t afford it. I was too old. I’d already had you and…” her voice broke a bit on the words and once again he felt that tightness in his heart that maybe he had asked a question he shouldn’t have but she smiled at him tenderly, so he felt somewhat reassured that it was okay. “And I was very happy raising you. Plus, my magic, is so small, even the wards don’t recognize it as real magic.” She gestured towards the field they had come there to watch, like they’d done when he was little.

She watched in wistful silence for what felt like a long time but really wasn’t very long at all. Darius could see the thoughts shifting in his mother’s eyes, feel something inside her churning at a notion that had been there his whole life but that she’d avoided speaking about seriously.

“I did,” she began wistfully, softly, with the gently pained expression of someone who knew even thinking a thought was going to hurt themselves so very much. Then she stopped and began again. “I always wanted to learn proper magic. To be an adventurer. We were going to be adventurers, your father and I.” And there it was the precious dream she’d let die so long ago. She began to speak again.

“Well, I was going to be an adventurer. And your father said he’d follow me anywhere and since I couldn’t fight for shit, he’d have to be my protector.” She laughed a barking laugh and wiped one multi-pastel colored palm across her eyes. “Could you imagine? Your father. Fighting? Man has trouble wielding anything more strenuous than a quill and he thought he was going to be the warrior of our party.” That made Darius join in his mother’s laughter because it was nice to hear her laugh and because it was funny since it was true.

It was also funny because he’d thought his father really was some kind of incredible magical warrior when he was younger, especially with the way his father’s servants fawned over him. He couldn’t believe it sometimes, the things his young mind had come up with.

“True,” he admitted to his mother while shaking his head ruefully, “but you have to admit, he certainly looked the part. With his armor and court regalia on. I’ve seen the portraits.” Which made his mother laugh even harder. For a few solid minutes, guffawing so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. She was shaking her head no and waving her hands in ‘x’s at him. And every time he thought she’d gotten a hold of herself, she’d look at him and burst out laughing again. If Darius hadn’t been so confused, he’d have been offended.

“No.” The amused woman gasped out eventually. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. His parents paid the artists to paint him slimmer and more muscular and rugged than he’s ever been in real life.” Darious…

…felt…

…his…

…brain…

…freeze…

“What?”

And his whole life perception began altering around him because those portraits had played a large role in how his young mind had seen his father. That once upon a time, the man had been a strong and dashing noble who had swept his common but talented and pretty mother off her feet. But tragically, things just hadn’t worked out, because… commoner and noble stuff. All that.

Now??????

His father had just always been like that? What had his mother seen in him because, Darius could remember what she was like when he was younger and it definitely wasn’t the frumpy soft shell she presented to the world nowadays.

“Oh yes.” His mother continued, unaware that she’d just shattered half of what he thought he knew about his parents’ story. “They thought it would help him find a wife faster. Make him look more desirable to the young ladies.” She was still giggling between sentences. And that broke his brain. Because even hundreds of miles from the Dukedom of Bellatoris, the stories of his father’s many affairs had reached Darius’ ears. He frowned in consternation.

“Well, it didn’t work.” He stated, indignant that the ploy had tricked him if not any of the intended targets. And his mother erupted into another peal of giggles at his words. “Now I think he’s even more of an ass.” A pensiveness grew over the young mage as his mother giggled at his father’s misfortune. Not that Darius was upset about that, his mother deserved a good giggle at the endless line of his father’s mistresses that was the bane of his grandmother’s existence.

It put his childhood in a new light. Maybe. He might have been reading too much between the lines, but he’d known that his parents were two vastly different people. His mother was adventurous, passionate, and kind to a fault. His father was manipulative, deceitful, and a bit of an indolent hedonist. Darius had always assumed that had come after his parents’ relationship. Or that something had changed while his parents were together and his father had changed. Those youthful paintings of his father hanging in his grandparents’ home were part of what shaped those opinions his child’s mind had formed.

Besides him his mother sighed as she watched another dragon landing and the young knightess riding it, practice a running landing.

“I did… so much… always want to be an adventurer.” She sighed again as a few of the support mages began working through their practice spells and she got that look on her face that said she was watching current in the magic that few could ever see.

“Then why don’t you?”

“Hmm…” came her distracted response, her eyes flickering between two sides of mage formations alternating between attack and defense spells.

“Why don’t you become an adventurer? It’s not too late.” He watched her face go very still, the rapt fascination and wonder slowly fading into a blank wariness. But while her face seemed to go blank, her mind sharpened. It was subtle, a tightening around the eyes, a new hardness to the set of her jaw. She slowly turned to him with that blank face that said nothing and everything, the stoney calm face of someone who doesn’t want to give away how very many emotions are running through them nor what those emotions might be.

The look of someone who’d just had a grand fireball spell go off in their thoughts.

Then her eyes finally settled on his, staring at him intently as if to see if he were making fun of her and when she seemed to decide that he was not, she finally responded, softly, wonderingly – as if realizing that it wasn’t impossible…

“Why don’t I become an adventurer?”