Little Warlock
It worked. He couldn’t believe that it was actually working. Maladar couldn’t hear the roaring of his own pulse in his ears, nor feel the prickle of excitement trailing down his spine. The budding droplets of cool sweat on his forehead and brow dribbled and dripped without his knowledge as the young elf experienced the disembodiment of a channeling trance.
He knew that any little break in concentration would lose him the link with his apparition, the book lying open in the grass between his knees suggested as much. The blackened and charred volume was encased in faded leather binding, crisped by a fire it had been through. The tome’s warped and wavy pages suggested it had also been waterlogged at one point.
Never mind how it had fallen into the young elf’s hands so casually in the bazaar, it was now his, and it had taken him a year to uncover the cypher buried in the otherwise innocuous text. Now he could read the first half of the tome’s secrets with confidence. Chiefly he had gone through the cantrips and the simpler spellwork detailed in the first quarter of the book, wondering at how the tome’s brutal honesty made so much more sense than his arcane sorcery classes ever had.
Perhaps the simpler and more visceral instructions made understanding and assimilation easier than the ambiguous and nebulous vaguery his magic instructors spouted at him when he repeatedly failed the trials they set. The book instructed him to offer something, in return there were creatures who would listen and perhaps would bow to his will. The cost of an offering had to be attractive, either time spent on the plane of Azeroth, or something more meaningful.
For the moment, the ocular conjuring required nothing more of him than concentration, as well as an affinity for borrowing energies from the twisting nether—though Maladar was unaware of his latent ability at the time. His corporeal body swayed slightly with the breeze, but even the cool air was beyond his senses. It felt bizarre to be looking at himself from the bottom of the garden, where his little Eye of Kilrogg summon roamed casually along the rosebeds.
No one was around, save for the squirrels and crows that scampered about and cawed angrily at the young elf invading their territory. It was a little corner of shadowy gloom at sundown, by the hollow oak that had been carved into a living bower during his grandsire’s time. It was the perfect forgotten little nook for the undertaking of shady business, and Maladar took advantage of the fact.
A dreamy smile split his angular features. Even at thirteen Maladar’s childhood fat was sparing, which was no small source of teasing for him, but Maladar shielded himself from his peers with unfriendliness and gloom. They—rather their parents—would definitely not have approved of his favourite hobby. They would have been horrified. Absolutely appalled.
Distraction! The glowing green sphere wavered and wobbled between planes for a moment, while Maladar beat the distracting thoughts out of his head with growing expertise, hammering smooth the liquid blackness in his mind until there were no more ripples. The eye danced and bobbed in place while the young elf controlling it got a nice rotating view of the garden.
When he spun it around to look at himself again, the calmness in his mind split into a thousand multicoloured shards, and just as suddenly Maladar lost the connection. Darys stood by the spot where the Eye had been with his sword unsheathed, glaring into the rosebeds. He shifted the displeased look back towards his little brother and began to walk towards him, gaining speed the closer he came.
Having lost the peculiar shift in perspective, Maladar came to his senses slowly, once again feeling the prickle of the grass on his bare shins, the cold breeze freezing his clammy forehead and back, and finally hearing the roaring thrum of his pulse in his ears. He swayed slightly, blinking the brightness at the periphery of his vision to regain a sense of himself, realising that his brother had seen what he had been doing. Not good. Not good at all.
Darys was angry, that much Maladar could immediately tell. Angry, Darys was much like their father; magnificent, strong, beautiful and thoroughly cross. The young elf had enough sense to flinch back at his older brother’s aggressive stride, which closed the distance between them within a matter of seconds.
Maladar scrambled to snap the book shut, then stuffed it into the leather messenger bag propped against his hip, even as his brother leaned down to snatch the bag away from him, but Maladar wouldn’t let go of it when Darys pulled. His pulse thrummed wildly in his veins while his heart rattled against the cage of his ribs, panic suffusing every fibre of his being.
“What in Light’s name were you thinking, Mal?!” Darys barked at him. “What in Azeroth are you playing at?!”
Maladar’s hold on the bag strengthened, despite Darys’ firm tugs on it. The smaller boy slid in the grass painfully, but curled like a ball around the bulk of his satchel, hissing at his brother through a thin skein of hair that had fallen across his face. Darys stopped pulling, expelled a few puffs of angry breath, until he found some semblance of calm. This was where Darys was different from their father.
“Let go,” Maladar mumbled out, still curled around his bag protectively.
“Maladar!” Darys barked again, losing his momentary serenity. “I suspected you were up to something fishy, but I never would have guessed it was—Do you even know how dangerous this is, Mal? You shouldn’t be anywhere near that sort of magic, let alone any of its relics! It’s poisonous, it’ll mean so much unpleasantness!
“Look I—I know things haven’t gone very well with your studies, but this is not, it’s never the answer.”
Darys’ voice sweetened a touch, softer, more caring, cajoling. Normally that would have thawed Maladar’s resolve, made him unfurl and seek the proffered tenderness, the support and mutual commiseration his older brother’s arms offered, but Darys had sabotaged his own effectiveness there. Darys’ presence at the manor was waning, as was the care he bestowed upon his younger brother, until their relationship began to deteriorate.
There was love there, but the lofty notion of Darys being concerned for Maladar over his fel magic use was lost on the younger Bloodwrath sibling, especially when Darys made mention of his failings. The green glow of Maladar’s eyes flickered through the strands of his hair, bright acid green in the gloaming. Darys slackened his hold on the satchel strap, squatted down slowly beside his brother, and balanced on the balls of his feet.
“What’s more, you wouldn’t want father to find out, hmm?” Darys ventured in the same tone.
Maladar’s glance skimmed across his brother’s shiny ceremonial breastplate, strapped across a thickening chest, the silvery hilt of the sword hanging at his hip which he wielded with ease and grace, a perfect match to the moonlight pale strands of the young trainee’s long hair. He was everything narrow and dark-haired Maladar was not, and the younger elf was beginning to hate the differences more and more.
“He won’t find out,” Maladar muttered mulishly.
“You know he will. Everything comes out in the end, Mal,” Darys murmured softly.
Darys reached out to try and stroke his fingers through Maladar’s messy mop of hair, but the younger elf jerked his head back and yanked on the satchel, finally managing to snatch it out of Darys’ grip while the paladin trainee was distracted. Shuffling backwards, Maladar ignored the scrapes on his knees where pebbles in the grass had cut his tender skin, and stumbled to his feet. The skirt of his robe fell around his ankles, as black as the hair he tugged out of his face with annoyance.
“Not unless you tell him,” Maladar accused, huffing out a breath.
Seeking to protect the well of knowledge that had sustained him despite the unfairness of life’s slings, Maladar put the satchel on and shifted the bag against his rear, farthest away from his brother’s reach. Darys watched his little brother’s antics with a torn expression for a moment, before he stood back up and towered over the skinny boy. Darys had never grassed on him before, then again, Maladar’s transgressions had never been as outrageous.
“I’m trying to protect you, Mal. This sort of thing… It’s nothing you want anything to do with. It’s just wrong, and harmful. You could put yourself and everyone around you in absolute danger! It’s the power—” Darys’ reasonable tone crumbled into that of worry, made sharp by his own fears of what it could mean for him as well. “It’s the power of the legion. It’s not to be used!”
“But I’m good at it!” Maladar cried back.
Emotion flooded the younger elf’s body as he grew more and more upset, twisting his fingers up into fists, drawing breath into his lungs as if he was short on it. Tears stung his eyes and he blinked them back stubbornly. It was easy for Darys to condemn the one thing that came to him as easily as breathing, after all, he was perfect. Everything their father wanted and more, and he was so righteous, brimming with Light, blessedly talented, while Maladar struggled with the arcane and earned criticism after criticism, until everyone pointed and tittered at him.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair!
“Mal, you need to stop. That avenue only leads to dark things. I can promise you that,” Darys entreated, taking a step towards Maladar. “Come on, if you hand it over I can get rid of it in the kitchen fires, without anyone being the wiser. Then I’ll help you with some of your lessons, I promise. Yeah?”
Maladar heard the word fire and his body went cold. All that work, for a year trying to piece together the puzzles of the book’s contents, and now his brother would destroy it? Wanted to destroy everything he had achieved, his one and only talent. Darys was asking him to turn his back on the one thing he found that was a salvation. No, no, no, NO!
He hadn’t meant to use it, not on anyone else. Just small critters and the occasional lynx, before they scurried off to safety, but the effect was the same. Darys’ eyes glassed over momentarily, he took a couple of stumbling steps backwards, then howled out a cry of pain as static erupted across his limbs and pulled from him the essence of his vitality, feeding it in small green rivulets of energy into Maladar’s frame.
Their gazes met, Maladar’s panicked, Darys’ filled with pain and shock. The hum of a shield interrupted the crackling hiss of swirling fel energy, cutting the ethereal lines of absinthe green tethering them together and snapping the spell in half. Darys leaned heavily against the oak, panting great lungfuls of breath in his bubble of safety, while Maladar stood stock still for a handful of seconds, staring in horror as he realised he had just drained his own brother of vitality.
“Mal…” Darys hissed out, struggling to remain upright on weakened legs. “What have you—”
His words slurred as he sagged against the oak and crumpled into a heap at its foot. Panic beat harder in Maladar’s breast. A small noise chirped in his throat and he lurched forward, then fell to his knees beside Darys and began patting his brother’s face, chestplate and neck, seeking a pulse.
When he found one, strong and unwavering, he expelled the air stuck in his chest and sucked in wheezing breaths that chased the momentary panic away. If not for Darys’ quick thinking, he could have completely… Maladar glanced back at his brother, the worry in his eyes fading by degrees. He stood back up slowly, dusting himself off carefully and readjusted the bag against his hip.
I could have killed him. The realisation should have made him feel dreadful, absolutely wretched, but Maladar found some other emotion interjecting between the cracks in his familial loyalty. An epiphany dawned. Maladar stood over his brother, the perfect Darys Bloodwrath, trainee of the Light, initiate in the blood knight order, and finally realised his perfection was only skin-deep.
The mild concern in the young elf’s eyes leeched off by the second, until he stood observing his brother with his head cocked to the side, as if he was studying a natural phenomenon. Eventually, when he had his fill of feeling powerful for the first time in his young life, Maladar turned and began to march back towards the house. Darys would wake out of his stupor eventually, Maladar had no doubt of that, but when he did, things would forever be different between them.
