Callitus: The Magister
Art by Merwild
He reflected upon the pivotal moments in his life. The catalysts and consequences that brought him to every event, each more crucial than the last as his youth fell away. His years had been spent for him by another, and the time not given to hard labor found him pitted in combat. He, however, was adaptive. His hardship had become routine with time, which was why the situation at hand made him all the more uneasy. In all his years thrown into cage fights the opulent room he found himself in was the first place to make him feel trapped, and the feverish eyes of the magister upon him made him feel as though a predator shared his trap.
He could just see her, eyes still adjusting to the darkness of the room. The windows were covered with thick muslin, daylight just visible around the edges. The only other source of light was the mullioned lanterns set about the room. The magister, however, stood just outside of the light cast by the fire. She was gripping at a velvet drape in the corner of the room, smiling in childlike anticipation.
In the short time he had known her he determined that she had two sides, like a coin. She was normally cold, self possessed, and unrepentantly malicious. There were increasingly frequent times, however, when all pretense was dropped and she not only expressed fervent emotion but seemed unaware that the expression was inappropriate or abnormal. He preferred the maliciousness. She began to tug at the fabric, sweeping it away from the grand mirror it had covered. He looked at himself.
“Well?” He could hear the anticipation in her voice. “How does my arm fit?”
He couldn’t help but narrowed his eyes. “Surely it is more my arm than yours at this point.”
“Ah, but my dear, so much of me went into the craft! Not only my magic, but the sweat of my brow and blood of my veins,” she simpered, “and I mean that last part quite literally.”
He opted for silence, taking the time to examine the new arm in question. What had been a stump ending just past his shoulder was now a matrix for his forged metal limb. Binding the organic to the inorganic were thick black veins running the length of the arm, and hooking into the corded muscles of his neck. That’s where they seemed to disappear, though if he focused his one good eye upon his face in the dim light he fancied he saw a slight discoloration along his jaw, as though the dark veins continued just beneath the skin, forming like a bruise. He reached his other, more familiar arm over to run the remaining fingers over the metal, testing for sensation. The fingers, much like his old arm and right eye, had been lost in his battles. His body bore the evidence of combat. ‘A shame,’ he thought absently. He used to think he wasn’t half bad to look at. Sure, his nose was bent out of shape and his jaw sloped off to the right a little now, not to mention the time spent in the salt mines had weathered his skin down to yellow paper. He still had all his teeth, though. Nice ones too. And a full head of dark hair, horns just barely visible above the mane. He was no longer of the same nature of his parents, Qunari or human. Pity.
“Well?” She hissed again, and he saw her nails grip the velvet, working holes into the thick fabric and he quickly decided not to keep her waiting.
“Good as new,” he grunted, flexing his new arm, “Maybe even better.”
Her serpentine-eyes narrowed for a second, but if his underwhelming response angered her she let it go. Gathering up her robes, she began to close the distance between them, becoming impassive once more. The proximity made him realize she was much more imposing than he first thought. As she drew herself up he was shocked to see her eyes were at the level of his. He felt an unfamiliar urge to withdraw under those unsettling eyes, made unnaturally bright by sickness.
“You know, my little project, that in all the excitement of invention, I forgot to ask your name.”
“You know, I really don’t remember.” He answered honestly. “Kind of life I’ve had, it’s not all as important as you’d think.