Fallen Mage Regressor

A hand clasped around Mal's fingers and stopped the fall.

"Crap—" Rolam adjusted his grip and clenched his fist tight. "Mal, hang in there!"

Mal's hands slipped further down. Rolam grit his teeth and clenched even harder, stopping Mal from moving any further down.

Mal glanced over toward the edge of the chasm.

It wasn't too far. With his Airgrass Boots fully charged up, he might be able to make the jump.

"Swing me," Mal said.

"What? Are you insane?"

"No, swing me."

He slipped a little further. Rolam let out a muffled screech and his fingers dug into the rock hard enough to crack some of the stone.

"Fine, on three—"

Rolam swung him back and forth in a pendulum motion. "One, two—"

He brought him up to the peak of his arc, then swung him as hard as he could.

"Three!"

Mal flew through the air and made it about halfway to the other side. He kicked his feet, wind burst from his heel, he was propelled forward—

And hit the other side in a loose tumble.

He rolled along the stone, scratching his robes and his exposed skin before he came to a stop.

I am never going rock climbing again, Mal thought.

Ahead of him was a cavern with a silver glow within the interior.

"Mal!" Rolam's feet touched the ground and he rushed over to Mal. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Fine. Dandy, even." Mal sat back up, then stumbled to his feet. He brushed off the dirt from his robes. "I believe we have a Moon Blossom to collect?"

"Right." His eyes lit up. "Wait, yes, right! We found it!"

They both turned to look at the glowing silver just a scant dozen feet away from them.

Rolam nearly tripped over himself in his haste before he corrected. He sidled to the silver sheen—

The glow floated into the air and fluttered about.

Rolam's body froze.

Mal traced the glow through the glow's flight path before it turned and flew completely out of the cavern.

"Oh. It wasn't a Moon Blossom, it was a moth," Mal said.

"I saw."

Mal walked over to Rolam. Rolam collapsed to his knees, and stared at the ground. Mal joined him.

"Fat lot of good your plan did us," Rolam said.

"Sorry."

Rolam flinched. He looked off to the right, away from Mal. "No, this wasn't your fault. We were just unlucky."

Mal nodded, but didn't respond.

Mal wasn't sure how long they sat there for before Rolam started speaking.

"It was her favorite flower, you know."

His mother?

Mal turned to look at him. "You've never talked much about her."

"It's a bit of a sore subject," Rolam said. "Really, my parentage is a bit of a mess."

He reached up and tweaked his pointed ears.

"My father isn't a good man."

"Shocker."

"My brother's mother—my father's first wife—she passed away, giving birth to Holam. Supposedly father didn't even hold a funeral for her."

"Everything I've heard about him makes me want to punch him in the face."

"Elves have long lifespans, so they have equivalently long mourning periods," Rolam said. "Within a mere five years, father took another wife. That seems long for humans, but for elves it's unbelievably disrespectful. Even worse, she was replaced by a human—a young woman that my father had seen while on a diplomatic trip to Chama."

"What happened to your mother?"

Rolam's fist clenched.

"She was alone, in a foreign land—everyone despised and detested her. Her own husband was busy most days, concerned with affairs of state. Bit by bit, she lost interest in life and—"

Rolam's fist unclenched.

"That's why Holam tries to take care of me," Rolam said. "I don't think he ever stopped blaming himself. He thinks that if he had seen what was happening, he could have saved her."

"Your brother is a good man."

"He is. And yet for some reason, even now, even after all that—"

"You still want the approval of your father."

A dry scoff. "Exactly. The worst part is that he doesn't even seem to be aware of what he did. He's busy being the Prime Minister. Any time a word of criticism is leveled against him, he points out all the good that he's done for the kingdom." Rolam shrugs, "And it's true. He's a master politician. The only reason we haven't gone to war with Violeko is because of his political maneuvering. He's been responsible for the safety of hundreds of thousands of lives, and he's excelled."

Mal remains silent.

"I was only a boy when she passed. By the time I remembered her, any traces of life had already been snuffed out of her eyes. All I see in the theater of my mind, is a cold, dead stare. I don't even know why I bother to do this every year. I wonder often if it's merely spite—an attempt to prove myself the better man."

"You know what they call him?" Rolam said. "Most honorable. But tell me, what honor is there in abandoning your wife and driving a woman to despair?"

"There is none."

"Exactly."

Rolam's tone turned quieter, his shoulders hunched forward.

"You know, what I did back at the tournament? That's what he would've done." A scoff. "If he's meant to be the model for honor, then what even is honor? How would you know if you were honorable? How would you know if you were just fooling yourself, like my father? Like me—?"

His voice hitched and his mouth clamped shut like an iron vice.

He really has no sense of perspective, does he?

Mal let out a single, long sigh. "Don't be ridiculous."

Rolam jerked. "What? I—"

Mal stood up and looked down at him. "You are defined by one word. It's on your lips every morning, it's the first thought you think of when you wake up."

Honor.

Rolam's eyebrows furrowed. "Where is this going?"

"What were your thoughts when you first began this tradition? Did somebody tell you to?"

"I—not directly. It was just that nobody else did. I'd seen death in our family before. Every year, father and Holam light a shrine for his first wife. But father refused to do that for my mother. And I just remember thinking..." He bit his lips. "...that someone had to."

Someone had to? I've heard that reasoning before, in my own head.

You used it to build a shrine. I used it to wage a war.

"You did it out of duty," Mal said. "You did it because it was the right thing to do, and no one else would do it. Because it was the honorable thing to do. Because you knew that no matter how she looked in her final days, she deserved better than to be forgotten."

Mal kneeled down.

"I'm not a good man, Rolam," Mal said. "I am the opposite of good in every conceivable way. So I know what that looks like, and that isn't you. You're naive, annoying, and frustrating to be around even at your best. But you are at your heart—"

A hero.

The words stilled on Mal's tongue.

"Good," Mal said instead.

Rolam's eyes shimmered. Mal stood up and looked away out of respect for him.

The sound of cloth shifting and fabric rubbing against skin came out from behind Mal.

"Thank you, honored leader."

"Don't mention it."

Mal faced away.

A glimmer. Just at the corner of his eye.

There's no way.

He took a few quick strides over to the glimmer, and kneeled down.

A flower, petals wrapped up in the shape of a peony. It was the color of the moon, exactly the right shape. Mal reached down and plucked it.

"Rolam," he said. "You'll never believe what I just found." He turned and presented the flower. Rolam's jaw dropped.

While Mal unrolled a carpet and set it on the stone, just below the full moon outside of the cavern. Rolam arranged the shrine, then set the moon blossom on the ground.

He kneeled in front of the shrine, clasped his hands together, and bowed his head. Mal glanced above. They were only a minute away from midnight, maybe less.

He shut his eyes and—

Something at the edge of his Total Awareness.

He turned around to yell a warning to Rolam when he stopped.

An ethereal figure was kneeled next to Rolam. She was nearly translucent, the rocks behind her visible through her body. A long, white dress trailed several feet behind her, hair was a dark black.

But it was her eyes that were the most striking—a sharp, pale green, only a few shades away from Rolam's own eye color.

She knelt down next to Rolam. Whispered something, though he didn't visibly react. She stood back up, glanced at Mal. She placed a finger to her lips in a shushing motion, then, finally—

She faded away into the night sky.

Mal's heart beat again.

Rolam opened his eyes, then breathed out. He stood to his feet, then reached down, picked up the candle, then blew it out.

“Rolam, did you...” Mal's jaw opened and shut.

Rolam looked at him curiously. “Did I what?”

“You didn't see—?”

He hadn't.

And it wasn't Mal's place to say anything.

“Nothing. Must have been my imagination.”

Rolam chuckled, a smirk on his lips.

“Come now, honored leader. You're a man of Chama. You're not supposed to believe in superstition. There's no such thing as ghosts, after all.”

“Of course. Right.”

Mal opened his mouth to continue speaking when a sudden breeze came out of nowhere. It ruffled his clothing and the temperature dropped by several degrees.

Rolam's eyes shot up and he glanced around with a frown. “Where did that come from?”

Mal felt goosebumps run down his back.

There was something behind him. Total Awareness was screaming at him, telling him that it had appeared without a trace.

He mechanically turned his head back.

Mal's heart stopped. The breeze stopped, the world was completely silent to Mal's ears. Every part of him screamed at him that what he was looking at couldn't be real, that it was impossible—that he had finally lost his mind.

Whatever it was, he couldn't deny what his eyes were seeing. Dream, or hallucination, or even a spirit—

None of it changed the fact that there was a suit of full armor in front of him. Most importantly, on the figure's hip was a sheathed blade that glowed even within its sheath. The light was golden, a familiar color that Mal had become painfully reacquainted with in his new life.

But unlike Lusia's gold color, this light was... paler. Cold, a light that sapped heat from a room rather than give it.

Without a word, the figure unsheathed the blade. She lined it up perpendicular to her body, then stabbed forward.

Shocked, stunned, Mal could do nothing but watch as the blade pierced his chest.