For The King - 1. Chapter 1

Adan stood on one leg, balancing a pair of tomes in his hands. He stared at the timepiece on the table in front of him, willing the sand to drain faster. This was one of his least favourite methods of exercising, but Master Dennet had caught him speeding through a spell earlier that day. Now he was slowing down, as the master called it.

It wasn’t like it had been that difficult of a spell, just a simple food summoning to feed a stray cat. He had mastered the spell nearly two years ago. But Adan’s master would not allow complacency. It led to bad habits.

The sand finally ran out, and Adan let out a sigh, lowering his leg before setting the books on the table. The last thing he wanted was to have Master Dennet tell him to start over. His body was sore, but the pain was bearable. He had been injured worse in sparring practice.

Shit, he was going to be late for sparring practice. Not that Adan understood why Master Dennet had him learning to fight with a sword. He was more than capable of fighting with magic, even if he wasn’t an invoker.

Striding purposefully out of the study, Adan made his way out of the large house, approaching the courtyard he used to learn the longsword. He was not surprised to see Master Dennet waiting beside Master Jacob, both his instructors looking stern.

“You are late,” Master Dennet scowled at the young man.

“Forgive me Master,” Adan said, lowering his head.

It was a strange relationship the two were in. Adan was Master Dennet’s slave, bound to be freed on his Day of Ascension when he would be considered an adult. But beyond that, he was the master’s apprentice, learning to harness the inherent magical energies within him.

His family had given him to Master Dennet when he was only a baby, the mage taking care to teach the boy to speak like a scholar and to read both Terin and Alor, the languages most commonly spoken in the kingdom of Mera.

Master Dennet was Adan’s owner by law, yet he treated the mage as a son. They trained as though they were nobility, Adan learning to ride horses, and use the sword, but he had never been to any of the gatherings Master Dennet frequented. He had learned long ago not to question the man about the trips. He would not get a straight answer.

It was uncommon for a slave to receive such an education, but it did happen. Especially when the slave could harness magic.

Adan had chosen his magical speciality at the age of ten, deciding to learn about transmutation. Master Dennet hadn’t allowed him to ignore the other schools of magic though. He had picked a spell from each school, mastering that one spell over the course of a year while still focusing on his transmutations.

First came Abjuration. One of the schools Master Dennet had chosen the spell for. It was a shielding spell, designed to protect from physical harm, but as Adan’s knowledge of the spell grew, he learned to influence the energy of the spell to protect against magic as well.

The other six schools had received the same treatment, Adan focusing on the spells until he knew them intimately. Through it all he worked on his study of transmutation, starting at first with changing water into wine, and eventually branching into human transmutation.

That was where Adan truly shone. He loved altering his body in small ways. Some days he made his red hair blue, sometimes he wore green eyes instead of the brown he had at birth. And he never had to worry about acne.

The transformations didn’t stop there. Turning himself into animals, changing animals into other beasts, the only limit was Adan’s imagination and the effort that would be involved. The world resisted the effects of magic, each being having a magical resistance that Adan had to overcome each time he cast a spell. And each time he did cast a spell on himself, the resistance only grew, his will increasing with each new effort.

“I hope you have learned to be more patient and considerate,” Master Dennet said. “That will have importance given what I have to tell you. After your spar today, I give you permission to begin your attunement.”

Adan’s heart soared at the comment. Attunement was the dream of nearly every apprentice mage. Mages could attune themselves either to a magical item or to a being, generally an animal they found in the wild. However Adan had been researching in his free time, and he knew he could create his own familiar.

“You will be sparring with both Master Jacob and myself today,” Master Dennet continued, interrupting Adan’s inner excitement.

Master Jacob handed a blunt sword to the young mage. Adan had no hope that he could win this sparring session. He had trouble fighting Master Jacob and Master Dennet separately. Together there was no way of fighting them. But Adan would not give up that easily.

Still, Master Dennet had taught him to know when he was at his limits early in his apprenticeship.

“I will not win this fight,” Adan said, holding up his sword. “However I will defend myself if you wish me to.”

Master Dennet nodded approvingly.

“I wish it. There may be times in your life that your foes overpower you. Even then surrender might not be an option.”

Adan settled into a fighting stance, sword held comfortably in a high guard. He looked at his opponents warily, trying to figure out their plan for this session. It was never the same twice.

Master Jacob stepped between himself and Master Dennet as the mage began casting. A shape blurred into the world to Adan’s left and the man took note of it, the shape becoming a snarling wolf.

Casting his own spell, Adan felt the light comfort of his shield spell cover his body. He got an idea and set it into motion quickly.

Charging forward, Adan felt Master Jacob’s blade bite into his shield, the spell shattering as he rushed past the man. His own blade cut into a hastily summoned shield Master Dennet had thrown up. Another quick slash stopped at the mage’s throat before Adan spun to face the opponent at his back.

“A very interesting use of a shield spell,” Master Dennet said approvingly, dispelling the wolf that was stalking toward Adan. “I am out of this fight.”

Moments later, Adan had a sword pressing against his gut. He took a step back, bowing respectfully to Master Jacob. There was no chance he could have put up a shield fast enough to avoid that last attack.

“I will give you a month for your attunement. After that, you will accompany me to Darinhal. We have business to attend to there,” Master Dennet said as Adan set his blade aside, the younger mage wincing at a small cut on his arm.

“Thank you Master,” Adan smiled.

He would start immediately.

Adan set a drawing on a table, taking a deep breath. The picture he made would be useful, but it was merely the first step in the process, one that hopefully would take less than a month. Still, he had to account for mistakes.

Adan would give himself a week for the next step of the process, the carving of his familiar. This would be more than just a familiar though. He was creating a life long companion. The mage stood in front of three blocks of material, glass, stone, and wood, brought in by Master Dennet explicitly for this purpose.

He already knew which he was going to start with. Wood would transfer some flexibility to his creation, though the being he created would find fire slightly problematic for him. Not that being burned was ever that pleasant.

Grabbing a set of tools, Adan found a stool and set about cutting into the block. It was a little too tall for his purposes. The man set the height of the block to be a few inches taller than himself. He began slowly working on creating a face, every move he made carefully thought out. This was his most important task yet, and he would not mess it up.

It took him five days to finish his carving, taking breaks along the way to rest his eyes and his mind. Lowering his wooden statue onto the stone slab Master Dennet had given him, Adan cast a transmutation, letting the stone meld over the wood until a thin layer of the grey material covered the entire statue. A second spell fused the layers together, leaving behind a wood that was strong as stone yet flexible as a branch in the wind.

Looking into the painted blue eyes of his creation, Adan smiled. This would do perfectly. The easy part was over. Now came the hard part.

Two weeks later, Adan set his pen down, breathing a sigh of relief. He was done, the last word copied. Ten books lay around the table, all completely copied from several books in Master Dennet’s library. It was Adan’s intention for them to be wiped clean by his ritual, the knowledge contained in them giving his companion knowledge as well. An eleventh tome filled with miscellaneous information sat to the side, Adan adding to it whenever he recalled something that seemed important. Three languages, smithing, political knowledge of Mera and its three neighbours, the art of war, and knowledge of the longbow and the sword, all contained in the pages before him. All would be used to give his creation knowledge that rivalled, and complemented his own.

He had never been more grateful to have a spell specifically for increasing his writing speed. He could accomplish in two hours what would take others nearly a day to copy. Still, the process had been long and slow, and the mage was ready to take a break.

He still had more to do, but it could all be done the next day. Carrying the books to his temporary workshop, Adan set them in a neat stack on a table and left the room, locking the door behind him.

Collecting another book from his room, Adan made his way out to the courtyard, eager to escape the indoors. Still he worked on his ritual, sitting against a tree as he studied a necromantic book. Even as a transmuter, the mage had a passion for the movement of living energy, using much of his free time over the past six years to read up on this second school of magic. He practiced the art of necromancy in secret, knowing Master Dennet would not approve. The older mage believed that it was better to protect than to heal. It was why Adan’s magical studies had begun with abjuration.

Adan believed otherwise. And it was the knowledge he gained while pursuing that belief that would allow his ritual to work. He had learned in his first year of study that a dead body had two hours at most before its soul would depart. But he had also learned that bodies could be raised without a soul. They would be mindless, but that was where his other research came in.

He had found a transmutative spell that would shape a mind to know what another person knew. It was a dangerous spell though, for it would literally drain knowledge from one person and give it to the other. To combat that, Adan had his books, all hand copied and ready to be absorbed. The timing of his spells would have to be absolutely perfect, but he had no doubt he could pull it off. He had gone over the order countless times and he knew the full ritual by heart. It wasn't a substitute for a true soul, but it would mimic one well enough.

Still he double and triple checked the tomes at his disposal, as Master Dennet had taught him, looking for anything he might have missed that would throw his ritual off. There was nothing that he could find.

The next morning, Adan approached his master in the library, a set of tomes sitting before the man on a large table. Even in his mastery of the arcane arts, his master still strove to learn, an inspiration to his charge.

“Master Dennet, I need a tiger for my spell,” Adan said with a bow.

“For your attunement?” Master Dennet asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Very well. I believe I can help you,” the older mage said.

They returned to the courtyard, Master Dennet drawing a chalk circle on the ground. Adan stood to the side of the circle, a spell readied in his hand, as the other mage cast his own spell on the circle.

A large cloud formed in the circle, solidifying into a tiger. Adan regretted what he was about to do, but it was necessary, or at least it was to him.

Reaching into the circle quickly, the mage placed his hand over the tiger’s heart, releasing a blast of electricity into the beast. The tiger dropped dead instantly from the spell, and Adan immediately set about skinning the large cat.

It took nearly an hour for him to finish, erasing the circle with his toe so the rest of the feline's body could return to the ether. The pelt remained, won through hard work. Adan carried it inside, setting it in his workroom to use later.

The mage drew out a chalk circle, large enough for his statue to lay in with the books around it. A second circle followed, with runes protecting against magical backlash. He knew that he would have magic left over from the ritual, a magic inherent to the creature he was creating, and he also knew he could influence that magic to give his familiar added protections and strengths.

Mixing a bowl of magical ink, Adan set a needle on the table. He took a deep breath, running through a mental checklist. After this next step, everything would have to be completed within six hours or he would have to freshen the body and risk losing everything he had done.

Everything was done in the correct order, as perfect as Adan could make it. His statue was on its stomach, a long feline tail stretching down from its butt. Out of necessity, there were no clothes present on the statue, but that wouldn’t pose a problem. Adan had a towel waiting to the side.

The mage stretched out his hands, magic flowing as he recited the spell he had practiced constantly for the past year. The statue before him took on a pale visage, the stony wood turning into the flesh of a corpse.

Moving quickly, Adan took the tiger’s pelt and laid it on the body, chanting again as the pelt melted into the skin of his creation. When the magic stopped flowing, he was staring at the body of a feline human hybrid.

Wasting no time, Adan took the needle he had set aside and began carefully inking the tiger’s left shoulder. The symbol he added was one of transmutation, granting the tiger the power of shapeshifting. It would be a power that could not be used more than once a day, but there was a good chance it could save both of their lives someday.

An hour later the symbol was finished, inked in a bold black. Another symbol followed, a symbol of speed, and the last symbol he would be able to add.

Letting out a small sigh as he finished, Adan picked up a small dagger. He sliced into the tiger’s back, before cutting his finger with the blade. Massaging his finger until a large drop of blood was sitting on the tip, Adan stuck the digit into the cut on the tiger, coating the inside with his blood. They were bound together now, their fates intertwined.

Adan rolled the tiger over, making sure the tail was set comfortably to the side. He smiled down at the creature, taking a brief moment to admire his work.

“Roku,” he whispered, naming his companion.

It was in the information he would be transferring to the tiger, but he still wanted to say it, to feel the name roll off his tongue. This was a momentous occasion, one few had ever had before him, and Adan felt he had the right to be proud. Yet he still wasn't finished.

Lifting the corpse, Adan carried it to the circle, placing it carefully in the centre. He set the books around Roku next, before stepping into the protective circle. This would be a difficult spell to pull off, combining three schools of magic into one, but he had checked everything hundreds of times, and Adan knew he was taking all the precautions he could. The magic would be contained to the circle Roku laid in. If it escaped, the room was warded to prevent magic from getting out, and his protective circle was strong. But nothing would go wrong.

Clearing his throat, Adan took one final breath. It was time.

Chanting a long string of words, the mage held his hands out toward Roku. A tendril of lightning shot from his hands, surrounded by the green glow of healing energy. It struck the tiger in the chest, Adan cutting off the lightning, but continuing the necromantic energy flow. He could feel the energy draining from his body, and he knew this would shorten his life by at least a year. But he knew it would be worth it.

Beginning the second part of his spell, Adan watched as the tomes flew open, ink flowing through the air before spiralling into Roku’s head. As the last of the ink faded, the mage cut off all of the spells, lowering himself to the ground in exhaustion.

He took a moment to catch his breath and make sure no loose tendrils of magic remained in the room before crawling over to Roku’s body. The tiger’s chest rose and fell slowly, but that alone meant nothing.

With a sudden cough, Roku rolled over, his eyes flying open. The tiger’s mouth opened and he uttered a single word.

“Adan…?”