The characters and plot in this story are copyrighted by the author.
All the characters in this story are purely products of my imagination and are not based on real people. Any resemblance is purely coincidental and is not intended.
If you are looking for just sex this is not the story for you. Most of the romance will take place in later chapters if I continue the story
This is my first attempt at a story and I hope that you like it. If you have any positive feedback I would love to hear it. You can email me at BlackAdept@Hotmail.com
I am going to try to get one chapter a week out but I am a university student so sometimes I might not have time
I would like to give special thanks to Bobby who is editing my work for me.
The Black Adept
Chapter 5: Echoes of the Past
By Matt
As I returned to my home beneath the Academy my mind was occupied with a storm a thoughts. Did I handle the situation with Kinren and Kai properly or did I let instincts other then logic guide. I had been lonely for too long, longer then even Void mages usually allow themselves to live. The only time I talked to others was when I was using one of my other identities or talking to my contacts. I haven't had a real friend in too long and there have been many times that I have needed one and times that I wanted someone closer. I may be almost three hundred years old but I am still in the body of a young man and I still have the same desires as the rest of humanity. I almost had to laugh at the fact that they both looked older then me since I sometimes forget get that my body doesn't age with my mind. I just hoped that this friendship wasn't selfish in regards to my responsibilities. I had served selflessly for so long I think I deserved a little bit of friendship and maybe more.
That thought brought my mind back to that shy, awkward, and innocent kiss from Kai. I don't know why he did it but I hope he saw something in me that I was beginning to believe dead, my humanity. Kai was beautiful and had a personality that was complex and intriguing. He was quiet, sweet, intelligent, and funny and I hoped that he would come back. Kai and Kinren could have been twins for how close they looked like each, both beautiful in the extreme. Where Kinren had a confident and almost arrogant manner to him, Kai was quiet and shy. Where in Kinren power was not great and felt like a calm breeze to my mage senses, Kai was a barely contained storm of power. They had thought my power great when I first came to the Academy but when compared to Kai, even my original potential was weak. The most intriguing thing about him was that I could sense more power in him that he was hiding either consciously or unconsciously. I don't know. It was something that I doubted that many mages could have detected if they were looking for it and I could only catch the most fleeting evidence for it. I almost doubted that I sensed it at all.
I don't know how I really felt about all this. I had never thought that I would ever find myself in this situation. Over the years I had been involved in a few relationships while posing as one of my other identities, some of them quite intimate, but I always backed out. The knowledge that I couldn't reveal who I really was for fear of rejection always shadowed those liaisons. That wasn't the case here if this developed into anything he would know what I was. It was at that moment I realized I would not be able to use that as an excuse and that scared me. Even after so long I still feel the pain from the loss of Jayden sometimes and I knew, deep down inside, that I feared it happening again. I stopped myself from thinking any longer on it. I didn't even know what he meant in that kiss. I didn't want to get my hopes up yet. If something happened, it happens and I will react to it when the time comes.
As I came to the end of this corridor that I had traveled down countless times leading to my home, a new thought intruded on my mind. I thought about the first time I had traveled down this corridor and entered the chamber of the Black Adept. I had been terrified then, still not understanding what had happened to me. I don't know why my mind was traveling in this direction. Maybe the events of the last few hours had released these memories. Maybe contact with Dalenti's spirit and my reminiscing with Kinren and Kai had caused it but, whatever the cause, I allowed the memories to surround me.
I was still heartbroken over Jayden's death and barely in my right mind. I was still trying to come to terms with how I was now a Void mage when all I had wanted was to slip into peaceful death. I felt cheated somehow that it been denied to me but at that moment I mainly felt exhausted. The Void was keeping me alive through my blood loss but it was sapping my energies slowly. Before I was allowed to rest Dalenti forced me to eat even though I had no appetite, so that my body could begin to replace my blood. After that She led me to a small room barely bigger then a closet, containing only a small bed. The minute I hit the surprisingly comfortable mattress, I was asleep.
When I woke up the next day I was disoriented and a little unnerved over what I thought was a terrible dream. All I wanted to do find Jayden and hold him while told him all about it and listen to his comforting words, like every time I time had a problem. It took me a few seconds to realize the bed was too comfortable to be mine or Jayden's. When I opened my eyes and realized where I was, that it hadn't been a dream, all I could do was cry. The next thing I knew, Dalenti was holding me. She didn't offer any words of comfort, which we both knew would be meaningless at that time. She just held me as I cried. I don't know how long it took me to stop but she stayed with me the whole time, just holding me.
After I composed myself, she led me out of the small room and gave me some breakfast. After that, she started my lessons, piling me with work until I could barely concentrate on anything. At first I thought she was being cruel. She knew I was suffering but she wasn't giving me time to grieve. It took me a long time to realize that she was giving me a distraction, something to focus on besides my heartache and sadness. At that time, though, I hated her. It wasn't until nearly a month of being drilled in the histories of the Black Adepts, forced to read the seemly endless journals of the previous Black Adept and taught all of the responsibilities required of me, that I realized she wasn't completely heartless.
One day I woke up and she gave me my breakfast but didn't tell me to start on my studies. Instead, she told me to follow her and walked towards the entrance of the chambers. At first, I thought of refusing but my curiosity got the best of me and I followed. She led me though the vast network pointing out where each tunnel went as we traveled to her objective. When we came to what appeared to be a dead end, she turned and, for the first time, I heard the Nameless language as she cast a spell on both of us. My first reaction was to flinch away from the horrible sound but then something about it seemed familiar, like I could almost recognize the words. By the time her spell was finished, I wasn't afraid but trying to interpret what she had said. There was no sentence structure just a string of words. I only sort of recognized two words. I knew what they were but the meaning didn't quite seem to make sense. The best definition I could come up with for them would be the words "other" and "sight". I couldn't help but mention this to her and she just smiled and said that the language seems to just come naturally to those who follow the Void. That upset me a little since I was still trying to deny that I was a Void mage. I had read the histories of the Black Adepts and knew that if they were true, the Black Adepts had done many things to help the Academy and mankind. She told me she had cast a spell to keep people from seeing us and told me that when she opened the door, to be quiet until we reached our destination. With that, she did something that made the wall seem to fade out of existence and took off at a fast walk. There were people about but they didn't seem to notice anything as I followed behind her. I had considered running off but didn't and just followed her. I was surprised as she lead me to the Academy cemetery and to a new tombstone. She simply said that I could say my farewells and left me alone. I looked at the tombstone and read the what was written to myself.
Jayden Maltri
Born 1703 TA Died 1720 TA
You will be missed by your family
That you left behind.
Carved in below by someone were the words:
Loved by Truin wherever he is now
I am sorry I never meant to hurt you. J.A.
I was crying again as I stared at that message I knew who had written it. "J.A.", meaning Jasrin Aubrey. The boy who had made my life hell for years had developed a heart or at least found it. To see that he would write those words for me made me realize that he must be hurting almost as much as I was. I forget most of my hatred for him in that moment and wished I could thank him for his small atonement of putting my name on Jayden's tombstone. I said my silent goodbyes and promised to do my best from now on, knowing he would not want me to waste my life in mourning him or in the more permanent way I had already tried.
I looked for Dalenti but she was nowhere to found. I began to search until I heard a sound. I looked over to find Dalenti crying softly in front of another tombstone. I realized that she just wasn't the monster that I thought she was. I took my turn to hold her until her crying ceased. With that we returned to our home under the Academy. Every little while, we would both come up here to cry our tears for our loved ones and remember our pasts. On one such trip, I was surprised to find someone else crying over Jayden's grave, Jasrin. >From the lips of my once archenemy I heard him speaking to my dead love grave.
"I am sorry I haven't been able to find him. It is liked he disappeared off the face of the planet. Don't worry I will keep trying and do must best to not allow this to happen again. I will try to change things for the better if I can. I promise."
With that he walked away still crying. It took every ounce of will power I had not to reveal myself to him and sometimes I still regret not doing it. Jasrin went through life haunted, some said, and when years later his father died and he became High Lord of Aubrey, he kept his promise to the best of his ability. The people of Aubrey were surprised when their lord started to make life easier for his people. He introduced schools for the poor and tried to help people make a better life for themselves. He passed laws against discrimination. Even if it didn't change peoples minds, it slowed their hands. He put pressure on High Lords to follow suit, and raised his children to continue after him. His line became famous for their concern for the people and the reforms on behalf of the poor and unfortunate.
After that first visit to Jayden's grave I studied whatever I was given with a passion. Dalenti showed me how to make explosives, poisons, healing salves, and everything that might help me when my turn at Black Adept came around. When Dalenti started to train me in the secrets of Void magic, I was a star pupil.
First we studies the language of the Void and I quickly learned to find the beauty behind the terrible sounds of the words. The language comes instinctively to Void mages for a reason no one have ever been able to completely figure out. I have come to believe that the Void gives us the tools to serve it better. It is not really necessary to even know what the words you say mean. If you want to throw a fireball you simply think it and the words and actions come to you.
Each Black Adept tries to further Void magic and Dalenti's contribution was interpreting the meaning of the words. She realized that there were many ways of doing the same things and, if we knew the words, we could do things using less energy and create more complex spells then what just came you. There was never any real subtlety involved in Void magic until Dalenti came up with this. It was just the throwing around of energy. I learned the meaning for each word and, in this, wanting to further her work, I started to try to transcribe the symbols we used when casting onto paper, which eventually brought about the Marks. I learned that in the Void, energy is fluid and can be easily altered which means, in theory, water can be turned to fire by simply converting the energy that makes it up. I took to Void magic naturally and came to love the simple complexity of it as well as the calmness and peace that came while casting it.
Shortly after I started learning magic, I learned how to process the energy in the air around the Academy to refill my magic back to my full potential. It was after two years that it was time to learn perhaps the most horrible lesson any Black Adept ever has to learn. There may be times you cannot fill your magic from a vast reserve like the Academy so a Void mage has to learn how to drain the energy from a person. The most energy is released at death which means I would have to kill someone no matter how much it sickened me. You could drain twenty people of their excess energy and not receive as much as you could from one death.
Dalenti was not unsympathetic to me and told me how hard it was for her when her master taught her. She told me that she only had to do this a handful of times in all her hundreds of years as Black Adept. She chose a murderer that had been plaguing the city of Molas for a few weeks. It was easy, far too easy to draw all the power out of the man. He tried to scream as I appeared out of the shadows in an alley and pulled him in, but my magic made all noise silent. I could still feel his terror, however. All I had to do was put my hand to the skin on his chest and I felt his energy. It was simple to pull it out of him. When his body went limp I felt dirty and evil. Then Dalenti was beside me telling me that as long as it was hard for me to do it, I was still noble at heart. She also told me that if it ever became easy then I should worry. I knew that it was an important lesson that I would have know eventually if I was to ever have to fight away from the Academy or the portals which gave me access to it.
My training progressed normally until one event which would alter the future of the Black Adept and Void magic. About three and a half years into my training, I was trying to transcribe the hand movements of Void magic onto paper which is harder than you would think. When you do something instinctually it is hard to study the exact movement and figure out how to express it on paper. One day, I was trying to write down the Cloak of the Void spell we use to be invisible and was quietly speaking the spell and thought I had it perfect when the page disappeared. It took me a second to realize that I had cast a spell permanently onto an object, something never done in Void magic to anyone's knowledge before.
I nearly tackled Dalenti trying to show her the now invisible piece of paper. She first checked to see if I was actively giving energy to the spell and, when she realized I wasn't, she was ecstatic. Up until that point I had never seen her lose her calm, collected attitude, except the few times I had seen her cry over her own long dead love's grave. She grabbed me in a crushing hug, saying I was brilliant and would do great things and how proud she was of me.
It was that that night that I tried my next experiment with what I came to call the Marks. I took a staff from a rack, it had been enchanted a long time ago by a mage of the Academy to allow the holder to see the flows of energy around them. Not that useful to a regular mage but, to a Void mage who can alter the very nature of energy, it was a valuable tool. I began to transcribe spells into the staff with the same enchanted knife I had once used to try and take my own life. It took me months to complete the carving since it still drew energy out of me to transcribe the spell onto something. Well, the spell would not act independently, as I first hoped. I learned that by focusing the spell through the proper string of Marks on the staff, it took less energy to cast the spell. I intended it as a gift to Dalenti but she said that since it was made with my energies and carved with the knife that almost killed me, it was attuned to me, so I should keep it.
Over the five years I spent in training, twice Dalenti left to deal with threats to the Academy. The first was an Academy mage trying to bond with a demon. She led him away from the Academy and killed him before he succeeded in bonding with one. She returned at the end of the day barely tired. The second was a mad Void mage that had begun to create problems in the south.
Sometimes when a mage tries to connect to the Void when they are not compatible they are driven crazy by it. Also, sometimes the emptiness of the Void, which a Void mage is always conscious of in a part of their brain whether they were compatible or not, can become too much for them and they snap. I don't know what case this was, but he had killed a mage of the Academy traveling in the south. The Academy had because of this, a renewed hatred of Void mages, who had been virtually unknown in the realm for hundreds of years, since they tended to seek isolation and do not want to be disturbed. There were always many mages outside the control of the Academy hiding in remote areas, from regular mages who didn't like rules to black mages hiding from the Academy. Dalenti wanted to deal with it before he got the Academy anymore worked up.
She was gone for three days to track him down and kill him. After that we were both a little unsettled because, in a way, one of our own had been killed. Void magic is a lot like clerical magic, in that it is almost like a religion. You receive access to using the Void in magic by serving it. Unlike the gods of clerical magic, the Void didn't have agendas to be followed, only that you worship the Void and find ways to strengthen it. Working together with other Void users is not required, but most Void mages feel some sort of loose brotherhood to each other, so it is hard to have to slay one of your own.
I realized I was tired from the earlier fight and now was emotionally exhausted from all the memories, so decided to call it a night. I did not know what tomorrow would bring but, for some reason, I felt that the future seemed a lot brighter then it did yesterday. I thought of my potential friendship with Kinren and Kai and what that might bring in the future. More though, I thought of the self-conscious, nervous kiss Kai gave me before they left. With those thoughts I went to sleep to have the first completely unhaunted sleep I had in a long time.
To be continued....
This is my first attempt at a story and I hope that you like if you have any positive feedback I would love to hear it. it. You can email me at BlackAdept@Hotmail.com