My Dearest Bellarose,
Oh, my sweet angelic flower. How I have hurt you in the years since my expulsion. I barely remember the names of most of my friends, but I could never forget you. We did not speak for two years following my departure, so consumed was I with the injustice of it all. I did not care to listen to the warnings that learning of my curse would set me down a dark path.
"Do not lose hope, Gyanda. You may be cursed, but you are also gifted. I have never known a stronger person than you."
I dearly wish I could say I took your words to heart, my love. Not just because of what I have done to you, but because of what I have done to myself. My saving grace is that although I chose to ignore these words at first, I never forgot them. They saved me when I was at the lowest point in my life.
After the doors of Hem Academy closed behind me, I immediately set off for Palon. I had heard you were looking for me back in the town by which I was named, but I could never return there. My cousin had recently accepted the protection of the Blackstone Monastery, and Mother was adamant about ensuring that I would do the same. As I walked away from you and the others, I made the foolhardy decision that I would not submit to this fate.
From the villagers, I heard the rumors of Adamora's treatment. She was reasonably cared for so long as she remained confined to the monastery and committed herself to the priesthood. I refused to remain trapped on these grounds while uttering daily pledges to the gods that allowed this to happen to me. My chosen life was stolen from me by forces from on high when it was decided that I could never be a spellwarrior. Why, I thought at the time, should I allow them to claim what remained of it?
And so, I continued my magical studies. You may ask why when I was already considered proficient at magic. You see, with my aspirations dashed, I had to think of my future, which I was determined should remain in my own hands. I refused to suffer the indignity of allowing my precious magical talents to go to waste. I thought of wandering the land as a mercenary, as many Hem dropouts do, but I would not, could not contemplate holding a sword in my hands again. It wasn't until I wielded a sword in battle for the first time that I felt the presence of that damned spirit, if you'll pardon my language.
The logical idea seemed to be to accept my fate as a magister. Although I longed for the chance to apply my magic for the good of Resta, I had no problem with my decision to be a lifelong student of the arcane. It was technically already true of me long before my admission to school.
All this time, I avoided contact with everyone, primarily out of jealousy. I wished so desperately for what you would all achieve without me. I wanted to join the order more than any of you, and yet you were all going to get there without me. Even underachieving Miles. I have found myself thinking many times that it should have been him to suffer this cruel burden. It was certainly not right of me to think so, I know. Miles was a good person, but so was I. My anger with the gods far overshadowed my envy, but this feeling was strong enough cause for me to turn my back on you all.
Between the rumors I must have left behind and my determination never to speak to you again, everyone else seemed to have gotten the point and never spoke to me again. But not you. When you graduated, I know you were determined to share your accomplishment with me. My sister told me as much in her letters. I knew you had no one else to see you receive your insignia, but I could not face the accursed place that cast me out again. I should have been there. You should have had someone there to show you how proud they were of you.
Despite the figurative wall of ice that I had allowed to form around myself as I continued my studies alone, you still wanted to see me. When you finally tracked me down in Palon, I was already prepared to immerse myself in the deepest corners of the magical community. I was preparing for a long trip when you showed up on my doorstep, demanding answers. For some reason, it did not hurt when I saw the order insignia pinned prominently to your chest. I sincerely shared your joy in that moment as we talked for the first time in ages.
It was as if hardly any time had passed at all. That night, we talked about many things. The magic I had learned and promised to teach you. My family. What happened to all of our old friends since my departure. I was far less interested in the latter, to be honest. I was simply glad to see you once more. When the night finally ended with the love we made, I considered for the first time since Hem what it would be like to have you in my life.
But the time was not right. I was already committed to something I could not explain to you at the time. I told you that I was leaving once more, but I did not want to lose you. That is why I handed you my key. The next morning I left, expecting nothing except for you to know that I would return to that house someday.
Those were the words I once imparted to Bellarose in a letter. But there is so much more that I never told her. In my studies, I burned through every codex, grimoire, and tome that I could get my hands on, learning skills I never dreamed of as a boy. But after amassing a large collection of spells and books, I found myself unfulfilled by the lack of challenge. I never had any sort of difficulty understanding the principles of magic. By my seventieth volume, everything I read looked familiar. I could invoke elemental forces with little difficulty at this point. In addition, I also had a passable understanding of empathy, divination, conjuration, and illusion. While I find these skills to be fundamental to a magister's learning, I began to resent these schools because of their strong representative ties to the divine. For instance, fire spells represented Chaos, who could or would do nothing to save me from his daughter's accursed brand.
In all this time, I had forgotten none of my fury at the gods for allowing me to be used as a pawn in a long forgotten game of Maula's. What better way to show my disdain, I thought, than to relax my position on forbidden magic? Blood magic was the first of these ancient disciplines I had ever considered.
Blood is the very essence of life, I’ve learned. It can be used to accomplish many great deeds such as healing, scrying, and, if one were so inclined, killing. All without invoking any of the gods’ divine power. You see, the gods designed all of mortalkind to be just like them. Elves in particular are said to resemble the gods in appearance while humanity was designed to improve upon their biology. Although we have nowhere near the level of power each deity holds, we do naturally carry some of it in our very blood. To use this power without the arbitrary limits imposed by the magic we use by invoking the gods' essences seemed dangerous and certainly repellent at first.
That was until I met Samson Amul. He moved into Palon during my second year there. Since then, people began to disappear. Some permanently, some temporarily. Those who were lucky enough to return were too horrified to speak of their dilemma, so the spellwarriors were unable to learn anything from them. Using a combination of divination and empathy, I found Samson first. Although I believed him to be of little threat, he handily overpowered me with a grasp on sorcery he initially believed to be beyond my comprehension. Over time, I impressed him by breaking his hold on me. Although he assured me that my attempts to escape were not tiring him in the slightest, it took an uncommonly gifted sorcerer to resist his power.
He explained to me of the limits to the approved forms of magic that I had always embraced and how blood magic is limited only by the power of the individual from whom the blood is drawn.
"But you wouldn't care about that, would you? You strike me as the sort of man who would embrace only divine-approved magic even knowing how it's fixed."
This was certainly true of me when I was younger. It is certainly true of me now. But at that moment, I was willing to listen. When I told him of my curse, he gave me hope that I could theoretically remove it using the spells he could teach me if I was willing. I knew that my chances of resisting a divine curse (even from the unholy claws of Maula) would be next to none. But with blood magic, I reasoned, I would stand a better chance than with divine magic.
And so I pledged to join his coven in the nearby village of Solan. That was where I intended to go the first night I saw my darling Bellarose since I left school. I wanted to stay or at least tell her where I was going, but Samson made it clear that he would not allow me live with the knowledge I had gained of his identity unless I submitted to his teachings. With little hesitation, I agreed. This is a secret that, until now, my most intimate friends and family never knew. And it only gets worse.
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