Chapter 5: First Steps

My eyes opened to a female figure above me. Laura had been pulling back my eyelids to see if I was sleeping or actually unconscious. She sat back and looked mildly relieved before angrily turning to another Knight in full armour who was standing to the side.

“There, Gregory, he’s awake. How he has managed that after being buried alive on TOP of whatever the necromancer did to him is a mystery… but stop fretting and mind your own kit.”

To his credit, Gregory didn’t escalate to Laura’s level of irritation but instead shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“Cap wanted him mobile. It’s your head if he isn’t. We ride in half a bell.” And with that he was gone.

I sat up and found myself remarkably well, all things considered. But as I stood up, I realised something was drastically different. I don’t know when it had happened, whether I was too tired last night to notice the change in the dark, but I felt better. I felt stronger. I felt...

YOUNG!!!

I looked down at my stomach, the extra weight I had carried around my waist and chest was gone. I pulled off my long shirt in such a haste that Laura had to step back in shock as I looked at myself in amazement.

The sagging softness I’d grown used to was gone—replaced by lean muscle and definition.

Even my hands looked younger.

And... yeah, everything else had scaled accordingly.

What the fuck?

I looked across at Laura in disbelief and caught her staring at my naked body as well. She blushed and turned away in embarrassment but I didn’t care. I ignored her and dove into Raphael’s wash kit praying that as a knight he was afforded a luxury, even in the field. And, as luck might have it, tucked into a little leather pocket in his shaving kit was a small mirror. It was a simple metal disk, polished to a fine sheen that reflected my image poorly, but well enough to shave by. And certainly enough to confirm my suspicions.

“How old do you think I am?” I asked Laura eagerly, who I noticed was still eyeing my physique.

“Uh... I don’t know, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old, no more than that. Why?”

I stared at her in amazement and then remembered that I needed to hide my origins. “Oh... no reason... I had bad dreams... I guess I was still half asleep. I... dreamt I was much older and it took a moment to figure out what was real I guess.”

I pulled my long shirt over my head and quickly rolled up Raphael’s, now I guess my, shaving kit. Laura seemed to snap out of her daze once my shirt was on, and I admit I had liked the attention, for no other reason than I had never been objectively attractive before. Certainly, my previous girlfriends and even my wife were all more attracted to my personality than my physique, or lack thereof. But with everything else going on I needed to focus on what my course was going to be. This group of Knights sounded, on the surface, like a good bunch, trying to do some good in the world and I figured staying with them and pulling my weight was a good start.

I rolled up my kit and got ready just in time for Deriostos to call us to move out. It felt weird being part of a military unit, but I carried what they asked me to carry and, being 18 again, I felt like it was a breeze. Easy even! I could walk all day like this without worrying about my sore knee. Well, I had no sore knee now!

Gregory turned out to be the one who had tossed me a water skin earlier and he and I spoke briefly as we headed out. He, like Laura, had joined more recently than the rest of the unit, though had served for six months under Deriostos before Laura had joined. He struck me as quite detached though and I ended up carrying most of our conversation by asking him questions about the world and getting only short, simple answers in return. In retrospect, I should have realised that he had just lost a comrade he had shared camp with for half a year, and I was walking next to him wearing that man’s tunic and boots. I kicked myself for that insensitivity and assured myself I would have to apologise to him later.

The other knights gave me a complete cold shoulder. They had no time for a civilian like myself and there was no respect there. The Captain was at least amicable, but the rest made it quite clear they wanted no conversation on the journey. All except Laura. Laura was an open book.

Along the journey, Laura told me of the Iron Shield and how they had two major mandates. The first was apparently to protect wizards in the field and in their enclaves, which were usually universities or schools. The Wizards’ Collective was a powerful organisation which governed the use of magic across the world and when they went into dangerous situations, the Iron Shield were paired with a wizard to protect them for the mission.

The second duty was to locate and recruit arcane potential and arrest or eliminate those who refused. The necromancer was one who had refused recruitment and resisted arrest and the battle had been short and devastating. Laura remarked that it had been her first mission with Revenant Company and she was hoping that this next contact was going to be a little quieter.

“If we test this girl and she returns a positive result, she should come quietly. There will be some grumbling of course, we don’t expect people to be happy about it, especially as it interrupts their lives, but they usually don’t try to physically resist.”

“It’s a shame there isn’t a better way...” I mused. “As much as it’s dangerous for others, it’s not their fault they’ve got this magic.”

“It’s a curse.” Deriostos growled as he dropped back to talk with us. “Like vampirism or lycanthropy they are a danger to others regardless of how much they try not to be. The difference is that if we can get to them early, we can limit the damage they can do.”

I frowned at that. I was accustomed to reading into people’s speech, a handy skill as a teacher, and there was something in the way he phrased it that irked me. He didn’t say that they could help the mages, despite Laura clearly stating earlier that it was their mandate to protect these young potential mages from themselves. Prejudice was an insidious and often sneaky thing, and I could see this position as perfect for a man who had a dislike for mages. I thought of corrupt cops who exercised prejudice when dealing with various ethnic groups and wondered if there was any equivalent problem here.

The captain continued. “Make no mistake, the most favourable outcome is to make a peaceful determination and then have the arcane potential come voluntarily. But anyone who stands in our way is in breach of the decree set out by Lord Arnias and that makes them a criminal.”

Lord Arnias, Laura explained, was the local noble who governed all of the Athnian Highlands and the Iron Shield were following the law that he had made for his lands. After a little more discussion I found that, in general, the Iron Shield had to be given permission by the local King or Lord to operate in each authority. These were negotiated by the Wizards’ Collective and that certain jurisdictions had different levels of control over the Iron Shield's actions. Some Kings gave the Order full judicial authority over magic law in their lands, whereas others placed strict restrictions on the manner in which the Iron Shield were allowed to act.

Lord Arnias, apparently, gave the Iron Shield full authority to arrest or kill any criminal mage who resisted the law, as well as any who aided the criminal. This didn’t seem out of place for a medieval, feudal society, but it struck me as rife for abuse. And, thinking back to the way medieval societies were, I shook my head as I realised that some things were universal across worlds; power corrupts and the authorities may not be able to be relied upon to act justly.

This made me even more wary about the impending mission to the nearby village. I waited until the captain re-joined his men at the front before quietly asking.

“Laura, what percentage of arcane potential who become wizards come from little villages like this one?”

The blonde-haired beauty frowned with intelligent thought and she wondered for a second.

“You know? I don’t know. We do know that certain areas produce more mages than others. There was an investigation into genetics that produced some interesting results. It showed that noble bloodlines don’t produce more mages than lower classes, as was believed for centuries. But there were regions which produced more or less and the mages at the Isle of St Stephan are trying to sort out why at the moment. That’s where I served before here.”

“You served as a mage guard?” I asked curiously.

“Yes,” she spoke sadly. “We worked closely with the Wizards and protected them when they had to do research with dangerous creatures or in areas where the chances of a bandit attack was high. It was very rewarding.”

“So what made you change career paths?” I was trying to get a measure of this woman. I had no time for cruelty but had no information on this group of people. Sure, they had helped me, and I was grateful, but if I was one of “their sort”, namely, non-magical, then they'd probably have no reason to show their uglier side.

So when Laura’s face darkened at my question, I grew worried. She looked away and I could tell she was trying to keep her composure.

“A colleague of mine, a… mentor, was murdered, he was a wizard and good man. He went to investigate a wild mage and bring him into the Wizard’s Collective. He and his Iron Shield protector were murdered. I left the Isle of Saint Stephan to join Revenant Company. I knew they had been tasked with hunting down the bastard and I wanted in.”

It all clicked into place now. “That’s why you were searching the graves when you found me. That’s why you were looking at all the faces. You were trying to recover their bodies.”

She nodded, a tear falling down her cheek. “We never did. He didn’t bury them in the field with you and the others. They must have been...”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but I knew what she implied; the necromancer had probably turned them into some abomination that didn’t bear thinking about. I put a hand on her shoulder in commiseration.

“It does no good to anyone to dwell on what might have happened. They are gone and you live and that will never seem fair to you. But you brought them justice and, in doing so, you saved my life. It will be enough for you in time. But once this mission is over, you should find time to grieve.”

She sniffed and looked at me confused. “You’re what 18? You’re younger than me, but you speak like you’ve been through this pain a dozen times. What fucking hell did you go through as a kid in the Shadowspine Plains?”

I grimaced. I had to remember that I didn’t look 40 anymore, that no-one knew I had lived an entire life, had the experiences of a lifetime, was hoping to meet Sasha in the afterlife. I hung my head to hide my expression and Laura took that to mean I was annoyed at her.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Of course, you can’t remember!” She looked away awkwardly and we walked in silence for a while, both of us unsure how to continue our conversation.

“It seems like the Shadowspine Plains is tough place?”

Laura nodded. “The whole place is overrun with undead. Every child grows up with a sword in their hand. If they grow up at all. Your accent sounds like it comes from there. If you did grow up there and you made it to this age; you would rank among the best swordsmen in the order.”

Well that doesn’t set expectations. I thought sardonically. I hope they don’t rely on my swordsmanship before I have a chance to disappoint them.

We continued for a while as Laura chewed on something that was clearly bothering her. Eventually, she seemed to lean in closer as if she was afraid of being overheard. “I disagree with the Captain, not that I’ve ever told him, but it’s not a curse. Magic that is. I mean, it obviously is horrible for those who don’t survive, but those arcane potentials who do make it through their Harrowing are set for life. Even the ones who burn out and end up not having magic after their Harrowing are offered employment by the Wizards’ Collective in all sorts of roles, from cleaners and maintenance staff, to research assistants, historians, engineers, the Wizards’ Collective takes care of those who it pulls from their families. They are good people. And the mages who do get to study magic would never give it up for anything. I’ve always enjoyed working with the Wizards.”

I decided I quite liked the girl. She was obviously a compassionate person, something I prided myself in and prized in others, and it seemed like she was more sympathetic to the plight of the mages than the Captain, for certain.

But the others had distanced themselves from us and I could see there was a definite difference in hierarchy here. The men were separated into those who had been together the longest, then Gregory a short way behind, and then Laura and myself so far back that we almost could have been considered a separate group. Soon though, the Captain and his men were pulling around and preparing their horses for riding and, as we walked up close to them, I saw we were on a ridge overlooking a hamlet surrounded by grazing lands that stretched for miles. It was just before midday, and the Captain ordered us to wait a moment as he prepared the plan.