User:Some Color Mage/The Last Light in an Empty House

"Oh my, he looks more and more beautiful by the day, doesn't he?"

"Ladies, please, I have asked before to keep it down if you wish to watch me paint."

"I thought his family was doomed after that dreadful day five years ago, but it seems his future is bright."

"Really, now, I can still hear you, and it's still distracting. The request was to not talk at all, not 'leave me alone while you chatter amongst yourselves.'"

"I wonder if he would be interested in my granddaughter..."

"That is ENOUGH!" Saldo pushed his easel over and turned to his elderly audience, a fury that none had ever seen before in his eyes. "Leave! No more painting sessions! I don't care if you were planning to pay me, you have thoroughly ruined the experience for me."

The old ladies murmured among themselves, and eventually filed out of the house, one of them stopping along the way to complain at Aunt Vylia. The Mailum family home was never rebuilt after the fire, so Saldo and his father had been staying with her the past five years.

Now alone, Saldo breathed a sigh of relief. He went to his bookshelf and pulled out a few tomes. A history book, detailing various ancient magical sects of Amevitai. A binder of some medical notes, detailing a disease that sounded remarkably like the symptoms he had once overheard his father mentioned when discussing his mother and Lucast. And the spellbook that Evon once used, slightly singed by the fire, but still readable. After mulling it over a bit, he decided to go with the medical notes. It had already been a foul day for him, it's not like reading about how his mother died could make it any worse.

"Symptoms can appear between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five, it is unknown what causes the disease to become apparent sooner or later than average." Saldo looked at his hand. "Well, seventeen and no sign of the disease yet, I've just got to hold on for another eighteen years and we're in the clear."

"Transmission rate from parent to child, seventy-five percent. Can still be passed on if the parent is asymptomatic. So that's a 'no' to if I'm interested in that ladies' granddaughter."

Saldo turned to one of the other notes. "And this is... a long, long list of failed cures." He sighed. "I don't know what I was thinking looking at this." He put away the notes and instead turned to the history book, intently reading about those who tried to balance the forces of white and black magic within them.

Soon enough, night fell, and Saldo finished reading. He went downstairs, as quietly as possible, avoiding Vylia yelling at his father about what happened earlier, and went outside. He made his way to the burial site outside town.

"I can't believe it's been fifteen years," Saldo said, staring at Venancia's gravestone. Although it wasn't just hers now, as five years ago, due to not needing a grave, Lucast's name was also etched onto it, followed by Saldo scratching Evon's name onto it a few weeks later. "I can barely remember you, but it still hurts."

After a long time staring in silence, Saldo returned home, once again avoiding the still yelling Vylia.

The next day Saldo had deliberately avoided any showing to his family or to the old ladies. Instead he had gone out into the woods with a knife and the spellbook. There was a large rock that he used for practice, trying to avoid as much damage to nature as possible.

He went through the spells one by one, and tried to cast them. He had managed to learn most of the spells in the book, even managing to power through his fears and control fire. After going through the section on black magic that Evon had thumbed through time and time again when the book was his, Saldo turned to the white magic and tried those, too, his efforts being hindered by not being able to tell if most of the spells were actually doing anything.

"I think that's every single one," he mused to himself when he was finished. He paused, then took another look at the cover. Most of the damage the fire caused was concentrated here, and it also appeared that Evon had drawn on it at some point. "I wonder if I still need this old thing..."

On his way home, he passed through the centre of Orchone. As to be expected, the gossip machine was now in full force, his every step accompanied by whispers over his outburst yesterday.

"Did you hear that he yelled at Anne yesterday?"

Step.

"He used to be such a sweet young boy..."

Step.

"Oh, I'm glad Venancia isn't around to see how he's fallen."

Step.

"And his father's completely useless, we'll have another Evon on our hands if Vylia doesn't do anything."

"STOP IT!" Saldo had turned around, glaring at the source of the last whisper. "Do you not see that this sort of gods damned nonsense coming from you and the rest of Orchone is what causes these problems in the first place, you incessant gossip?"

"I-I didn't mean to offend you..." It seemed that Saldo had successfully stricken fear into the heart of the old lady.

"Yes you did! You're dragging my name through the mud, like you did to Evon. I knew Evon better than anyone else here did, because of everyone in this whole cursed town, the only people willing to honestly talk with him were me and my mother! You want to know what caused that fire? It was because you all tormented a teenager to the edge. I was twelve, our mother was dead. He had nobody in his life that could truly help him."

The old lady was silent. Everyone was silent. The town had ground to a halt.

"You wanted a monster." Saldo turned around and started walking away. "You got one. Now piss off and think about if you really want another one."

Once Saldo returned home, he immediately went to where his father was sitting.

"I'm leaving. And I'm not coming back."

His father looked at him in some sort of acknowledgement, but said nothing. Same as usual. His mental state had gotten worse and worse as the years progressed, the grief having slowly broken his mind. Vylia wasn't home, so at least there would be no shouting match.

"I'm sorry that I'm leaving you alone to deal with Vylia, but there's no future for me here. I'll forever be trapped under the weight of what happened to our family."

Still no response, but Saldo could swear he could see a bit of a smile.

And so he went upstairs to pack the essentials. He took his knife, the books that he considered most important to him, and some clothes, and that was about it. Vylia had taken most of the money he had earned being some sort of model for the Orchone elderly, and left him with very little. And he definitely did not want to take the painting equipment with him. After sneaking into Vylia's room and stealing the money from her purse, he set out, giving one last farewell to his father on the way.

The gossips would tell their stories about what happened, each time growing more and more distant from reality. The only constants were that they would not see Saldo again, and they would never learn their lesson.

On the edges of Vellaten stood a... questionable, for lack of a better term, entertainment district. Bards, dancers, and all sorts of performers came to the city in the pursuit of coin and renown. One such performer was a young man, just entering his twenties, dressed in a red cape, with matching giant hat and mask.

Another show was set to start. The man was a dancer, of swords. His moves were accompanied with grand shows of magic. The two combined into an entrancing performance that led up to his greatest trick; a sword dance performed by a single person. As he performed his dance, the swords moved on their own, leaving the dancer the need to dodge their quick movements. As per usual, the crowd rained money upon the stage.

After collected the money, the man retreated behind the building. Saldo took off his mask, and examined a gash on one of his legs.

"Still not good enough," he muttered to himself, while closing the wound with his magic.

"That was an impressive show." Saldo turned to see the source of the voice, and saw a paladin walking down the alley towards him.

"Thank you. It's taken years of practice, and there's still so much more room for me to improve."

"I'll bet. I wish I were able to use magic even half as well, my experiences with the art have been more... accidental."

"At the same time, those weapons of yours are probably better than any I'd be able to effectively use, Mister...?"

"Ah, right. I am Corporal Hexed. You can just call me Magnus."

"A pleasure. Saldo Mailum." Saldo pushed the door back to the stage open. "If you want to talk more, there's a table back here."

The backstage was poorly kept and seemed to be falling apart. It was hard for Magnus to believe that this was the same building that he was just in the front of.

"Here, let me get you something," Saldo said, as he reached into his hat and pulled out a bottle of wine. He then noticed Magnus giving him a bizarre look. "What? Oh, the hat. That's a spell a few friends came up with. It's a pretty complicated spell, but the general idea of it is that it turns the hat into a bag, much larger than it looks. I mostly use it for food."

As the night passed, the two shared tales of their travels. Both were reluctant to tell of why they left their homes in the first place, but anything afterwards was fair game in their pursuit of telling the better story.

"Saldo, I have to ask," Magnus eventually said. "It seems like you could be doing much better than this. Why are you here, in this run down stage? I saw the money you're making, you can clearly afford better."

"The truth is, I give most of it away." Saldo poured himself another glass of wine, and downed it almost as quickly. "My blood is cursed. Most of my family is doomed to never see their children grow up. Odds are, in the next fifteen years, I'll just drop dead. So instead of improving my lot today, I give the money to a group of doctors that have been researching this disease for years. If I'm lucky, they'll find a cure. If I'm luckier, I won't get the disease in the first place, but even then, those researchers need it more." He examined his glass. "Wow, this is the most open I've been with anyone since I was a child. Maybe it's the wine..."

"I have an idea." Magnus pulled out a piece of paper and started writing something down. "The Order, the one that I've been talking about, well, we're always recruiting, and we can probably pay you a lot better than what you're getting here." He slid the paper across the table to Saldo. "I'll be leaving town in a few days, but if you're interested, here's where I'll be."

Magnus got up and went to the door. "Hope to see you soon." And with that, he left.

Back to being alone, Saldo pulled out the binder of medical notes. Not much had changed in the description, but the list of attempted treatments had grown, some working better than others, but none so far able to neutralise the disease. Patients were rare, so most of these tests were performed against blood samples Saldo had provided, which was hampering efforts a bit, as while the traces of the disease were present, they weren't active, and there was no way to tell if it would be active.

Saldo spent the rest of the night thinking about what was right for him to do. In the morning, he left a notice on the front door, telling the people of Vellaten that his show had concluded, and went to see the Order.