Where Ages Meet

Paths Crossed

The carriage ricketed down the path, rocking from side to side not too unlike the boat Oliver left behind a few days ago. Honestly, he should've puked up his entire stomach by then. If not from the motion, from the anxiety, if not from those, from the excessive spellcasting and all-nighters, and if not from all of that, from the fact that everyone he met was tired of him already.

"Excuse me, yes, pardon me," he began, possibly out of desperation for some social aspect to break up the blur of practice and half-sleep. "Hypothetical question for you," he said through the small window to the carriage driver. Rick was his name, just a dull-eyed teen who didn't turn or acknowledge him in any fashion.

"If you were heading toward a massive contest, or at least formerly massive, that would earn you possible worldwide renown and a great portion of your material desires for the rest of your life, even if it would put that life in certain danger of an abrupt and humiliating end—would you still go?" He waited. A jerk of the lines brought the horses on a steady turn and the driver scratched at his stubble.

"Just wondering. Purely hypothetical."

"...No, sir. I believe I would not." Ah, he did speak. Truth be told, the mage wished he would speak more. There was a certain rustic eloquence in his flowing tones and raspy voice. It matched his weathered appearance, skinny though he was, draped in rough clothes and leather packs. "But I've little use for fame or material things."

"Really. That is interesting." Oliver never could tell a convincing lie. Perhaps that was the source of his societal shortcomings and those evident traits that allowed him to become a mage in the first place. "Well now. Thank you, thank you very kindly. That will be all."

And they didn't speak again until the sun eased its way down and the moon slid its way up. Rick originally turned the horse onto a path to the miserable village of Kendon. That was before Oliver got him to swear to turn the carriage around, drive through the night no matter the threat, and travel to Aethia, the (waning) magical capital of the world. Rick made some money off the vow.

He woke up not to Rick, like he expected, but to Aethia's bubbling morning bustle and the accompanying distant bird calls. The ocean was off by a day or so, but the sea birds still graced the city with caws and droppings. Even that early, six or maybe seven in the morning, people moved about the streets and brought the carriage's pace to a patient amble. Fortunately for them, there were few of the new "automobiles" about...

Still, they made it to the arena at the city's approximate center before noon and that was all that mattered. Even if that was when the driver got the other half of his payment, Oliver was thrilled to finally arrive, to look at the vaulted stone spires and rows of pointed arch windows.

Oh, to take it all in firsthand... As Rick unloaded the mage's two carpet bags onto the limestone path and eventually stared at the stout steamer trunk on the rear luggage rack. Oliver was so fixed on the arena, imagining his way through corridors to his assigned and truly unremarkable room (though it would impress him to no end), that it took the carriage boy speaking to get his attention.

"Sir, the trunk."

"Oh, of course, right," he corrected himself, joining an unimpressed Rick at the back of the carriage and pulling up his sleeves. "I'll handle this."

With a whispered incantation, his eyes closed, he missed Rick's muted expression of shock and revulsion as the trunk rocked. Sticks of cedar jutted out from its side, the wood cracking in the strain even as the process left no marks in the trunk or the leather straps. Oliver kept his eyes closed, muttering the made-up language while the sticks bent as if they had an elbow, coming out farther until they ended in square hands. They had no form, looking like thumbless mittens even as they closed and opened.