Purity of Mind

Chapter 1

"Here is your first assignment," the taskmaster said to me, handing over a small sealed scroll.

I took it eagerly, opening it without hesitation.

Locate a Pure within the city limits

I looked back up to the taskmaster. "Is this a joke?"

He shook his head. "No joke, initiate." His mind betrayed no hint of deception, but of course someone like him could weave a story out of whole cloth without revealing himself. He wouldn't have the job, otherwise.

"I don't understand." I said, making sure my confusion was perceptible to him. "There hasn't been a Pure in over a hundred years."

The taskmaster nodded. "There hasn't been a publicly acknowledged Pure in over a hundred years. Think back to what happened to that last one and you'll probably figure out why."

The taskmaster didn't have to remind me - the last Pure had been kidnapped by every organization that had even the barest means to do so. Sometimes he'd even been kidnapped from other kidnappers. He hadn't lived an enjoyable life, and at some point he realized he never would. They found him asphyxiated, presumably via his own air magic.

"There are," the taskmaster interrupted my thoughts, "at least three Pure within the city limits. Find one of them."

I nodded, used a bit of fire magic to dispose of the scroll containing my instructions, and left the building to roam the streets of the city.

Once I got over my initial shock that there was a Pure in the city (let alone three of them), it made sense. Their magic wouldn't stand out, so long as they could manage to tone it down to the level that the common person could use. The whiff of flame I'd disposed of the scroll with was about as much fire as anyone could conjure, for example. A gust of wind to clean up dust or (maybe) close a door. A handful of water to stave off thirst, though as any desert traveller could tell you that was very much a zero-sum proposition. Furrowing the earth to plant a few seeds. Knowing the surface thoughts of your fellow man. Such were the powers everyone had access to. Like any skill, they could be honed, but the days of mighty wizards destroying entire cities with a rain of fire were long gone.

Or so I'd thought. Because if the Pure were here, it was within their power. I didn't understand exactly how - I left genetics to the monks - but every once in a while someone was born who didn't inherit their meager powers from their meager parents. Generations of breeding had dulled the once terrifying abilities of the mages of long ago, but the Pure were proof that they had in fact been our forefathers. They commanded a single element directly, and with a power that none could match. Of course, any time one went public they were kidnapped and - at best - used for breeding stock. Unless they were willing to level an entire block to deal with potential captors, it only made sense to stay hidden.

I didn't worry that I was exposing an innocent person's secret to the taskmaster - the fact that they knew of three Pure in the city already told me that such persons were watched, but not interfered with. One would think the organization would want such a person for the same reasons everyone else did, but that would ignore what the organization truly stood for: The status quo.

It didn't matter, though. I had my assignment. Clearly it was a test - I could hardly be expected to locate a fourth Pure where others with years more experience had failed - but I took it seriously. The question was, how would I find such people? They wouldn't dare use the full extent of their abilities in public, or else everyone would know.

I smiled as the answer came to me. All I had to do was make it very clear to anyone who looked at my mind that I was seeking a Pure. Ordinary people would read my intent and get out of the way; all I had to do was find someone who didn't react (or who needed someone to tell them), and then I'd investigate those people later. It wouldn't work if my target's element was Mind, of course, but a Pure Mind could make you forget they ever existed so trying to locate one was pointless.

Finding a Pure was easy, I reflected as I started my patrol. It wasn't about what they could do. It was about what they couldn't.