The Burning Blue Mage

11

     I woke up with jagged breaths, heart pounding, and body shaking. All the events leading up to me loosing consciousness suddenly flooded back to me in a wave of panic and fear.
     The burning blue mage just attacked me and Sage, she's apparently a female in her twenties, and Sage called her Nirvana. She's childish but ruthless. And damn powerful. She beat Sage to a pulp like it was nothing.
     And then that last fact hit me and it hit me hard. Sage is a mage.
     I jerked up in my bed. I was in my room, still in the same clothes I was in from the attack.  I wonder how long ago the attack even was. How long have I been unconscious?
     The door creaked open and I got my hopes up, thinking Sage would come strolling in here with his fun smile and tell me that the burning blue mage was just a stupid dream.
     A younger teen female servant came into my room, holding a tray with food and a wash cloth on it. When she saw me her face immediately turned red.
     "Y... Your highness! You're awake," she stuttered shyly.
     "How long have I been out for?" I asked.
     "They found you and the other boy about 10 hours ago," the girl replied immediately.
     My eyes widened. "The other boy, where is he?" I shouted.
     The servant girl looked at me surprised. "I think they took him to his room. He was in pretty rough shape. He was treated by a doctor but there's been no word about him."
     I immediately jumped out of the bed and ran out of the room. The servant girl was startled, yet started calling after me. I ignored her.
     I kept running until I stood outside of Sage's room. I hesitated at the door, not sure what I should do. Not after all that just happened.
     I swallowed before pushing the door open just a creak. I peeked inside to watch.
     Sage was awake and sitting on one of the tables in the main living quarters. He was staring down and his whole body was bandaged, easily seen as his shirt was off. Even his head was bandaged.
     Sage was still for a long time. I questioned if he was even really conscious. Suddenly he slammed his fist on his good arm against the table. "Damnit!" He shouted. His fist suddenly burst into flames.
     I flinched with surprise. Sage's eyes were filled with anger. The same anger I've only ever seen him have when we sparred.
     Sage was silent for a few minutes again. And then Sage's eyes changed to an emotion I never expected to see on him. Sadness. A single tear trickled down his cheek.
     Sage coughed a bit on his good arm and looked at it for a few seconds before sighing. From my position, I couldn't see what made him sigh or most of his body.
     I tried to move my head slightly to view Sage better when my shoulder brushed up against the door, creaking it open.
     I froze as Sage immediately turned to look at the door. Guess there was no use hiding.
     I stepped into the room. The temperature just suddenly dropped. The castle seemed to always get so dang cold lately.
     Sage looked back down at the ground. I walked further into the room until I was standing right in front of where Sage was sitting on the table.
     We stood like that in silence for a few minutes. Sage stared at the floor while I stared at him.
     "You can do magic?" I asked weakly.
     "Yes."
     "You're a mage?"
     "Yes."
     I clenched my hands into fists. Of course he was a mage. Of course he tricked me into thinking that he understood me. That he trusted me.
     "When?" I asked, my voice a bit harsher than before.
     Sage stayed quiet, unmoving.
     "When did you become a mage?!" I shouted.
     "That's a hard question," Sage said quietly.
     "When was the first time you casted magic?" I rephrased.
     "Voluntarily, 5. Involuntarily, I believe I was about 2 or 3," Sage mumbled.
     I opened my mouth to say something but stopped. 2 or 3? Wasn't that too young?
     I waited for Sage to elaborate but he didn't. "Isn't that a bit young for a mage?" I asked finally.
     "I'm not a normal mage. I didn't originally learn magic. I was born with it."
     I blinked at him in surprise. Born with magic? Was that even possible?
     "You still decided to practice magic, didn't you?" I demanded.
     "Yes."
     "Why? Why the hell would you practice magic?!" I shouted at him.
     "There's no one cut and dry answer to that. Originally, it was so I didn't harm anyone," Sage said.
     "So you didn't harm anyone, what the hell does that mean?!"
     "Magic reacts to emotions. So as a kid, my magic would act up whenever I had strong emotions. So I trained it so that I wouldn't harm anyone when I acted up."
     "And what about after that? Why did you practice magic then?!"
     "I wanted to help out in the village. I wanted to entertain them and make them happy. Then I think I wanted to use it in the future, I don't know. It was routine. Then..." Sage's voice broke. "I want Nirvana to leave me alone. I want to kill her."
     I stared at Sage in shock. "You want to kill someone of your own kind?"
     "Don't lump me in with that monster!" Sage suddenly shouted, finally looking up to meet my eyes. His face was a mix of anger and sadness. "And humans kill humans all the time! It doesn't matter if we both use magic! I'll kill that demon if it's the last thing I ever do!"
     Sage's attitude was surprising, so unlike himself. The mix of anger and sadness made him like a pitiful beast. He looked torn.
     "Who is the burning blue mage? How do you know her?" I was starting to calm down but I still felt betrayed. And was starting to feel fearful. The burning blue mage kept asking Sage to join her. Was he in league with her? But he seems pretty spiteful against her. But could he join her?
     "Nirvana. At least that's the name she gave me and goes by. I don't know much about her. She's a powerful mage that mainly uses fire magic. Her flames are blue but I don't know why. She wants to overthrow the king and put mages on top. I've only met her once before. Two years ago."
     Overthrow the king. This wasn't good.
     "How did you meet her?"
     "She approached me while I was just outside my village. I was goofing off with my magic. She saw. She asked me to join her. I said no," Sage said.
     "And you were just goofing off with magic near so many people? You weren't worried about getting caught?" I asked skeptically.
     "As I said, my magic acted up when I had strong emotions. Everyone in the whole village knew about my magic."
     "And they didn't turn you in?" I wasn't sure how I was feeling anymore. Everything just mixed together into one unknown blob of emotions.
     "I was born this way. Why would they turn me in for something I had no control over? They didn't think of me as some evil mage. So they raised me as any village would. I did everything I could to repay them. I used my magic to help out."
     I didn't know what to say. The magic law was the biggest law in the kingdom. And a whole village broke it? Magic is dangerous, yet they raised a mage as if it was nothing?
     "You don't have to worry about them being traitors. About betraying the kingdom for mages or what not," Sage mumbled.
     "And why's that? How can you be so sure?!" How could you be so sure that someone you know wouldn't do something like that. I thought Sage was... I don't know what I thought of him. I thought he was my friend, I guess. And look at where that got me.
     Sage swallowed. "My village had a name, you know. It wasn't very well know since it was so small, just on the outskirts of the kingdom. We didn't get many visitors so I guess there wasn't really a need for it to have a name but we created one anyway." Sage paused for a few seconds. "We named it Lyneria."
     I froze. "Lyneria?" I asked weakly, voice cracking. "The village that was destroyed in a night? With no survivors?"
     "There was one survivor. A 14 year old boy," Sage said so quietly that I barely heard him.
     I was silent for a minute or two. "H... How?" I asked, not sure I actually wanted to know the answer.
     Luckily, Sage knew what I meant because I wasn't sure if I would be able to choke out the rest of the question.
     "I told Nirvana to leave me alone. She got angry. She came back that night..." Sage's voice drifted off, but he didn't need to finished his sentence for me to know what he meant.
     No wonder why he hated Nirvana so much.
     "The last thing she told me... She said that she would find me wherever I went and do the same thing over and over until I came around. I just want her to leave me alone," Sage said softly.
     I looked down and that's when I suddenly noticed Sage's arm. The same arm that he had coughed on. There was a bloodstain on it.
     I grabbed Sage's arm, the temperature immediately dropping as I did but I ignored it, and I looked at the blood stain on his arm. It was definitely on the outside of the bandages, not blood from a wound.
     "You were coughing blood," I said, more of a statement than a question.
     Sage looked away, avoiding looking at me. "You were coughing blood," I repeated, slightly louder.
     Unconsciously my grip tightened on Sage's arm. Sage immediately winced and I loosened my grip but still stood firm.
     "I let my guard slip," Sage mumbled quietly.
     I tightened my grip. Sage understood my order to elaborate, something Sage hadn't really done much of since I gained consciousness. It was strange, speaking that Sage is usually such a chatter box.
      "Magic reacts to emotions. By now I've trained myself pretty well to keep my magic in check but... My guard slipped."
     "And how does that have anything to do with why you were coughing up blood?" I snapped.
     You know, looking at it, I shouldn't care why Sage was coughing up blood. It had nothing to do with me and he was a dangerous person. Why should I care for him? Yet I just couldn't help myself.
     "Magic is powerful. It takes stamina, something I hardly have right now. With the state I'm in, if I try to do any magic aside from changing temperatures or something like that, the strain on my body will probably kill me."
     I let go of his arm but for some reason I suddenly got really angry. "Why the hell would you do something that would hurt you like that?!"
     "You can easily hurt yourself on your own sword," Sage said. I stared at him, confused. "Magic is nothing more than a weapon. Or maybe it's more of a tool. Like a butter knife. It could be used to cook or cut food, such a normal and harmless activity, or it could be used to kill, a deed of evil. Magic isn't evil or good. It's obedient, that's all. It listens to what you say and does as you ask."
     "You act like magic is a living person." For some reason I was pretty curious by what Sage was talking about.
     "It kind of is. Magic doesn't always listen and it can act on it's own. If you're in trouble it might do something on it's own to save your life. It also might purposely not show up when you call it, costing you your own life or the life of another. Magic is dangerous because it is alive."
     I had an impulse to ask more about magic. A topic that always interested me but was rarely known. I finally had someone in front of me who could tell me all about it.
     But then I took one look at the state Sage was in and immediately shut my mouth. This is what magic could do. This is the damage it caused.
     Sage's head was bandaged and I could see the bandages turn a faded reddish as the blood seeped into them. His broken arm laid limply by his side. It was bandaged and a metal stick was wrapped to it in a makeshift splint. His whole torso was bandaged but the burns on his shoulder could be seen through the thin bandages. And did they look bad. They looked nearly tinted blue, the same as Nirvana's flames. His neck was bruised so that you could see exactly where her fingers were as she choked him. I could see cuts here and there from where his skin was visible. I'm sure there was far more cuts where he was bandaged.
     I finally started to register the fight that happened yesterday. This was the power of a mage. Nirvana may have been able to overpower Sage but Sage's magic could still easily kill me and I would be powerless against him.
     Mage's are powerful and dangerous. Magic is powerful and dangerous.
     I so desperately wanted to know how Sage felt about magic. Welp, I know now.
     There were definitely more questions I wanted to ask but I was suddenly too nervous to talk. I kept playing the fight in my head, the magic they showcased. Sage said that in this state he couldn't use magic any magic stronger than changing the temperature but who knows if he was lying.
     Wait, changing the temperature. The room was freezing and it seemed to be getting colder every minute I stayed in here. The whole castle has felt colder ever since Sage showed up. Was Sage making it so cold?
     Then a new thought crossed my mind. I wonder how cold of a temperature the human body could survive without warm clothing. I wasn't wet so I could last longer in the cold but if it gets to -30°F, I could get hypothermia in less than 10 minutes. How cold was it now? I don't think it reached negatives yet.
     "I'm sorry. I can't make it stop. It reacts to emotions and I can't shut it off," Sage whispered weakly.
     I looked at him confused before I realized I had my arms crossed in an attempt to stay warm and I was shivering.
     What emotion could possibly make it so damn cold?
     I opened my mouth before I shut it again. I didn't know what to say. What could I say? I had so many questions that I couldn't think of what to ask. And which questions would cost me.
     "What kind of magic would you do?"
     Sage looked at me confused. "What?"
     "What kind of magic did you do in your village? What kind of magic is a butter knife?"
     Sage was quiet for a long time. I didn't think he was going to answer. I started to turn to leave when Sage said, "building."
     I stopped and turned to look at him. Sage took this as a motion for him to continue.
     "I did a lot of building. Well, I helped out at least. With every part of the process. I would use wind magic to help cut trees. Wind magic is surprisingly sharp and can easily cut things," Sage explained.
     I remembered that when Nirvana redirected Sage's wind magic, it had cut the trees.
     "I would also help carry heavy materials with telekinesis. I was also trying to find a way to use magic to affect the weight of objects so anyone could carry them. I didn't really learn how to though. Sometimes I would help the blacksmith. It was helpful to forge in a fire that couldn't burn you. He was the one who made my dagger. Because of my magic everyone called me Little Dragon so that's why there's dragons carved into it."
     It made sense that they would call him dragon when he has magic. Magic and dragons just go hand in hand that when someone hears one of them they immediately think of the other.
     "I did small jobs here and there. I'd held burn up dead plants, I'd held water fields. Even change the weather for the really young kids so they could play outside. I did different stuff everyday. I'd grow ingredients that could be used for cooking. I'd even make an ice rank or snow so the kids could play, even in the middle of Summer."
     Sounds like he did a lot to help around, especially with little kids. It surprised me that any parent would let their child get that close to magic.
     "Everyone knew me and my situation so they would ask me to help out every once in a while. I mostly did temperature or weather magic," Sage said.
     It still amazed me that a whole village just lived with a mage as if it was normal. That they didn't just live with magic but that they used magic in their daily lives. That they used it like any other routine item. For 14 years they lived with it.
      "Has your magic ever caused trouble?"
     I'm not sure why I asked it. It was magic for Pete's sake! Just having it causes trouble for everyone around you.
     Sage paused for a second before nodding. "When I was younger, yes. I nearly started a forest fire once when I was throwing a fit. I caused a river to go crazy and a kid nearly drowned. I apologized every day for a month afterwards. Yes, I caused a lot of trouble but no serious injuries or casualties."
     So even someone who's young can destroy so easily. The amount of power mages have is unbelievable. My father once said that if the burning blue mage tried to attack, I would stop her. I can't even win against Sage 100% of the time when he's not using magic! And even Sage didn't make a scratch on her!
     My mood swings were physically impossible, I swear, cause I went from fear to anger to pity to fear to curiosity to sorrow to fear once again. By now I could just combine all the emotions and name it the "Rook emotion".
     Sage suddenly laughed sourly. "Well this is just stupid."
     My fear overtook any confusion or curiosity I had. I was more worried about what was so stupid and what he would do to make that less stupid. Would he kill me? Was this conversation stupid? Was answering my questions stupid? Nirvana told Sage to kill me, that was the thing I remember most vividly. Would Sage actually do it though?
     "We're both scared of each other now. We both think the other is going to kill them. It's stupid," Sage continued.
     I froze. I had never thought about that before. It never even crossed my mind that Sage would fear me. That Sage would think I could kill him, even if I wanted to. He was stronger than me so what's there to fear?
     Then it hit me. Magic is illegal. Sage didn't tell anyone he was a mage not because he wanted to secretly revolt against me. He didn't want to get executed. And I'm the prince who has every right to execute someone.
     The last page of Sage's journal said he was surprised he got along with me. He said he didn't like royals. It's because he was scared of being executed for magic.
     I was about to say something when I heard the door open. Both Sage and I turned to look at the door. A high ranking guard came in, his uniform gold.
     "Your highness. The king had sent me to come and ask you about what happened to you and your servant," the guard said.
     The temperature dropped significantly. And that's when that last puzzle piece clicked. I knew what emotion made Sage drop the temperature. Fear.
     I took a deep breath and exhaled. "The burning blue mage attacked us. She tried to kill me but Sage fought her off. We weren't winning. The burning blue mage probably would have killed us. We were both on the verge of consciousness. But she heard people coming and took off. Sage took the most damage. I only got hit with a bit of magic."
     The guard nodded. "I'll go tell the king. I'm sure he'll ask you more later." The guard slipped out of the room and closed the door.
     I waited a bit before I turned back to Sage. He stared at me, eyes wide with surprise. The room felt warmer.
     "I don't feel cold towards you. At least not anymore," a said with a shy smile.
     His eyes widened. He knew exactly what I meant which was good because I would have been embarrassed if I had to explain it.
     "I used to, yes. Your magic... It made me cold. After seeing you use it... But I'm not anymore. And don't feel cold towards me anymore. I won't tell anyone. You won't be executed," I said.
     The room was definitely warmer now. A tear slid down Sage's cheek.
     "I hope you'll still serve me. I..." I couldn't stop myself from speaking. "I usually hate personal servants. They're far too clingy and annoying. But... You're the only person I've gotten close to for as long as I can remember."
     I stood silently for a few minutes before I headed to the door. I opened the door and was about to walk out of the room when I stopped and turned to look back at Sage.
     "I'm not cold towards you anymore because you're my friend. I trust that you won't misuse your gift."
     Sage's eyes widened at the word "gift" and honestly, I was surprised by it myself. The words had just slipped out of my mouth.
     I turned back away and walked out of the room.