A Mage Born Ch. 01

"Perhaps," came the soft reply. "My name is Vale, are you Hanah?"

"We have a mutual acquaintance in Bek who suggested that we might have enough in common that we should meet in person."

There it was. This was another step down the road. There was still a chance to walk away and try something else, or simply find a way to be content with passionate afternoons whenever fate gifted them with time. She so fell into the spiral that it took Vale's voice to bring her back into the moment. "May I come in, or was Bek mistaken?"

"No, no...please come in." She stepped away and Vale entered, taking stock of the home and its decorations. "You have a lovely home."

"Thank you," she began, making certain she bolted the door. The rote nature of pleasantries gave her the the impetus to keep talking, which she hoped would make everything else easier. "Please sit. Can I offer you anything?"

The other shook her head as she seated herself in the nearest chair. "Nothing, thank you." Her tone became more authoritative as she moved past those pleasantries herself and into realms that she had more experience with. "Now, so that we do not waste time unnecessarily, why don't you tell me what you need? Then we can discuss how and if it can be provided, and what the price of that might be."

"You're...from the Guild then? You're a... mage?" Even saying the word felt like a criminal act.

"Yes, and yes." No need to tell Hanah that she was still learning her craft and had yet to earn her Guild markings. She wouldn't be the one doing whatever needed to be done in that regard anyway. She was selected to undertake these initial meetings because she had an excellent instinct for reading people and her unassuming nature often made people more comfortable around her.

"You're uhhh...not really what I expected."

"What did you expect, dark cloaks, a sinister demeanor, and perhaps a sign that says, 'I am a Mage?'

Truthfully, some variation of a couple of those notions would have fit what she thought she would find, "I guess I'm not sure."

Vale thought little of it, as it was a very common reaction. "Blacksmith. Seamstress. Cook. Those are all simply other people, not all that different from anyone else, with specialized skills. Mages are the same. We look like you and sound like you, and we simply have skills you lack."

With her next breath, Vale hoped to move things along, "While there is no set time limit for meetings, the Guild's time has value."

"You're right, I'm sorry." Hanah hurriedly took another chair, bringing it in front of Vale as she spoke in a rush. "I'm not sure exactly what I need from you or what you can do. I...and another need a fresh start elsewhere, need to not be found again after, and need to make arrangements to take care her...the other's family in a way that cannot be traced. You probably want more details than that", she said, rubbing her hands on her lap in an attempt to self-soothe, "I'm just really not sure where to start."

"Very succinct, thank you, but there are details that I need in order to better assess your needs. Please, start at wherever you think the beginning is and I will stop you and pose questions as I need."

So Hanah did. And once she did, the story didn't stop coming forth. She told Vale of meeting Dina at a small gathering of merchants Dina's husband sponsored. She spoke of their instant attraction and the passion between them that had blossomed into love. Hanah told Vale of Dina's fears that her husband would find them and make trouble and the fear for her family being without the financial help she could now provide. They wouldn't be begging on the street without it, but with it, they had just reached comfortable.

When she finished she felt relief at having someone to share it all with. Hanah kept everything but the fact that she'd found a secret someone from her friends, and even then she only told them because they were beginning to actively question her about her seemingly random disappearances over the past few months. To have a dispassionate someone to lay it all in front of was a release that made her physically fatigued. Burdens like that really did have weight after all, it seemed.

For her part, Vale took a long breath as she picked through the elements of the tale that mattered. Otherwise, her face was a practiced, expressionless mask as she attempted to break the story down to an itemized list. It wouldn't do for a client or potential foe to reveal too much in any fashion, "So it seems to me that you require a new appearance for you and Dina, transportation to parts unknown, and the ongoing transfer of funds from your destination to Dina's family here in the city."

She gave a small smile, "These are things that can certainly be arranged. The transformation would be the most costly, of course. The transportation from the city without alerting Mr. Stranix is not difficult, though specialized, as there are very few mages with the appropriate skill set. Setting up a stipend to transfer funds from there to here undetected is a simple thing, so..."

"Wait," Hanah said, holding up her hand out of reflex, "Transformation? What does that mean, like a disguise or something?"

Vale shook her head. "Eventually disguises get shed. A transformation is just that, your faces and bodies are permanently altered. There's no disguise to let falter because it is who you are as though you have always been."

Why is that the hardest part if you can just...get us away from here to someplace no one knows?"

Vale tilted her head, internally chastising herself, as sometimes she still didn't ask or explain all she needed to. Guild Mistress Lia and several of the other mages had assured her that it was a mortal failing that they had all been guilty of from time to time. "I'm sorry, I assumed that you still wanted to stay within the bounds of civilization. If you want to truly be on your own, that can also be arranged, and a transformation unnecessary."

Silence hung in the air as Hanah worked her way through her confusion, "Why would we need to go to all that trouble?"

It clicked in Vale's mind at that moment. Hanah didn't know anything about Stranix beyond what most everyone else knew and Dina didn't bother to fill her in for her own reasons. Mages, having to live in the dark corners of the world familiarized themselves with everything that shared the dark with them as a matter of safety. She measured her words, "Mr. Stranix is not one to take the sudden departure of his wife well and, given the breadth of his business interests, word of your whereabouts has a fair chance to get to him almost anywhere. A permanent transformation is safest for the both of you."

It was at this moment that she started to make sense of Dina's hesitancy and trepidation, "You really think he'd hurt her for trying to leave?"

Vale knew the likely answer because she knew stories of what he had done to people that he felt betrayed him that he didn't have an emotional investment in. "Any man is likely to react poorly to having his wife leave him. Mr. Stranix would likely...react more poorly than most. Given his power and reach, a transformation is the safest course."

She closed her eyes as the weight returned again before she surrendered. "All right, all right." If they could be happy in the end, it'd be worth it. "This is what you people do, If you think it's best, then fine. How much would it take?"

Vale had already calculated cost as soon as Hanah finished her story, happy to get back to matters she could treat with detachment . "For a transformation as described and one-time transportation to a mutually agreed location will be fifteen-hundred gold." Vale continued as she watched the other's eyes widen and her face lose a bit of color. "Ten percent of any stipend is taken by the guild on a continuing basis for as long as you wish to maintain it, though that percentage guarantees delivery. Once you have paid, those you designate will be paid in turn."

Silence fell again. "That's a lot."

Vale prayed to the Goddess that this woman was not one to try to negotiate. While some accommodation could be made for extraordinary circumstance at a mage's discretion, there was no negotiating to be done "It's reasonable for what's being asked."

"I don't have gold though."

She nodded amiably, "Many clients don't. I assume you have other things of value?"

"Of course." She turned and led Vale to her small but warmly-appointed bedroom and waited patiently as Hanah went to the other side of the bed and reached under it to pry away a piece cut from the wall to find the box hidden there. Getting both hands around it she pulled it free and placed it on the bed before opening it to reveal an assortment of jewelry, some of the pieces being quite old and some with heavy stones.

Vale was already examining a necklace and a pair of earrings as Hanah came back around. "My grandmother left these to me. Are they worth what I think they are?"

Vale wrapped a gold chain around her wrist as she examined the pendant with a yellow gem in the center dangled, catching the light. This having not been her first time trading goods she had become something of an expert on anything that might have value. "They are."

Hanah realized she'd clenched her fists to fight her fear. "Do we have a deal?"

Lifting the trays to be certain that there was nothing she was missing, she nodded. "We do."

As if on cue, the knocker rapped against the wood again, causing both women to jump, startled by the sound. Hanah felt better that she wasn't the only one while Vale scolded herself for it. One day she would be a mage. She already had some mastery of power, though she often feared not enough, though Mistress Lia had tried to calm her anxiety there as well, which only made it worse sometimes. She shouldn't have to nursemaid me. I should be stronger, like her. "I assume you aren't expecting anyone?"

Hanah shook her head quickly, glancing down at her valuables.

"Be calm," she said with more tranquility than she felt as she put the various pieces back where they'd come from. "We have committed no crime. We have a mutual friend, things in common, and thought that might be enough to strike up a friendship of our own."

Hannah listened as she hurriedly placed the box back where she'd hidden it before rising and smoothing her dress. "Yes. Right."

"If it is someone with cause to ask, that's enough to tell them. Don't embellish."

"Yes, all right." She feared she might hyperventilate before reaching the door as whoever was behind it knocked again. Vale stayed off to the side and out of sight, beginning to pull power to herself, just in case

Hanah white-knuckled the metal, and she had no more than turned the knob when the sudden force of a man barreling into her sent her into the wall behind her, and her head snapped against it making her vision swim even before his fist smashed into her face. Behind that wall of muscle, three other men rushed in, heading directly for Vale as soon as they spotted her.

Her breath caught as a moment's hesitation turned her into a statue as they moved on her with a speed stunning for their mutual bulk.

The last one casually through the door as though he had been invited for tea was a tall, thin man, unremarkable, save that he was so familiar with violence that, even as things took a decidedly unexpected turn that would have made others recoil in horror as though demons had come to life, he didn't even flinch.

* * *

There was blackness that surrounded and confined her as though she were buried alive. For a moment she wondered if she were dead, then, for two reasons, decided that that was unlikely. First, if she were dead, she didn't think she'd be able to pose the question, much less answer it. Those who were experienced in the arts of magic often had a belief in an afterlife simply because they had experienced and could manipulate the energies that bound everything together. Whether they ended up with the Goddess, or elsewhere, most believed that that which was uniquely them returned to the ley lines of energy that created and fed everything that was or would be. Vale believed similarly, but she wasn't sure she believed that there would be sense of self left enough to ask.

Second, whatever form a life beyond death took, she doubted there would be this much pain. Everything hurt and it crashed into her in rhythmic waves. As her mind slogged to put itself back into the now, she realized the reason for the rhythm. Broken ribs. She tried to use her skills to see if she could sense the presence of others, but there was just too much pain to bring her will into focus. And then she was afraid. Without magic, she was back to being nothing.

She was back to being that little girl helpless to do anything as their landlord evicted her family from their home after father died. She was the girl who could disappear into into a crowd because she felt there was nothing special about her and no one went out of their way to tell her any different. Add quiet and shy to the mix of being average, not ugly enough to perhaps garner sympathy as much as scorn, and not quite beautiful enough to be able to trade on it, and she was just...there. It seemed to her that people could look right at her and not see her.

Magic gave her something. It let her be something even if no one else noticed. Indeed, being someone that no one usually noticed or remembered aided her greatly these days. Her first Guild Master told her that anything could be an effective weapon if one knew how to use it. All she had right now was pain, so she decided she may as well use that. She breathed as deeply as she could manage, embracing the pain, clawing at it, riding it back to consciousness.

Her eye popped open and she whimpered in pain as more of her senses came under assault from reality. Every inch of her body hurt. Her face was swollen and when she choked as the blood in her mouth trickled down her throat, her chest stabbed at her, making her whimper anew. Her nose burned from the assault of the scents of burned fabric and flesh and, with that fresh attack came bits of memory in the form of men rushing towards her, red mage fire, screams, and then...blackness. The fight must have gone on for longer than I remember. I must have fought them off. No one standing over her, and no voices, so she was alone.

It doesn't matter One thing at a time here. Use the pain. Focus through it. She wasn't a healer, but she knew the things that all mages did. Pushing through the pain, she began turning the energy around her to her own ends, feeling it coalesce around her hand. The simple fact that she could bring it to bear made her feel better. She twisted and formed it right until the moment she pressed her hand to her ribs. Vale shrieked as magic touched bone. She could see it in her mind now, the fragments of bone and the cracked ribs themselves. The magic consumed the fragments and used what was consumed to help rebuild the bone. Her swollen lips formed a smile as the worst of her pains ebbed and vanished. She took a deep breath and reveled in the fact that she could do so for the most part. The rest of what ailed her could wait.

Bruises she was previously unaware of made themselves known to her as she rolled to her side and looked around the room. It was remarkably undamaged considering how substantially she herself was. It seemed that they had what they wanted with her and Hannah. Well, Hannah, she surmised as she found her form still by the door, face down. There were rivalries within guilds, of course, but no one would resort to bringing others into it like this, thereby risking public notice. There was some competition between guilds, but they were tempered for largely the same reason. Protecting one another was in the interests of all.

And I wasn't the one looking to take something from Etan Strannix that he values.

In front of her now was the charred remains of the attacker closest to her. She didn't need to be a healer to look into his open eyes with contracted pupils staring into nothing and know for certain that he was dead. She felt a pang of regret because she, unlike some others, had no love for the idea of taking life, but no real remorse, as she reminded herself he attacked her first and with no provocation.

Putting it all aside, and swallowing a bit more blood as she moved, she crawled over him to reach Hanah. She carefully turned her and had real regret at the brutality she saw there. It looked like they beat her until they were simply tired of hitting her. She was literally a bloody mess.

Vale closed the eye that could close on its own and touched Hanah's chest and, to her surprise, Vale could see that her heart still beat within. She fought to live, but, now having a sense of what had been done, it was clear that the people sending the message took a bit too much joy in the process and, without aid, she would most likely die. Vale could buy time, but she would have to get help soon.

She pushed aside her own pain and marshaled her energy and the energies around her once again, hoping that she had skill enough.

To Be Continued...