PayishVibes

  As the saying went, it was a dark and stormy night.

  Of course, in this instance, the city was actually quite bright at night, echoes of ughter and chatter wafting through the streets. Sounds of party and revelry were everywhere, balloons from the old world, rarely allowed due to their rarity, were used liberally tonight. It would have been the perfect evening for the city, if not for the storm that had rolled in that afternoon.

  Most people moved their celebrations inside, electing to celebrate the holiday inside rather than out on the cobbled streets. The fmes inside the street nterns had shifted to a soft green to indicate the oncoming rain, and some of the st remaining weather mages had warned of the incoming downpour. Most people had ignored the signs out of desperation, but at the end of the day, nature won out. Heavy downpour fell through the streets as I walked through the almost hallway-like back alleys. Years of city growth with no room for expansion had resulted in a lot of new, supposedly temporary vertical extensions to buildings popping up, turning the street level into a byrinth of dark passageways, with only the main roads allowing for light to stream through.

  It was an odd occurrence, but one that people probably could have guessed, after new mages stopped being born, and the wars across the continent stopped, people, well, got busy. I was one of those children, born just before the Ceasing, roughly 16 years ago, nowadays old enough to just remember the days of mages, but young enough for people to assume I’d never seen one. And for that matter I hadn’t. Not in person. Most of them kept to themselves nowadays, with their craft going out of use, most people shoved them aside and ignored them. Despite the fact that magic still existed, but because there would now be a finite amount of it, people didn’t see it in quite the same light. Some of the kinder lieges kept paying their mages, out of respect for their services, but some of the more penny-pinching ones chose to let them go, preferring a nicer budget than keeping their mages afloat.

  All this led to the old magic institutions and buildings coming apart, old towers and monuments, now virtually useless for their intended purpose of awakening and educating young mages, fell into disrepair as people forgot them. One of these towers was my current destination. I had overhead a rumour that someone had left a side door into the city tower unlocked. And I had jumped at the opportunity. In magics heyday, the tower had stood proud at the centre of Rivermoor, a beacon to the world and a sign of the power and opulence the cities powerful people wielded. Its grandeur rivalled even that of the capitol, with its gss dome top and curving stature. Deep purple rubies decorating the structure, some of the lower ones having been stolen, but many still persisting, high above the streets, a symbol for what once was.

  As I approached it, I couldn’t help but admire the ancient builders. Having grown up myself on the streets, no guardians or people to look out for me, the tower had always been a reference point. Something to look for, to orient myself, and served as my mental anchor for the rest of the city. When people gave me directions, my mind converted it to where that was retive to the tower. It was an odd way of existing, and if I ever left Rivermoor it would be less than useless, but the city was all I had ever known, so that’s what my mind tched onto.

  As I reached the main street circling the tower, I couldn’t help but feel a bit out of pce, this was where the more wealthy residents of the city lived, a left over relic of the old order. Fabulously wealthy houses lined the streets, shining with the shine only raw wealth can get you. A fake sort of gleam fell over the whole area as I turned my attention back to the tower, ignoring the rain spttering over my face.

  After basking in the grandeur of the spire, I remembered why I can come all this way, breaking into a jog, I began to scour the base of the tower, looking for any indication of an insecure entrance. The main entrance had been sealed for over a decade now, with no one having gone in or out since, but the back door was rumoured to be where young mages were let in and out through, to protect their identity. As such it was probably designed to be invisible to the naked eye, hidden in pin sight as my mentor would say.

  Finally, something out of ordinary caught my eye, a patch of stone that seemed out of pce. It was nothing particurly interesting, but from what I had observed, the rest of the towers design seemed to have a pattern to it, which this ft wall seemed to viote, the sort of thing that you wouldn’t know to look for unless you were specifically looking for it. Which funnily enough, I was.

  Smirking under my hood, I made my way towards the wall, feeling it and looking for imperfections. Finding nothing, I stepped back and gave it an appraising look. Something about this felt off, like a trick of the light or some other deception was in my way. Tilting my head I pondered.

  As my head moved, I saw it, out of the corner of my eye, a blue fsh on the edge of one of the bricks. Excitedly I move in and inspected it closer. As I moved my head one of the bricks seemed to go from its normal greyish brown to a deep blue colour. Smiling, I reached out and gave the brick a push. Something seemed to click, both inside the tower and in my bones, as a secret door unfolded from the wall.

  Quickly checking around me to make sure I wasn’t being watched, my smile widened as I crept inside and heard the door close and click shut behind me.

  Inside the tower was something I wouldn’t have expected, instead of halls and rooms fit for schooling, a single dark spiral staircase wove through the banisters of the tower, seemingly all the way to the dome celling. Weird. Everything I had known about the tower up until this point suggested it was a pce of learning and practice for young mages, to be closer to the stars at the top and a quiet area otherwise. To instead find what was effectively a single room was something I had not expected.

  “What on earth…?” I let out, grimacing slightly at my rumbling voice, even after all these years.

  Standing there for another few moments, I decided, against my better judgement, to climb the tower. I reasoned that I had come all this way and may as well see what was at the top, but deep down, something was telling me that this was either incredibly dangerous, or incredibly important.

  Taking a deep breath, I began to climb, one step at a time, not daring to look up, to acknowledge the climb I had ahead of me. A fervour had seemed to come over me, I began counting my steps. 5, 15, 30, 50, 100 and beyond. The steps fell away beneath me, after I passed them, they seemed to fall out of existence, all that mattered was the next step, going in circles around and around the tower, the voices and chatter of the streets around me, which had dulled as I entered the tower, now fell into silence. I was alone in the tower, and I knew it. One more step. Just keep going. It almost felt like fear, but I knew I wasn’t afraid.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I looked to the next step and found nothing but ft wooden floorboard.

  I had reached the top.

  Not daring to look up yet, I steeled myself for what I knew would come next, something was telling me to run, to hide, but I didn’t want to.

  Finally, I turned my head up and looked around.

  My jaw dropped.

  One of the first things I remember from that night was the stars. As I gazed up at the purple gss dome, stretching a dozen meters across, everything I had worried about fell away. The majesty of the cosmos was quite literally id out before me, in a way I had never experienced before. Down in the streets, yes, I could see the stars, but the light of the mps always got in the way, when I could even see the sky among the cloudy nights or dark corridors. But what I was seeing before me was something else entirely, something about the tower seemed to strip away the light of the city, and the clouds of the storm, letting me see the night sky, as I had never seen it before. And I was awed.

  A small tear fell down my cheek, something that these days was a rare occurrence. And it took all my willpower to keep standing.

  After I had had my fill, drinking in the majestic sight above me. I blinked, and looked down, wiping the tear from my eyes, and shaking myself. The feeling of danger or importance had faded away as I reached the top, and something told me they might have not existed at all.

  Those feelings had been happening a lot since I entered the tower.

  Walking away from the stairs, towards the edge, a second image full of lights presented itself to me, the yout of the city, rolled out below me, in a way I had never seen it before. Next to the stars, it was nothing, but to me, who had spent my entire life among those streets, among those people, among those lights. Something about it made me smile. It was beautiful, this pce was beautiful, the stars were beautiful, I never wanted to leave.

  So, I didn’t, at least for the next few hours.

  Pulling out a book I had nabbed from a merchant a few weeks ago, I y against the gss, listening to the sound of the rain against the dome, feeling the faint vibrations of the wind on the tower. The light of the stars and the city were dimmed by the gss, making the interior of the dome a tranquil and silent pce, perfect for reading.

  I felt like I had discovered magic again, in this pce, above the city, below the stars, lying there, reading, I felt at peace.

  It couldn’t st forever though. Eventually someone I knew down there would wonder where I had gotten to, where had Onyx gone, they would wonder. And I would have to return. So regretfully, after a few hours of sitting at the top of a worn down mage tower, I picked myself up, and took one st gnce at the city below me. I didn’t know if I would ever be back here. But if I couldn’t, I wanted to remember what this looked like.

  Gazing down, regretting having to leave, I heard something click.

  Looking around, I didn’t see anything different.

  Crack.

  There it was again, something was making a noise.

  Craaaackle.

  It was getting louder.

  I moved towards the stairs, trying to see if I had missed something on my way up.

  Oh.

  It seemed I had.

  Lying just below the deck of the tower, a faintly glowing sceptre y, a purple gem inid into its head. I must have missed it on my way up the tower, so focused on getting to the top.

  As I stooped down to pick it up, a zap of energy seemed to cross from me to it as I straightened up, making me frown. It reminded me of a static shock. Inspecting it closer, I found runes, carved into the hilt and body, I couldn’t read them, but they reminded me of the runes you could see, whenever a faraway lord brought a Mage to dispy the wealth of a distant nd. Maybe they were connected to Mages then.

  The ruby on the other hand, looked completely uncut, as if it had been mined in raw form and directly inid into the sceptre.

  Curiously, I reached out, without thinking, and touched the ruby. Nothing happened for a second as my finger brushed over the cool surface of the gem. And then suddenly it lit up unlike anything I had seen before. I yelped and tried to let go of the sceptre but it stuck to my hand like the strongest glue on the pnet. The surface of the gem heated up to immense temperatures, causing me to cry out in pain as I fell to the floor.

  The white light emanated from the gem, growing brighter and brighter, overloading my brain. Slowly, my vision turned dark, then to bck, and my st thought, was that I was very grateful for a st look at the sky before I died.

  PayishVibes