I heard my mother’s voice grow increasingly distant, her features much less defined now than only a moment ago. She walked through the main entrance to our house as my eyes began to blur and my heart began to pound.

“Where are you going? Why do you have to leave?” I shouted. Tears streamed down my face and snot fled from my nostrils as I called out after her. I couldn’t have been much older than the age of five when I saw my mother for the last time; her steel-colored hair was stuck close to her body from the rain as she walked out into the twilight.

There was no warning, no sign of anything being wrong, or of anyone at fault. I wept, but I didn’t know for how long. It felt like an eternity, though, as I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. The only thing I did know was that my life was about to change forever.

An older man with a scar on the left side of his face and silver hair walked in the door, but I didn’t recognize him at all. For a few moments, he argued with my father, who was a plump piece of shit, though all I can recall is their stuttering silhouettes bouncing off the walls just as angrily as their tones of voice.

“That monster of a mother of his is finally leaving, and you think you’re going to take care of him better than I will?” my father said, his jowls were shaking just as much as the light bouncing off the wall. “Absolutely. You’ve already sent his older brother to me out of spite for her, and yet you have the gall to believe that I’m going to believe you will take care of this child?” the scarred man asked. His face was twisted and angry, but that wasn’t what I was focused on.

It was his eyes.

They glowed like twin suns against the dark of the room that the fireplace’s light couldn’t touch. “W-well yes,” my father said, his voice beginning to tremble as the scarred man growled before speaking. “You’ve done enough already. You’ve gone against her will and done the unthinkable, and yet you expected her to forgive you for it?” the scarred man asked, his anger was evident and almost tangible in the thickened air.

I could feel a sort of pressure emanating from him, like the world was itching to bend to his will. I wiped the tears from my eyes, trying to make sure it wasn’t just the light of the fire being blurred in my vision, but it wasn’t.

What is that glowing stuff? Is that fire? I thought, trying to understand what I was seeing.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The scarred man looked at me. He couldn’t have been much older than my father, or at least, he didn’t look like he was. There was, however, something with the way he carried himself that told me he was strong.

Extremely strong.

He was in the middle of saying something I either couldn’t understand or chose to ignore; I don’t know which. I reached my hand out, and these odd hair-like strands of this aura that surrounded him came towards me. I felt it gathering in my palm and around my hand like a warmed glove.

He stopped mid-sentence and stared at me more intently. Whatever it was I was doing had certainly drawn his attention. I remember laughing as the warm cloud of golden… whatever it was began to circulate around my arm and chest.

Suddenly, it halted all movement, and a sharp pain riddled my body that started in my chest. I couldn’t figure out what in the realms had just happened, but whatever it was, my father had clearly taken some delight in seeing me suffer.

I blinked, and I immediately saw a smokey arm materialize in front of me. It grabbed my father by the neck, and pinned him against the wall, making sure his feet were off the ground.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” the scarred man growled through clenched teeth as spittle flecked my father’s face. “I did the only reasonable thing to do to him,” my father said through his tightened throat. He began to chuckle, though the sound wasn’t a clear and cheerful sound. Instead, it was more like a wet gurgling, as the large, smokey claw tightened even further.

With a heavy sigh, he tossed my father aside, slamming him into the wall. The scarred man walked over to me, and after having seen that display of power, I could only wonder what would come for me next.

“Hello there,” he said in a much warmer voice than he had used when he first arrived. “You’re Thoma, right?” he asked with a smile, wrinkling the scar on his face. I could only nod out of fear of saying something that might anger him. “Gods above, he’s done a real number on you, hasn’t he?” he said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure my father was still unconscious.

“Yes,” I said, the only words I could muster in my confusion. “Yes to what, exactly?” he asked, keeping the same, warm tone as if he’d somehow forgotten I was only a small child. “I-I’m Thoma,” I said bashfully. He chuckled lightly and tousled my hair. “Yes. Yes you are. So, can you do me a favor, young Thoma?” the man asked.

I nodded my head.

Just as I did, my father groaned in an apparent regaining of consciousness. The scarred man sent another fist of what I could only describe as hardened smoke smashing my father’s face into the ground without him even bothering to look; keeping the same, warm smile on his face.

“Like I was saying, I need you to do me a favor, Thoma,” the scarred man said. He paused, almost as if he was choosing his words carefully, and I thought I almost saw his smile fade for a moment, but he recovered before any significant change was made. “I need you to grab some of your things, and grab your best raincoat,” he said.

“But why do I have to go? Are we going after my mother?” I asked. The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we can’t go after her right now. Things are… complicated, and she’s going somewhere we can’t follow right now. I’m sorry,” he said dejectedly.

I sniffed back some snot as the tears began to well in my eyes again as his words set in.

The man seemed unsure of what to do, but he resorted to conjuring a swirling sphere of light in front of me. It looked a lot like the fire that was dying down behind me, only far more controlled and compacted into a sphere not much larger than an apple.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked. “N-no. Is that like the shining stuff that  I was playing with earlier?” I asked, almost reaching for it. “This… stuff is called mana,” he said softly. He began to mold it into a few different but easily recognizable shapes.

“All things have mana in them, Thoma; you, me, your mother. Some of us even go so far as learning to control it with special powers,” he said, turning the sphere into an arrow-like shape.

He sent the arrow barrelling through the room, turning sharply and avoiding all kinds of objects in the room, then coming to a quick stop in his hand, where it turned back into a sphere. “Ooh! That was so cool! Can you teach me to do that?” I asked, rubbing my eyes to see it better if he decided to do more with it.

“I can, but remember that favor I asked you to do for me earlier?” he said, dispelling the mana and putting a hand on my shoulder. I nodded my head quickly. “Good. Go grab your things. I’ll deal with your father in the meantime,” he said.

I raced upstairs and grabbed the items he asked for, failing to notice the note left on my pillow, and ran back downstairs. When I came down, I saw that my father was being loosely tied up to a chair. Not so tight that he couldn’t have escaped on his own, though it was more to hold him upright than anything else. The scarred man had sat him down on a chair that was near a smaller table with an open bottle of wine on top of it.

“Ready to go?” he asked me from over his shoulder. “I’m ready,” I said, still unsure of what to call him or even who he was. He merely grunted a response, and jabbed something into my father’s leg. I could hear the drops of blood hitting the ground from where I stood, and when I noticed it, I saw the letter attached to the cheese knife my father always used; which was now embedded in his upper thigh.

“Sorry about that,” the man said softly, turning my head away. “Your mother said I should do what I can to protect you, and this is my version of it,” he continued. “Why couldn’t she do it herself?” I asked. “That’s a difficult question that I can’t answer right now, Thoma,” he replied, looking down at the floor. “Oh… okay,” I said, feeling my facial features slump a little more.

“Come on. We need to get going. I know it’s dark and rainy outside, but we need to leave tonight,” he said, ushering me out the door. Just before we stepped outside, he bent down and made sure that the small notch around the neck of my cloak was clasped correctly, then patted me twice on the shoulders.

He grabbed an iron cage with small panes of glass embedded into it from just outside the door. He opened one of the glass panels that had a small knob on it, pushed a sphere of pure mana inside, and closed the door. The cage sealed shut with a sheen of a blue, translucent mana, allowing the light to shine through cleanly.

“Where are we going?” I finally asked. I’d trusted the man until this point, but that was more out of survival instincts than anything else. I didn’t know much about him, but something felt familiar about him that I couldn’t quite place. He helped me onto his horse then mounted the beast behind me, making sure I was secure in the saddle before kicking his heels into the horse’s sides.

“We’re going to my home in the North-Western corner of Coltend,” he replied, having to use a bit more of his voice since the rain had gotten worse. We rode for a few minutes in silence, as I tried to piece together everything that happened until this point. My chest was hurting a little bit, but I couldn’t tell if that was from all the crying I’d done, or something else entirely.

“What’s your name?” I finally asked. I’d spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out what it might be, but when nothing of the conversation that I recalled held the information I was looking for, I decided I had to ask that question myself. In response, the man chuckled, and patted my shoulder again.

“You can call me The Master of Codrean,” he said warmly.