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tamingthemuseHello, and thank you for allowing anybody to enter. I'm really happy I found this community, for I'm really in need of help to get me writing again. I would love feedback, any type of feedback is good in my eyes. Ok, here I go.
Title: Stolen Lessons
Fandom: Original
Prompt: #80 The seventh rule
Warnings: You might want to read my story Maybe This is What Happened to understand where this one is coming from.
Rating:G
Summary: Safed sneaks back to the demon's cave to learn something about magic.
After finding his way through the short hall into Try’s one roomed home, Safed pulled several scrolls to him and set about browsing the words written therein. He still wore the pendant the white haired demon had given him not that long ago, so as he read, he learned the meaning of words he’d never encountered before, plus a bit of words in a different language. Grinning, he fingered the magical pendant, wondering if the demon would ever ask for it back. He wondered if he would lose all the knowledge he’d gained.
Deciding that he should read as much as he could while he could, he selected a few scrolls he’d yet to throughly devour and set them on the table next to a lamp. He turned the lamp up to cast away shadows from the table and seated himself. With one glance at the entrance, he guessed the time to be still early in the night.
His parents would be still asleep and won’t miss him until morning, and the demon wouldn’t be home until the sun was well into the sky. Hopefully, Safed would be gone long before then, but if, by chance he wasn’t, then Try should be too tired to get angry at him for entering the cave without permission.
Not that he’d ever asked before. But now, something seemed different. Safed was no longer Try’s student, if he ever really was. The demon hadn’t really taught him anything save for that demons were temperamental and cranky without fail. What he had learned while here, he learned from the scrolls, not from the demon himself. Heck, even him learning how to read really came from his father, not the demon.
Turning back to the scrolls he’d picked out, he quickly passed through the first one. It was a story about people long dead and lost to history. He’d never heard any legend about the names in the story, so he put it aside for another day and turned to the next scroll.
He made a face, wrinkling his nose. Math and arithmetic. And the next held even more. Pushing them away, he glanced at the piles and piles of scrolls littering the floor and shelves, wondering just how much useless junk was there.
And just where were the magic spells and such? He realized that, in all his searching, he’d never come upon any magic written down. Histories, maths, sciences, legends, and even cooking recipes, but no spells. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at the room in general. Where would the demon hide such a thing?
If he even had any.
Maybe he didn’t and demons didn’t have need of writing down their spells. If so, then he was lost, for how was he to learn magic with no spells? He bet Lord Jared had them written down somewhere. The warlock had a library, too, but he’d not seen hide nor hair of the other man since he had come to ask his father to engaged Safed to the warlord’s daughter.
A smile graced his lips as he thought back. To believe that a very powerful warlock would think so high of him as to offer his daughter to him. Even though the girl was only five years old, it was still quite an honor, even if his father had refused to force the two of them into an arranged marriage.
In the lamp’s flickering light, his eye caught sight of a word he could read. Clear as day, on a scroll half tucked under the bed embedded into the wall, he could make out ‘magic’. Jumping on the scroll as if it were a wild animal that would scare with his movement, he clutched the paper in his hands, quickly unrolling the parchment. The paper was old, like most of the scrolls in the cave, and crackled loudly with the unrolling.
The ink was faded in some parts while dark as night in others. The parchment itself was yellowed with age, crumbling along the edges, and the language was old. He set the scroll aside and searched out the translator that he’d seen Try stuffing into a shelf last week. Unrolling scrolls then tossing them aside as he searched, he created a mess he knew Try would love to kill him for. In the same thought, he smirked as he thought that Try would quite enjoy cleaning the mess once Safed was gone.
He’d lived with the demon once, albeit for a short time, but he remembered how the demon would wait until he thought Safed was asleep before he would go through each scroll, re-rolling some, finding new places to shelve others, and pointedly cleaning everything Safed had so much as breathed on. It had driven the human boy crazy, for with each day, Safed had to go through each scroll again to find the ones he’d yet to read.
Finally finding the scroll he wanted, he returned to the table and laid out the two scrolls. One character at a time, one word at a time, he translated the text.
It was about magic! It spoke of humans learning magic, a magic much different than that of demons and that of spirits. The human magic was not natural, it said, coming into existence long after demons and spirits had come into the human realm permanently, when the three realms collided, by the will of the gods. Before that, humans had no magic, there were no immortals. No warlocks, and no magic within humans.
Try had said something of that effect before, Safed remembered. He’d said that humans weren’t born with magic. Safed assumed that meant that demons, or spirits, had given the magic to them. But, in all the time he’d been with Try and Kiwi, Xactán even, they’d never offered to gift magic to anybody. Reading more, he became convinced that he had been wrong in his assumption.
There had to be another way.
The text went on to tell just how different human magic was, explaining that magic made humans immortal, which Safed already knew. Simone, Lord Jared’s daughter, should have been born immortal, he father being such a powerful warlock and all, but she was born in the presence of demon magic, anti-magic, if you will. The Pendent of Try, created by Safed’s friend, Try, was a death sentence for any human near it, and brought about Simone’s mortality. He wondered if it still worked properly after he’d broken it. Now it had been returned to Try and it rested on his mantle, bent and cracked where Safed had smashed it with an iron poker. Could it steal his life?
Would Try let it?
Shaking his head away from such thoughts, he returned to translating the scroll. With the help of the other pendent, the one that let him learn quickly, the going was easy, but the scroll was long and long winded. Whoever had written it apparently liked to hear himself talk, for it went on and on about every detail about human magic, from theories to well-known human sorcerers, from battles to man-made charms. No spells though, Safed noticed.
Eyes heavy, he yawned and considered going home for the night, but there was only a little bit left. A few pages at most. Adjusting the scroll to reveal the rest, he noticed that there seemed to be a list on the last of the text. Skipping over the other pages, he started to translate the list. The header revealed them to be rules of human magic. Scoffing at such an idea, Safed translated.
Something about the dead remaining dead, only the spirits have domain over the dead.
Likewise life, life is the domain of the gods, and humans must follow the gods’ rules for life.
The third was about nature, all of nature has a name and names hold power. Magic can only affect nature with the help of a name. Safed knew about that already, having found Try’s name, lost as it was.
Next was the fact that magic could not be gifted from one human to another. Frowning, Safed suffered his ideas of going to Lord Jared to learn dying. He could learn all he wanted from the warlock, but he couldn’t gain magic. Spells were useless without the magic to fuel them.
The next was something along the lines of once one has magic, one cannot lose the magic. Once immortal, always immortal. Death by natural causes would never happen. That was only minutely different than demons, who cannot die at all, natural or otherwise. Safed didn’t know about spirits, he’d have to ask Kiwi, if ever he got the chance.
Six was about keeping control of one’s magic. It was imperative one had control, else not only would they likely die from wayward magic, but those around them would die as well. Gulping, Safed wondered if that also applied to the control of another’s name. Technically, he had the ownership of Try’s name, the demon was his, along with his magic. If ever Try decided to turn against him, there was no way Safed would survive that magical attack.
And the seventh rule was missing. The page was crumpled and cracked from age and the last of it was gone completely. Blinking in surprise, Safed unrolled the rest of the scroll. There was nothing written on the last of the parchment, leaving him wondering about the seventh rule.
Maybe it was the most important one! Maybe, if he ever learned magic and he broke this rule, the gods themselves would come from above and smite him for disregarding this rule.
Maybe not. It wasn’t likely he would ever gain magic. Even if he did, these seemed more like limits to magic rather than rules. It was probably something like magic couldn’t make someone fall in love, or something similar. He set aside that scroll and laid his head on the table, closing his eyes for only a moment.
He jumped up as the table rumbled under his head. Wide awake suddenly, he came face to face with the red eyed demon he’d first seen walking the streets of the Shining City, eyes glowing in the lamp’s unsteady light. A fierce frown curved his brow and lips. Almost idly, his eyes moved from Safed’s face to the mess on the floor of his home. Sheepishly, Safed offered him a grin.
“I’ll clean it up.”
The demon snorted and pushed himself away from the table where he’d been leaning. He turned his back to the human, striping his shirt off as he plopped down on his bed.
Safed quickly stood and gathered the scrolls on the floor, stuffing them into slots and shelves randomly. Once they were all up off the floor, he eyed the demon, who was apparently asleep, his eyes closed and breathing steadily.
“Um, Try?”
The frown returned and one lid lifted to show a glaring red eye before closing again. Safed took that as a sign to continue.
“Do you know anything about the rules to human magic?”
“Why do you bother? You’ve no magic.” He shifted on the bed, turning slightly away from the room, away from Safed.
“This scroll over here,” he motioned, knowing the demon didn’t see, “it says that there are seven rules, well, limits, to human magic. Do you know them?”
“Doesn’t the scroll tell you? Why ask me?” Still he didn’t look at him, his eyes still closed and the frown still etched on his brow.
“The seventh one is missing.”
The demon shrugged, pulling a pillow closer and finding a more comfortable spot on the bed. Frowning back at the demon, Safed put away the last of the scrolls before he suddenly glanced at the entrance. Daylight was trickling through the door.
Gasping he rushed outside, and found day had come. Morning had come. He’ll be in so much trouble when he gets home. His mother is going to kill him.
Returning to the demon’s cave, he gathered his stuff, pushing them into his bag without regard in his haste. He shot a glance at the demon and found the other man to be sitting up on his elbow, watching him with unreadable eyes.
“I’ve got to hurry, the ‘rents don’t know I’m here. Mom’s going to kill me when she finds me gone. I didn’t know I slept so long, I thought it was only a moment.”
Try crooked a finger at him, beckoning him to come closer. His lips closed on his babbling and his eyes widened as he approached the bed, the demon.
Try smiled lazily, his eyes filling with a knowledge Safed would give the world to have. He leaned forward when Safed stopped next to the bed, their noses almost touching.
“Humans cannot change fate. That is the last limit on their magic. To normal humans, warlocks seem powerful, but in the grand scheme of things, they are nothing compared to spirits, demons, and gods.” His had shot out and he captured Safed’s chin. “Remember that, little human. Compared to what’s out there, you are a small fry.”
Suddenly frightened of his tutor, Safed jerked his chin free and fled the demon’s cave, seeking the safety of home.
Title: Stolen Lessons
Fandom: Original
Prompt: #80 The seventh rule
Warnings: You might want to read my story Maybe This is What Happened to understand where this one is coming from.
Rating:G
Summary: Safed sneaks back to the demon's cave to learn something about magic.
After finding his way through the short hall into Try’s one roomed home, Safed pulled several scrolls to him and set about browsing the words written therein. He still wore the pendant the white haired demon had given him not that long ago, so as he read, he learned the meaning of words he’d never encountered before, plus a bit of words in a different language. Grinning, he fingered the magical pendant, wondering if the demon would ever ask for it back. He wondered if he would lose all the knowledge he’d gained.
Deciding that he should read as much as he could while he could, he selected a few scrolls he’d yet to throughly devour and set them on the table next to a lamp. He turned the lamp up to cast away shadows from the table and seated himself. With one glance at the entrance, he guessed the time to be still early in the night.
His parents would be still asleep and won’t miss him until morning, and the demon wouldn’t be home until the sun was well into the sky. Hopefully, Safed would be gone long before then, but if, by chance he wasn’t, then Try should be too tired to get angry at him for entering the cave without permission.
Not that he’d ever asked before. But now, something seemed different. Safed was no longer Try’s student, if he ever really was. The demon hadn’t really taught him anything save for that demons were temperamental and cranky without fail. What he had learned while here, he learned from the scrolls, not from the demon himself. Heck, even him learning how to read really came from his father, not the demon.
Turning back to the scrolls he’d picked out, he quickly passed through the first one. It was a story about people long dead and lost to history. He’d never heard any legend about the names in the story, so he put it aside for another day and turned to the next scroll.
He made a face, wrinkling his nose. Math and arithmetic. And the next held even more. Pushing them away, he glanced at the piles and piles of scrolls littering the floor and shelves, wondering just how much useless junk was there.
And just where were the magic spells and such? He realized that, in all his searching, he’d never come upon any magic written down. Histories, maths, sciences, legends, and even cooking recipes, but no spells. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at the room in general. Where would the demon hide such a thing?
If he even had any.
Maybe he didn’t and demons didn’t have need of writing down their spells. If so, then he was lost, for how was he to learn magic with no spells? He bet Lord Jared had them written down somewhere. The warlock had a library, too, but he’d not seen hide nor hair of the other man since he had come to ask his father to engaged Safed to the warlord’s daughter.
A smile graced his lips as he thought back. To believe that a very powerful warlock would think so high of him as to offer his daughter to him. Even though the girl was only five years old, it was still quite an honor, even if his father had refused to force the two of them into an arranged marriage.
In the lamp’s flickering light, his eye caught sight of a word he could read. Clear as day, on a scroll half tucked under the bed embedded into the wall, he could make out ‘magic’. Jumping on the scroll as if it were a wild animal that would scare with his movement, he clutched the paper in his hands, quickly unrolling the parchment. The paper was old, like most of the scrolls in the cave, and crackled loudly with the unrolling.
The ink was faded in some parts while dark as night in others. The parchment itself was yellowed with age, crumbling along the edges, and the language was old. He set the scroll aside and searched out the translator that he’d seen Try stuffing into a shelf last week. Unrolling scrolls then tossing them aside as he searched, he created a mess he knew Try would love to kill him for. In the same thought, he smirked as he thought that Try would quite enjoy cleaning the mess once Safed was gone.
He’d lived with the demon once, albeit for a short time, but he remembered how the demon would wait until he thought Safed was asleep before he would go through each scroll, re-rolling some, finding new places to shelve others, and pointedly cleaning everything Safed had so much as breathed on. It had driven the human boy crazy, for with each day, Safed had to go through each scroll again to find the ones he’d yet to read.
Finally finding the scroll he wanted, he returned to the table and laid out the two scrolls. One character at a time, one word at a time, he translated the text.
It was about magic! It spoke of humans learning magic, a magic much different than that of demons and that of spirits. The human magic was not natural, it said, coming into existence long after demons and spirits had come into the human realm permanently, when the three realms collided, by the will of the gods. Before that, humans had no magic, there were no immortals. No warlocks, and no magic within humans.
Try had said something of that effect before, Safed remembered. He’d said that humans weren’t born with magic. Safed assumed that meant that demons, or spirits, had given the magic to them. But, in all the time he’d been with Try and Kiwi, Xactán even, they’d never offered to gift magic to anybody. Reading more, he became convinced that he had been wrong in his assumption.
There had to be another way.
The text went on to tell just how different human magic was, explaining that magic made humans immortal, which Safed already knew. Simone, Lord Jared’s daughter, should have been born immortal, he father being such a powerful warlock and all, but she was born in the presence of demon magic, anti-magic, if you will. The Pendent of Try, created by Safed’s friend, Try, was a death sentence for any human near it, and brought about Simone’s mortality. He wondered if it still worked properly after he’d broken it. Now it had been returned to Try and it rested on his mantle, bent and cracked where Safed had smashed it with an iron poker. Could it steal his life?
Would Try let it?
Shaking his head away from such thoughts, he returned to translating the scroll. With the help of the other pendent, the one that let him learn quickly, the going was easy, but the scroll was long and long winded. Whoever had written it apparently liked to hear himself talk, for it went on and on about every detail about human magic, from theories to well-known human sorcerers, from battles to man-made charms. No spells though, Safed noticed.
Eyes heavy, he yawned and considered going home for the night, but there was only a little bit left. A few pages at most. Adjusting the scroll to reveal the rest, he noticed that there seemed to be a list on the last of the text. Skipping over the other pages, he started to translate the list. The header revealed them to be rules of human magic. Scoffing at such an idea, Safed translated.
Something about the dead remaining dead, only the spirits have domain over the dead.
Likewise life, life is the domain of the gods, and humans must follow the gods’ rules for life.
The third was about nature, all of nature has a name and names hold power. Magic can only affect nature with the help of a name. Safed knew about that already, having found Try’s name, lost as it was.
Next was the fact that magic could not be gifted from one human to another. Frowning, Safed suffered his ideas of going to Lord Jared to learn dying. He could learn all he wanted from the warlock, but he couldn’t gain magic. Spells were useless without the magic to fuel them.
The next was something along the lines of once one has magic, one cannot lose the magic. Once immortal, always immortal. Death by natural causes would never happen. That was only minutely different than demons, who cannot die at all, natural or otherwise. Safed didn’t know about spirits, he’d have to ask Kiwi, if ever he got the chance.
Six was about keeping control of one’s magic. It was imperative one had control, else not only would they likely die from wayward magic, but those around them would die as well. Gulping, Safed wondered if that also applied to the control of another’s name. Technically, he had the ownership of Try’s name, the demon was his, along with his magic. If ever Try decided to turn against him, there was no way Safed would survive that magical attack.
And the seventh rule was missing. The page was crumpled and cracked from age and the last of it was gone completely. Blinking in surprise, Safed unrolled the rest of the scroll. There was nothing written on the last of the parchment, leaving him wondering about the seventh rule.
Maybe it was the most important one! Maybe, if he ever learned magic and he broke this rule, the gods themselves would come from above and smite him for disregarding this rule.
Maybe not. It wasn’t likely he would ever gain magic. Even if he did, these seemed more like limits to magic rather than rules. It was probably something like magic couldn’t make someone fall in love, or something similar. He set aside that scroll and laid his head on the table, closing his eyes for only a moment.
He jumped up as the table rumbled under his head. Wide awake suddenly, he came face to face with the red eyed demon he’d first seen walking the streets of the Shining City, eyes glowing in the lamp’s unsteady light. A fierce frown curved his brow and lips. Almost idly, his eyes moved from Safed’s face to the mess on the floor of his home. Sheepishly, Safed offered him a grin.
“I’ll clean it up.”
The demon snorted and pushed himself away from the table where he’d been leaning. He turned his back to the human, striping his shirt off as he plopped down on his bed.
Safed quickly stood and gathered the scrolls on the floor, stuffing them into slots and shelves randomly. Once they were all up off the floor, he eyed the demon, who was apparently asleep, his eyes closed and breathing steadily.
“Um, Try?”
The frown returned and one lid lifted to show a glaring red eye before closing again. Safed took that as a sign to continue.
“Do you know anything about the rules to human magic?”
“Why do you bother? You’ve no magic.” He shifted on the bed, turning slightly away from the room, away from Safed.
“This scroll over here,” he motioned, knowing the demon didn’t see, “it says that there are seven rules, well, limits, to human magic. Do you know them?”
“Doesn’t the scroll tell you? Why ask me?” Still he didn’t look at him, his eyes still closed and the frown still etched on his brow.
“The seventh one is missing.”
The demon shrugged, pulling a pillow closer and finding a more comfortable spot on the bed. Frowning back at the demon, Safed put away the last of the scrolls before he suddenly glanced at the entrance. Daylight was trickling through the door.
Gasping he rushed outside, and found day had come. Morning had come. He’ll be in so much trouble when he gets home. His mother is going to kill him.
Returning to the demon’s cave, he gathered his stuff, pushing them into his bag without regard in his haste. He shot a glance at the demon and found the other man to be sitting up on his elbow, watching him with unreadable eyes.
“I’ve got to hurry, the ‘rents don’t know I’m here. Mom’s going to kill me when she finds me gone. I didn’t know I slept so long, I thought it was only a moment.”
Try crooked a finger at him, beckoning him to come closer. His lips closed on his babbling and his eyes widened as he approached the bed, the demon.
Try smiled lazily, his eyes filling with a knowledge Safed would give the world to have. He leaned forward when Safed stopped next to the bed, their noses almost touching.
“Humans cannot change fate. That is the last limit on their magic. To normal humans, warlocks seem powerful, but in the grand scheme of things, they are nothing compared to spirits, demons, and gods.” His had shot out and he captured Safed’s chin. “Remember that, little human. Compared to what’s out there, you are a small fry.”
Suddenly frightened of his tutor, Safed jerked his chin free and fled the demon’s cave, seeking the safety of home.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 10:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 05:46 pm (UTC)The funny part about this world? I created it on a spur of the moment whim for NaNoWriMo, and it came to me in full bloom, history and all. I'm really happy you find it interesting.
Again, thanks for reading.