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Another night of sleep taken, a man lays in his bed hugging a crescent moon. His room was dark, the only light coming from his collection of candles, their scents mixing and wafting through the room. Among them was lavender, meant to help him sleep. It did not work. It had never worked.
The moon had caused this insomnia. He hated it for that. The centuries he had lived before were on his own terms, but now he was bound down by the curse of the moon. Beyond his insomnia, however, he was dragged down by his duty to defeat it. Living in the manor was a change for him, a change that brought both good and bad for him.
Among those he had lived with now were the Tyrant and the Brothers.
The Tyrant he wanted to defeat and bring down so that he would become the strongest wizard in the world. He tells himself that is the only reason why, but he is also jealous of him. Jealous of his power. Jealous of the love he received from the other wizards. Jealous of the family he still had. He’s had a vendetta for the Tyrant for centuries, but the jealousy only grew with time.
The Brothers were the children of his former teacher. The woman was the closest thing he had to a mother, she taught him magic and made him into the wizard he currently was, but the younger brother killed her with his birth. Before her death, however, she had gotten the man to make a promise to her. To promise to protect her sons. Like a fool, he did, and now he had to do everything he could to make sure the pair didn’t get themselves killed.
The elder one he got along well enough with, be it because they knew each other while his mother was alive or because the elder is persistent in talking to him. With the younger, their relationship was more strained. A part of him blamed the younger for his teacher’s death, and so he resented him for that, but he still had to keep his promise. He knew that his protectiveness of them came off as overbearing, but to him the brothers were weak, and so he would be there to make sure they didn’t die.
The specifics of the promise he made were nothing hard to understand. All he had to do was protect the brothers. The circumstances, however, were not as simple. He was a powerful wizard, rivaling that of the Tyrant in magical ability and strength, he would never risk losing his magic over something like a broken promise. And yet he made it. He made the foolish promise with his teacher, swearing to protect her children.
His teacher had made him realize he was a wizard and helped to mold his magic into what it was now. She gave him company and was the closest thing he had ever had to a real family. Sure, she was eccentric and a bit odd, but it was a welcome enough change for his otherwise drab life. As such, when she was on her deathbed, he didn’t know what to do. She had asked him to protect her children, and without thinking he promised that he would.
He went on to forget that promise, of course, but it always did rest at the back of his mind. He only fully remembered when he met the brothers once more.
His time before the manor and before the birth of the brothers was spent as a ferryman in the north. It was a task the village he was born from assigned to him, and he would perform it when asked. He had no qualms with transporting the dead. He was used to their company. After learning of his magic, he eventually developed his skills by using teleportation to transport the corpses. It was faster for him that way.
When he wasn’t ferrying the dead across the lake, he worked on becoming stronger. He fought many wizards after his teacher had helped him to grow. The Bandit, the Hunter, and many other wizards he hadn’t cared to remember the name or face of. He had beaten them all. The only one he hadn’t beaten was the Tyrant. That annoyed him.
The man got up out of his bed, sighing. He hadn’t been able to sleep, and there was no point in getting the sage that early into the morning.
“<<Arthim>>”
A door opened before him. Stepping into it, he came out by the Lake of Death. He looked out onto the water, the rising sun reflecting oranges and reds onto it.
He would stay here for a while. If the other wizards at the manor needed him, he did not care.
Mithra would make this morning his own.