Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Callum glanced out the window of his study. He’d taken over Viren’s old quarters when he officially took on the title of High Mage.
It was raining. Again.
He supposed the weather must be reflecting on his mood. After all, it was 6 years to the day since she’d disappeared on his 15th birthday at the Moon Nexus. No one had heard from Rayla since.
Even Ethari, who was the closest thing to family she had left, hadn’t received a word. He had mentioned to Callum the last time the young man had come to the Silvergrove (as had become a yearly pilgrimage) that the floating lotus in the basin of the fountain representing Rayla was still floating. This, at least, had brought some comfort to the two grieving men. Wherever she was, at least she was alive.
Hearing a knocking from the door, Callum snapped out of his thoughts of the past back into the present. Straightening out the grimace on his face, he turned and faced the door.
“Enter,” he called.
The door swung open to reveal a much shorter visitor than he’d been anticipating.
“Bait?” he questioned, then looked around curiously. “Wait, how did you even open the door?” Bait grumbled in reply.
“I see, so Ezran sent you?” Callum guessed. Bait nodded his head. “Aaand, he wants me to follow you?" Bait nodded again and Callum slapped his face, a little exasperated. "Welp, it’s not the weirdest request I’ve gotten this week.”
Callum followed Bait down the tower and towards the bakery on the main level of the castle. One of Ez’s first orders as king had been to move his office adjacent to the bakery so that jelly tarts were always easily accessible. The results spoke for themselves, Callum supposed. While Ezran was technically more productive, it was purely through a technicality because he spent less time commuting to the kitchens.
Knocking on Ezran’s office door, Callum looked around and wondered why his brother had sought his counsel this early in the day. Maybe to discuss his birthday? Or, possibly, the upcoming annual Festival of Peace – the festival was a brainchild of Ezran’s and Zym’s. Allegedly, they’re reasoning was that the festival was a way to foster goodwill between the human kingdoms and Xadia. Internally, Callum was pretty sure it was just a fancy excuse for the two friends to see each other. Thinking about how much both of the two young royals had grown into their roles brought a slight smile to Callum’s face.
“Come in,” Ezran yelled, his voice muffled by the door.
“Hey Ez,” Callum smiled, entering. “What’s up – ” he paused, not seeing Ez, but rather several very large stacks of papers and books where Ezran was supposed to be, “—wait, where are you?”
“Piled under all this paperwork,” came an exasperated, disembodied voice. Hearing a chair pushed back, followed by footsteps, Callum watched as his brother came around the stacks into his view.
Ezran had grown the most in the past several years, aside from Zym, who was now the size of a large wagon, standing well above even Soren at 6’ 3”. At 16, he greatly resembled the late king in stature, but unlike his predecessor, Ezran's hair was kept short, as he'd done since the great Jelly Tart Gummy Incident.
Callum himself had grown to 5’ 10”, something that had become very amusing to Ez once he'd surpassed Callum in height. At 21, his hair maintained a perpetually windswept look. This was not necessarily by intention, but more so was an aftereffect of his morning flights. After all, part of being a sky mage was discipline. Ibis had drilled into Callum during his three years of training that being in the sky and taking time each day to meditate on the arcanum made a better mage. And what was a better way to meditate on the sky arcanum than flying?
"Happy birthday big --" Ez gave a dramatic pause, and looked down at Callum coyly " -- or should I say little brother?"
"Haha, very funny".
“I’m just saying,” Ezran smirked, “it is kind of funny”. He frowned and shook his head, “Anyway, that’s not why I called you here. I got a message from one of my sources in Xadia that Claudia was spotted outside of the Uncharted Forest with an unknown male Earthblooded elf and another unknown cloaked figure”.
“And you think the cloaked figure could be Viren?” Callum asked.
“Maybe,” Ez shrugged. “That’s what Ray-” he stopped himself and glanced at Callum, whose face had become stoney at the mention of their old friend, “-I mean, that’s what some people have speculated,” he finished lamely. “A body was never found,” he added quietly.
“So what do you want me to do about it?” Callum bit off, now in a foul mood. Talking about anything that even remotely suggested that Viren might be alive was a sore spot for him. Especially on this particular day of the year, which was a sore spot in itself.
“You’re a sky mage, aren’t you?” Ez said. “ I need you to spy on them, you know, fly around and stuff,” he proceeded to make flapping motions with his hands to demonstrate. “See what they’re doing out there in Xadia”.
Callum groaned.
“You know as well as I do that nothing good can come of Claudia being out there around all those magical creatures,” Ezran pressed. “Think of all the potential dark magic she could do in a place like the Uncharted Forest. Not to mention, you’re the only one even strong enough to take her on one-on-one if it came down to it. The only other person I could think of would be Soren, and I’d never want to put him in that position. Plus, his wife just had a baby”. He was good at guilt tripping, that was for sure.
Bait grunted in agreement.
“Well, I guess if even Bait thinks I should look into it, I should go check it out,” Callum amended. “Can I at least wait until tomorrow? It is my birthday, after all”.
“Of course!” Ez grinned, “We have to celebrate, after all! And it would be a travesty for you to miss your surprise-” he bit his lip and then grinned sheepishly, “I mean, evening of close, family bonding with your favorite brother”.
“You’re my only brother,” Callum deadpanned. Then, he turned and walked towards the door waving his hand goodbye to Ezran and said, “I’ll be in my room working on some very important runes if you need me. It will probably take me all day and I will also probably be too preoccupied to hear any possible commotion going on outside”.
With that, Callum closed the door behind him and his brother let out a sigh of relief and turned to his faithful companion.
“I think we did pretty good at keeping the surprise hidden, don’t you think Bait?”
Bait grunted.
The next morning, after the unsurprising surprise birthday party (where Soren showed off his newborn daughter like she was the best thing since sliced bread – a heartwarming, if a bit ridiculous, display of affection), Callum set out for the Uncharted Forest. Since the trip itself would take a week by flight, he planned to carry his pack and just camp wherever he ended up at the end of day. The sooner he figured out what Claudia was doing, the sooner he could put this all behind him.
Flying at a steady pace, Callum made his way across the horizon of Katolis. Having flown this route many times to go back and forth between Katolis and Xadia, Callum was still blown away by the sheer beauty of the landscape from his view in the sky. Perhaps, once this was over, he’d pay a quick visit to Ibis and see how things were going at the Storm Spire before making his way back home in time for the festival.
He made good progress, making it to the Breach by the end of his second day and to the Silvergrove by the end of the third, but, eventually, Callum’s desire to get as far as possible became outweighed by the icky sweat that had built up over four days of nearly nonstop travel and he decided to make his way down towards what looked to be a reasonably sized river.
He removed his clothes swiftly and dived straight into the water, regretting not staying with Ethari the night before in lieu of it adding extra time to his journey. Coming up for air, Callum breathed in deeply, letting the exhilaration of his arcanum fill him.
Once Callum felt sufficiently more human and less troll-like, he made his way to shore. The sun was starting to set, and Callum decided that this was just as good a place as any to set up camp, rolled out his sleeping mat, and began to gather firewood to start a fire and cook dinner.
After gathering enough firewood to last through the night, Callum started making his way back to camp but then stopped.
Someone was there.
He froze and listened closer.
It was more of a group than a single person, it seemed. Bandits from the sound of things. And they were all gathered at his campsite…where Callum had left all of his provisions for this trip.
Cursing himself for his stupidity, Callum began creeping towards the campsite beginning to mutter a spell under his breath.
“Aspiro,” he breathed and the air swelled around the group before violently dispersing, knocking all of the bandits off of their feet.
Callum walked out purposefully into the view of the bandits now, feeling a strange prickling in the air that he couldn’t quite place.
“Why are you here?” he asked quietly, menacingly, the air around him starting to crackle with electricity. There seemed to be seven members of the group, but it was difficult to tell what race each bandit was as they were all wearing cloaks.
The bandits looked scared, and then one member shook themself out of their stupor, jumped up and ran towards Callum, growling angrily. The other members followed suit.
“If that’s how you want it,” Callum grimaced, taking a fighting stance as the bandits charged. He took no pleasure in fighting, but the sooner he got rid of these bandits, the sooner he could be on his way.
The bandit charging at Callum took out their blades and Callum began another spell.
“Aspiro Frig–”
He stopped, immediately recognizing the bandit’s sharp amethyst eyes. It couldn’t be…
“Rayla?”
*Thwonk*
She hit him over the side of the head and everything went dark.
When he came to, Callum found himself tied, rather tightly might he add, to a tree. Looking around, it appeared he was still at his campsite, but his things had plainly been rummaged through and there was now a steady fire burning. Clearly, it seemed that the bandits had not only hijacked his things, but his campsite as well.
Shaking his head, Callum wondered how he’d even ended up here. He’d been outnumbered, sure, but it’d been a long time since anyone had been able to get the jump on him. His brain was a little fuzzy with the details…had he been hit in the head?
“We were wonderin’ when you’d wake up,” came a strangely familiar feminine voice. Where’d he heard that voice before? In Callum’s fuzzy brain, he couldn’t place it.
Then, said voice came into view, revealing the hooded figure who’d gotten the jump on him earlier. From the sound of it, Callum raised his head, and looked at the figure, wondering if he’d been hit harder than he’d thought. Surely, he was hallucinating.
“Rayla?” he questioned, confused, feeling a sense of deja vu. Is that what had distracted him? This woman’s resemblance to Rayla? Callum shook his head, clearing his thoughts, chastising himself. He should be better than this. It had been six years.
The woman frowned at him.
“Who’s Rayla?” She looked around, as if to make sure none of her compatriots were around. Once satisfied that they were alone, the woman turned to Callum, moving closer to him, biting her lip in concern. “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, by the way”.
Callum instinctively wanted to make this girl feel better, a weird feeling for the person who’d be accosted. “Rayla was my, that is, she and I…” He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t really matter at the moment, I suppose.”
“Is that why you’re out here? To look for this Rayla character?” the woman asked, taking a seat a nearby stump, her hood still covering the top part of her face.
“No, she’s been missing a long, long time,” Callum said wistfully. “I’m actually hunting a dark mage in the Uncharted Forest, heard anything about that?”
The woman shook her head and Callum sighed again. This charade was getting tiresome and he was still several days away from the Uncharted Forest. Right as he was about to cast a quiet Aspiro Frigis on the rope, the rest of the bandits came back into view.
“Isla,” came one of the bandits, a broad, barrel-chested Sunfire elf who came into view single handedly carrying a boar. “Have you gotten anything interesting out of the noble?” he asked gruffly.
Isla, Callum now realized was the woman’s name, turned and smirked coyly at the Sunfire elf. “I would have,” she drawled, “if you would have given me a few more minutes”.
Realizing that the woman had been trying to gather information out of him, Callum’s face grew red in embarrassment. This was obviously part of the group’s tactic, to leave one of their members alone with a potential captive to prod them for anything of interest or value. Callum was also very obviously a noble, as could be seen by his finer clothes, and he deduced the group was debating holding him ransom. He almost wanted to grin in spite of himself, these bandits didn’t know who they were dealing with, but then felt another wave of that strange prickling feeling, realizing in horror what it was.
Dark magic, and a lot of it. It was almost overwhelming now that he’d noticed it, but where was it coming from?
Isla removed her hood and Callum just stared at her.
“Is that noble okay?” another one of the bandits asked, a tall willowy Moonshadow elf, by the looks of it. “You didn’t knock him around too hard, did you, Isla? Remember, we talked about this, we want to keep potential hostages coherent or they’re not as valuable”.
“I didn’t do anything to him,” she picked her hands up in surrender. “He was fine when I was talking to him a minute ago”. She waved her blade in front of Callum’s face. “Oi, noble bloke, tell Galin I didn’t do anything to you”.
The willowy bandit, Galin, palmed his head. “I can’t believe you broke another one,” he said. “Look, and he’s crying too”.
And it was true, although Callum hadn’t said anything, tears were definitely dripping silently down his face.
“You’re starting to make me reaaal uncomfortable here, noble bloke,” Isla spoke shakily, concerned at Callum’s sudden change in demeanor.
“Sorry about that,” Callum smiled shakily, tears still streaming down his face. “I’m just so happy you’re alright”.
“I’m confused, is anyone else confused?” Isla asked.
Callum laughed, realizing it was the first real laugh he’d had in a long time. “Apologies, I’m usually much more put together than this, you’ve just caught me on a really off day”.
“Uh-huh..”
“I have a proposition for you, but before I ask it, I need you to confirm something for me,” Callum said more seriously.
“Sure,” Isla responded. “Though, you’re not really in the position to be making demands and propositions, considering you’re tied to a tree and all”.
Callum smiled at her, and Isla couldn’t figure out if she should smile back or run as far from this loony noble as possible.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked sincerely.
Isla looked at him, really, truly looked at him. There was something about the man that was oddly familiar , but when she tried to concentrate on what about him was so familiar, her brain started to itch, so she stopped dwelling on it. Obviously, she was just thinking too hard. She was sure she’d remember someone as
‘handsome ?’ a voice in the back of her head helpfully supplied.
She ignored this voice, “Trust me, if we’d met before, I’d remember. Now, who are you and what is this so-called proposition?”
Callum smiled, and weirdly, Isla felt more like smiling back this time than running away. It was…odd.
“Aspiro Frigis,” the noble said, snapping his fingers, and a well-controlled small burst of lighting broke him from his ropes. Taking an elegant bow, the noble said, “My name is Callum, Crown Prince of Katolis and High Mage of His Majesty, King Ezran the First’s Court”. He looked up, grinning. “I’d like to hire your crew to assist me in hunting down a dark mage”.
“What’s in it for us?” Isla asked slowly, hunting down a dark mage was a dangerous and dumb idea as far as she was concerned. Petty thievery was a lot more cost effective.
Callum paused, taking a moment to consider how to proceed. “ You’ve been cursed, Isla, '' he said slowly. “I don’t know if your crew can sense it, but you reek of dark magic, and the signature of that dark magic matches the very same mage I’m hunting down right now. If we can find her, we can figure out how to reverse the curse that’s been cast on you”.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” the broad chested Sunfire elf standing off to the side asked.
“Chief’s right,” Galin nodded. “No one ‘ere can feel dark magic. As far as I know, the only ones who can smell dark magic are dragons, and you don’t look like a dragon to me.”
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me,” Callum shrugged. “It’s true, and any mage worth their salt would tell you the same”.
“If you’re such a great mage, why don’t you reverse it?” the elf they’d referred to as Chief spoke, narrowing his eyes. “It seems suspicious that you just happen to be looking for this ‘dark mage’,” he made air quotes, “ and you’re a human ,” he curled his lip in disgust, “ mage. Some would say that in itself is taboo”.
“And what if we decide we don’t want to come with you?” Isla asked quietly, wondering how the prince would reply.
He seemed mildly shocked momentarily that she’d even considered not coming. Turning to look for his knapsack, Callum spotted and grabbed it, pulling out a battered looking sketchbook that looked to have seen some better days.
“I think there’s something I should show you,” he said seriously, opening up the sketchbook and sifting through it. Finally, he stopped on a page and handed the sketchbook to Isla solemnly.
“What is…” she looked confused, “...is this me? Why do you have a picture of me?” She flipped through the pages. “Why do you have multiple pictures of me?” Callum sighed.
He looked sad, and older than she knew he probably was. And so, so tired . Part of her wanted to…
‘...reach out and comfort him ?’ the voice in the back of her head no-so-helpfully supplied.
Wait, what?
“Your name isn’t Isla, it’s Rayla.”