The Wizard meets Himari – Part 2

This is the 2nd part of the meeting. To read Part 1 click here.

This second part is the book’s 18th chapter.

Enjoy!

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The Wizard relaxed his hold. “Are you calm, now, my dear?”

“Are you not going to finish me off?”

“No. In fact I’m going to restore your life-force, but purified. Before I do that, though, I want you to sign a contract with me, with your true name, your date of birth and the time of it, of course.”

“You… want me to become your familiar?”

“I’m not going to kill you, even if you don’t, my dear, if that’s what you are asking. And I’ll restore your life-force, because I don’t want you to disappear. But, I doubt there are many wizards who’d take you as a familiar, so, eventually, you’ll either disappear, or you’ll become a demon again. And I can tell, you don’t want either of these to happen. So… will you become my familiar?”

And Himari signed the contract. The Wizard checked it and smiled.

“You’ve been born in an interesting date.”

“No, you are mistaken. The same day a year before my birth was the interesting one.”

“I know. I could never mistake the exact day when all the planets aligned. But, still, I think yours is a nice day to be born.”

“It was just a plain day. The monks thought that some of the immense magical energy of the day of the great alignment would come to me, were I to be born in the same date, but it didn’t work.”

“Still, your magic is impressive. Too few would stand a chance fighting against you.”

“This, I’m afraid, I’ve learned, too well.”

The Wizard, softly, caressed the familiar’s face.

“That wasn’t your fault. The monks are the ones to be blamed. A Deity of Protection is not a tool you can just discard when you don’t need him, anymore.”

“But I was the one who chose to kill all those people.”

“A lion who kills an antelope to eat is not a murderer.” The familiar tried to speak, but the Wizard, gently, closed Himari’s mouth with his finger. “Nor is the bear who overeats during summer, to have enough fat for the winter, my dear. Nature isn’t pretty. It simply is what it is. You followed yours. Just because you stand above humans in the food chain, it doesn’t mean you are evil. Don’t forget that. And now you are safe. I’ll never have you kill people.”

The Wizard’s voice was calm. His touch soft. Through it, slowly, Himari’s energy was returning. A warm, kind energy. An energy purer than any he could remember ever possessing. Yet, he could feel it was his. The Wizard wasn’t transforming him to something else. And an almost imperceptible smile was drawn on the familiar’s face. But the Wizard noticed it anyway.

“Good! This is how you should be looking!”

And the smile grew bigger.

“Now, I’ll rest and tomorrow we need to leave this place. If I don’t return with the news of your death, they’ll probably send more people to kill you. So, where is your home?” asked the Wizard, once he had returned all of Himari’s life-force.

“The main temple is my home.”

“Oh, dear! Well… then, my dear, I’m afraid we’ll make your home ours for a short while. I prefer to get well accustomed to your energies before I cut off your connection with your home. Do you mind?”

“No, Master. You can do as you please.”

“Don’t call me ‘Master’, my dear. You are part of my family now. And don’t you dare call me by my name. I hate the sound of it, just as much as I hate being called ‘master’. I’d rather you call me ‘Hey, asshole’.”

Himari giggled. ‘I’d rather not. Then how should I call you?”

“Well, your siblings simply call me ‘Wizard’. If you can’t come up with something more entertaining, do the same.”

*****

Just as the Wizard had assumed, two days later a group of five wizards came to the monastery to kill the demon. The Wizard told them he had already killed him, and decided to keep the monastery as his reward instead of the bounty. They weren’t really convinced, as he didn’t allow them to search the premises, but they didn’t put up a fight.

A group of officials came a few days later, declaring that the monastery, the land, and whatever riches were there belonged to the state. Them, too, the Wizard sent away, without allowing them to search the premises. He gave them, however, a large pile of human bones, and told them that, were they to challenge him, he would resurrect the one who gathered them.

In that world, the Wizard wasn’t considered as god-like as he was in Albert’s, but his power was not to be underestimated. His special trait was also known. Along with a resurrected Demon, who had killed so many, even if the Wizard’s group were to be beaten, the cost would be greater than any treasure hidden in the monastery. And that’s why the authorities chose to compromise.

Of course, the monks had taken with them all the gold and money and anything of value, when they left the monastery, but the stolen goods and fortunes of the thieves the Demon had killed were still there. And the Wizard wasn’t willing to share them with anyone. Let alone to give them away.

Later, sparingly, a few groups of thieves came to take over the place, but mere thieves weren’t even a challenge for the Wizard. So, most of the time was passing quietly and pleasantly. Little by little, Himari got used to being part of the Wizard’s family. His other familiars accepted him right away, too. And the Wizard finally decided that the time had come for him to cut off Himari’s bond to the monastery.

“Tomorrow, my dear, you’ll lose your home and – from then on – you’ll be haunting only me. Once that’s done, we’ll be able to leave here, and you’ll never see this place again. Ever. So, the question is, are you ready?”

“I don’t care about this place, Wizard. I’ll follow you, anywhere.”

“It’s settled, then!”

“Will you be taking the riches, too?”

“Of course! You don’t need them anyway. If there is anything of value to you, you can keep it. As for the rest, what isn’t already gold, I’ll use to buy more gold. Gold, my dear, is valuable, everywhere. Did you know that?”

“No, not really. But, then, when you came, you could have just killed me, taken everything, and then, collected the bounty, too.”

“As if I would ever kill you, of all people! Well… kind of ‘people’.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“When I was born, everyone was expecting me to be, right away, a great wizard. A really great one actually came to take me as a pupil, when I was six. Until then, I hadn’t managed to use magic, not even for the simplest reasons. Well… that’s the usual thing, anyway. Some kids, accidentally use magic even at a younger age, but none can consciously produce any objective result. But as I said, I was expected to be a prodigy, since my birth, so I was receiving too much pressure. By the age of six, I already thought I was a failure.

“My master, though, didn’t believe I was one. He spent two years rebuilding my faith in myself. A challenging job, as I couldn’t produce any decent magic effect even until my eighth year of living. And, maybe, this would have taken longer, if, coincidentally or not, he hadn’t brought me to this monastery. He had noticed I would pray to the gods daily to help me become the great wizard everyone was expecting me to become, but the gods had never answered. Maybe that was exactly the reason he brought me here.

“He left me alone, to do as I please, telling me he had some job to take care of and he would be meeting me that evening. Once he left, I ran to the temple to pray. And once I started praying, I saw you, standing there, listening to my prayer, along with everybody else’s, and you looked like you were paying attention. And even though I was too young and too inexperienced, I could feel your enormous power. I could tell my master was nowhere near you. ‘This must be the power of a god,’ I thought. And this god was listening to me. He paid attention. He even appeared in front of me, as if to reassure me he would do his best to help me. And I thought to myself, I’ll become a wizard so powerful that I’ll be equal to this god. You, in other words.

“You might laugh, but I didn’t know better. So, that’s what I thought. Since the next morning I could use magic. I thought this was because of your help, of course. And, reassured you were helping me, I progressed rapidly. In less than two months I had overpowered my master. It was then, when he asked me what changed in me, and I told him what had happened, here. He laughed, of course, and then he explained to me what you really were and that a Deity of Protection had no power to help me while I wasn’t in the monastery’s premises. Neither could he help me become a great wizard. Nonetheless, my dear, you had helped me. Maybe not by means of your divine powers, but you had.

“My master was, as I said, a really great wizard, so finding a more powerful teacher wasn’t something easy. Not to mention that strength alone is not the only thing that matters. So, I continued being his apprentice, until his death. I was trying to surpass his wisdom, and, at the same time, to reach your power. We never came here, though. So, the being I was trying to surpass was the one the imagination of my eight years old self had conceived. No matter how much stronger I was getting, the you – in my mind – remained equally more powerful than me, as the real you compared to myself when I was eight. The funny thing is, I didn’t realise this mistake of mine, until I met with you again.

“Anyway, when I heard that a demon was haunting this monastery, I was annoyed. I knew this monastery was abandoned, but it was the monastery of my god. So I decided to cleanse the place of that impudent demon who was desecrating your place of birth. The prize wasn’t bad, either, but it wasn’t my main target.

“I am a cautious being, Himari. I don’t underestimate my opponents, unlike you. I’d have had a much more difficult time winning against you, had you not underestimated me. So, I researched this demon. Asked everyone who had survived about ‘him’. And the more I was investigating ‘him’, the more I was realising that this demon was probably you. I wouldn’t have imagined that the monks would have abandoned such a powerful Deity of Protection, when they left the monastery, so it came to me as a surprise. And I wasn’t really sure my conclusion was correct until I saw you.

“As I said, in my mind, until we fought, I thought that you were immeasurably more powerful than me. That’s why I didn’t attack. I wouldn’t have killed you, but I would have forced you to use most of your magic, before starting absorbing you. Instead, I focused on defence, making sure you couldn’t possess me, and waiting for my chance to grab you. Only when I had absorbed most of your life-force, I realised that I had, in fact, surpassed you in power.” The Wizard laughed at himself. “Well… you know the rest.”

“That’s a nice story, Wizard. A fairytale, of course, but a nice one. So, what is the true story?”

“I don’t usually lie, Himari! That’s the true story!”

“It can’t be! It’s more than a century since the monks left this monastery. You can’t have seen me in my Deity’s days!”

The Wizard burst into laughter. “A century? A century you say?” Hardly could he control his laughter, for some time. “Try five, my dear! It’s eighty years since you became my familiar. Eighty two, to be exact!”

The Wizard was still laughing. Himari, on the other hand, was in shock.

“Then… what exactly are you, Wizard?”

“A human. A simple, plain, normal human. With much magic, too, of course. Other than that, a mere human. Oh! Yeah! And immortal. Probably not too common amongst humans, I guess, but yes, other than those details, I’m just a human.”

“Details?!?! Your magic power alone isn’t a detail. Your immortality? I think ‘mere human’, or even ‘human’ hardly describe you! Don’t you think you should have mentioned this detail before I signed our contract?”

“I thought you might haven’t signed it, if you knew. Have I forgotten to mention I’m cunning? Yeah! Another insignificant detail, but I am.”

“I probably would have signed the contract anyway.”

“Yes. At that time… you probably would have.”

The familiar smiled. It was the first time the Wizard saw this forced smile on Himari’s face. From then on, none of the few times Himari smiled, his smile would be the sweet, innocent one the Wizard had been enjoying so much. Not until Albert came into their lives.

“So, you are more than five hundred years old then?”

“I’m exactly a year older than you, Himari, my dear. That’s why I found your date of birth, interesting. I was born at the exact moment of the great planetary alignment.”

The Wizard smiled, proudly. But his smile, too, was a forced one.