Sehn sat alone in the back-left corner of the cell. He was deep in thought, struggling to find the answer to a very important question. His back was turned away from the others while he evaluated his performance. This was quite possibly the most important thing he’d ever been forced to mull over. Several times, Cah’lia, or the other woman, Mistress Bitchrellia—or whatever her name was—had tried to speak with him, but he could spare no time for conversation while he struggled to find his answer.
Did I make myself look good or bad
?
On the one hand, he’d proven his sister wrong by using magic in a place where no others could. That’d earned him quite a few astonished looks, but Sehn wasn’t surprised in the least. Of course his magic had worked! Sehn figured that, without question, his display was worth at least plus ten awesome points.
His mind drifted to the other side of things. He’d (intentionally) failed to blow a hole in the wall below the window; his back still throbbed from the impact with the steel bars, adding another ache to the frequent pain he’d been forced to endure as of late.
He held his hands out in front of him, palms open, and he moved them up and down like a scale. Each time he thought of the look on everyone’s faces when he’d used magic, he raised his left hand up a bit; each time he remembered using his one-hundred-percent-intentional “backwards motion” spell, he lowered it a drop and instead raised his right one.
Gods be damned
,
he thought.
Those fools definitely think I messed up the spell on accident—which I did not
!
I merely wanted to know what it would be like to have a spell backfire and then send me flying across the room
.
Who wouldn’t
?
Sehn knew there were other, less important issues to ponder, such as how he’d escape this damnable prison cell and punish everyone who’d locked him inside it, but he needed to take care of the most pressing matters first. He ignored the throbbing pain in his thighs as he made his way to his feet. He turned around and coughed into his hand, drawing everyone’s attention. Benjamin and Iona looked half asleep, and Cah’lia
had
been dozing off, but now, at the sound of his cough, her eyes popped up, and she shook her head.
“You’ve been ignoring us for hours, Sehn,” Cah’lia said. “Are you ready to talk? Orellia has important things to tell you.” She pointed to the woman standing beside her—Orellia, so that was her name. Well, at least Sehn had been close.
“Everyone listen up,” Sehn began, “for your God-King has an important announcement to make. You there!” Sehn shouted at the elderly mage, Benjamin, who was lying on his cot with his head propped up on a pillow.
“Me?” he asked
“Yes, you—you are not paying close enough attention. When the Great Sehn speaks, all are required to listen and take note of every word spoken.”
“Oh, okay, sorry.”
“See to it that this does not happen again.” Sehn cleared his throat. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, I recently attempted to use a magic spell, which, by the way, I have used many times before, only this time I added a certain—”
“Save it,” Shina muttered. She sat upright on one of the beds across from where Sehn stood, with her knees tucked into her chest while she gazed at the stars outside the window. By Sehn’s estimation, it would be morning soon.
“No one here wants to hear your excuses.”
“My…excuses?” Sehn whispered. Had he heard Shina correctly? Surely his sister wouldn’t be so stupid as to blatantly insult him in front of other people?
“You heard me. You clearly don’t know how to merge two magical elements together. Everyone saw you fail.”
“You fool! You know not of what you speak!” Sehn filled with such terrible anger that only his desire to someday witness the completion of his statue kept him from ending the world that very moment.
“I know all the magic—do you hear me?
All
of it.” He interlocked his fingers and began to chant. He’d show his stupid sister just how powerful he was. He’d heard several of the magical chants during the battle in Hahl, so he picked one at random, hoping he wouldn’t purposely fly across the room again.
Kellar, laughing, strode over and, much like a mediator breaking up two angry nobles about to swordfight, placed his hands over Sehn’s, and then guided Sehn’s Godly arms back to his sides. Sehn frowned. Who did this Drashian boy think he was to stop Sehn from turning his little sister into a ball of slime?
“Don’t make your sister pay for what’s my fault,” he said.
Sehn felt his ears twitch. “
Your…
fault?”
Kellar let out a nervous chuckle. “I didn’t want to say anything because I was really, really, embarrassed, but…I think it’s pretty clear what happened here.”
“It is?”
Kellar nodded. “Yup. Someone like you probably has so many spells running through his mind that on the rarest of the rarest of the rarest of occasions, you probably need to be reminded of what spell to use, and I must’ve given you the wrong one.”
Sehn narrowed his eyes skeptically. He had to admit that the boy’s words did make some sense. “Go on.”
“Well, I guess I’m just hoping that you’re gonna spare my life for my honesty. After all, I did do a pretty bad thing and make the, umm, the Great Sehn look responsible for someone else’s mistake.”
Of course
,
Sehn thought.
It all makes sense now
.
I didn’t miscast the spell—I never cast the right one in the first place
!
Sehn sighed and, in a kingly manner, dismissively wiggled his fingers at the boy, who was fortunate that Sehn was in one of his rare, forgiving moods.
“I am prepared to offer you a one time—and one time only—pardon for your crimes.”
Kellar bowed. “Thanks, buddy. Oh! Hey, since you’ve got, you know, all those spells in your head—more than any human, elf, or dwarf could ever hope to possess—maybe my Mistress, Orellia, could help you to sort some of them out.”
Sehn glanced over in Orellia’s direction. She still stood next to Cah’lia, her face blank. He turned back to the mage-boy. “What do you mean?”
Kellar leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Listen, I’m…I’m really not supposed to say anything, so I don’t know if I should.”
“You’d better,” Sehn said back to him, not bothering to lower his voice. “All secrets must be told to the Great Sehn. Do not tremble before these insignificant mortals. Speak your words loudly for all to hear.”
Kellar backed away and raised his voice. “Okay, fine, but this is something I could get into big trouble for telling you. See, the thing is, Mistress Orellia over there”—he pointed—“is afraid of your power, Sehn, and she’s going to try to convince you not to remember some of those devastating spells, the ones that you
only
forgot because you know so many.”
Orellia gave Cah’lia a bewildered look, and then faced Kellar. The two exchanged a brief yet knowing glance, and then, while tilting her head to the side, Orellia said, “How, ah…how could you…betray me? How could you, Kellar? Why would you…why would you do something like that?”
She bit her lip and shrugged at Kellar, who for some reason shrugged back, then continued, “You’re awful for trying to, ah, trying to…awaken Sehn’s powers, Kellar. Luckily, there’s no way he can force me to teach him how to use his magic because I’m not going to…put the world at risk?”
Sehn had heard enough. “I knew it! I knew there was something going on here!” The pieces clicked together in his mind. “Did you really think you foolish mages were clever enough to slip a conspiracy like this past me? I am Sehn! I am the unraveler! You, woman, you are to share all spell-secrets with me at once!”
For the second time, Orellia gave Cah’lia an odd look; Cah’lia only sighed. Sehn wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Cah’lia whisper, “Don’t ask.”
Shina muttered more nonsense while Kellar, keeping his mouth closed, let out another throaty chuckle. Before anyone could speak another word, the sound of keys jangling came from just down the hall outside the cell.
“Damn,” Shina whispered. “They’re definitely here to interrogate either my brother or Cah’lia.”
Three beefy guards in dark blue uniforms came into view outside their cell. The center one, taller and fatter than the other two, removed a key from his belt and slid it into a socket on the other end of the door. He grabbed the bars and slid the door to the side; it made a metallic creak as it opened.
The centermost guard pointed directly at Sehn. “You, elf, yer comin’ with us.”
Cah’lia and Shina exchanged worried glances. Sehn let out a mighty laugh. He didn’t know why everyone except for Kellar looked so nervous. Sehn placed his hands on his hips and sneered at these guard-fools.
“Who summons me?”
The fattest of the guards spat on the floor. “None of yer damn business, that’s who. Getcha’ can over here before I drag you.”
Sehn, so taken aback by the bold display of disrespect, found himself more shocked than angry. He took a few steps in the guard’s direction, passing by Benjamin and Iona, who covered their mouths and trembled with each step. Sitting on the same bed, they huddled together and backed up against the wall behind the headboard.
“Do you have any idea who you’re speaking to?” Sehn asked them.
“Not really,” the leftmost guard said, “but the thing is, pal, we don’t care, neither.”
Sehn tsked. “You don’t care, do you?” He cracked his knuckles; it seemed that the time had finally come to teach the sky-fools about their new religion. “Why don’t you try dragging me then?”
The guard took a step forward. He reached out, intending to grab Sehn by the throat. Sehn stepped to the side, easily avoiding the man’s slow, untrained movement. Now off to the guard’s right, Sehn pivoted off his back foot and gripped his hands into fists. Using his body weight to give additional power to his blow, Sehn hit the man in the side of the face. His cheeks rippled like the surface of unsettled water and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. Then he dropped to the floor.
“Brother, what are you doing?” Shina yelled at him. “Stop it!”
The second guard was on him in an instant. He was also too slow. Before he could fully make it through the cell door, Sehn dashed forward and delivered a crushing blow to the nose; it had been far too long since Sehn had last hit something. The feeling of knuckle on nose sent a wave of gratification shimmering through him.
The man groaned and stumbled backwards out of the cell, picking up speed as he fell backwards until finally crashing back-first into the steel bars of the opposite cell in the hallway; he slid down until he came to a sitting position, unconscious.
The third guard looked first behind him and then in front of him at his two downed companions. He slowly backed away. “Y-y-you c-can’t do that,” he stammered. “Y-you will be in b-big trouble.”
Sehn laughed. As he approached the remaining guard, the man retreated until Sehn, now standing in the hallway, backed the guard into the cell that his friend had been knocked into. The six imprisoned mages behind the bars cheered, and then soon after, Sehn could see fingers gripping the cell doors all throughout the hallway. Voices shouted their encouragement, reminding Sehn of a crowd watching a horse race.
“Get ‘em!” someone shouted.
“Get us out of here, elf!” shouted another.
Sehn narrowed his eyes on the guard; he was crouched on the ground, with his hands in front of his face, flinching every time Sehn made a movement.
“Don’t you have somewhere to take me?” he asked.
“W-what?”
“Did I stutter? Don’t you have someplace to take me?”
The man, slowly at first, rose back to his feet. He trembled as he spoke. “Y-yeah, you need to c-come with me, elf.”
“Lead the way.”
He nodded, but not before pointing at Orellia in particular; the door to their cell was still open. “You scum better not go anywhere. You can’t escape, so don’t even try.”
Sehn followed the puny human as he led him through the hall. It amused Sehn how the guard was too terrified to take his eyes off him, so he was forced to walk carefully backwards, peeking over his shoulders every few steps as though to avoid bumping into something. For a laugh, Sehn made a sudden forward movement. The guard shrieked and fell onto his butt.
“Haha! Look at how frightened you are.”
The guard said nothing. He scrambled back to his feet and continued to lead Sehn through a large, oval-shaped door at the end of the hallway, which led to a winding staircase. Sehn followed him up.
The trip took longer than expected, because the guard climbed the stairs backwards. There were several doors along the way, leading to other cellblocks, but the guard ignored all of these and continued to lead Sehn through six flights of stairs, his feet making a soft echo as they tapped against the steps. Arriving at the top, the guard grinned. Behind him was a normal-sized door. The guard stepped to the side.
“Go ahead, elf—go right in through there.”
Sehn laughed and threw the door open, marching inside and not bothering to stop the guard from fleeing. The room was small, with little more than a bookcase, a desk, and a chair where Sehn assumed he was intended to sit. Rather than carpet, the room was covered in hardwood flooring.