47. [Uicha] The Wildcard (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Uicha de Orak, a young man of no renown or loyalty, but only for now

Ahmed Roh, Archmage of the 15th Renown, the Magelab, once a mark always a mark

Kayenna Vezz, sorcerer of the old Kingdom of Orvesis, making a mess

***

Now and then

Here or there

858,197 memories until brain death

The archmage Ahmed Roh wetted his lips—dry and chapped, even in this psychic approximation—as he eyed the frozen memory of Uicha’s mother. “You may have some of her gifts, boy. A talent for the arts buried beneath the bad habits of a rural upbringing.”

Uicha gestured to the empty chair next to his mother. “Why don’t you sit down, master? You seem so tired.”

The old man’s forehead wrinkled. He nodded toward Uicha’s father. “And now I see a flash of him. Such a mouth on that man. Always looking for a better deal.” Roh’s sharp eyes focused on Uicha. “You aspire to negotiate with me? Is that right?”

For a moment, a dizzying falling sensation threatened to overtake Uicha. In the physical world, Kayenna Vezz had cut through another rope using the bone-icicle that jutted from Uicha’s forearm. His body now hung from the ceiling by the ankles. In the memory, Uicha focused on his dad, and almost felt his control slip, drawn toward an older memory of playing with his father, the man holding him by the legs and pretending like he would let him fall…

The archmage raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you are not as in control as you’d like me to believe.”

Uicha took a seat at the table next to his childhood self, playing off the momentary lapse with a shrug. “I’m new at this,” he said. “Hard enough to control my own memories. Can’t even imagine what it’s like for you—barging in where you don’t belong, searching for Kayenna, stealing from me. How long can you keep that up?”

Roh remained resolutely standing. “As long as necessary.”

“Let me help you,” Uicha said. “I don’t want this Orvesian in my head. I want to go back to normal.”

“Go on, then,” Roh replied, his fingers curling around the back of the chair before him. “Take me back to her memories. Show me the way.”

“You have to promise to let me live, and not as some blank slate.” Uicha waved his arms at the farmhouse. “I’ve lost everything. A powerful archmage like you should have the resources to give me a good life.”

“Fine,” Roh said. “Agreed.”

Uicha leaned forward, feeling a strain in his abdomen. In the physical world, Kayenna had his body struggling to do a sit-up so she could cut away the bonds that secured his legs. His muscles were weak, though. How long had he been hanging up there? Had the archmage even bothered to feed him? Kayenna used magic—an icy wind propelled him upward—and the cost was frostbite spreading across Uicha’s narrow torso.

In the memory, he hugged himself and shook his head. “You accept too easily. Makes me think you won’t keep your end.”

The archmage growled impatiently. “What would you like, boy? A contract?” He yanked out his seat at the table and at last sat down, steely eyes boring into Uicha. “I had a contract with your parents once. I commissioned their ship to search for First Age relics off the coast of Ruchet. Together, we discovered a trove of old writings, a guide to the location of Kayenna Vezz and her followers. I paid your parents handsomely only to discover, once we had parted ways, that the documents were forgeries. Your mother had a talent with illusions.”

Uicha recalled the letter from his mother he had found in the safe along with Kayenna’s urn’chan. What had she said about Ahmed Roh? We thought we was hustling him but in the end I think he hustled us.

“Of course, I hunted them for some years, seeking recompense to no avail,” Roh continued, no doubt detecting Uicha’s interest in the story. “Only later did they resurface in Ambergran. You see, they kept the original documents for themselves. Perhaps they expected some great treasure. Instead, they unearthed a curse, and soon realized that I would be their only buyer. We came to an arrangement where they would keep the urn’chan secret for me. I believe you have pieced together the rest.”

“Why didn’t you come?” Uicha asked. This question was genuine—not a stalling technique. “Why didn’t you come when the Orvesians first arrived in Ambergran?”

“Your parents wrote and assured me they had the situation under control. When they did not write again…” As Roh turned to regard Uicha’s mother, Uicha was surprised to see a bit of fondness creep into the man’s dark eyes. “I knew your parents as fools, but I did not expect them to be so foolish as to die.”

Uicha swayed. A rope snapped. Only one remained.

“They left letters about you,” Uicha said. “Proof about what you’re doing.”

Roh cocked his head and gazed up at the ceiling. “Burned, most likely, with this place.” Uicha’s mouth fell open, and Roh smiled. “Of course. You didn’t know. Too busy running. Your farm is gone. A consequence of my encounter with that silly Orvesian ritualist.”

Uicha sat back. “I had a dog…”

“Shall I get you another?” Roh snorted. “Your memories intact, a life of leisure, a new pet? Are these the things I must promise so that we might hasten this encounter?” He reached his gnarled little finger across the table. “Shall we hook pinkies and make a child’s pact of it?”

Uicha shuddered—or, more accurately, he vibrated. His physical body had hit the floor. There had been an urn’chan positioned beneath him, waiting to collect the pulp of memories that Ahmed Roh squeezed from him. The metal capsule dug into his ribs, then popped out from under his weight, and skittered across the room.

“What was that?” In the memory, Roh tilted his head and glanced toward the front door.

“Kayenna thinks she can outlast you,” Uicha said hurriedly. “She doesn't seem to have much respect for your generation of mages. I might be the only advantage you have--”

Roh slapped the table. “I tire of this, boy. You have mastered your father’s obsequiousness but lack your mother’s charm. Knowing now the access you possess, perhaps we should begin this negotiation anew, with a clean slate?”

Uicha understood the archmage’s meaning. He meant to siphon out the memory of this interaction and send Uicha spiraling back into his subconscious. Roh made a circling motion with his hand and Uicha half-expected to feel that sensation of twisting pain that accompanied Roh’s psychic extraction.

Except, Uicha’s body was not where it was supposed to be. Uicha couldn’t suppress a smile as bewilderment spread across the archmage’s face.

“What have you done?” he asked.

“You thought you were hustling us,” Uicha began. “But we—”

Ahmed Roh did not wait for Uicha to finish his quip.

All at once, reality snapped back into place. In those first few moments, Uicha did not yet feel the full brunt of his brutalized physical state. The weeks of starvation and thirst that left his guts in knots, the jangling agony of his wasted muscles, his broken arm, his frostbitten back—Uicha stood apart from all this. Kayenna Vezz remained in control of his body, making this transition back to the physical world feel like another dream of memory.

Quickly, he took in the room. Small, filled with strange-smelling smoke, the wooden walls and floor covered in wards—those were flashing, sparking, fading, the magic thrown into a state of chaos at his escape. A trough of animal carcasses sat against one wall, the bones and guts spread around the room in arcane patterns. Next to that, a narrow ladder led to a hatch on the ceiling. Uicha sensed a gentle rolling beneath him.

The archmage had him on a boat.

And there was Ahmed Roh, curled into a cross-legged position at the center of a wide rune he’d drawn in sparkling chalk. He was stripped down to his burgundy pants, his ribs visible through papery skin. As Uicha watched, some of the black and red symbols on his chest faded. His collection of Ink was badly diminished. On rickety legs, the archmage scrambled to his feet, a whip of energy exploding from his fist. Apparently, he hadn’t used up that ability in the process of invading Uicha’s mind.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Fool!”

Kayenna hadn’t piloted Uicha’s body toward the ladder and escape. No—she had maneuvered him toward the archmage’s workbench. She had shoved aside his tomes and grabbed for the rack of vials, each of them filled with a crimson liquid. With Uicha’s hands, she had already dumped one of these vials onto his chest.

Now, she swallowed a second.

Uicha could taste the gunk in his mouth, clogging his throat. It was thick like paint, tasted hot, like blood but not from any creature he could understand.

“Wait,” Uicha said. “I don’t like this.”

Kayenna Vezz did not respond. She did not stop.

Mere seconds had passed since Uicha and Roh returned to the physical world. Roh’s arcane whip lashed across Uicha’s back and wrapped around his torso. In response, Kayenna crushed two more vials of the crimson liquid with Uicha’s bare hands. She mashed the goop and the broken glass across Uicha’s face, into his eyes, up his nose—

“Stop!” Uicha screamed.

He took control of his body, shoving Kayenna back into his mind.

“The only way,” she said at last. “I warned you.”

Fully in control, Uicha had only a moment to appreciate the enormity of his pain. Everything hurt in new and incomprehensible ways. He felt as if channels of acid were opening across his chest, bubbling up from the poison Kayenna had ingested.

Uicha passed out.

That was fine. He preferred it, actually. The escape would fail, Ahmed Roh would have his way, and Uicha would be grateful to forget all this suffering. He had made the wrong decision with Kayenna. He knew that now. He should’ve chosen death.

Except, Uicha hadn’t passed out. He passed down.

Down, down, down.

Down until the weight of Emza pressed upon him. Sand packed against his skin on all sides. Buried alive. A crushing tomb.

And then the voice came. Impossibly vast. The perfect darkness of this prison shifted into a throbbing crimson. The same color as that stuff in the vials. It had come from down here. The voice—this entity—it bled.

It bled power.

Long have I waited. And for my patience, I am sent a quivering child.

The voice’s disappointment broke Uicha’s bones. Its sigh was like a salt wind stripping away skin.

I will make of you a messenger. Their game, my rules.

What did that mean? Uicha couldn’t form words to ask. Even thinking the question felt like it might be taken as an affront by the entity that held him. He shrank into himself and gave himself over.  

I see your memories of cards. An amusing metaphor. It will do.

Symbols formed out of the red. Somehow, Uicha understood their meaning. [Wildcard] said the first. That was him now. His class. Two more symbols came attached to that first one. [Disloyal] and [Ink Thief].

You are dying. A most pressing matter.

[Greater Regeneration].

Something for the witch within you, though I sense her resentment even now.

[Summon Gargoyle] and [Ice Mastery].

No more playing warrior in the grass, my child. I will teach you the blade.

[Swordplay+].

And give you something that even the best of them rarely master.

[Telekinesis].

Am I not generous with my power?

Still, Uicha could not respond. The array of symbols had wormed through the sand and onto his skin, crawling onto his chest and shoulders, and solidifying there.

I only ask that you be seen. Let them know…

Uicha was propelled upward with the voice’s rapturous scream, the power so great it felt as if the sky itself had slapped him.

I AM STILL HERE!

Restored to his body, the first thing Uicha felt was his forearm sliding back into place, the skin and muscle mending over it. [Regeneration+] at work. He let out a shaky gasp as his bones clicked back together. Bits of broken glass fell out of his face, tinkling onto the workbench.

“Madness!” shrieked Ahmed Roh. “Do you now try to kill yourself? Is that it?”

Only seconds had passed since Kayenna Vezz desperately smashed vials of chanic—he knew that word, without understanding where the knowledge had come from—onto his chest, his mouth, his eyes. Roh’s arcane whip was still wrapped around him, pulling him back from the workbench. Uicha relaxed. He let the archmage lift him into the air with the coil of energy and turn him.

“What--?”

The crimson had spread in complicated and precise patterns across Uicha’s chest. A tattoo, like any champion, but all red. Uicha would not see this detail until later—not until he found a mirror—but the space on his throat that had once bore the swaying wheat stalk of Ambergran now featured an empty box.

The archmage’s face crumpled, his mouth hanging open. Uicha wondered when this powerful man last felt such profound confusion.

“What have you done to yourself?” Roh asked.

“I don’t know,” Uicha replied quietly.

Roh understood the symbols on Uicha’s chest, just as Uicha understood the ones tattooed on the archmage. The man was fifteenth renown, but greatly diminished. The abilities that provided him healing, stamina, fortitude—they were all faded from long hours digging through Uicha’s mind.

“I have never seen…” Roh shook his head. “What does that mean? To be [Disloyal]?” The arcane whip tightened around him. “We must bring you to the Magelab, at once. We must…”

“No.”

Uicha held out an open hand toward Roh. He worked on instinct—instinct and curiosity. He knew what his symbols should do, but he badly wanted to test them. And if anyone deserved to be his object of experimentation, it was this man.

The power felt warm. It felt right.  

He used [Ink Thief], focusing on Roh’s symbol for [Arcane Whip]. The archmage howled, grasping at his chest as his Ink ripped away from his skin, floated through the air between them, and then arranged itself on Uicha’s ribcage. Uicha dropped lightly to the floor as the coil of energy holding him dissipated.

“Impossible!” Roh shrieked. “Mine--!”

Hunched over, dripping sweat, the old archmage unleashed a comet-shaped burst of energy. As the missile streaked toward him, Uicha used [Ice Mastery]. A thick sheet of ice manifested before him, shattering on impact from Roh’s bombardment, but protecting him.

Uicha flicked his fingers and used [Telekinesis]. The workbench sailed through the air toward Roh. The old archmage got his forearms up at the last moment, using some kind of deflection to make the object sail wide. Still, it was an effective distraction.

With his [Telekinesis], Uicha snapped his mother’s scimitar into his hand. He unsheathed it and closed the short distance to Roh in one smooth motion. The blade felt natural in his hand, like he’d spent hundreds of hours training with it. He slashed for Roh’s neck.

The moment before his blade bit into Roh’s neck, Uicha used [Disloyal]. The archmage had been curious about the symbol’s meaning, so it was only fair that he show him.

The empty box on Uicha’s neck filled with the symbol of a tome, marking him temporarily as a man of the Magelab.

 “Gods protect me!” the archmage screamed.

They did not.