Halwyn Magnus
Prompts:
“I’m willing to die on this hill.”
“I left town seven years ago.”
“I’m running from the mess I made.”
There was something terrible in knowing that your family was suffering because of you, because of something you did. That was where Halwyn was, standing in the rain in a forest, watching wisps dart in the distance, trying to lead him astray. Seven years ago, or was it seventeen? Seventeen sounded more likely, he’d been a young man fresh out of the academy, power thrumming in his veins, and thinking himself immortal as most young men do. He was cocky in his own way back then, sharp-tongued and rash. He would do far-reaching spell work, spell work that required his own blood and hair and semen and whatever else he had to give to get the power he craved. Sometimes a spell would leave him wracked for a week, barely able to do the most basic of tasks while his body healed. Now he wasn’t as stupid but oh, he wished he could reach back in time and strangle his younger self. Because now he had to ask for help.
Hal’s horse had run off while he had been distracting digging into the living bleeding trunk of a dead tree. It hadn’t liked the scent of the fresh blood so now he was forced to do a finding spell and he was so terribly tired. The magic warmed his cold palm, a simple arrow floating above his pale in pale golden traceries and he stumbled towards the direction it pointed. He was collecting the ingredients for a magnificently powerful and complicated spell and he was doing it alone. He had been tasked with this by a … person and Hal was just desperate. He was too desperate and he’d agreed too readily for the deal, for the bargain and now he was out here in a forest in the rain lost alone and wet. Exhausted too.
Years ago, years ago he had run. Not wanting to deal with what he had caused. He’d been jealous then. Jealous of his sister’s happiness, jealous of people’s admiration of her. He loved her, he cared for her, but he was jealous and bitter and magic his only respite – at least that was how it seemed at the time. But doing that much magic warps the land around it, it warps the mind, it will kill you. Hal was thrumming with magic that day. He was vibrating with it. It was rushing through him in such a way that it felt like he was drunk and high and he was dying and being born all at once. He was too full of himself. Magic cracked the side of the hill nearest to the great house he grew up in, the rose gardens instantly bursting into bloom in mid-winter and dying again in no more than minutes, the ground shook, the spell was finished. He was so power hungry, so eager to prove his mettle… Hal’s magic had tainted the ground around the family home, soaked into the earth and it was never going to be the same again.
Now Dominic was cursed. Except Halwyn was certain that it wasn’t a curse, it was a form of magic radiation and it was his fault. His fault for being stupid and young, tainting the ground without a thought in his head, too wrapped up in his own power and his pain and loneliness. The guilt was eating him. So he had gone home. To survey the damage his magic had unleashed. And he had had to get help. To sell… himself.