The Laws of Wizardry

[Caden Law]

1. A Wizard must have a Hat.
2. All Wizards inevitably gain a staff.
3. A Wizard is only as good as his word.
   Addendum: Vendetta sworn is vendetta pursued at all costs.
4. A Wizard never stops thinking.
   Addendum: No, not even when he's doing that.
5. A Wizard can never truly go home.

Ten years ago, a young Wizard looked up from a book read by campfire's light. His gaze followed the highest flickers of flame and fell solidly on the sagging gray hat of his scar-riddled mentor. He considered his words carefully -- a rarity even back then -- and brought himself to ask, "Why can't a Wizard go home?"

It was a long time before the older Wizard deigned to look at him. Longer still before he finally answered, "Pray to the Ethereal Sway that you never find out."

[Caden Law]

A false dawn came to Salvar, bringing with it the promise of warmth and better times.

But in the remote desolation of the Salvic tundra, so far from Knife's Edge that even the League States hardly had any presence there, winter's cold hand refused to loosen its grasp. The days were still unbearably short and the winds would still chill you to the bone. On better nights, the snowfall was just slow enough that you could camp out in a field and expect to be buried by only six or seven inches come morning. On worse nights, you wouldn't even dare to stop moving for more than a few seconds.

Life was wild and hard and unforgiving in the far north. Barbarian tribes, only sometimes human, still held sway over most of the area. The fauna out here could dwarf your average fruit stand in Knife's Edge, and that wasn't even accounting for the beasts that moved in groups. Plants became more and more unusual the further you went from civilization; green pine needles gave way to crystalline leaves that shimmered and steamed gently in the morning light. Far enough out and the forests seemed to be made almost entirely out of glass. Roads disappeared as even the ancient, rigid magicks supposedly meant to lend them permanence gave way to the endless persistence of nature.

But if you go far enough, you'd find that civilization still stood on the tip of old Father Salvar's jagged finger. At a point called Solomon's Wheel, everything came undone. Crystal pine stopped and ordinary wood took its place. The ground was clear, save for patches of thick grass and a few inordinately stubborn weeds. At the center of it all was a perfectly maintained circle of interconnecting roads, all of which were in turn centered on a spoked wheel nailed to the ground with a spear now topped by a statue of the Saint herself. Ghost lights danced around it, whispering things in an archaic form of Salvic that few living spoke, and fewer still dared to listen to.

Just within earshot of those whispers, echoing dimly in the early night, two sets of hooves clattered to a stop. They were accompanied by the crush of snow beneath oversized paws.

"This," said an Orc wearing a hooded cloak fashioned from a red wolf's hide and lined with dead men's skin. He rode a creature like a white tiger the size of a horse, its stripes and mane thick and its horns ten inches long and pock-marked from years of frontier living. "This is as far as we go together."

"Yes," said the Centaur in the middle of the trio, a hairy brute whose eyes were covered by a sash that was just thin enough to see lights blazing beneath it. It sported antlers like those of a moose, and its equine body was thicker and sturdier than any ordinary horse while its human body was bruised blue and black beneath a sparse layer of white. He nodded, the gesture such that his antlers dipped seven inches forward and three back. "We all part ways here."

"Well then," said the plucky and downright unlikely human riding beside them. "I guess it's been a pleasure, gentlemen." He shifted a bit atop the thickly furred ram he rode, then stuck out a hand that neither the Shaman or the Seer deigned to shake. "...one-sided then, I take it."

"The road goes ever on," said the Centaur. "Winding and weaving, its paths predictably unpredictable and its twists and turns without pause or pity. Our meeting will go unchronicled, Wizard Blueraven," and he turned, and Caden couldn't look away when the Centaur stuck a finger under his blindfold and lifted it just so. Head cocked to one side, and there was the terrible expectation of the whole world changing from just a few words...

...and nothing profound happened. The Centaur blinked and lowered the sash, then spoke, "Good-bye and good luck."

You'd never think something that big could move so quickly, corner so tightly or vanish so abruptly, but the Centaur did. Snow puffed up in his wake and he was gone in seconds; maybe into the crystal forest, maybe into the pine, and maybe somewhere else all together. Neither Caden nor the Orc could keep an eye on him long enough to say one way or any other.

"Centaurs," muttered the Shaman, adjusting his wolf's head hood to keep a tooth from his eye. "I've met Spirits and trickster godlings who're more straightforward than that bunch."

"And I've crossed swords with zombies that were less creepy," Caden replied in kind, shuddering as he said it. "Would've been nice if he at least told us why he was tagging along."

"Old proverb of the Wyrmfolk," the Shaman began, "Ask no questions of Centaurs, for the answers you get will be three: All of them true, all of them terrible. I try to avoid them when I can."

"Smarter than me," Caden mumbled. "Been running into the things since I left the mountains."

The Orc nodded. "Suppose you've been running into my kind too, eh?"

The Wizard looked over to the Shaman, still remembering the unlikely circumstances of their meeting. "No, Mabek, I can't say that I have. You are one of a kind, after all."

They stared at one another for a full minute.

Then they began to chortle like schoolboys who'd just gotten away with something terrifically innocent and equally perverse.

"It was good seeing you again," Caden said, and meant it. "My regards to your tribe." He pounded a fist across his chest.

"I'd say the same, but..." Mabek shook his head, then slammed a fist across his own chest. Caden could hear the impact at least four feet away. Loudly. "Fortune smiled to set us on the same path, even so shortly as it did and-"

"Oh, don't talk like that. It makes you sound like an Elf."

Silence.

"Ew."

"Exactly," Caden muttered.

"Well, on that brutal note..."

"Yes," said the Wizard. "Good-bye, Shaman Redhide."

"Kaio, Wizard Blueraven."

The tiger growled, Charger bleated, and both riders made haste from the wheel. Caden followed the northernmost road where the woods stayed green; Mabek took a turn to the northwest and disappeared from the road when the woods turned back to crystal.

[Caden Law]

The Village of Evernorth that Caden remembered was a quaint little place. Wide in terms of geography, but the population barely topped a thousand by the time he hit puberty -- and most of those were seasonal migrants attending classes at the alchemic schools that provided for so much of Evernorth's economy. Isolated as it was and surrounded by so much barren wilderness, Evernorth really was the perfect place to field test alchemic inventions. It also made for an excellent place to stick an academy for Clerical Wizards -- Aeromancers, mainly; the people who in better times kept Salvar from being one colossal iceblock. That the village had a disproportionately high population of people with the taint of magic didn't hurt either.

The Evernorth that Caden grew up in was a sprawling expanse of small houses dominated by a town square that included the mayor's office, a proper chapel that was merged with both the Clerical academic facilities and the Evernorth Weather Tower, a single tavern that tripled as an inn and as the hub of the village's marketplace, and a bunker that was mostly underground; the place where all the alchemists, regardless of scholastic affiliation, were required to store and test their (less explosive) materials. It was all very quaint with plenty of room for children to wade through the snow chucking iceballs at each other. There had been a few trees in those days, and Caden still fondly remembered casting his first thermal spells to burn a few stupidly sweet nothings into the base of one.

The Evernorth that Blueraven called home was a place that was cozy and perhaps even charming, in a rustic sort of way. The people were descended from a core of barbaric frontiersmen and religious pioneers, and it showed in everything from the slogans etched into the huge drills and saws that fishermen used to get through the ice to the vaguely religious sport of axe throwing that took place after morning services at the church. Even the priests -- the truly local ones -- wore animal hides over their clothes. Everyone knew each other by family name at the least, and there were always smiles to be swapped and stories to be told and...

"You have got to be striking kidding me."

...and tonight, Caden Law returned to find that the Evernorth of his boyhood no longer existed. From a hilltop on the edge of the forests, he studied its replacement with a mixture of disbelief, wonder, and empty horror.

There was frosted cobblestone in lieu of the hard-packed snow-and-dirt roads that Caden grew up with. There were two- and three-floor houses instead of the cabins that he remembered, and there were just so many of them now that you could no longer see any expanses of snow at all. Of the old town square, only the Weather Tower remained close to what he remembered -- and even that was only because it had been elevated to stand out above the rest of the cathedral it was now linked to. The mayor's office was replaced by a bona fide town hall, and there were at least three taverns that Caden could see from his vantage point, and the old bunker was nowhere in sight. In place of the temporary wooden stockades that had once served more as a property line than as a defense against outsiders, there was now a red brick wall standing twice as tall and wide enough for men to comfortably pass each other by on patrols. The whole town (city?) was lit by street-lantern, and there was nothing magical or alchemical about that light.

"What in the seven hells," Caden muttered again, still not quite processing any of it. Charger bleated and started forward of his own accord. The Wizard did nothing to stop him.

Later on, he was going to regret that.

[Caden Law]

"HALT!" came the expected cry from behind a layered oak and steel door on hinges that must've weighed more than Caden did. "Who goes there at this hour?"

He hesitated before lowering his arm, and then answered with a half-truth instead of an outright lie. It came easier that way, "A wanderer seeking respite!"

"What have you to offer the Township of Evernorth?" the guard demanded, and Caden finally got a look at the guy through a slot in the door. He had beady little eyes like a goblin, but none of the honest spite that Caden had come to associate with them. He was unfamiliar, but there were too many years on his face to be a child. He was an immigrant. An honest to Sway immigrant to the most remote place in civilized Salvar.

"It's a town now?" Caden asked before he could stop himself.

"Whaddaya mean it's a town now?" the guard huffed, his breath steaming and his eyes narrow. "Evernorth passed from Village to Township four years ago, when the population hit-ah, why am I telling you?"

"Good question," Caden admitted. "You could always let me in and we could discuss it over a nice warm cup of tea and some biscuits-"

"Biscuits and tea with a pointy-hatted fruitloop like you?" the guard snapped. "What kinda fool d'ya take me for?"

The kind I'm going to turn into a sheep if you don't open the damn door, Caden wisely did not say. "Would gold get the door open faster?" he asked instead. "I've been riding for three days and-"

"BRIBIN' A SILVY!" the guard screamed, his voice cracking mad. "What kinda...!" and the door flew open, revealing not one guard but four. The other three outsized Wrinkles McMeaneye by a fair margin, and all of them wore gleaming silver armor to accompany their winter clothes. They had the look of overcompensated guardsmen everywhere.

Caden just stared at them as they brandished their swords, and he tried very hard not to laugh. The sad part being that it wouldn't have even been a nervous laugh. He had literally been through too much to be intimidated that easily nowadays, and actually felt sorry enough to have to cover his mouth so they wouldn't see him smiling. "Oh Lady," he sighed. "This just keeps getting better and better."

"Surrender at once!" the first guard demanded, pointing his sword like he didn't actually know how to use it. The other three didn't seem much better, aside from the layers of extra muscle they had to compensate for so many missing braincells. "And maybe we'll let you live."

Charger bleated. The ram snorted steam and its fur bristled from head to toe. Caden patted the thing on the head with his free hand and replied, "You guys are just too cute. Do they actually pay you to do this or are you just volunteering?"

The guards turned red.

It was actually mildly impressive to look at.

"Okay," said Wrinkles. "Gut the pasty-skinned son of a-"

Ting ting ting ting, went a metal truncheon against the men's helms, and each one stopped moving. They didn't even breathe, and Caden actually had to do a double take before realizing that he had been so occupied with the false threat that he didn't notice the real one creeping up behind it.

And Caden had enough experience to know the real deal when he saw it.

The deal in question was a living, breathing slab of everything that a Salvic man was supposed to be: Tall and muscular, broadshouldered and pale like fine porcelain rather than excess paste, with hair that was golden blond and eyes that were dazzlingly blue. He had a jawline you could drive nails with and wore armor that was one polish short of sparkling, with his sword safely sheathed at his hip and a steel truncheon in his hand. The cold didn't even phase this one, and upon reflection why should it?

He was a native of Evernorth, after all.

Caden knew as much.

Because a few seconds later, before his saviour could so much as begin to chide Wrinkles for his job performance, the two of them locked eyes and Caden spoke first. Just one word: A name.

"Ogden?"

After a few more seconds, his brother finally replied in kind: "What the seventh hell are you doing back here?"

[Caden Law]

"Well," Caden eventually got around to saying, "This isn't exactly what I imagined my homecoming to be like."

"What did you expect?" Ogden shot back from the other side of some very thick, very cold iron bars. Ones inscribed with enough runes to cage demons, among other things. "You go missing however many years and you're still wanted for attempted murder of a Senior Clerical Wizard. Nevermind that you come back with military-grade weapons and immediately provoke the damn gatekeepers. Honestly, Caden..."

"...well, a hug wouldn't be bad. Maybe a Oh, Mom's doing just fine and she still makes the best fish-pies this side of Berevar! or perhaps a Little Cadence is all grown up now! or even Dad's actually got a sense of humor or something." Pause. Caden rubbed at his chin. "Does he?"

"No," Ogden replied without so much as a smirk. "Kind of hard to have a sense of humor when you've been dead three years."

It took Caden almost thirty seconds to actually register this statement. Too long to stop him from admitting, "I don't know, Og. I've met some pretty humorous dead folks lately." Click. "Oh." Nevermind that most of the laughing dead had been sadistic monsters about it. Ogden stared at him for a few seconds, disgust slowly but inevitably creeping onto his face. "It's a long story. Could you at least tell me what I've missed?"

"No," Ogden replied. "No, I think not. I'll be back for you in the morning."

He left without another word or the decency of a backwards glance. All Caden could think to shout after him was, "Keep an eye on my goat! He doesn't like-" A heavy metal door slammed shut at the end of the hall. Caden winced, and was alone. "Well...that could've gone better," he mumbled.

All things considered though, it could have been worse. Evernorth's jailhouse was apparently a brand new addition to the town. It stood not too far from the town guard's headquarters, elevated by almost ten feet on solid stone pillars. The whole thing was made out of brick and metal, barely any wood involved in its construction, and there were enough runes and wards etched in that magic was nearly useless to get in or out. It was the kind of building you could leave unguarded in an emergency, then come back later and find it exactly as you left it.

And the cells were at least better than some of the cages Caden had been subjected to over the past few months. He actually had a bed in this one, even if it was one of those half-hang-on-the-wall-by-chains deals with flimsy sheets and a dirty pillow and an open window that meant the temperature was going to fall below zero by close to triple digits before sunrise. There were bars visibly inset into the floor, walls and ceiling, and a bucket for waste. They had taken his weapons, his rod, his goat, his amenities; but they left him with his Hat, coat and clothes, and that would do.

Caden took a seat on the bed, clasped his hands together and cast some thermal magic to stay warm. It was a hassle with all of the anti-magic in play, but he managed.

"Nothing to do now but wait."

[Caden Law]

It bears mention that the Wizard Blueraven was born to a very, very large family -- even by frontier standards. Brayden and Essa Law had been a prolific marriage, with seven sons and three daughters. Caden was the youngest of the boys, and the only one with magical talent. His brothers were Aiden, Brenden, Hayden, Ogden, Dresden and Camden; all six of whom were icons of strapping Salvic manliness, and most of whom were already settling down and starting families of their own when Caden went rogue. His sisters were Eden, Jaiden and Cadence; all three of whom were blatantly magical and equally brilliant right from the get-go. He had at least four nieces and/or nephews. Probably a lot more.

It should come as no surprise that Caden had basically been raised by one of his brothers and said brother's now-wife. It should also come as little or no surprise that they and Ogden were the very first people Caden saw the next morning. Perhaps it might come as a surprise that the two of them were trailed by a mob of restless little boys and girls that had quintuplets stamped all over them, herded along by a slightly older girl with a broomstick that was missing its head and covered in Church-approved runic script.

Dresden Law was a very tall man, even compared to Ogden and Caden's other brothers. He was also downright burly, and wore a brimmed hat instead of the hood on his coat. He had a hammer on one hip and an icepick on the other and a great big bowie knife on his thigh, and despite pale skin and blond hair, the man looked dark and grim on his best days. His wife, Crina, was short and visibly pregnant even in the thick winter clothes that defined Evernortherners to anyone visiting them; her hair sported more gray than Caden remembered, and her face had more than a few lines to go with it, but she was still pretty in a tired sort of way.

Caden spent a few moments studying the lot of them, and one by one they returned the favor. The kids took the longest, if only because their shepherd was distracted.

"So," Dresden finally said. "How's the Hat wearing these days?"

Caden thought about it and said, "Heavy."

And just like that, but for Ogden's general air of having a ship's keel lodged up his ass, the tension literally fell out of the room. Dresden began to snicker, and Caden couldn't help but join in, and then Crina picked up on whatever unspoken joke passed between them and the shepherd girl did too and then all the little ones started laughing just because and it went from there. It took four or five minutes before the giggles died down to a gaggle of sighs and shaking heads, and then Ogden cleared his throat to say, "Bail is set at 175."

The unspoken part of that was, Pay it and get the hell out already.

Caden began to reach for the coinpurse in his coat, but Dresden already had one out. With the speed and precision of a man used to making hard choices with too much precision for his own good, he counted off the bail and handed it to Ogden in full. The older brother pulled out a ring of keys, opened the cell door and ushered Caden out. He didn't speak again until they were all outside, where he turned to the Wizard and said, "Trial date is set for next week. We're keeping your things to ensure that you don't run off on us again. Try to do so and the men have a kill-on-sight order that will be supported by the Clergy. Is that clear, Blueraven?"

Caden stared at him.

Gave a terse little smile.

Said simply, "Clear, Sergeant."

"Captain," Ogden replied smartly, then walked off.

Caden waited a minute or so before looking at his other brother and asking, "What crawled up there and died?"

"A lot," Dresden answered. "But it can wait...you've obviously come a long way, and there's much to talk about..."

"...and I owe you for bail," Caden pointed out.

"That too."

He fell in-step with his brother's family, and together they left the jailhouse behind.

[Caden Law]

The walk through Evernorth was almost as much of a shock as being arrested by his own brother. Not only were the streets really cobbled, but there were honest-to-Denebriel sidewalks and traffic signs everywhere. Horse-drawn carts pounded by every so often, and there was a shop for something or other on every corner. Caden saw a few actual restaurants in his home town and it felt like being back in Knife's Edge for the very first time; a place where you could dine out of your home and probably had the money to do so.

"The Church got bigger," Caden noted as they passed it by.

"Among other things," Crina said. "Sway-botherers just keep getting louder and louder every week. Holy war this and For Saint, not Sovereign that. Even the local Aeromancers are sick of them."

"The local Aeromancers are them," said the girl with the broomstick.

"Exactly," Crina and Dresden both replied, utterly level as they said it.

"Festive," Caden mumbled. "So what happened with Ogden?"

"Well, you see how big the place's gotten since you left," Dresden said with a wave of one arm to indicate it. They passed a barber shop and a tavern and what appeared, more or less, to be a very high-end house of ill repute. "We actually have a crime rate now. And it can't be pawned off on outsiders since the wall went up. Except for the missionaries, merchants and freetraders, but nobody in their right minds will go after that bunch even when they should. Og started getting jaded pretty quickly. Then there was some...civil unrest a few months back," Dresden paused as they entered town square.

Even that was bigger than Caden remembered. The fountain at its center, showcasing Ethereal Solomon with his rapier held high and his Tome tucked under the other arm, was a new addition.

So were the gallows.

Which still had a few bodies in them.

"Og and his boys had to crack down hard to put a stop to it. There were reprisals. Og's house was set on fire. His wife and two of his kids didn't make it out, and the third was so wounded that Sway's Mercy had to be administered before he could even get there to say good-bye. They caught the perpetrators, of course. Heard the torture rack in the Church's basement broke getting confessions out of them. You can guess the rest."

Caden winced. None of the children or Crina said anything.

"But besides that, growth's been pretty good for all of us. Bren actually opened his own business in the early days. Now he supplies most of the meat to the restaurants on the southside. Hay teaches at an alchemy school not too far from here, Cam's part of a hunting company, and Aiden's actually gone into politics."

"Just the mayor's aide for now," Crina pointed out.

"It's a start," Dresden replied.

"How're the sisters?" Caden asked.

"Eden's off on Mission somewhere, Jaiden's joined the Witch-Hunters-" Caden rolled his eyes and Dresden nodded stiffly. "I know, right? And Cadence is actually handling the local Weather," he pointed to the tower as they passed, just in time to catch sight of a small violet cloud swirling around the lightning rod on top. "She's also handling some of the weekend schools, I believe."

"Auntie Weatheraxe taught me how to carve runes," said the girl with the broomstick, holding it for show. Caden examined them with a perplexed look.

"Weatheraxe?" he asked. "Nicely done, by the way." The girl beamed. "My sweet little sister's Sorcerous Name is Weatheraxe?" he asked again, blinked twice and then asked the little girl, "What's your name by the way?"

"I don't have one yet..."

"...no, no, your name," Caden said, trying to pronounce a lower-case letter in a whole sentence of them. "The one Mummy and Daddy gave you."

"Oh! Lucretia," she said, "Lucretia Lexia Lux Law!"

Caden straightened up and looked at his brother and Crina. Both of them shrugged. "Could be worse," he admitted. "Anybody ever tell you your oldest uncle's full name? Aiden Donal Orwell Rice Armand Lewis Law."

Lucretia stared at him. So did her little brothers and sisters.

"You forgot one," Dresden pointed out. "I think."

"Yes, well," Caden shrugged. That was the end of that conversation, and the walk across Evernorth resumed in earnest. Each of the children introduced themselves sooner or later -- most of the mob did it all at once -- and there were a few familiar and not-quite-hostile(-yet) faces to be seen about the place. One thing that stood out, and Caden had to comment on it sooner or later, was how cosmopolitan the town had become.

"Think I've spotted a few Elves, at least three or four Dwarves...and was that an actual Hobgoblin back there?" he asked, staring without shame. "I know we've always been too far out to be as militantly racist as the rest of the country -- that's why Greyspine was allowed to wander and keep the peace with all the locals -- but...wow. I didn't think I'd ever live to see that kind of progress."

Crina and Dresden shared a Significant Look; the kind that lets people converse in silence without any special powers whatsoever. It was one of those things developed through long years of marriage, including the parts where they had to discuss things as complex as alchemic physics while keeping the babies asleep.

"That's subjective at best," Dresden said.

"To...?"

Dresden shrugged. "The inhumans came in with the first few surges of growth, not long after you left. Tyr's Dwarves, as they call themselves, and then some others. Elves mostly, Dark and Drow and High. A Hobgoblin family that converted to the Sway just to get through the gates, and Og and the Church were both too perplexed to kill them anyway. Think we might even have a few Wyrmies running around..." Another shrug. "They mostly keep to themselves in a place called Inhuton."

Unspoken but still very audible: And we're all happier for it.

Caden said nothing.

"So," Crina said. "What've you been doing all this time?"

[Caden Law]

It is at this point that we take our leave of the Laws, if only for the time it takes Caden to come up with enough half-truths and flat-out lies to cover his involvement in the war, the price on his head, and the awful reality of his using Necromancy to survive the worst of it.

Rather than watch the Wizard squirm, we're going to leave Evernorth all together. Gather yourself up now, and don't forget to bring a good winter coat. An umbrella may or may not be advisable.

Out of the Laws' kitchen window, fashioned from the thickest glass you can see through. One last look would reveal the Wizard sitting at his brother's table, dining on a Salvic meat-pie concoction while being eavesdropped by his niece. Past that and you'll find yourself standing in the Laws' back yard, which is an actual yard and therefore a rarity among the relatively cramped confines of their neighborhood. No playground equipment or tree forts, but plenty of decapitated snowmen and battle lines for snowball warfare. There's a well trodden path between the Laws' house and their immediate neighbours, leading to the cobbled streets and from there it's a straight shot to town square.

Hang a left.

Straight for three blocks, then a right. Another left at the next turn and then keep going to the gates, where Ogden Law was overseeing the nightly closing of Evernorth's doors, an iron cage-lantern in one hand and his truncheon in the other. It takes three men to close each one, and all four of the night shift to slam the lock into place. Just past that and the cobbles continue for about seven or eight yards -- then it's just hard-packed snow until even that fades.

And it will fade, where we're going.

Back up the hill to the forests of pine, and deep enough in that they transition to forests of crystal. Needle by needle, branch by branch; until the jump from one to the other is too natural to even notice. Until finally, hoofprints in the snow. It's a short trail, blinking in and out at random, but it eventually leads to where we want to be -- to who we want to see.

The Centaur stood alone now, the uncontested master of all that he Saw with eyes granted by things beyond the Church's authority. Bowed low to the ground at the moment, his sash lowered all the way to his neck as he examined a sigil sunken into the snow. It resembled a pair of wavy blades to either side of a serpentine eye; the beginning of some new path that had shaded the Wizard's some miles and a day or so back. The impression and the color differentials were so faint that the Centaur almost missed them entirely.

Fairy lights danced and whispered about him as he reached out, power burning at the tip of a finger. The Centaur moved to undo whatever magic had been Worked here; to erase whatever path would be walked from this place...

...and he barely had enough time to register that something was wrong before he exploded.

There is no pretty, artistic way of putting it. The Centaur was there one second and then he was a cloud of blood and guts and gore the next. Fully intact chunks were raining down for the next minute or so, including broken antlers and a severed arm that broke backwards at the elbow. One of his ribs stabbed into a crystal tree and left cracks in from top to bottom, and that was before the bone caught fire and collapsed to black ash on the ground. The most intact segment was the hind end of the Centaur's equine body, standing almost comically upright until the smoke cleared and the whole thing collapsed in a half-cooked pile in the snow.

In the Centaur's place stood a draconic humanoid; thin and still holding the exact same sword that had been in his hands so many months earlier. He was frozen in place for a while as the memories flashed through his thoughts: Of a Wizard, scrawny and pale and blond, outwitting him in the basement-shop of an arcane merchant. He remembered reagents collapsing into a fire, and he remembered laughing in despair as the door -- the only way in or out -- was slammed shut before he could get to it.

He remembered, this Wyrmfolk did, the brutal feel of magic fires licking the scales from his bones and charring his fingers off in one exquisite instant that dragged on forever.

And then there had been blackness.

And then there was this.

Back in Dendrestok, Anton Wyrmtongue had laughed in terror.

Tonight in the forests near Evernorth, he just laughed with relief and said to himself, "It worked. It actually worked." A pause as he looked around, surveying the havoc caused by the Centaur's sudden departure. That wasn't part of the plan, but he wasn't complaining either. All the blood was already starting to turn silver, and the Centaur's corpse was beginning to rot from meat to ashen wood. Only the head remained unchanged, though the light was starting to fade from its eyes.

"I suppose I probably owe you my thanks," Anton admitted, picking the Centaur's head up by one tattered ear. "Well done, whoever you are. Rest in peace." He threw the head over one shoulder and left it at that. It only belatedly occurred to Anton that he had missed out on a perfectly viable chance to say rest in pieces, but it was a moot point by then anyway.

[Caden Law]

"...and finally, after all that, I made it here," Caden finished, tactfully omitting, glossing over, or outright lying about too many details to sleep easy at night. Not that he'd slept very well since his time in Raiaera anyway; if it wasn't catnaps on the road, it was being jarred awake by ambushes, being forced to sleep in cages, or having night terrors about everything from the unliving dead to a sultry grin and the pin-prick of initials being carved into his neck. The strain was starting to show by now. Bags under his eyes. Not very heavy yet, but give them time. "Figured I'd come home...take a break from all the fighting. Settle some of my old scores for the better, you know. It's true what they say, Dresden. Swaying Saints, it's true. Nothing focuses the mind quite like death."

At this point, Caden stopped and took a sip of tea. Real tea. Crina's home blend; the kind of stuff that was an acquired taste because lesser palettes would be overwhelmed by the number of herbs and spices that went into it, nevermind the preparation and serving and all the little tricks that turned into a sensory overload for the mouth. He hadn't realized how much he missed it.

"The things I've seen," he said, shook his head and left it at that.

The story had taken him around an hour, give or take all the interruptions and time spent improvising and the effort put into keeping everything consistent. He started his journey outside Salvar as part of an adventuring company (true; Caden was talked into joining Patton Ventures by a senior crewman), left when the company's ethics went sour (lie; Caden left when they went into an ancient Coronian warlord's tomb and half the company died). Jumped through a dozen more companies in the same way (half-true; he didn't join so much as he was alternately pressganged, held hostage and/or bribed for expertise, sometimes all at once; it never ended well). Travelled the world (half-true; Caden went all over the Known World but he didn't go to Kebiras until much later). Wound up in Scara Brae, then hopped a boat to Raiaera (stupid bird).

He was conscripted into the defense forces at Eluriand (true; Caden left out the bit about being chucked through a door and almost set on fire). He took part in the defense directly (true; Caden left out the parts about seeing 'friends' die, in part because they were Elves and because there were still children at the time). He was dragged off before the end (almost half-true; Caden was there until the end, and that was after being tortured near-death, among other things). He fought alongside retreating forces until being scattered near a coastal village (lie; Dresden and Crina didn't need to know the truth there, and Caden didn't dare speak of it anyway). He took a horse and made good his escape into the woodlands (half-truth), just in time to witness the Scourging of Tembrethnil (lie; Caden caused the Scourging himself).

He left out the events at Borse-Ahyarkham. Caden didn't want to talk about that. Not now, maybe not ever.

He still saw the bodies in the church sometimes, in dreams.

Why didn't they just leave when they thought I was dead?

Still heard the mothers crying.

There was nothing I could have done for them!

Still felt stones pelting off his back and couldn't answer the accusations levied against him.

...

Still tasted death's sweet, cold embrace, and could not let himself admit that he enjoyed it.

Ididn'tIdidn'tIdidn't...

He never mentioned the price on his head.

"More important than all my misadventures," Caden eventually said, once he'd put his Hat on the table and the children had been put to bed and Dresden and Crina listened intently in their night clothes: Plaid gowns. Matching. Caden wisely did not comment. "How'd sweet little Cadie get a Name like Weatheraxe?"

"To make a long story short," Dresden began, grinning in a less-than-thrilled sort of way, "She bested a Wyrmfolk Chieftain in open combat on the plains of Berevar. Came back wielding the pagan freak's axe and used it to stop a rampaging troll with a tornado of lightning and ice."

Caden took a moment to process this.

He couldn't. "Say again?" Dresden repeated the story, twice.

Cadence Law, for reference, had always been the runt of the litter. She was the shortest of the daughters, barely topping five foot five in heels, and even then you'd have to squint a little to be sure. She was a borderline waif, just that little bit too husky to make it all the way to anorexic. Long light blonde hair, deep blue eyes and skin that was just about as pale as snow. Her smile always glittered like diamonds and her magic, what little Caden had seen of it, was brilliantly benign. Clear skies and divination. Not much offense. And she wore dresses and she was just so girly...

"Brought the head back too, I might add. Threw it at the troll and everything."

The mental image cracked a little bit.

"Conjured up the tornado from a war-prayer," Crina said, "I was there. Her Voice bellows, Caden..."

Cracked a liiiiittle bit more.

"When it was all over with, she went back into the Church and kicked the head-priest aside. Lead one of the finest masses I've ever seen."

Shattered completely. The Cadence that he had known never really put much stock into all the clerical nonsense she as being forcefed. That had been an act to please Mother and Father. Now...

"Weatheraxe, they Named her. She's taken to it pretty well. Almost as cranky these days as old Greyspine."

"Swaying Saints," Caden muttered, then took another sip of his tea and rested his face in one hand. "Blink and the whole world changes."

Crina and Dresden shared another of those Significant Looks. She nodded harder. Dresden cleared his throat in surrender. "Yes. Well. Funny you should mention that..."

[Caden Law]

Caden stayed the night with his brother and sister-in-law, more because Dresden casually threatened to knife him in the spleen than because he actually wanted to. He was up early and expected as much; Caden was a Wizard who had been far and wide and knew much that dear ol' Auntie Weatheraxe either did not, would not, or could not share. Lucretia wanted to learn and that was that.

"Alright," he muttered from the living room floor as she plucked the Hat's brim up from his face for the third time in a row. "Alright, alright. I'll teach you something. Go away."

"No. Ask nicer." Because nyeh, bird-brain.

"Alright, Lucretia. I'll teach you something this morning. One hour in the field, hard practice, same way I was taught." He sat up. Tried to remember some of the extreme basics that had driven his early days as a Wizard's apprentice. "Which means you'll need to be in proper uniform. Pointy Hat included. Now get going," shove, shove.

Bubbly Okay!

Face into palm, grumbling. Bounce, bounce, away!

"I don't know how I keep getting myself into this crap," he mumbled once the little girl was safely out of earshot, then stood up and stretched away pains that shouldn't have come until his mid-sixties. War is brutal. He didn't bother waiting for her either. Caden went out into the back yard of the Law family household, found a decent enough stump and dusted the snow off before taking a seat.

Then he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

(It was actually only five or six minutes, but the Wizard Blueraven had never been known for his patience.)

Eventually, he reached up into his Hat, pulled out a heavy looking book and a cheap pencil to mismatch. Started writing. Didn't stop for a while. Among the more pertinent bits of thought that found their way onto paper was this.

Evernorth has changed. My father, Brayden Law, is dead. My little sister has apparently become an axe-crazed Sway-botherer. Of my older brothers, one has become even more jaded and bitter than I; the other is living a dream that I feel like I'm stomping all over just by being here.

I can't shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen. Or that it's already happened in part. Looking back on it now, I think I may have felt this way ever since I first set foot back in Salvar. It doesn't help that I've been hounded almost every step of the way by...

Gods.

Who haven't I made enemies with now?

The nightmares have stopped at least. Or perhaps they've just gotten less coherent. I didn't die in my sleep last night. Or come back from the dead to kill those I care for. All I remember is a white-covered street, her voice, and a name: Justina. Good to know I'm still at least a bit of a sap. I think at this point, I've seen too much real evil and coldbloodedness to think I'm a bad person anymore. Or to want to be one.

I guess I just want what Tancred showed me back when I visited Scara Brae...

The notes go on, of course, but the important bits end there. Just as well. Caden only managed to get another page before his writing broke down into magical theorem and then he was treated to a poke on the shoulder that almost triggered combat reflexes (standupstandupstandupJUMPAWAYwhere'saweaponCASTASP ELL), but thankfully stopped just short.

He looked up from the Grimoire and affected a smile that could've been real or not. Even Caden couldn't tell this time. Playing the role of Favorite Uncle was wholly new and unusual to him; all the nephews and nieces he knew before the past two days had only been toddlers at the time.

Now he was confronted with a proper Wizard Apprentice wearing clothes that were, for want of a better word, adorably similar to his own: A long threadbare coat with plaid patches scattered about at random, along with a suitably Pointed Hat (even if the tip sagged ridiculously). The difference came in the form of a thick red scarf and the rune-scribed broomstick. And everything was pink.

Pink.

Am I really having to fake this? Blueraven thought of his own smile, and then chuckled dimly. At what, even he couldn't say.

"Apprentice Law, reporting!" Lucretia declared with a clockwork salute.

Caden pointedly fought off the urge to groan. He had been like that too, once. (It had been an overdramatized act to piss off his tutors, but that was beside the point.)

"Okay," he said, and then tried to think of something nonlethal to teach her. (Tried not to be disturbed by how long it took.) "Have you been taught any Evocation yet?"

"...what's that?"

It goes without saying that what followed this question was one of the single longest hours of Caden Law's life. Pity it didn't last.