"This is just a continuation of the backstory I already posted for Ahir a while back. This would be how he lived on the streets and then how he met his master.
Just to help establish this visually, if this were ever to be a movie, I'd cast John Hurt as Evren and a young Benedict Cumberbatch as Ahir." -Casey
Ahir
stood in the middle of the road, hoping to catch a generous soul on their way
out of the market. Standing for so long made him feel faint, but sitting on the
grass off to the side made getting food even more unlikely. A woman with a
heavy basket walked purposefully out of his way, obviously not wanting to cross
paths with the beggar. Ahir leaped after her, pleading for anything that she
could spare.
Reluctantly,
she reached into her basket and held out a tomato for the boy to take. Ahir
reached out to take it and the woman dropped the tomato to the ground with a
gasp. His hands were red and covered in blotches, but he picked the fruit up
off the ground all the same.
“What
are you doing in this town?” the woman demanded, but the boy was already making
a run for it down the streets. “Stop him! Blazes! Stop that boy!”
Ahir
kept his head low and tried to escape down an alleyway only to run straight
into a castle guard. The soldier seized him by the hood of his coat and held
him firmly in place.
“What
are you running away with, kid?” the man demanded.
“I
didn’t steal anything!” Ahir complained.
The
guard grabbed him by the wrist and then stared in horror at the boy’s scarred
hands. “Oh, God…” he gasped. Ahir struggled to free himself, but he hardly had
the strength to stand, let alone fight.
“It
killed my mother and father and spared me!” he cried, tears of desperation
running down his face. “I wasn’t the one it was trying to burn! Honestly, it
has been months! It would have come for me by now!”
“We
are in the midst of a drought, child!” the guard scolded him. “Our village
cannot afford the blaze of a fotia!”
The
desperation in the boy’s eyes vanished in an instant, leaving nothing but cold
indifference. He pulled a knife from his belt and quickly stabbed it into a
kick in the soldier’s armor, right at the waist. The guard folded to the ground
with a cry and the boy slipped away into the alley, absentmindedly wiping the
tears from his cheeks.
It
was becoming more and more apparent that he would need to steal some decent
gloves to conceal his scarred hands. People’s fear of the spirits had only
grown worse over the past few months and he was nothing more than a signal for
their attack. The crying child routine wasn’t doing him much good either, but
it would be his only option until he got his strength back. He quickly devoured
his tomato, though it did nothing to satisfy his starvation. He half collapsed
against the wall of the alley, steadying himself with his right hand and
clenching his knife in the other.
The
spirits had killed him. Even though he survived the wrath of the fotia’s
flames, he’d surely be dead before the next winter. What good were the
benevolent nymphs and dryads’ if they did nothing against the wicked spirits?
Surely they cared nothing for mortals. Because what were mere mortals to such
immortal creatures? Powerless, useless, helpless.
“But
they shall know my pain,” Ahir promised. “So long as there is breath within me;
I shall find a way.”
***
Ahir
awoke; his sense sharp as the blade he clutched in his hand. He slashed at the
figure leaning over him, catching the man on his forearm. “Get back!” he
demanded, poised to strike again.
The
old man before him clutched his bleeding arm calmly as he stared down at his
attacker. There was no apology in Ahir’s eyes, but no malice in the man’s
either. “You nearly caught your death of cold out here, boy,” he explained. “If
I had not come along, you’d be dead now.”
Ahir
was still freezing in the open winter air, but if he had in fact fallen asleep,
he shouldn’t have survived. The old man straightened up and began to walk up
the road, still clutching his arm. “Perhaps next time, I shall let sleeping
vipers lie,” he remarked.
Ahir
had lived on the streets for seven years now, but he’d never heard tell of
anyone that could bring someone back from freezing to death, even if they were
a doctor of some sort. He could hardly even recall the last few minutes before
he slipped away into unconsciousness. Could the man be a sorcerer?
The
teenager followed the old man through the dark until they at last reached a
rather shabby looking house in the middle of town.
Ahir
snuck inside after the wizard and watched as he busied himself with bandaging
his arm and gathering water and ice into a bowl. He then removed his gloves to
reveal that his fingers were frostbitten at the ends, a sickly shade of blue
around the nails. He dipped his hands in the bowl of water, wincing slightly as
he began to rub them together.
“I
call it transference,” the man said, turning suddenly to where Ahir hid in the
corner. “The healthy warm energy of my body was enough to bring you back from
the brink.”
Ahir
remained hidden in the shadows as the man continued to explain. “It’s taken
years of practice to perfect this magic. Though if I had used much more of it,
I might have caused some permanent damage to these old hands.”
“You
used magic to save my life. Why?” Ahir asked as he stepped out of the shadows.
“Because
I didn’t know you were going to knife me for it,” the man snapped.
Ahir
stood silently in the corner as the man continued to treat his nearly
frostbitten hands. The young man had no desire to venture back out into the
cold, but he knew that he’d be no match for a sorcerer if he decided to kick
him out. After a few hours, the man bandaged up his hands and began to clear
away his work area.
“So,
you’re just going to stand there all night?” he asked. “I don’t have anything
worth stealing, unless you count the cheese in the cupboard.”
“I
have nowhere else to be,” Ahir admitted.
“Very
well,” the old man sighed. “Care to tell me your name?”
The
young man didn’t answer, which seemed to amuse the old man more than it annoyed
him. “You can call me Evren,” the man said before waving his hand before him,
causing every candle and lantern in the room to extinguish. Ahir was left in
the dark, listening to the retreating footsteps of Evren leaving for what was presumably
his bedroom. He waved his hand before a nearby candle, but it didn’t relight.
He’d heard of people being able to wield magic like the spirits, but he’d never
met a sorcerer before in his life. Now he could plainly see that there was a
way. If that old man could wield this power, so could he. The power that had
nearly been his demise would become his weapon of vengeance.
Characters and Story (C) SuperheroGeek13
