The blue-haired mage looked up from the parchment he held and smiled at the nervous boy seated at the other side of his desk. "It seems you'll be under my custody for a while."
The boy nodded, shoving his glasses up his nose with his middle finger as he did.
Rune Simbriant leaned forward on his desk, steepling his fingers casually and peered at him from behind them. "Lazlore, do you know why you were sent here?"
"Uh huh." The glasses were shoved up again. "Mama and Papa's work is getting too dangerous for me to stay in the Tower with them." Cerulean eyes blinked owlishly from behind the thick glass. "And it's best if I learned how to get along with people. And studied in a school. Papa says that there's no better teacher than experience."
Rune smiled. "Lezard is a very wise man." Wise enough to send his only child from that nightmarish valley that they call home, anyway... The ancient sorcerer with the face of a teenager watched Lazlore unconsciously puff with pride at the compliment to his father. Undoubtedly, the boy adored his parents. Rune was a little surprised that Lazlore seemed to be a fairly outgoing lad, considering he had grown up sequestered from human contact, surrounded by the deadly creatures that resulted from the experiments of Lezard and Lenneth Ragandi. The only playground this aspiring sorcerer had ever known was the forest-choked valley that was inhabited by chimera, and twisted by the dark magic of the man still feared to this day as The Dark Alchemist. Rune marveled at the youth's open, innocent expression, wondering how the obsessed, manic and caustic Lezard had sired such a charming son. Probably Lenneth, the Blue Mage decided, dismissing the images of the mage-pair from his mind. "So, you wish to specialize in the field of artimancy, do you?"
Lazlore's long ponytail of sunlight hair slithered against his back as he nodded vigorously. "I do! I mean, Papa's an Alchemist and Mom's a Chimera Researcher...there should be an Artificer on the team, right?"
A gentle smile was his reply. "That would make an ideal team, Lazlore. But before you become an artificer, you must first become a student." Rune stood up. "It is almost time for my tutorial class in general sorcery. You'll meet your classmate soon."
Big blue eyes lit up with a mixture of eager curiosity and a touch of nervousness. "I have a classmate?" Rune felt a stab of sympathy for the boy as he jumped up out of his chair. Likely, Laz had never had a playmate, or spent time with children his age. His companions were the chimera that haunted the Valley of Twisted Dreams, and the prospect of meeting someone like himself filled Lazlore with anticipation and fear.
Rune carefully hid his thoughts behind a smile. "Yes you do. She's a year younger than you are...and you'll be sharing the general course subjects. Your Advanced Artimancy class however, will be with the older students. Your father showed me some of your work the last time he was here...and I've decided you don't need to do the basic magical item charms any more."
Lazlore scampered after Rune, hooking his bookbag in his fingers, and started to drag his duffel, then stopped, wondering how he was going to bring his trunk too. Rune stopped at the door and then laughed, seeing the boy's quandary. "You don't need to bring your things to class, Lazlore. I'll have someone bring it to your quarters. You only need your bookbag."
"Oh, okay..." Laz flushed, realizing he must have looked like a total prat, and dropped his duffel on top of his trunk before slinging his bookbag over his shoulder. He trotted to the door and walked next to Rune, who watched, fascinated, as Lazlore's eyes changed color from that unearthly cerulean blue, to stormy blue-gray, to wolf-gray as his emotions waxed from uncertainty to determination.
He's nervous. Rune cleared his throat and looked down at the little boy who was trying his best to match Rune's long-legged stride. "Your classmate's name is Lina Inverse. Right now, she's my only other pupil."
Lazlore looked up at him, blinked, and his eyes returned to their normal color. His expression betrayed his curiosity. "Your only other pupil? How come, Master Rune?"
Rune thought about it for a moment, then replied just as Lazlore began to think the question had been impertinent. "Well, many mages believe that children as young as you and Lina should not be taught yet. Many refuse to accept students until they're at least eleven years of age. You, who have grown up surrounded by magic, have inherited your parents' talent for it. Lina on the other hand, is extremely gifted. I thought it best to begin nourishing the talent she had before it burst out when she starts becoming a teenager. Your father started to teach you when you were how old, Lazlore?"
It was the boy's turn to remain silent as they walked through the labyrinthine corridors of the guild school. Finally, he looked up, his brow furrowed in confusion. "I honestly can't remember. I guess... Mama and Papa have always been teaching me. I remember that my crib was on one side of the lab, and later on my playpen." He tilted his head sideways, his finger pressed into his cheek as he thought. "I was seven, I think, when Papa decided to have a little fun with me and made a ball of light appear in his hand. He put it in my hand and I played with it for a while. Mama says later on I pushed it into one of my glass marbles, and it stayed alight longer than it should have. Papa calls them 'Lazlore's Lights' and says that the invention was mine." He smiled shyly, realizing that his tale sounded much like bragging to his ears. "To me it was just cool to have a glowing marble."
Rune, realizing that Lazlore's shyness was about to cut off his fascinating tale, shook his head and said "More than that, you had the talent to merge a light spell with a material object."
Lazlore's smile widened and he nodded vigorously. "That's what my Papa said, and well, he taught me some magic. Lighting for one... and I experimented with different kinds of things to put the light in. I worked with different kinds of glass, and found out that the better the kind of glass, the better the glow, and I tried it out with different kinds of crystal -- white quartz and citrine work best with the eyes, they're not so strange colored when they have light..." he ticked them off his fingers as he talked. "Papa set me up a little lab of my own in my corner and I tried it on gemstones. It worked pretty well with colored gemstones, like sapphires, or topaz... well, it worked well with emeralds and rubies too, but the light looks kinda scary when you're in a dark room. And diamonds tend to burn up with the spell, weirdly enough. Papa guesses that it has something to do with the fact diamonds are pure carbon."
Rune looked at the lad, understanding why Lezard and Lenneth had not waited to train their precocious son. The boy's mind worked with an affinity for artifact creation, and probably had inherited his ancestor, Shazaard Lugandi's instinctive creativity for the things. His smile was quick and pleased as he clapped a hand on Lazlore's shoulder. "That might be the case. At any rate, I've sent some samples of your work to one of the master artificers in the guild. In the meantime, your classes are all general, until you are assigned to a professor who'll teach you. It will also give you time to adjust to your surroundings and settle in."
Lazlore nodded, his thoughts again abstracting his expression. It finally began to sink in that he wasn't going home that night, and that he wouldn't see his parents for a long time. He'd be staying in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar room, one that wasn't cluttered with all the toys and books that he had with him since as far back as he could remember. He wouldn't be sitting at his own laboratory table, working with his parents just down the hallway, nor would he hear a story of war mages of the Kouma War from his mother, or tales about his illustrious ancestor from his father at bedtime, or while they fished for supper. There would be no chimera following him wherever he went, guarding over him and making sure he returned home each night, nor would the forest be alive, the trees whispering their greetings to him and telling them the tales that were brought to them by the breeze.
The aspiring mage stopped in the hallway, his head bowed, tears threatening to cloud his glasses. He was far away from the only two people he had ever known and loved, far from the familiar valley that was his home, a place feared by people and avoided, but where he played and ran without worry or care. The bat-winged serpent that had brought him to Zefiria had long left, returning to the Valley of Twisted Dreams after affectionately coiling around him in farewell. He began to wish that his mother had allowed him even a little chimera to take along for company.
But Lenneth had said no. There would be other people for him to make friends with. The chimera might panic, being unused to people other than their family. The silver-haired sorceress had hugged her son, eyes shimmering with unshed tears, then slipped a locket under his collar just before the chimera he rode soared into the air.
Lazlore's gloved hand reached up and touched the comforting hardness of the locket in the chest of his yellow robes. This was what he wanted, didn't he? He wanted to study, to learn more than his parents could teach him, and become the greatest artificer in the world since the Kouma War...
"Lazlore?"
Rune had stopped down the hallway, his hand on a doorknob. The blue-haired mage gazed back at his ward with an expression of concern. "Are you all right?
Lazlore blinked, then his expression firmed. Everything will be okay. I'll learn. I will be the best artificer in history! I'll make Mama and Papa proud of me.
"I am all right, Master Rune." I'll remember everything Mama and Papa taught me. I'll not forget...
"Come along then... we're late for your first class." With that, Rune opened the door and strode inside, leaving it open for Lazlore to take.
Papa always said that you shouldn't be late for your meeting with destiny...
Shoving his glasses up his nose with his middle finger, Lazlore ran to the door.
Chapter 2 | Fanfiction