Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 14:34:29 -0300
From: Matthew Amos <stu363@nb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: Black Adept 6

The characters and plot in this story are copyrighted by the author.

All the characters in this story are purely products of my imagination
and are not based on real people. Any resemblance is purely coincidental
and is not intended.

If you are looking for just sex this is not the story for you. Most of
the romance will take place in later chapters if I continue the story

This is my first attempt at a story and I hope that you like it. If you
have any positive feedback I would love to hear it. You can email me at
BlackAdept@Hotmail.com

I am going to try to get one chapter a week out but I am a university
student so sometimes I might not have time

I would like to give special thanks to Bobby who is editing my work for
me.

The Black Adept

Chapter 5: Echoes of the Past

By Matt

As I returned to my home beneath the Academy my mind was occupied with a
storm a thoughts. Did I handle the situation with Kinren and Kai properly
or did I let instincts other then logic guide. I had been lonely for too
long, longer then even Void mages usually allow themselves to live. The
only time I talked to others was when I was using one of my other
identities or talking to my contacts. I haven't had a real friend in too
long and there have been many times that I have needed one and times that
I wanted someone closer. I may be almost three hundred years old but I am
still in the body of a young man and I still have the same desires as the
rest of humanity. I almost had to laugh at the fact that they both looked
older then me since I sometimes forget get that my body doesn't age with
my mind. I just hoped that this friendship wasn't selfish in regards to
my responsibilities. I had served selflessly for so long I think I
deserved a little bit of friendship and maybe more.

That thought brought my mind back to that shy, awkward, and innocent kiss
from Kai. I don't know why he did it but I hope he saw something in me
that I was beginning to believe dead, my humanity. Kai was beautiful and
had a personality that was complex and intriguing. He was quiet, sweet,
intelligent, and funny and I hoped that he would come back. Kai and
Kinren could have been twins for how close they looked like each, both
beautiful in the extreme. Where Kinren had a confident and almost
arrogant manner to him, Kai was quiet and shy. Where in Kinren power was
not great and felt like a calm breeze to my mage senses, Kai was a barely
contained storm of power. They had thought my power great when I first
came to the Academy but when compared to Kai, even my original potential
was weak. The most intriguing thing about him was that I could sense more
power in him that he was hiding either consciously or unconsciously. I
don't know. It was something that I doubted that many mages could have
detected if they were looking for it and I could only catch the most
fleeting evidence for it. I almost doubted that I sensed it at all.

I don't know how I really felt about all this. I had never thought that
I would ever find myself in this situation. Over the years I had been
involved in a few relationships while posing as one of my other
identities, some of them quite intimate, but I always backed out. The
knowledge that I couldn't reveal who I really was for fear of rejection
always shadowed those liaisons. That wasn't the case here if this
developed into anything he would know what I was. It was at that moment I
realized I would not be able to use that as an excuse and that scared me.
Even after so long I still feel the pain from the loss of Jayden
sometimes and I knew, deep down inside, that I feared it happening again.
I stopped myself from thinking any longer on it. I didn't even know what
he meant in that kiss. I didn't want to get my hopes up yet. If
something happened, it happens and I will react to it when the time
comes.

As I came to the end of this corridor that I had traveled down countless
times leading to my home, a new thought intruded on my mind. I thought
about the first time I had traveled down this corridor and entered the
chamber of the Black Adept. I had been terrified then, still not
understanding what had happened to me. I don't know why my mind was
traveling in this direction. Maybe the events of the last few hours had
released these memories. Maybe contact with Dalenti's spirit and my
reminiscing with Kinren and Kai had caused it but, whatever the cause, I
allowed the memories to surround me.

I was still heartbroken over Jayden's death and barely in my right mind.
I was still trying to come to terms with how I was now a Void mage when
all I had wanted was to slip into peaceful death. I felt cheated somehow
that it been denied to me but at that moment I mainly felt exhausted. The
Void was keeping me alive through my blood loss but it was sapping my
energies slowly. Before I was allowed to rest Dalenti forced me to eat
even though I had no appetite, so that my body could begin to replace my
blood. After that She led me to a small room barely bigger then a closet,
containing only a small bed. The minute I hit the surprisingly
comfortable mattress, I was asleep.

When I woke up the next day I was disoriented and a little unnerved over
what I thought was a terrible dream. All I wanted to do find Jayden and
hold him while told him all about it and listen to his comforting words,
like every time I time had a problem. It took me a few seconds to realize
the bed was too comfortable to be mine or Jayden's. When I opened my
eyes and realized where I was, that it hadn't been a dream, all I could
do was cry. The next thing I knew, Dalenti was holding me. She didn't
offer any words of comfort, which we both knew would be meaningless at
that time. She just held me as I cried. I don't know how long it took me
to stop but she stayed with me the whole time, just holding me.

After I composed myself, she led me out of the small room and gave me
some breakfast. After that, she started my lessons, piling me with work
until I could barely concentrate on anything. At first I thought she was
being cruel. She knew I was suffering but she wasn't giving me time to
grieve. It took me a long time to realize that she was giving me a
distraction, something to focus on besides my heartache and sadness. At
that time, though, I hated her. It wasn't until nearly a month of being
drilled in the histories of the Black Adepts, forced to read the seemly
endless journals of the previous Black Adept and taught all of the
responsibilities required of me, that I realized she wasn't completely
heartless.

One day I woke up and she gave me my breakfast but didn't tell me to
start on my studies. Instead, she told me to follow her and walked
towards the entrance of the chambers. At first, I thought of refusing but
my curiosity got the best of me and I followed. She led me though the
vast network pointing out where each tunnel went as we traveled to her
objective. When we came to what appeared to be a dead end, she turned
and, for the first time, I heard the Nameless language as she cast a
spell on both of us. My first reaction was to flinch away from the
horrible sound but then something about it seemed familiar, like I could
almost recognize the words. By the time her spell was finished, I wasn't
afraid but trying to interpret what she had said. There was no sentence
structure just a string of words. I only sort of recognized two words. I
knew what they were but the meaning didn't quite seem to make sense. The
best definition I could come up with for them would be the words "other"
and "sight". I couldn't help but mention this to her and she just smiled
and said that the language seems to just come naturally to those who
follow the Void. That upset me a little since I was still trying to deny
that I was a Void mage. I had read the histories of the Black Adepts and
knew that if they were true, the Black Adepts had done many things to
help the Academy and mankind. She told me she had cast a spell to keep
people from seeing us and told me that when she opened the door, to be
quiet until we reached our destination. With that, she did something that
made the wall seem to fade out of existence and took off at a fast walk.
There were people about but they didn't seem to notice anything as I
followed behind her. I had considered running off but didn't and just
followed her. I was surprised as she lead me to the Academy cemetery and
to a new tombstone. She simply said that I could say my farewells and
left me alone. I looked at the tombstone and read the what was written to
myself.

Jayden Maltri

Born 1703 TA Died 1720 TA

You will be missed by your family

That you left behind.

Carved in below by someone were the words:

Loved by Truin wherever he is now

I am sorry I never meant to hurt you. J.A.

I was crying again as I stared at that message I knew who had written it.
"J.A.", meaning Jasrin Aubrey. The boy who had made my life hell for
years had developed a heart or at least found it. To see that he would
write those words for me made me realize that he must be hurting almost
as much as I was. I forget most of my hatred for him in that moment and
wished I could thank him for his small atonement of putting my name on
Jayden's tombstone. I said my silent goodbyes and promised to do my best
from now on, knowing he would not want me to waste my life in mourning
him or in the more permanent way I had already tried.

I looked for Dalenti but she was nowhere to found. I began to search
until I heard a sound. I looked over to find Dalenti crying softly in
front of another tombstone. I realized that she just wasn't the monster
that I thought she was. I took my turn to hold her until her crying
ceased. With that we returned to our home under the Academy. Every little
while, we would both come up here to cry our tears for our loved ones and
remember our pasts. On one such trip, I was surprised to find someone
else crying over Jayden's grave, Jasrin. >From the lips of my once
archenemy I heard him speaking to my dead love grave.

"I am sorry I haven't been able to find him. It is liked he disappeared
off the face of the planet. Don't worry I will keep trying and do must
best to not allow this to happen again. I will try to change things for
the better if I can. I promise."

With that he walked away still crying. It took every ounce of will power
I had not to reveal myself to him and sometimes I still regret not doing
it. Jasrin went through life haunted, some said, and when years later his
father died and he became High Lord of Aubrey, he kept his promise to the
best of his ability. The people of Aubrey were surprised when their lord
started to make life easier for his people. He introduced schools for the
poor and tried to help people make a better life for themselves. He
passed laws against discrimination. Even if it didn't change peoples
minds, it slowed their hands. He put pressure on High Lords to follow
suit, and raised his children to continue after him. His line became
famous for their concern for the people and the reforms on behalf of the
poor and unfortunate.

After that first visit to Jayden's grave I studied whatever I was given
with a passion. Dalenti showed me how to make explosives, poisons,
healing salves, and everything that might help me when my turn at Black
Adept came around. When Dalenti started to train me in the secrets of
Void magic, I was a star pupil.

First we studies the language of the Void and I quickly learned to find
the beauty behind the terrible sounds of the words. The language comes
instinctively to Void mages for a reason no one have ever been able to
completely figure out. I have come to believe that the Void gives us the
tools to serve it better. It is not really necessary to even know what
the words you say mean. If you want to throw a fireball you simply think
it and the words and actions come to you.

Each Black Adept tries to further Void magic and Dalenti's contribution
was interpreting the meaning of the words. She realized that there were
many ways of doing the same things and, if we knew the words, we could do
things using less energy and create more complex spells then what just
came you. There was never any real subtlety involved in Void magic until
Dalenti came up with this. It was just the throwing around of energy. I
learned the meaning for each word and, in this, wanting to further her
work, I started to try to transcribe the symbols we used when casting
onto paper, which eventually brought about the Marks. I learned that in
the Void, energy is fluid and can be easily altered which means, in
theory, water can be turned to fire by simply converting the energy that
makes it up. I took to Void magic naturally and came to love the simple
complexity of it as well as the calmness and peace that came while
casting it.

Shortly after I started learning magic, I learned how to process the
energy in the air around the Academy to refill my magic back to my full
potential. It was after two years that it was time to learn perhaps the
most horrible lesson any Black Adept ever has to learn. There may be
times you cannot fill your magic from a vast reserve like the Academy so
a Void mage has to learn how to drain the energy from a person. The most
energy is released at death which means I would have to kill someone no
matter how much it sickened me. You could drain twenty people of their
excess energy and not receive as much as you could from one death.

Dalenti was not unsympathetic to me and told me how hard it was for her
when her master taught her. She told me that she only had to do this a
handful of times in all her hundreds of years as Black Adept. She chose a
murderer that had been plaguing the city of Molas for a few weeks. It was
easy, far too easy to draw all the power out of the man. He tried to
scream as I appeared out of the shadows in an alley and pulled him in,
but my magic made all noise silent. I could still feel his terror,
however. All I had to do was put my hand to the skin on his chest and I
felt his energy. It was simple to pull it out of him. When his body went
limp I felt dirty and evil. Then Dalenti was beside me telling me that as
long as it was hard for me to do it, I was still noble at heart. She also
told me that if it ever became easy then I should worry. I knew that it
was an important lesson that I would have know eventually if I was to
ever have to fight away from the Academy or the portals which gave me
access to it.

My training progressed normally until one event which would alter the
future of the Black Adept and Void magic. About three and a half years
into my training, I was trying to transcribe the hand movements of Void
magic onto paper which is harder than you would think. When you do
something instinctually it is hard to study the exact movement and figure
out how to express it on paper. One day, I was trying to write down the
Cloak of the Void spell we use to be invisible and was quietly speaking
the spell and thought I had it perfect when the page disappeared. It took
me a second to realize that I had cast a spell permanently onto an
object, something never done in Void magic to anyone's knowledge before.

I nearly tackled Dalenti trying to show her the now invisible piece of
paper. She first checked to see if I was actively giving energy to the
spell and, when she realized I wasn't, she was ecstatic. Up until that
point I had never seen her lose her calm, collected attitude, except the
few times I had seen her cry over her own long dead love's grave. She
grabbed me in a crushing hug, saying I was brilliant and would do great
things and how proud she was of me.

It was that that night that I tried my next experiment with what I came
to call the Marks. I took a staff from a rack, it had been enchanted a
long time ago by a mage of the Academy to allow the holder to see the
flows of energy around them. Not that useful to a regular mage but, to a
Void mage who can alter the very nature of energy, it was a valuable
tool. I began to transcribe spells into the staff with the same enchanted
knife I had once used to try and take my own life. It took me months to
complete the carving since it still drew energy out of me to transcribe
the spell onto something. Well, the spell would not act independently, as
I first hoped. I learned that by focusing the spell through the proper
string of Marks on the staff, it took less energy to cast the spell. I
intended it as a gift to Dalenti but she said that since it was made with
my energies and carved with the knife that almost killed me, it was
attuned to me, so I should keep it.

Over the five years I spent in training, twice Dalenti left to deal with
threats to the Academy. The first was an Academy mage trying to bond with
a demon. She led him away from the Academy and killed him before he
succeeded in bonding with one. She returned at the end of the day barely
tired. The second was a mad Void mage that had begun to create problems
in the south.

Sometimes when a mage tries to connect to the Void when they are not
compatible they are driven crazy by it. Also, sometimes the emptiness of
the Void, which a Void mage is always conscious of in a part of their
brain whether they were compatible or not, can become too much for them
and they snap. I don't know what case this was, but he had killed a mage
of the Academy traveling in the south. The Academy had because of this, a
renewed hatred of Void mages, who had been virtually unknown in the realm
for hundreds of years, since they tended to seek isolation and do not
want to be disturbed. There were always many mages outside the control of
the Academy hiding in remote areas, from regular mages who didn't like
rules to black mages hiding from the Academy. Dalenti wanted to deal with
it before he got the Academy anymore worked up.

She was gone for three days to track him down and kill him. After that we
were both a little unsettled because, in a way, one of our own had been
killed. Void magic is a lot like clerical magic, in that it is almost
like a religion. You receive access to using the Void in magic by serving
it. Unlike the gods of clerical magic, the Void didn't have agendas to
be followed, only that you worship the Void and find ways to strengthen
it. Working together with other Void users is not required, but most Void
mages feel some sort of loose brotherhood to each other, so it is hard to
have to slay one of your own.

I realized I was tired from the earlier fight and now was emotionally
exhausted from all the memories, so decided to call it a night. I did not
know what tomorrow would bring but, for some reason, I felt that the
future seemed a lot brighter then it did yesterday. I thought of my
potential friendship with Kinren and Kai and what that might bring in the
future. More though, I thought of the self-conscious, nervous kiss Kai
gave me before they left. With those thoughts I went to sleep to have the
first completely unhaunted sleep I had in a long time.

To be continued....

This is my first attempt at a story and I hope that you like if you have
any positive feedback I would love to hear it. it. You can email me at
BlackAdept@Hotmail.com