The year is XXX31
Damien sat on the beach and stared up at the night sky. As he tried to count each star with naive curiosity, he didn't hear his mother sit down beside him on the large boulder. Lapping waves splashed up the base of the large rock, occasionally spraying the two in mist when the waters dared against the shores.
Damien's amber tunic and bare arms were covered in a bear's pelt, a black hide who's hair tickled the back of his neck. His trousers, a dark brown pair of culottes, had been tucked into his boots. The soles of his boots were caked with moist sand; the woven pattern of his trousers had gathered dirt from his climb onto the rock he sat on.
Like his father, Damien Modeus sported light brown eyes like warm caramel, though he had not inherited his father's dark circles under his eyes. Instead, his eyelids drooped like his mother, his lips pulled into a constant dreamy grin Tabitha Modeus had worn. His nose was wide, like most of the people he was related to, maternal or not, and his lips were full. Much to his mother's relief, his head was a garden of loose curls that fell around his ears. If he'd grown the tight curls his father had, the maids under the Modeus family's employ would have to take hours to keep the boy's hair from being tangled and "nappy."
Tabitha Modeus, the mother of the seven year old boy, and wife of Solomon Modeus, was tall and slender. Like her son, she too had naturally loose curls that bounced when she walked. On most days, she sported a wide brimmed witch's hat, gray in color with a large blue eye painted onto its front. Since she was a worldseer, capable of seeing planets lightyears away, her robes were speckled with gold beads, to resemble the stars laid against the black canvas of infinity. Her robes, a flowing black silk that billowed in the wind, flapped soundlessly like the incorporeal body of a specter. The moonlight bore down on her skin, a lighter bronze than her husbands, yet darker than her son's.
"There used to be a lot more, ya know," Tabitha Modeus told him, wrapping an arm around her son. She pulled him closer to her. TOgether they gazed in silence at the open sky from the jutting boulder on the beach. A pair of stars darted across the sky in the blink of an eye, making the young mage wonder if he'd imagined them.
"What happened to them?" Damien asked, leaning his head against his mother's breast. He had decided to stop counting the stars after losing track of which stars he had counted one too many times.
His mother didn't answer at first, inhaling as she formed an answer- the best answer- to tell her son what had happened to the missing stars. "They got tired of being held up there. Hanging out amongst the clouds and the moons got boring."
"Where did they go?"
"They…" Tabitha pursed her lips before continuing, "They decided to… join us, stepping down from the heavens to join us mortals. We call those people, who came from the stars, starchildren."
The young boy rubbed the back of his hand, where the brand of a star had scarred his smooth flesh. Tabitha's eyes slouched as she brushed her thumb over Damien's brand.
"Papa said I was one of those stars. And that's why I have this mark." he turned to look at his mother's eyes tearing up. She turned her head in the nick of time, batting her eyelids to fight back tears. "Is being a star child a bad thing, mama?"
"No." Tabitha croaked, fighting back a sob. "Not at all."
"Then why do you look so sad everytime we talk about it?"
"Because," cupping her son's cheek, still plump with the baby fat she adored, "Because starchildren are gifted. And some people want starchildren to be our saviors."
"Papa told me I'm going to be a good mage, a really strong mage, since starchildren always are. He says that's why I'm already casting spells, even though I'm only eight."
Stretching out a hand, the boy summoned the aura- the source of all magick. From his shoulder two swirls of yellow light spiraled down his arm before joining at his palm. Turning over his wrist, he admired the glowing sphere of yellow aura.
"Instructor Kadman taught me this spell.'' He nudged his mother with his elbow to show her. "This is the base for a conjuration spell." Balling his hand into a fist, he dispelled the healing spell, watching the embers fly skyward, fading back into the aura as they flickered out.
"You know," Tabitha placed a caring hand on her son's shoulder, "I couldn't do couldn't do that until I was twice your age." Tabitha waited for her son to respond.
"Really?" he asked. He squinted at her as if that could unveil any deception his mother told.
Tabitha nodded. "But then again I didn't know how to control my ebb and flow when i was spellcasting.'' That last part came out with a small nostalgic laugh, the woman's eyes brightening a little.
"What's ebbing flow?" her son asked, his brows knitting into a confused frow.
"Ebb and flow" Tabitha corrected, "is the way our aura moves when we cast spells." Raising her own hand, she called out to the aura, summoning a misty cloud over her upturned palm. The dark blue energy shimmered, rippling into an orb that hovered above her palm. "Do what I do." she told her son. With almost as much ease as his mother, he replicated the bubble. Once he had mimicked her, Tabitha's orb slouched into an oozing liquid. Damien tried to copy, but failed at first. His orb had popped like a bubble, instead of the solid orb his mother had conjured. "Try it again," she urged him. "You've got this."
He did try again, this time his orb melting into a neon slime. Damien turned to his mother, giving her a proud grin. Tabitha smiled back nodding.
"Now, do you see how the waves out there rush towards us," her orb shimmered before mirroring the crashing waves she pointed at. "That's called flowing, since the water is flowing towards us."
She watched her son nod, mentally noting this new lesson. The fluid aura he conjured mirrored the tides. "Flowing," he echoed. "Because the water is flowing towards us."
"Good job." Tabitha planted a kiss on her son's forehead before continuing. "Now when we mages cast in flow, we are pulling aura towards us. This aura can be used to conjure items, mold the world around us or to protect our bodies like your uncle Nathan."
Damien's uncle Nathan was a soldier, capable of hardening his skin using red aura.
"Do all Lesser Mages cast in flow?"
Lesser mages, who cast using Red, yellow or orange aura, pulled their aura to their body. If his assumption was true, that was why aura always seemed to dart to the lesser mages when they were casting and why Greater mages, capable of casting blue, indigo and violet aura seemed to push aura aways from their body. Damien's mother, an indigo mage, had always pushed aura away from her body when she cast her seer spells.
Unbeknownst to Damien, the term lesser and greater mage was used to separate the types of mages. Greater mages considered themselves superior to the lesser mages, who were locked in constant rebellion against their assumed higher class.
"Who told you about Lesser mages?!" Tabitha dispelled her aura, which splattered into droplets before dissipating. With both hands, she grabbed her son's shoulders. "Was it your uncle Nathan?"
Trying hard to keep his aura still, the boy shook his head. "No, mama! One of the girls in Kadman's class did. She said lesser mages were below her and all the other Greater mages."
For reasons Damien couldn't grasp at such a young age, he didn't understand why the girl in his class, a violet mage, had been so rude to the orange mages. Though she never picked on him directly, since he was noble born, he felt bad for the kids who were picked on.
"Damien, I'm only going to tell you this once, so I need you to listen to me, okay?" Before Damien could nod in agreement, Tabitha dove into a lecture on lesser mages and greater mages. "No one- and I mean no one- no matter what color aura they wield is better than anyone. Do you hear me?"
Damien nodded vigorously.
"And I best never hear you call someone a lesser mage or a greater mage or none of that, do you understand me?"
He nodded again, this time with more gusto.
His mother's shoulders relaxed as she exhaled. She turned her eyes to the aura in her son's hand, which wasn't flowing like it was a moment ago. Now it was a writhing mass of tendrils. Amber light shown on their faces, Damien staring at his conjuration spell in silent curiosity. Tabitha inhaled quietly, her lips parting as she recognized the ebb direction.
Normally, a mage could only cast in one direction, ebb or flow, no matter what color aura they wielded. This didn't limit how a mage cast spells, however. A conjurer who cast in ebb could still replicate objects as well as one who cast in flow.
In the last two decades mages were being born with an abnormal gift: to cast aura in both directions. Typically when a mage could do this, it was a rare phenomenon that happened only once a century. In the last decade alone, two mages were able to cast in ebb and flow directions. Tabitha tutored one of them, a daughter of the Emperor. The other was supposedly a telepath who could convert her aura into static electricity.
Usually when a mage could cast in both directions their magecraft differed depending on the direction. Scholars believed that whenever a mage cast in flow, their ebb magicks would react the opposite of their flow spells. For example, the student Tabitha taught was a perception mage, able to observe objects from miles away. Though her ebb pattern let her conjure illusions, capable of convincing most that her mirages, or illusion spells, were real. Thus being able to perceive with her flow pattern and deceive with her ebb.
Tabitha watched as her own son, a conjure mage with a flow pattern, willed his aura to ebb away from him.
"Baby boy," she asked calmly. "Have you always been able to do that? To cast in ebb, I mean?"
The boy stared down at his aura, watching it roll away from his wrist. He frowned, "No." he looked into his mother's eyes. "Is that normal?"
Tabitha didn't answer. Of course it wasn't normal. It was far beyond normal. It was extraordinary!
But what would a conjurer be able to do when he cast in ebb? His training had taught him how to replicate items on a whim. What would the reflection of that be?
As soon as she pondered the question, a light flickered on her forehead. Only for a second, but enough for her magecraft to perceive what her mind's eye was showing her.
It was the future. She saw a man- her son- thrusting amber light at foes dressed like dragons. In the stomachs of each foe was a ball of colored light. Judging by the colors of each light, Tabitha assumed the light was supposed to resemble aura. She watched as her son launched his own aura at- no! Through- the attackers who stood against him. Like a wave, it washed the aura out of the foe's bodies.
Tabitha's vision ended with her son looking at her, as if he was piercing the veil of time. His eyes were yellow suns, his mouth uttering a phrase that she repeated aloud.
"By the light," Tabitha gasped. "Counter magick!"
"Did you just have a vision, mama?" Damien asked curiously. He tugged his mother's arm, begging her to tell him what she saw. "Please mama, you can tell me what you saw. I wont tell nobody."
But Tabitha couldn't tell him what she saw. Her vision, a glimpse of the future, was of him. A future him. If she told him what she saw exactly…
"No, baby boy." She shook his hand off of her. Chewing her cheek, she gazed up at the stars. Cursing them for giving her this gift of foresight, yet damning her to only tell one person of her visions. "I can't tell you."
Damien's arm dropped to his side. QUietly, he went back to conjuring his base spell. The two of them stayed like that for a long time, Tabitha hiding tears in her eyes, Damien staring down at his aura, watching it ebb away from him. "Mama, what's counter magic?"
"What?"
"When your mind's eye opened, you said counter magic. What is that?"
"Well," Taibitha sighed, a rattling shudder that rose from her lungs. "It's a really unique kind of magick."
"What's unique?"
"It's a special kind of magick." She told him. "Counter magick lets a mage turn off the aura of another mage. It's like how the pyro mages on Amphigur II can put out flames with a wave of a hand. Except you- er a counter mage i mean, can do that to aura."
"I had a dream that I could do that once. I was an old man, though, but I could make a person's spells stop the second they cast them." He grinned widely as he remembered the dream. "I liked that dream."
Tabitha remembered the tale of a counter mage who ascended to the stars millenia ago, becoming the star Charybdis. When Damien was born, that mage's star disappeared from the canvas of the cosmos. Tabitha found herself telling him that wasn't a dream, but a memory of his past life. As a starchild, he must have remnants of his past life.
"Oh." he nodded. Tabitha could tell he barely understood what he was saying. After all, this was a lot of stuff to throw at a nine year old. "What else can I do with counter magick? Is it like a new kind of conjuring magick?"
Damien had been training to be a conjurer, like his grandfather, Aster Modeus. For the last four years, he'd been studying spells through a mage Instructor named Kadman, a High Priest for Emperor Haethora.
But since he would be a counter mage, his training would be different. He'd need training on counter magick, crafting warding charms and learning how to dispel another mage's spells. Only three Mage Instructors were capable of teaching counter magick currently, and only two of them would make trips to this side of the galaxy. Both of them would charge a high price, but since the Modeus family was wealthy, it wouldn't be a problem. Dr. Banthum was an old friend of Solomon's, since the two were both of the 99 Hands of Jade. But the other was Damien's current instructor, High Priest Kadman. Tabitha was weary of having him teach Damien magick, since most of his students had gone straight to the employ of the Empire. She was one of them herself.
Tabitha shuddered at the thought of Damien- her baby boy- being a slave to the Emperor like she was. She already didn't trust Kadman as her son's conjuring instructor, but as his counter magick instructor?
"Are you getting cold, mama?" the boy asked her. In a sweet gesture to keep his mother warm, he wrapped his arms around her.
"Yes, baby boy," she lied. "Let's get back inside. I'm sure the maids have finished dessert by now." She turned to her son, wearing a warm smile. "I told them to make the cake you love so much."
With that, Damien began to barrel down the side of the rock, almost tripping. "Choco cake!" he shouted.
"Be careful!" she shouted at him, watching him slow down as he crawled down the rock's side. Before Damien could sprint across the sand and into the manor, she called to him. "And Damien?"
"Yes mama." he said, pivoting in the sand.
"Don't tell anyone anything about… counter magick, okay? Not until tomorrow when Mr. Kadman gets here. Okay?"
"Yes, mama." he turned to leave again.
"And Damien?"
He turned back around, slightly irritated. "Yes. Mama."
"I love you, baby boy."
She watched Damien crawl back up the rock and wrap his arms around her. He buried his cheek in her hip, squeezing her tightly. "I love you too, mama."
A lump formed in Tabitha's throat. Running her finger through his curls, she noticed how fast he was growing up. It seemed like yesterday she couldn't keep him from causing a ruckus in the manor, and she couldn't turn around without him stripping off his clothes and prancing around naked the day before that. Before long, he'd be a rebellious teen obsessing over girls. And after that, he'd be a registered mage, pursuing whatever career he'd be designated. He was growing up so fast. Too fast.
"Can we go eat choco cake now?" the boy asked, pulling away from his mother to stare up at her. He couldn't see the tears in her eyes, just her silhouette against the giant moon behind her. His mother's curls bounced in the wind against her wide brimmed hat. Tabitha's hands, which always smelled like roses, were scratching his scalp with that gentle massage he'd liked. He began to fear that one day, his mother wouldn't always be able to hold him like this.
Tabitha chuckled, trying to shake the sob from her chest. "Yes, baby boy, lets go get that choco cake.'' She led him down the rock carefully, so, hand in hand, the mother and her son could trek up the sandy beach and into the manor where a slice of chocolate cake awaited them.
That night, the choco cake tasted really good to Damien