Old and Gone
Teto stalked the halls of his sire’s forts. A storm raged outside, it clashed against the blocks of the fort, resounding like the roaring thunders outside.
The lights of the lamps and candles flickered by the wind’s rush in the corridors.
Walking was a hard endeavor for the old man, using his olive-tree staff as a walking stick to keep him straight, lest the strong winds knocked him on the floor.
Teto was an old man, nearing his eighties, who lived beyond the years someone of his standing should live. While the likes of archmages and saints could live for many decades past their eighties or even centuries, Teto was not one of those.
He was but a man with magical knowledge, a man with a beating heart, and a man on the last fumes of his body. A dishearted sight escaped his mouth.
The passage of time made itself in the marrow of his bones, hurting it from the inside as the man walked, everything hurt—from his ankles to his buckling knees and muscles, an aching, distant, but ever-present tingling.
A man like Teto should be resting, not walking under the storm in corridors with flickering lights.
The haunting long corridors of his sire’s fort were longer that night. The roar of thunders sent a jolt in his heart, adrenaline, and terror mixing. Teto loved his sire, the man he helped raise and train, but the sage could not hold back his fears and terrors over finding one of his undead warriors.
One of his black-magic raised subordinates, creatures that sent primal fright inside the man’s chest.
He wondered sometimes, had he failed his sire somehow? If he failed, did that send him into the clutches of black magic? Or was his falling in the dark arts inevitable? Teto did not know.
The memories of a frail boy lost in wonder and a face of unbridled joy surfaced in his thoughts. A boy with thick, expressive eyebrows and eyes, unable to focus and chasing after silly, childish things.
A third child of a family with a long-standing military background. A boy his mother and father wanted to teach discipline to, and for that they contracted a broke magician to teach him the ways of magic, to make the boy learn focus and discipline.
The boy was then thrust into the flames of war once his two older siblings failed to uphold their duties and died on the battlefield.
A lost child who took a failed magician and made him his advisor on magic and battlefield applications of such.
Teto saw the wonder and expressiveness of his sire grow. From a boy with expressive girly expressions to a man with a wide, refreshing smile, his features thick and well defined, his face clean save for a goatee he maintained and groomed well.
The man who looked back at Teto with bright green eyes, full of hope, guile, and determination to see the campaign through. His determination was like the torches and pyres of their camps in the dark nights of the woods of the barbaric lands.
His smile and understanding were like a light at the end of the tunnel.
Many fathers and mentors would envy to see a child become such an accomplished man, from a boy with problems focusing and taking things seriously, to a man with a hard, but enlightened sympathetic stare.
Teto was a little arrogant, he would dare to say he had more hand in shaping the boy into a man than his own father and mother and accompanied him on the battlefields, overseeing many campaigns and battles.
Yet, where did Teto fail? Why had his sire turned to dark magic? The answer was not obvious, if it ever existed, but the old magician wanted to see his pupil, face to face.
The magician had an inkling about what his sire planned to do to him once he died. For this reason, Teto shouldered on through the dark storm despite his age.
He made his way to the office of his sire and softly knocked on it with his staff.
“My sire, it is I, Teto. I seek an audience.” The old man talked with a raspy and crispy voice, cracking with the weight of age and weakness.
“Audience granted, my mentor.” Teto was answered with a clear, deep voice, but serene as a lake.
Teto entered the office.
His sire stood on the other end of the room. Clad in silver armor with a white mane. The white mane of a lion he had slain at the start of his career.
Many mistook the hair of his lord for white, for they had only seen him in his armor, few who hadn’t campaigned with him before his ascension as a minor noble knew that he had brown hair.
In a way, his lord now mirrored the monsters he commanded. “Milord, I beg your pardon beforehand, but I must know this. Did you forfeited your body? Are you now a monster?”
Teto’s knees buckled, they trembled as strength was lost in them. Not for action of foul magic and spells, but for the fear of what his sire would do.
He feared what kind of reaction his lord would take.
His lord chirped, seemingly amused at those turn of events. “My mentor, do you think I am one? That I forfeited my body?”
His voice did not crackle, or show any emotion beyond his serenity and joy.
Teto wanted to know if his lord had changed, he wanted to know if the boy he helped raise was still there, a confirmation, but the vague answer he got filled his soul with uncertainty.
His lord’s voice was the same, and so was his tone and emotion. Teto swore he saw a smile on his lord’s face, even as it was covered by his helmet.
Despite his armor, despite the fact none had seen his lord without his armor in decades, Teto could still believe he was a person under the steel. All evidence pointed against that conclusion, but the serenity, and the joy made Teto doubt his logic.
It was but impossible for a man, any man, to remain so human, so emotional, to have the charisma his lord wielded. Teto had no answer, in the end, logic and emotion clashed, and they could not topple each other…
Teto licked his lips, trying to hydrate them as they crackled and dried, his heart racing, mustering the strength to ask the most obvious question.
“Milord… what do you plan to do to this old servant once he dies?”
As Teto could see the smile behind the helmet, he too could see its ugly death as his sire stopped smiling. “You know what I will do, my Mentor. I am weak. I cannot accept your departing, I couldn’t accept their departing in the past. How can I accept my mentor’s?”
Teto opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him. The form of his sire projected itself in the room, like a looming, great shadow of a beast in the deepest, murkiest waters of the ocean.
Was it magic? Reality? Or is Teto’s mind playing a trick on itself? The old magician did not know, but he knew that the presence of his lord was naturally overwhelming.
His figure is clad in silver armor, tall and regal like the statues of the imperial palace. The bluish flames behind the helmet shone with otherworldly power and knowledge.
An unknowable figure, that Teto believed to be benevolent, good despite his turn to foul magic, or was it? His lord confirmed his suspicion in a heartbeat, no denying, no rodeos, just the raw reality.
“Yet, if you do wish to join me in eternity, then I will write you a letter of recommendation to the royal academies of the capital. I will do my best to safeguard your journey there. I will make sure, and use every last bit of power and influence I have to make you live a glorious life for what you have left of your time. No stress or hurt in your last days.”
His lord answered Teto before he could formulate a phrase.
“I am weak, and I know that the only way I cannot raise you back from the dead is to send you far away from me. If you wish to remain dead once you depart, I will honor your wish by making sure your last days are well-lived in a lavish manor, enjoying your last days to your heart’s content. I won’t tolerate, or accept, you living anything lesser than a well-fed noble, my mentor.”
Behind the silver armor, behind the looming figure of unknowable dread and without a face, Teto saw the silhouette of a boy. He smiled coyly, a sad smile.
The boy accepted that he would not hold his mentor back, and acknowledged his weaknesses, to get rid of them, he would send his mentor to where he could not reach to honor his wishes.
Teto smiled back at the boy. His emotions lead him to believe that Avesta is still human, a person underneath his armor.
“This is all I need to know, milorde. I will stay by your side.”
Even if it meant enduring an eternity of undeath, the joyful and youthful man leading the armies against the barbarians, the infidels, and the monstrous still lived in Teto’s heart.