Snippet #2652320

Lir rested at an inn near the port. She sat off to the corner on the lower floor in a room separated from the dining hall. She combed through a tome, reciting incantations that she no longer had the leisure to study in a library in solitude. However, being on the run had taught her to be quick with her wits. She practiced everyday, it made her keener, sharper than the average, complacent Academy student her age. Her meditation was cut short by her curious eavesdropping.

She overheard a pair of patrons talking about a fight that took place earlier in the day.

"Aye, 'at Feld'n claw'd th' other wun's face wi' its baur paws," the first man finished his mug.

The second man appalled, "Indeed? And that's what they call a fair fight?"

"Faer ur nae, dun matt tae meh. 'Twas a sight."

Every so often, she cast a wary glance at the various guests coming in and out of the tavern for any suspicious fellows. Lir could only sit and wait, but that was a dead man's game.

Or in her case, dead woman's game.

The open road proved ever perilous with sellswords sent to kill her. She knew the Academy was behind this, they wanted to keep things quiet, the things that she had seen. She managed to foil the attempts on her life on numerous occasions.

She disappeared wherever she went thus far, but she could never stay at any one place for too long. Mages always smelled of magic, and prodigal mages stunk of magic. She left as big a trail as any other, and her appearance was what some might call distinguished. Her hood could only cover so much of her hair.

Her hair smelled like nothing on some days. On other days it smelled of the mud and garbage that she hid in while witnessing an assassin dismember an innocent man in her place.

All of this running and fleeing made her long for her home, long for the days when her hair smelled of lilacs. That had vanished now. She was sure. Her mother and father may have already suffered a fate all too familiar to the one soul she chose to reach out to.

Antius Geminus was rumored to be a pit fighter in the colosseum of Opynonias, at least that was the news when she last heard of him.

She remembered him as a gifted mage and a friend during their early Academy days. She had the impression that he liked her, but he never said anything about such feelings which made her believe that he only viewed them as friends.

When the University of Magic accepted her, she thought they would admit him as well. Things were never so simple, for she knew nothing of the enemies that Antius's father, Senator Geminus of Agora, had made at court.

One day Antius disappeared without a word, she discovered his exile and his family's execution from another friend. The same friend who had since died by the Academy's hands for the same reasons that assassins were pursuing Lir.

She heard the locals speak of a fighter who went by the name 'Magus of the Gemini'. If Antius Geminus was still alive and fighting in a pit, then perhaps this fellow was him.

She felt a mix of emotions though. Fear that she could have mistaken the 'Magus of the Gemini' to be her friend, for anybody could have such a cryptic alias. If it was Antius, then she felt anxiety that he might not help her. She had few friends or family left, it would be her alone. No matter though, the next ship for Khi'ir would depart on the morrow. A loquacious captain had already secured her spot aboard the ship.

And if he did help her, nervousness at having to look upon his face again. The years may have worn on him, changed him. His face might be different, marred, or worse, clawed. If his appearance changed, who knows what else may have changed. But she hoped not much other than that.

The concoction she sent him, a final act of defiance against the Academy as she had stolen it from one of the alchemy chambers. If Antius was still studying magic as she had hoped, then the potion would simply be a bad hangover for him if he knew how to use it.