"Have a seat over there, conjurer, I'll be able to start your lessons in a moment. If you keep starting and stopping while preparing a zombie, they never turn out just right. New to the Covenhouse, are you? Well, almost everyone is new to the Coven compared to me, I suppose. I remember when I first joined the Covenhouse. Upset my parents no end, they were shamans in Timberwood, you see. They taught me a bit of magic as I was growing up, preparing me to follow the family trade and such. Hand me that leg, would you? That's a good lad. Now, where was I?
"Oh, I had nothing against plants and animals, they were just too plain, too cut and dried. 'You fix a broken paw this way.' Bah! Where is the thrill of the unknown, the adventure in that? The field of healing has been gathering dust for years before I was born, the best way to heal anything already found and written in a book. That wasn't for me, not for old Usten Sacarat, my boy. I thought about Wizardry, interesting field of study, speeding things up, enchanting things, but I wasn't much interested in Arcana and the Wizards were supposed to put a lot of stock in that. But Sorcery, now, that seemed like something I could sink my teeth into. Throwing fire and calling lightning, harmless fun everyone enjoys now and again. My mother and father sighed, but they let me take lessons. I suppose they thought, 'Better he take an interest in Sorcery than pick up a sword and become a fighter, or worse, a berserker.'
"I was doing well enough in my studies that I was sent into Moorgate to pick up some things for my teachers on a market-day. My friend Renel was sent with me to place some orders or pick them up for the orphanage. A good fellow, Renel. Soft-spoken sort, for an orc. Anyway, we were walking about, looking at all the sights like any two boys with hay in their hair, when a runaway wagon nearly crushed us. We managed to jump clear, but this other fellow didn't. One minute, he was alive, with purpose, and the next, he was laying on the ground, breathing out his death-rattle. And for just a moment, a tiny part of a second, I could see the fellow's soul, like something made out of cobwebs and clouds, hovering over his body, and then gone. I heard Renel groan, and pull me away and down the street for home. We didn't say much on the way home, both busy with our thoughts. I was amazed how a living, thinking person could become just so much bone and meat without the soul. I hadn't thought much about the basis of life and death before then, but afterwards it was all I could think about. Of course, it was a small step from thinking about souls to studying souls, and the best place to learn about life and death is the Covenhouse.
"If I had thought that my mother and father were opposed to my learning Sorcery, it was nothing compared to how they reacted when I came home a few years later with a cursed talisman around my neck. Very nearly tied me up and carried me back to return the thing. Impossible to undo it, of course, and I would not if I could. I felt that the Covenhouse offered more opportunities to study without being restrained by too many silly "ethical" considerations. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty when you are digging for gold, but the nuggets are worth it."
Alley back to the library foyer.
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