Legacey: The Curse of Blood

[Marcus Kobra]

     It was a cold wintery night and the year was 344 Sosarian Reckoning. The jewel festooned halls of the five story sandstone and marble building were draped in the finest silks and most exotic furs from the furthest reaches of all Sosaria. The inhabitants always took all the wealth for granted, for on this Isle, ALL buildings were decorated thus. This was Magincia Isle of Humility! Though all buildings looked thusly, it was only here that every room smelled different, that men swirled about the place waving hands and swinging arms in wild gesticulations while calling out in a myriad of different tongues which caused flashes of light, bouts of flame and frost, or brought forth foul beasts from the deep. This building was the Mages Guild, five floors of witchcraft and sorcery and hedonism. It was not on anyone of these floors that Marcus lived, but in the sublevels, the dungeons, and the places for castoff experiments. It was here that so much pain and heartache would begin in a long line of sacrifice without gain for a young Marcus Illinius Kobra.

     Marcus had spent nearly seven years of his life in this building, never allowed to see the outside world. Always tested, always being instructed, always passing from one wytch to the next, in an endless procession until tonight. Until tonight he had passed through fifty or so teachers, each branding him as their own with some rune or arcane symbol upon his body. The pain of these was moot to him now, and tonight he would receive his last. Tonight he would realize a horrible potential, one that would send him careening down the path to Avatar hoping against hope for absolution.

     This night, it wasn’t the usual adept, or master. It was a small gaggle of neophytes coming for a little sport before they dismissed the “stupid wretch in the basement.” Marcus smiled at their approach, their magic was weak, especially compared to that of the masters who could shock him, freeze him, and had on occasion disemboweled him in an attempt to wake his latent talents. The very talents conferred to him by blood from his father, a man who was one of the most feared pyro-mancers outside the loyalist states and possible in all Sosaria. Marcus’ smile faded with the first spark of electricity up his spine as he lost control of his muscles and spasmed in his chains.  They all laughed and taunted him loudly but, as the spell faded Marcus just laughed at them and taunted them back. It was then that two more neophytes came in forcing a girl about his age into the room. Her name was Sorina Hellas, a lass he had met in early childhood. He looked at them now with contempt and even fear for what they might do to her. She was, in some way special to him but he couldn’t put his finger on how. To say that she was beautiful would be an understatement, she had strong elven features from her father but she had her mothers charm and spirit. She had deep blue eyes like the sea, hair rich and brown like fresh tilled earth, skin as white as the peaks of Daggers’ Isle, and her ears had just a little backwards curve.

     Hellas came into the room screaming curses and thrashing her lithe frame all about as she struggled to get free. “Close your mouth, you half-bred whore!” They struck her a few times across the face then drug her to kneel in front of Marcus as they taunted him and told him all the horrible things they would do to her. The taunts didn’t matter, didn’t register with him as he looked into her eyes and felt himself swallowed by them. When he came back to himself it was to the sound of more blows befalling poor Hellas. He screamed in rage at them, but they continued. None of the taunts had mattered; nothing they ever did to him would have ever mattered. He would never be like his father, swore it upon his very blood, and had they just stopped hitting her, Marcus would most likely never have lived to realize the horrible truth of his own blood.

     It was with one more rage filled scream that flames erupted around his body, white hot and multicolored all at once. They melted his chains and then leapt to the two men holding Hellas and consumed them on the spot leaving not even ash to mark their passing. Hellas screamed in fear thinking she would be burned but soon realized as the flare of heat and the white light faded that she was unharmed. Marcus on the other hand screamed more his body seeming to be made of flames as he grabbed two more men by their throats. He promptly burned holes in their throats and held them until their eyes were nothing more than two smoking holes in their heads and dropped them to the hard floor of the place. The others fled the room screaming for a master, an expert, an adept, anyone to save them. Marcus’ rage finally played out as a large fire ball that erupted from him, seeming to steal all the flames from his body and hurtled up the stair case to erupt someplace near the middle of the Guild hall.  Hellas dragged a nearly swooning Marcus from the Guild hall and to the beach where they watched as the building burned and crumbled with many, many wytch and potentials inside.

     Months later around his sixteenth birthday, Marcus and Hellas booked passage for free lands, winding up in Vesper. Trouble would soon beset the two after arrival but, that, is another story, for another time.

{OOC: A bit of back story to Marcus that should be important to future events I may try and organize, plus its a clue in to some character development, figured I shouldn't blind-side everyone!}