Arrogan walked a slow circle around him. “Focus? A child could do this. If you weren’t such a moron, you’d have done it by now. Stop thinking so hard and just do it!” He stopped in front of Will and a strange expression crossed his face.
As Will inhaled, he was assaulted by the stench of something akin to rotten eggs. When he glanced up, he saw the old man watching him, and on seeing his reaction, Arrogan burst into laughter.
His frustration boiled over, and for a moment the world turned red. Within him, his anger churned and twisted, spinning until he could feel it as an almost physical object. Snarling, he pushed his hand out and his feeling became real; an intense ball of crimson light shot forth toward Arrogan.
The old man’s eyes widened in surprise, and he raised a hand just before the vicious ball of power struck him with a deafening thunderclap. Will was almost blinded by a flash of light, and when his vision cleared he saw his grandfather still standing, his hand outstretched, palm touching the ball of light. Arrogan’s face was a picture of intense concentration and his brow was beginning to bead with sweat.
“You’ve made your point, boy. Let it go. Now!” ordered the old man.
Will was still angry, and it was a second before he realized he was still connected to the energy, that he was in fact pressing it forward against his grandfather’s hasty defense. Meeting his teacher’s eyes, he wondered what would happen if he didn’t relent. I’ll teach the old bastard a lesson. He pushed harder.
Arrogan grunted, and his arm bent under the pressure. “This is why I hate training apprentices,” he growled under his breath. Sticking his left hand out to one side, he sent a red line of power out. It flowed with fluid grace and began to circle Will’s ball of focused hatred.
Will felt his control beginning to slip as whatever Arrogan was doing began to eat into his spell. His anger turned to panic as he felt his determination falter.
“Let it go, boy!” commanded his grandfather. “You’re just making it worse. If this goes much further, I won’t be able to contain it, and I guarantee that I won’t be the one who winds up a smoldering pile of ash. My kindness only goes so far.”
Unsure what he was doing, Will let go of his anger and tried to relax. As he did, he felt something snap within him, and pain shot through his body. Gasping, Will fell sideways and lay on the ground. Looking up, he saw his grandfather still struggling with the ball of turyn he had somehow conjured. It was growing smaller by the second, with streamers of light trailing behind it like smoke as the old man guided it into a circle around his body. He seemed to be pulling energy from it as it traveled.
Arrogan’s hair was standing out from his head, and to Will’s eyes the old man seemed to glow with light that was shining through his skin. He grew brighter as the ball shrank, and wisps of steam began to rise from his body. When he could hold no more, he sent the now-diminished sphere away from the house, directing it into the forest. After traveling thirty feet, it struck a large oak and exploded, sending splinters of wood in all directions.
Will’s ears were ringing so loudly he had trouble hearing anything else, but after a moment he asked, “Are you all right?” His grandfather was still standing in the same place, panting heavily and glowing like a piece of iron fresh from the forge. Then the old man took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Flames sprang from his body, forming a shell of fire around him that slowly expanded before vanishing.
Arrogan sat down in the dirt, staring at Will. Streaks of red painted his face and arms where splinters had struck him, and he had begun to bleed. “Do I look all right to you?” spat the old man.
Will was having troubles of his own as a familiar pain began to build in him. He had lost control of his source, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t clamp it shut again. “I think something’s wrong with me,” he stated, trying to hide his panic.
“Your will is broken,” commented his mentor. “Jackass.” Raising one hand, he made a quick gesture and Will felt the spell-cage within him disappear. The pain vanished with it.
Letting his neck relax, Will’s head sagged back to the ground. “Thank you.”
“Nothing’s ever easy with you,” observed his grandfather. “You could have set something on fire or created a light show. No, you had to try and blow us both to hell and back.”
“To be honest, I was only trying to blow you to hell and back,” said Will, coughing into the dirt.
“Next time distract me first,” said Arrogan. “If I see it coming, I’m just going to feed it right back to you and find a new apprentice.”
“Is that what you were trying to do?” asked Will.
The old man snorted, reaching up to wipe away the ash that was all that remained of his eyebrows. “No. If I had, you’d be dead already. I was trying to defuse the anomaly you created, but you were fighting me all the way.”
He wasn’t familiar with that word. “Anomaly?”
“Accidental spell anomaly,” said Arrogan. “Which basically just means you created something nobody’s got a name for. If you want to give it a name, I suggest ‘the idiot’s ugly fucking death ball.’”
“You think I can do that again?”
His grandfather shook his head. “Shit like that isn’t reproducible. It’s too random.”
“When you were learning, what did you do?” asked Will, suddenly curious.
“I levitated my master.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Will.
“She would have disagreed with you. I sent her into a stone ceiling so hard it nearly broke her neck,” said Arrogan, chuckling at the memory. “Served her right.”
“Does something like that happen with every student?”
“God, no!” said Arrogan. “Most of the time it’s not a huge problem—things like changing color, innocuous stuff. But I have seen worse.”
“Like what?” asked Will.
“My last student, a guy named Valmon, he unleashed a really weird anomaly. It looked like a black spark, but it kept growing on its own, as though it was alive. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t taken it apart, but it might have continued getting bigger and killed a lot of people. This was in a city, mind you,” said the old man.
“If he was younger than you, is he still alive?”
“No,” said Arrogan, his tone flat.
Will’s head was pounding, and he knew he wasn’t in any shape to stand up, so he kept asking questions. “What happened to him?”
His grandfather blanched, his expression one of profound unhappiness. Eventually, he answered, “He did well, for a hundred years or so, then we had a philosophical disagreement. I killed him.”
Shocked, Will could only mumble, “Oh.”
“Don’t take it to heart, boy. When you get as old as I am, you collect bad memories like a dog collects fleas,” said his grandfather.
“Anything I should know so I can avoid that sort of ending?” asked Will.
The old man laughed. “Don’t piss me off, and don’t mess with my daughter.”
Will immediately thought of Tailtiu and blushed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said his grandfather. “It wasn’t Tally; she hadn’t been born yet. It was my oldest, Ethnia. She was human. But while we’re on the subject, don’t get any funny ideas about Tally. I know she’s amoral, nearly immortal, and wears less than a whore in Cerria, but as my student I expect you to keep your distance.”