Part 2: The Tales of Baldarr

Vertigo. Slight pain. A little nausea. That's what the others said it would be like. Baldarr fell to his knees, his mind spinning. He was suddenly taken up in a coughing spasm, blood and saliva spewing from his mouth. He made a weak moan. His eyes burned. Whips of pain flogged his back, and his nerves screamed in agony. The man could no longer will his throbbing hands to hold his body up, and he collapsed onto the marble floor. He was oblivious to the stab of pain to his skull as it hit the marble, his whole body wailing from the sheer shock of what had happened. Tears streamed down the man's face as the fresh memories of the spell surfaced in his mind.

Baldarr took a deep breath and lifted himself off the ground, clenching his teeth against the pain. He stumbled across the long temple room where he had been left, past column after a column of marble. When the young man had visited the temple before the hüag, he would spend hours pouring over the ancient hieroglyphics inscribed into the endless marches of columns. The stories of the past were writ on the marble surface, telling of the bygone days of Cencaria's infancy?stories of the gods in Olympia, of Pheona and the King of Darkness. Indeed, this had been Baldarr's favorite place to visit when he was studying at the Academy Magiius. These pleasant thoughts were far from the young man's mind as he struggled to make it to the lavatory.

Baldarr spotted the small, wooden door in the west wall of the room. He was all too thankful to find the place empty as he stumbled to the sink closest himself. The young man hastily turned the faucet, impatient as the pipes filled with water and a slow stream came forth into the sink. He filled his callused hands with the cold water and threw it on his face. He didn't mind that it soaked his woolen robe; he was too exhausted to care. After wetting his face a few more times, Baldarr turned the faucet back off and reached for a washcloth hanging from a small wooden peg in the wall. As he dried himself off, the young man looked up at his visage in the small silver mirror. Deep rings of black lay under his eyes, and he face seemed to slump in fatigue.

Baldarr made a small mordant chortle as he thought back to what the graduate physicians had said about the hüag. They had claimed it would be a simple process, relatively free of pain and over within the hour. As the physicians had claimed, a mage specializing in hüag spells would incant the ancient Spell of Magiius, a magical chant invented by the renowned sorcerer-turned-physician. The chant was invoked whenever a studying physician completed his stay at the Academy, and was known as being the most important moment in a physician's life. This was because the Spell of Magiius activated the hüag?the ability to see all afflictions?whether they be exterior or interior, in he to whom the spell was directed. Veteran physicians had also begun to refer to the process of obtaining the hüag by the same name.

Baldarr had received the hüag yesterday, and the result was instantaneous. The young man remembered standing in the central room of the Academy reserved for hüags. He remembered glancing around at the room's cylindrical enclosure and all the tapestries and murals depicting the Miracles of Magiius. The silence was broken when his instructor and the mage, face hidden by a dark brown hood, entered the room. There was a brief ceremonial introduction, and then the mage dismissed the instructor. When the door had closed, the mage turned to the young man and removed his cowl. A gasp escaped the young man's throat as he saw the mage's hideous face. It was covered with scars from boils and gouges that had seemingly never healed. The old man's forehead was marked with innumerable tiny stitches, the purpose of which Baldarr hadn't the faintest idea. And the man's eyes were even more peculiar.