Music. The first boulder was the size of their cabin in the woodlands. It didn't explode or crumble to dust. One moment it was there, a colossal, unmovable fact of stone-blocking Dragon Road, and the next it was simply gone. The air rushed in to fill the space where it had been, a sudden whoosh that echoed down the tunnel and kicked up centuries of dust. The smaller rocks that had rested against it tumbled into the new void with a clatter.
Dala coughed, waving a hand in front of her face. Beside her, Prosper didn't seem to notice. He stood with one hand outstretched, his palm open and facing the mountain of rubble. His face was a mask of concentration, sweat beading on his brow, despite the cavern's chill. He took a step forward, his eyes fixed on the next obstacle, a jagged slab of granite leaning against its twin. The festival. The colored lanterns. His voice was a faint whisper, almost lost in the great, silent dark.
The granite slab shimmered for a barest second, and then it too vanished. More rocks cascaded down. Dala watched him, a knot of unease tightening in her stomach. She had seen his magic before. She had witnessed him float her and Mela down a cliff face, a feat that had left him drained and grieving a lost memory. This was different. This wasn't a single act of power. It was a relentless assault. This was a man trying to tear down a mountain with his bare hands, only his hands were his memories.
He moved again, his steps sure and steady over the shifting rubble. A hand in mine. The first snowfall. By the gods how beautiful she looked. Another rock, this one larger than a draught horse, ceased to exist. The air popped. Dala took an involuntary step back. The sheer scale of it was terrifying. He was not just moving stone. He was unmaking it, erasing it from the world. And with each piece of the mountain he unmade, a piece of himself went with it.
Katrina had told Mela how it worked, and Mela had explained it to her. Magic was an exchange. Power for a memory. The greater the power, the more cherished the memory it consumed. It all seemed so abstract and interesting at the time. But this? This was brutal. Inhumane. What memories was he burning now to fuel this rampage? What precious moments with Katrina was he feeding to the darkness to clear this path? He had already lost their beginning.
Now, it seemed, he was sacrificing the middle and the end. He was moving faster now, a frantic energy about him. His muttering grew louder, less distinct. It was a torrent of words, fragments of a life being dismantled. Sunlight on the water, the small boat. So cold, but still we laughed. A section of the ceiling, a hanging dagger of stone, dissolved into nothing. The scent of wildflowers after the rain. she laughed.
I remember she... His voice trailed off, his brow furrowed for a moment in confusion before his focus returned to the rockfall. He didn't seem to be choosing which memories to sacrifice. It was as if the magic was simply taking what it needed, ripping pieces from him at random, and he was either powerless to stop it or worse, didn't care. He was a man with nothing left to lose, and it had made him terrifying.
Dala took a cautious step forward, her boots crunching on the newly settled gravel. Prosper. He didn't turn. His attention was on a twisted mess of fallen rock and shattered stone that formed the bulk of the remaining blockage. It was a solid wall of debris, dozens of feet high. Prosper, maybe you should rest. Her voice was small in the vast emptiness of the tunnel. He raised his other hand, both palms now facing the rubble.
The air grew still, the ever-present draught through the tunnel ceasing. The light from their single torch seemed to dim, stretched thin by the oppressive silence. The red dress! She wore the red dress. Her father smiled. His voice cracked, a sliver of anguish cutting through the monotone. Dala couldn't watch anymore. This wasn't a wizard clearing a path. It was a man committing suicide, one memory at a time. She walked up behind him, her steps slow and deliberate on the unsteady ground.
Prosper, that's enough. She reached out and put a hand on his arm. His skin was cold, clammy, but it was his reaction that made her snatch her hand back as if burned. He didn't turn his head. He didn't flinch. His entire body went rigid, and the air crackled with a power that made the Herondala's arms stand on end. He turned slowly, mechanically, until his eyes met hers. They were empty, Blank voids. There was no recognition in them, no anger, no grief.
There was only the spell, a terrifying focus that was utterly devoid of the man she knew. The look pinned her in place. It wasn't a threat. It was worse. It was the look of a storm that would destroy everything in its path, not out of malice, but because that is simply what it did. She saw then that the man she knew was already gone, lost somewhere inside the hurricane of his own magic. She backed away slowly. He turned his attention back to the wall of stone, and then he unleashed everything.
It was not the quiet vanishing of before. The entire mass of rubble, tons of rock and cracked stone, lifted a few inches from the ground. It groaned, a deep, earth-shattering sound of protest. Dust poured from a thousand cracks. The torchlight flickered wildly. Prosper's arms trembled from the strain, his whispers now a steady, incoherent stream of words. He was shouting them, screaming them into the dark, a litany of lost moments. He gave a final, desperate cry and threw his hands forward.
The great mass of rubble didn't fly. It didn't explode. It simply folded. For a split second, the entire wall of stone and rock seemed to collapse inward on itself, shimmering like a mirage. Then, with a deafening implosion of silent air, it was gone. The cavern shuddered, not from an impact, but from the sheer wrongness of so much matter ceasing to be. A violent gust of wind tore back down the tunnel, a vacuum desperate to be filled.
Dala threw an arm over her face, her mind reeling not with the power of the spell, but with a single terrifying question. Where did all that stone go? Stretching out beyond the flickering light of the torch, the road ahead was clear, as if it had never been blocked at all. The ancient paved stones stretched forward into the darkness, pristine and untouched. Prosper stood for a moment, swaying. His arms fell to his sides.
He crumpled to his knees, then fell forward onto the newly cleared road, his body limp. Dala rushed to his side, her fear replaced by a hollow-hearted pity. She knelt and gently rolled him over. His face was slack, his eyes open, but seeing nothing. She put a hand on his cheek. It was still cold. Prosper, can you hear me? His eyes slowly focused, blinking as if seeing the world for the very first time. He looked at the cleared road, then at the high cavern ceiling, and then, finally, at her.
There was nothing behind his gaze, no memory, no history, only a profound and terrible emptiness. He frowned, a look of simple, childlike confusion on his face. Who are you? He was a husk, a man hollowed out and left empty. Dala helped him to his feet, his movements clumsy and uncertain, like a newborn foals.
His eyes, which had burned with such terrifying power moments before, were now vacant, listlessly taking in the cleared tunnel, the distant torchlight, the concerned face of the woman supporting him. There was no recognition, no memory of the wife he had just lost or the mountain he had just moved. We need to go. Her voice echoed in the sudden profound silence of the cavern. Mailer is waiting for us. The name didn't register. He simply blinked, a slow, languid motion. Mailer.
The word was an alien sound on his tongue. He knew what a name was, but this one held no meaning, no connection. It was just a collection of noises. The journey back down Dragon Road was a slow, agonizing education in the true cost of magic. At first, Dala thought the spell had taken everything. He walked with a shuffling gait, his hand often trailing along the cavern wall as if for guidance. He stumbled over the smallest of pebbles on the smooth, paved road. He was a blank slate.
Then came the first crack in that theory. As they passed one of the sconces Prosper had lit on their way in, its magical light still burning brightly, he paused. That's a continuous illumination spell. The lattice frame contains it. Very efficient. Dala stopped, her heart skipping a beat. You remember that? He looked from the sconce to her, a flicker of confusion in his eyes. Remember what? It's a simple piece of craft. Any apprentice would know it.
He knew the spell. He knew its function, its name. But he had no memory of casting it himself. It was as if he'd read it in a book, a piece of trivia disconnected from any personal experience. The pattern repeated itself, each instance a fresh wave of horror for Dala. He knew he was in the Dragon's Teeth Mountains. He had even retained some emotional connection to memories, for when he casually mentioned the road they were on, his voice took a dark turn.
This is the road to Ness, the home to evil wizards and their vile lackeys. He knew his own name was Prosper, but when Dala, her voice trembling, finally worked up the courage to ask the question she'd been dreading, his response was a chilling affirmation of what he'd lost. Do you remember Katrina? He looked at her, his head tilted slightly. Should I? There was no pain in his eyes, no flicker of a lost love, just a placid, empty curiosity.
The spell hadn't just taken the memory of his wife, it had taken the hole her absence should have left behind. He was a puzzle with pieces missing, and he wasn't even aware of the gaps. That, Dala realized, was the cruelest part of the curse. He couldn't even mourn what he couldn't remember. He knew he was a wizard, but he couldn't recall how he'd learned a single spell. When Dala mentioned the levitation spell which saved them, he nodded and simply said, The essence of the feather.
But he had no memory of studying it. He was a library of facts with the soul ripped out. All the knowledge remained, but the emotions, the connections, the life that had been lived alongside that knowledge, all of it was gone. He was a man made of charcoal sketches, the vibrant color of his life erased. Dala found herself becoming his caretaker, his guide back to a world he only partially remembered.
As his mind rushed to fill or cover with scar tissue, the gaps left behind, it made him aimless and without focus. She would point out a loose stone on the path. She would remind him to drink water from the deerskin pouch. She would wake him when he fell asleep walking. He followed her instructions with a docile obedience, his trust absolute and immediate. Why wouldn't it be? He had no memory of betrayal, no reason to fear a helping hand.
The walk across the ash fields was a silent one. The blighted land seemed a fitting reflection of the emptiness walking beside her. He seemed to understand what the fields were, describing them as the result of a catastrophic failure due to poor agricultural practices. He felt nothing about them. They saw the Thieves' Tower long before they reached it. It rose from the base of the mountain, a black spear aimed at the sky, a structure that was both a part of the mountain and a defiance of it.
Dala felt a surge of relief, of homecoming. This was where Mela was. This was safety. She looked at Prosper, expecting to see a similar awe, or at least confusion at the massive, hidden structure. He had stopped walking and was staring up at it, his head tilted back. The vacant look was gone from his eyes. In its place was a spark of something she hadn't seen since before he'd cleared the road.
Recognition. A slow smile spread across his face, but it wasn't the warm smile she'd seen him give Katrina. It was a smile of ancient knowledge, of a secret long kept. He turned to her, his eyes focused and clear. Ah, he said, his voice full of a strange, quiet confidence. The Tower of the Wizards. I know it well. Music. We'll be right back. The Podcast Alchemy Production.