Dead Parents Omake





I was staring at my mother the moment the ax split her skull open. I couldn’t even look away. Blood got in my eyes, but I was too paralyzed to blink, it just smeared the whole image instead, making it fade away like a dream.



I don’t know why they hate witches, why they hate necromancy, soul magic. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called, they don’t make any real distinction. I don’t really care why they hate it either, at this point, reasoning has long since left the issue. It’s become a matter of old emotions and stereotypes for everybody.





We lived on the outskirts of the village, not hurting anyone, not bothering anyone. A quiet life, an idyllic life, the kind you see in those stupid story books marketed to city children. Maybe that’s just the nostalgia talking.



Looking back on it, I think the other people in the area already feared us, there are too few visitors, too few family friends or young children coming over on play dates. It was always just the three of us. Alone.



Never did see much of my father, except when he’d come home late at night, shove off his muddy boots and collapse in exhaustion. Kind of an odd pairing, the two of them, a woman so magical with a man so mundane. Maybe that was the point, trying to find some magic in his life, trying to find some stability in hers. On the other hand, I’ve always suspected that my bloodline actually came from my father, so it could have been for other reasons.



My mother seems to have gone to great lengths to prepare me for whatever I might have to face. I even remember her taking me to find and harvest a fresh dirge moth chrysalis for the potions she fed me. I found out later that it’s what opened my senses to the realm of souls. Didn’t stop her from making me do soul-sight meditations though.



Even now, I can’t quite tell if she was just a proud and happy young mother that wanted what was best for her son, or if she was trying to groom me for some greater purpose. I don’t suppose it really matters any more, even if I was only born to fulfill some plan, it wouldn’t affect my feelings for my parents at this point, too much time has passed.





It was probably also those excursions to collect resources that drew the unwanted attention that ended their lives.



With soul magic largely banned the way it is, most of the more common locations to find the things needed for it are watched, when they’re even available. A book being bought here, a plant harvested there, for those with the divination skill to put together the pieces and track them back, it would have all seemed fairly obvious.



It wasn’t a priest that brought them, nothing so cliché. It was a Cyorian investigator, a detective, an officer of the law. Oh, sure, he started off talking about how he would just fine her for illegal practices and confiscate the illicit goods, and he may have gone away without any obvious ill intent.



I know better though, I saw him in the shadows, directing the crowd, while I was hidden under my mother’s cooling corpse. A big smirk on his face, sign of a job well done.





So I survived. I collected what didn’t burn and I grabbed what was hidden away in caches. Then I headed for the capital, to apply to the academy. Because what really killed my family wasn’t old hatreds, or scared villagers or anything like that, it was that they got caught. The easiest way to not get caught is to learn everything about how people get caught in the first place.



That means magic.