Tundra

The worst thing Erasmus ever did? Not by far. The worst thing I ever did? Let me tell you what that was. Not all of us can be immortals playing immortal games. Some of us are or were just men.

Back at Blackmouth, as an Apprentice, I used to be liable to be bullied. It wasn’t a big child that bullied me, no, but rather quite the opposite. Master Ulrik picked favourites, and in my year his favourite was a little girl named Yasmin. Daily, she would find ways to harass me, taunting and teasing, and stealing my property. I had freckles and buck teeth, and she made sure that every other Apprentice knew it, as well as ensuring that they also knew the state of the family came from. Yasmin alone made sure that I never had any friends. My parents were poor, and I had a devotion to books. I never stood a chance.

Then, one day it all came to an end. She had set a chasing spell on me, as usual, and it knocked me over so that my knees beneath my robe were scuffed and bleeding. My staff, which I was always mending or replacing on her behalf, was snapped in two. That did it. I went wild with four years of repressed frustration, and the next thing we knew, I had knocked her four front teeth out. They never grew back. Not even magic could coax them.

Just like that, I was kicked out of Blackmouth. You can imagine my surprise years later when another ex-Blackmouth Apprentice came to summon me. It was almost something orchestrated, something arranged by players in a far larger game than mine. Whoever had sent her, the poor child in rags, it was almost an immortal, omnipotent decision to have made.