Wic dropped the heavy boar on the old table. Today was one good day. The equipment he ordered in town were all ready. He had finally found a reason to go on. Something inside him was beating again

As he dropped the animal, he cast the blood off his shoes and feet. The liquid was all condensed into a ball, which was left flying around him. He opened the belly of the boar and removed its blood in the same way.

Casting was one of those things that gets harder the further you go into it, Wic thought. At first, it is really easy, natural, like walking. It has been done, unconsciously by every race of man, since the War of Gods. Everyone has experienced it, like that one time when your brother mysteriously trips into a pile of mud after eating your food.

It was, basically, extending one's will against the will of the universe, and the universe was surprisingly weak-willed. As long as you don't try to do something too outrageous, or try to extend your will outside of your core's range, it would concede.

But as casting turns into a science, an art, it gets hard. The universe may be weak, but it is surprisingly stubborn. If it is to be distorted, it has to be distorted in the right way, by the right hand. If you are trying to do something complicated, like using someone's blood as your own source of energy, you have to also understand the process. Casting was a thing like that.

And for a long time, casting was also the only thing Wic had left to do.

At age 13, almost every adult in his family was killed. When you live in Carmesi, death by killing was the natural outcome of your life. The Syngenia got too powerful, every other family of mercenary-mages hated them and their "stupid Blood Forest". After a particularly lively dinner, his father had insulted the soup made by the Headmaster of the House of Iron, and that was it. Conspiracies were made, betrayals enacted, heads rolled and kids orphaned. His cousins, who were older, left to earn money in the wars and were never seen again. Another common occurrence.  

After killing all the adults in the family, the Wic never came for the House. The Blood Hill protected itself, it was more trouble than it was worth for a couple of kids. Wic was left alone and the only thing he could do was cast.

The forest around was a slave to the House and provided him with food, water, and blood. He studied and practiced until he collapsed, every day. He read all the books and secrets on the old House a thousand times, festering his hatred, sadness, and loneliness, just so he could become strong enough to get his revenge, get just a bit of justice. It wasn't fair, it really wasn't fair.

8 years after the death of his parents he came out of the Blood Hill for the first time. He would destroy the House of Iron, the ones that took everything away from them. 

In truth, his tale of revenge never came to be. 2 years after the massacre of the Syngenia, the House of Iron (which became the most powerful family of Carmesi) had badmouthed the soup of another family. The Snakes of Shakam poisoned the air around the family's food stock, while the Menaci family exploded their keep and burned their fields. Once again, heads rolled and kids were orphaned, the Carmesi way.

After 8 years, Carmesi had changed a lot, but also not changed at all. Wic cried and cried, but only the old walls, now collapsing under the weight of the uncontrolled vein-like plants of the Blood Forest, could hear him.

He spent a year like that. Emptying the old reserves of moonwine on the house. Smoking what he could find. Lamenting to the walls, to plants, and to the old busts of his parents on the porch, now pulsing with veins.  

That is, until he heard the walls crying back. A sound he had read about before. The lament of Lumea.