Favored Zachery

An old story which decided it wanted to rise again. We will see if I keep at it.

The winds whipped through the mountain pass. It hit young Zachery in the face, but his gait did not falter. For months he had walked the winding paths of the central mountains of Seta, his food was running low, it had been weeks since he had seen another human face. He opened his satchel to check on his supplies, a satchel still bearing the seal of the Setan School of Magic. All too few, he thought to himself, and shut the bag.

He came over a crest of the pass and saw a valley below, it was almost as if he was flying, he had an eagle eye few of the little town. It reminded him of the school, flying in cushioned only by the flow of magic energies. He remembered the feeling all too well. Swooping down casting flames upon the buildings, watching the broken form of his master fall from the sky.

He shook his head to remove the memory, but it couldn’t help but linger. The image continued to haunt him, he wished it would fade. He brought his eyes back to the town below. It was a series of houses surrounding a larger structure, fields surrounded the rest of the houses, much of the valley had been cleared to be farmland. It was quaint, with one path into the valley and one path out. Zachery’s course would have to be through it. He set his staff across his shoulders and stretched. Well he couldn’t avoid people forever.

He set his staff to the ground and started the slow descent, the pass was made as passable as it could be by human hands but was still steep. Zachery found himself bracing himself against his staff more and more as he came to the valley floor. It was a few hours of this before he reached level ground.

He sucked in air greedily, he had gotten used to this height, but still the climb had been harder than he expected. He would have thought that the months of his walking would have helped him, but his body had not really been made for hiking. He had been spoiled by his power, using it to ascend great heights with force of will not muscle. Though in the past months he had reclaimed much of that muscle.

Walking silently alone with only his thoughts and the endless winds of the mountains had done much to quiet his mind. At first he walked with the intensity of a man leaving a burning building, closer to the truth than he’d like. After a time he let the anger, fear, and other negative feelings leave him. Only once he had reached the height and could see the world around him did he finally find a moment of peace. Glancing around the alpine forests, which surrounded the central mountain range that protected the Mage King’s mountain, he was able to see how small he was compared to the world. His failure was something he could cope with then. One drop in an ocean of broken dreams.

His Masters had placed many of their dreams into Zachery. dreams of peace and prosperity, dreams of strength and light. Zachery, however, couldn’t deliver, his failure monumental.

Jed had been right to distrust Zachery.

The sun had reached its zenith, and still no movement from the town. No one coming to the well in the middle for water, no one tending the fields. Maybe this town had been abandoned like so many others, unable to beat back the tide of corruption seizing most of the land. If that was the case Zachery had to be on his guard.

Glancing around though, he did not sense any great danger. He wondered too how he would defend himself against it even if it did appear. Without breaking his vow to never use his powers again, he had no way to fight back the creatures of the darkness. Why fight he thought, he was only one man in the face of a tide. If he did encounter a demon he would run. His mind made up he made his way to the well, a lone figure in his long brown woolen cloak. He leaned his staff on the well, shoved back his hood revealing his shaggy brown hair and a growth of a patchy beard on his face. He pulled up the bucket and dipped his hands into it bringing the water to his lips