Rays of sun streamed through glass and settled on the water which Vereshin poured into a bowl, his wrists moving the jug as gradually as evening arrived. From outside the room where he worked, thunder rolled through the pews and reverberated off the walls of the cathedral, alerting him to a storm on the horizon. As the water rose, he made a note in his mind to collect his subject with haste and return to the cathedral before the rain fell at it's hardest. He filled the bowl half-way and set the jug aside. Another clap of thunder pulled his attention towards the door, which he closed, before returning to the bench.
From the side of the bench, Vereshin grabbed a pouch and felt the weight of the gold inside as he held it over the bowl. He undid the string and selected a coin, which he placed in the bowl. An array of colours from the stained glass window rolled over the shape of the coins as Vereshin repeated the process. All of the coins sat on the bottom of the bowl, their metallic surface receiving the sunlight as it disappeared behind the cathedral. Vereshin twiddled his fingers in the air and looked around for his knife, only to look down and see it hanging from his belt, exactly where he had left it.
Detaching the ceremonial knife from his belt, Vereshin unsheathed the blade and held it above the bowl, fixated on the colours emanated by the stained glass as they flashed against the steel. He turned the knife around and watched them shift in hue, only to hear the rain pick up and return to his work. He opened his hand wide and held it above the bowl with his fingers stretched apart. The knife sent a chill through his skin as the edge collided with his palm. The sunlight reflecting in the surface of the coins disappeared behind clouds, only to illuminate for less than a second as lightning split the sky.
With the knife held firmly in his grip, Vereshin dragged the edge through his palm. His features remained still as pain ran through his hand, heated his cheeks and caused his spine to shudder. The end of the knife drew a neat line across the inside of his hand, tearing his flesh and releasing blood into the bowl. As he pulled the knife away, Vereshin coiled his fingers only to partially to quicken the flow of the blood and avoid smearing the remainder of his palm. He watched the transparent water fill with colour and parted his lips, going over the runes for the spell in his mind, before he began to sing.
Vereshin delivered the properties of the spell through an incantation, which drew the blood into the coins and fused them with a fragment of his soul. The verses dropped from his mouth and into the water, where they enhanced the part of soul carried through the blood and directed it to the coins. Using the blood as a focal point, the coins attached themselves to Vereshin. The part of his soul which they carried begged to return to him and drew anybody who touched the foci into his midst. He completed the spell and watched the blood disappear as the coins sucked it in. Satisfied, he picked the coins out the water and dried them with a rag, then placed them back into the pouch.
Without giving the wound too much time to dry, Vereshin grabbed a bottle of healing serum and a clean rag from across the bench. He soaked the rag with the serum and wrapped it tightly around his hand. He swallowed, braving the sting as he layered the rag with a longer bandage. After securing the bandage around his hand, he pulled on a pair of leather gloves to keep it hidden from suspicious eyes. He unhooked the sheath from his belt since he would not be using the knife until he returned and replaced it with the pouch of coins. He pulled the hood of his mantle over his head, then rose to his feet and left the room.
The thud of the door echoed throughout the main hall of the cathedral and frightened pigeons from their nests in the spire. A flurry of wings beat against the air as Vereshin emerged from the narrow corridor behind the altar. Between his candles and ceremonial tools, a small wooden casket sat mounted on the stone altar, bestowed upon him by the mother of the young boy who rested inside. As he slunk around the front of the altar, Vereshin spared a moment to peer over the edge of the casket, where he saw the dead teenager, his eyes still wide open.
"Don't worry, I'll have you a new soul in no time." Craning his neck over the edge of the casket, Vereshin spoke to the corpse with the weight of a genuine promise. He smiled to himself, eagerly awaiting the results of his ritual, then turned around and walked between the pews. He shoved a large key into the iron lock of the doors and hauled them open, releasing a gust, thick with mist, which swept up his mantle. After locking the door behind him, he walked outside of the cathedral and down the cobblestone path.
Angels made of stone bid Vereshin farewell as he passed through the iron gates. He wrapped his mantle around his arms and recoiled beneath their pristine features, almost as though they were warning him against practicing his unholy craft in their place of worship. The line of his mouth drooped as he skulked away from the angels, telling them with his resentful gaze that he determined to craft a little angel of his own once he had gathered his intended subject. The rain blew in the direction of his stride, pressing into his back as he walked across the bridge which separated the countryside from the village.
By the time Vereshin arrived in town, the sun been replaced by a backdrop of clouds. Light stretched through their layers, telling him afternoon still hung over the settlement. With little time to spend before night fell, he picked up his pace and remained on alert for the young boy whom he had been stalking for days. Townsfolk scanned him down, their mistrust evident in their furrowed brows and the way in which they avoided him with their gait. Pulling his hood further over his head, Vereshin paid them no heed and experienced a strange kinship with the young thief whom he stalked as another wayward delinquent on the edge of any civilized structure.
"Stop thief!" A woman cried to the side of Vereshin and pulled his attention to the center of the street. She fumbled through her surcoat for any sign of her missing purse, all the while waving a finger at a young boy who had disappeared into an alleyway. The dark mage stood still and ignored the woman who flailed in her hysteria, his eyes fixated on the shadow of the boy who had made off with her purse.
"Don't just stand there, catch him!" The woman shouted again, this time directly at Vereshin. He turned around and pointed a finger towards his chest, his eyebrows creased in bewilderment as he wondered whether or not she had been referring to him, or more to the question, why.
"Who, me?" With his finger still pressed against his chest, Vereshin pointed to himself and questioned the woman in an exaggerated voice. "Do I look like a bloody ranger?" He asked, his voice heavy with confusion. The woman placed her hands on her hips and refused to drag on the conversation until somebody recovered her purse. Vereshin shrugged. In any case, he had been looking for the boy and opted to use the situation to his advantage. Turning away from the woman, he slunk into the shadows of the alleyway, where the boy had darted to the other side.
"Come out of there, son." Vereshin demanded in a tone both tempered and firm. He stood between the corners of each building and watched the shape of the boys shadow shift beneath the flashes of lightning as he darted from one side of the wall to the other, looking around for a way out. After a moment of pause, the dark mage strode forward, his black attire melding with the shadows and doing no favor to the harmless image he sought to maintain. He stopped in his tracks and stared at the boy, the line of his mouth sliding downwards.
"Look what I've got." Vereshin offered him a wide smile and reached for the pouch hanging from his belt. He untied the string and shook the coins around, luring the stomach of the teenager to the sound of a proper meal, possibly a room in an inn as well. A pause followed as Vereshin waited for the boy to emerge from the shadows. Rain pounded the cobblestone between them and soaked the skinny teenager, the mage watching him beneath the hood which shrouded his depraved intent. "It's not easy living outside of the law." He sighed, weighing the pouch up and down on his hand.
"Everybody thinks you're up to no good, when really you just have a different idea of what "good" is." The coins jingled beneath the impact of the rain as Vereshin attempted to reach out to the boy. He retracted his hands, drawing the pouch closer to his person in order to pull the boy's attention towards him. "Take you, for example. You didn't steal that lady's purse because you didn't like her, I bet you're just hungry." He wondered aloud and retrieved two coins from inside of the pouch. Versehin did not wait for the boy to respond as he offered him the coins, for he knew that he could not speak. All he needed was for the boy to know where the coins where and that there were more to be found where they had come from.
"Here, this should get you something to eat." As he placed the two coins in the boy's hand, he immediately felt the foci establish the connection between the boy and himself. The fragment of his soul which he had used to enchant the coins grabbed at his form, begging to be let back in. Both of Vereshin's cheeks lifted in a smile as ignored the pulling sensation of the foci. "Now, give the lady back her purse." He ordered and tied the pouch back onto his belt, just loose enough so that it could be easily snatched. Sliding a hand behind the boy's back in a paternal gesture, he gently nudged him out of the alleyway.
Vereshin lead him into the street, where the woman stood with her hands on her hips. A discerned frown dragged her face down the cobblestone as Vereshin gently pushed the back of the boy, urging him to return the purse. Once he did what he had been told, the dark mage tousled his hair and released his hand from his back, letting him know that he could leave. The woman took her purse with a growl and expressed no thanks, to which Vereshin dismissed with a wave of his hand.
"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" He asked the woman rhetorically what could have passed for a threat. She said nothing and stormed away. Turning his head in the opposite direction from where he had come from, Vereshin narrowed his eyes as he watched the boy leave.
The rain picked up and attached itself to Vereshin's mantle, soaking his hood and hammering the stone beneath his feet. He turned around and kept to the side of the street as he made his way back to the bridge. The population became scarce as he left the village behind, the call of the foci in the boy's grasp pulling at his form all the more. Whispers of the townspeople echoed in his ears as the boy walked among them, their voices carried along the sensory connection between them, although Vereshin knew that they did not belong to the boy, whose inability to speak had been what had drawn the dark mage to him in the first place. He looked ahead and saw the bridge which lead him to the front yard of the cathedral.
Slowing the pace of his stride, Vereshin ran a hand along the bridge's wall and looked into the river below. Evening had left the settlement, leaving night in it's wake. Rain gushed into the river and disrupted the chain of the foci which Vereshin used to call the boy to him. As he pulled his hand away from the wall, he ran a palm across his belt and felt around for the pouch of coins. It was gone. His eyes glowed with excitement. A smile rose in his cheeks as he lapped up the signal emitted by the foci. Through the torrents of rain, which disrupted the connection, he heard the footsteps of the boy as the spell took of him and drew him back to Vereshin. He gripped the stone wall with a hand, closing his eyes as he concentrated on the foci. His lips moved in time with the flow of the signal, wrapping the spell around his victim and luring him in with a sweet incantation.
The spell strengthened the longer the boy held the coins and repressed his conscience into the depths of a trance. Vereshin listened to the tapping of his feet through the signal, all the prolonging the spell through his song. The part of his essence contained within the coins moved to rejoin with it's vessel and brought with it a gift. Vereshin dug his nails into the stone as he sang, his focus poured into the spell. He paced his lyrics and waited for his subject to arrive.
Fife
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