Taramo awoke to feel a blade in his heart. He thrashed his body only to find it was restrained. He grasped at his mana, finding it sliding through his fingers like sand when his hands trembled with desperation.
Quickly enough consciousness faded from him.
---
Taramo gasped and sat up. The thing he was worried about drifted from his mind like a dream as the hum of the market day turned from a droning to keep him asleep to their constituent parts, mostly talking, some music, a little shouting.
A child shrieked as it chased a dog and he was now fully awake.
"Don't wake me up yet, Tarm." A voice rasped with tiredness that suggested the speaker was past due a morning glass of water.
His breath stopped. For some reason his heart was breaking all over again, but his wife was there, right beside him.
"You all right?" She spoke to him, her squint expecting some prank widened into concern. Then she reached and embraced him. The driftwood holding onto a drowning man.
"I. I. I had the worst nightmare." He confided, "I got all the power I wanted, but lost everything I wanted it for-" His throat closed involuntarily and he simply let himself be in the presence of his dearest Ariel.
---
They had left so late that the inn wanted to charge them for a second night, at first. Being an apprentice mage at the cusp of being recognized as an adept he had many projects finished that would make paying for it trivial.
The innkeep after he saw Taramo decided to waive the fee. He was looking better but had the appearance of someone whose heart was carved out and walking beside him with a genuine optimism.
By the time they actually left the inn Taramo would have been able to walk independently but Ariel insisted on hanging on his arm. "I got you for more than parlor tricks."
They walked the market, making a few purchases after Ariel got a wicker basket an old crone missing four fingers had woven for five times it's worth. Taramo gave it a quick enchantment to lighten the load it would bear, octupling the price Ariel would get if she would ever sell it.
They wandered, gathering some cheeses, breads, and cured ham. Readying their lunch before they had to depart back home.
All was well.
---
Life continued at the pace which felt both frantic and leisurely. Their three children came to be, two daughters and a son. Taramo became a "proper mage" and got a basic understanding of all the different pillars.
His understanding was deeper, somehow it was simple enough for him to comprehend and apply the theory. Some thought him to be deceiving them, pretending to be learning something he had already mastered, but that call faded in relevance as he seemed to be a master of whatever he put his attention towards.
This was his undoing.
---
Taramo was secluded, trying to understand the fundamentals of the soul and the magic that required to use it. Before he saw his own he was surrounded by things made of mana only. Little thoughts given form which begged to be useful. Taramo made suggestions and they were too hasty to form themselves to his whim. He made a great innovation and wisps, the bane of most mages, were found to be useful.
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The problem was of communication. People had foundations of their mind which were impossible to understand completely. Wisps were fundamentally different, though they took imprints of those who formed them. Greedy men would have their wealth hoarded in different floorboards than they first set them. Those whose minds meandered might lose a wisp to find it a decade later taking on tasks from a bunch of commoners for lack of anything else to do.
And Taramo found the thing that would bind them. He saw his own soul and learned how to put a mask on it. Wisps became dedicated workers who would slave away until their essence was utterly spent and Taramo became an archmage.
Ariel was less interested in the high life. There were politics and tea parties that could mean life or death. So she and her children stayed among the common folk, staying near the extended family of Taramo.
They whispered and chuckled over changing their clan name to his first since he was immensely powerful and becoming only stronger. No one would dare to harm them.
Then war called Taramo away. Somewhere on the other side of the world threatened to do what was obviously impossible, but a response was necessary.
Taramo brought an army of ten thousand wisps, each with the strength of a middling mage. The ley lines of that region would take centuries to recover fully.
Then he returned to fire. A dragon had attacked his city. It had slept through his rise and decided that nobody was as skilled to rise so easily.
The Dragon's children swore to obey on their very mana and the ruined corpse of their ancient father.
He lost some of his family. His youngest son had been in the guard. A purely ceremonial position he strove in and became real through force of will and stubbornness to learn. Dragonfire took him.
Some of his family left. A lesser clan decided to actually take Taramo's name when his daughter decided to join them. She became the Matriarch of their clan instantly.
The other daughter followed as a mage, having their choice of the other archmages for a master.
One of them decided they were spurned.
---
"I have lived a long life. I cannot ask for more." Ariel gasped over the sound of life wards holding her life together. She was nearing three hundred years. The curse that the archmage had sent after Taramo was redirected to his wife. Family was off limits.
He'd glassed her entire palace, after letting the servants go. Necromancers tended towards stupidity when it came to choosing targets. They thought life and unlife were the same. Her soul had been sealed and her soul cursed to immortality. To forever see and be unable to act as the world passed her by.
But that wouldn't cure Ariel. The bitch necromancer hadn't even made a counter to the spell since she'd decided that making it curable would make it trivial for Taramo to deal with.
That was true, and the only reason the necromancer was allowed to live was to make a cure if the thing was possible.
That was years ago. And Taramo had difficulties fighting this curse. The thing would burn away Ariel's mana completely when it reached her end.
The old faiths claimed that one's mana was their essence, their soul. True enough for most respects. She feared what would happen, more than most people in palliative care. Taramo had explained it and Ariel had asked to be made to forget. He agreed.
And then. In the last moments where some action could be made, when the mana was a thinnest candle that would be put out in days or hours Taramo had an idea. Something stupid and doomed to fail. But maybe-
He acted with a feeling of being pupetted. As if his desperation made him no longer the chooser. The wisp was more than willing to participate, to become more. The mana, the soul, was extracted. Pulling all life, memory, and purpose from a body that should have been dead for a century even without the curse.
The mana was pulled into the wisp, which was made the follower of this bodiless experience. Both were broken and forced into each other, becoming something that remembered both pasts.
He stole the new wisp away leaving the body, his wife, behind.
---
He jolted awake, his half mended heart thundering. His magic was available now so he grasped all he had available.
They had stolen her away. They refused to help because they might lose complete access to their secrets and the others hid the necromancer. All of them deserved it.
Something attached itself to his mana before he sent out his attack. Instead of going directly from him it was released from the sky, thundering down and shaking the earth. Taramo breathed deeply, refilling a quarter of his mana with unprocessed, raw, mana that burned in his soul.
Then his mind caught up with him. He'd had his vengeance already, though no good came of that. The sharp pain of his heart being unable to pump brought him back and he let Ariwyn settle him onto the bed.
The pain didn't stop even after his heart was mended.
