Blood-Mage Hunters

Cyrus and Lucius

Cyrus's first memory from his childhood was of his mother's tearstained face as she was being thrown out from the old, dirty apartment complex in which they were living. She was holding little Cyrus tightly in her arms, the voice of the owner ringing loudly through the cold, dark night. "Get outta here you cheap whore!" he yelled after her, making the tired woman scurry away faster, holding an almost empty bag that contained all of their belongings with one hand while she held Cyrus against her chest with the other.

Cyrus's childhood was mostly composed of those kinds of memories. Dirty rooms, people yelling, barely having any food, his mother crying, living on the streets, getting kicked out again and again, stealing, getting into fights.

He loved his mother dearly. She was the kind of woman that managed to keep smiling even after going through hell every single day. When they were especially low on food, she would give her portion to Cyrus without even batting an eye, sometimes not eating anything for days on end. She always took up jobs, sometimes working even 20 hours a day, just to make enough money to keep living day by day.

As for his father, Cyrus never met him, thankfully (for his father). In her teenage years, his mother fell deeply in love with a noble man. He was gentle and loving, promising that he didn't care about her social status or her poverty, saying that he would make her his bride. And she truly believed him. Soon after, she got pregnant. When she told the noble man that she was with his child, he left her. Suicide crossed her mind multiple times, not knowing what else to do. However, every time she thought it would be easier to end it all, she remembered the small human growing inside of her -the human that was created out of her love. Even if she had to raise him alone, she refused to give up. Her baby boy would grow up knowing nothing but love, taking the best parts from both his mother and his father.

And that was how Cyrus was born. Just like she had promised, she always made sure Cyrus was feeling loved, even if they were sleeping on the cold streets or in dirty old rooms with no food. He had never doubted his mother's love for him.

But when he was just five years old, his mother fell with a sickness. In those times, tuberculosis was deadly, so he simply had to watch his beloved mother's life slowly drain out of her. Even on her death bed, she managed to muster a smile for her only son.

After her death, Cyrus roamed the streets as a vagabond, stealing food and money, not caring about his wellbeing at all. Without his mother, he was lost in a word of darkness.

That was until one day, an officer caught him stealing some bread. He brought him to a police station, but the officer wasn't brutal or violent -he was kind towards the little kid. He asked him if he had any family and, when he found out he was an orphan he asked him for his family name and left. He let Cyrus stay in the police station for a week, giving him warm food and making sure he was feeling well. The kid even became friends with the other officers.

Then, after a week, the police officer that had found him returned with two old people: a woman and a man. "I searched up people with your family name and I found them. They are your grandparents," he said.

Don't get it wrong. Even though they were his grandparents and they took him in, they were not good people. They threw out their own daughter, Cyrus's mother, after she got pregnant, leaving her to mend for herself. The only reason they agreed to take Cyrus in was because they were afraid of what other people would say when they found out they had a bastard grandson living on the streets.

Even though he now had a roof over his head and meals everyday, Cyrus's life wasn't any better. His grandparents basically treated him like a slave, making him sleep in the basement on a small, dirty mattress, not allowing him to come out during the day. The only time he exited the basement was during the night, when he was instructed to clean the entire house and do all the chores, so his grandparents wouldn't have to do them during the day.