Outside the Mirage

#18: Memories of a Mentor

"Alistair!"

Merlyn looked over and saw his friends all sitting together at a campfire. Three of them were his schoolmates and the fourth, the one who had called for him, was his mentor, Bennett. Standing up, Merlyn replied, "Yes?"

"Come, sit with us," Bennett said. "No need to sulk in the corner."

Taking a step, Merlyn felt a little off. What was happening? Where was he?

"Are you alright, Alistair?" Bennett asked. "You look pale."

"This doesn't feel right," Merlyn said. "Where are we?"

Bennett laughed. "We're at Camp Hillside. We've gone here for the past few years."

"I haven't been to Camp Hillside since I was a teenager," Merlyn muttered.

A cold hand landed on his shoulder. "Hate to break it to you, kid, but you are a teenager," the deep voice of Sabine told him. Merlyn looked over to see his old friend. It had been years since Merlyn had seen Sabine, but he knew that the Sabine he was currently looking at was too young. The scars that defined his gruff friend were missing, his hair was too short and he was smiling.

"I'm not a teenager," Merlyn insisted.

"Alistair's gone off the deep end," John chuckled. Merlyn looked at John now, who also looked far too young, still carrying the weight he would end up dropping in college. "Is he alright, Master Bennett?"

Bennett frowned and looked at Merlyn. "I think he's fine. Perhaps the Veil is doing something to his mind."

"My mind?"

"The Veil of Magics is a strange and powerful force," Bennett explained with a soft smile. "It has its own will, and sometimes it tries to tell us things we don't necessarily understand."

"Poor Alistair doesn't understand much," Callum chimed in, grinning like an idiot. That made John and Sabine laugh.

"This is from when I was a kid," Merlyn said aloud.

A strange expression crossed Bennett's face. "So, you, from the future, is currently inside the head of you as a child?"

Merlyn looked at Bennett and gave a sigh of relief. "That's what it seems like. You all look so much younger than you did the last time I saw any of you."

"Good to know we grow old," Sabine growled, rolling his eyes.

"If that's true," Bennett said, "then why would the Veil of Magics bring you to this moment?"

"I don't know," Merlyn grumbled. "What were you talking about before I arrived?"

"Something about water?" Callum replied, his soft Irish accent barely audible over the crackling of the fire.

"Water is a strange thing," Bennett explained. "You see, we all know the ways we can cut off a piece of our aura and put it inside of an object. That's how you create a catalyst, something that makes a non-mage a warlock. Not anything too uncommon, of course."

"But you can't do it on an object with a Spell of Wards over it," John mentioned.

"True," Bennett agreed, "and if an object has an aura attached with a Spell of Wards over it, the aura cannot escape that object. That's all very important to what we're going to discuss, because those are the established rules of magic, written by the first wizards and believed to have been true for centuries."

"But it's not true?" Merlyn asked.

Bennett shrugged. "There's something special about one of the most common things on the planet: water. You see, water is unique in that it is one of the very few non-living things that possess a natural Spell of Wards. Even non-mages possess a Spell of Wards, although it is weak enough that an aura could pierce it if it wanted. But water has one of the strongest naturally-occurring Spell of Wards on it. Whether this is by design or just how water is, it exists in all water. Tap water, the oceans, every lake and river, it contains a powerful Spell of Wards."