Algernon Black || The Rise of a God ||

(Chapter 107) Fledgling Lovers

Marve toiled away at the marble maker in his workshop. It was a massive complex machine, bigger and heavier than a cow, with lots of moving parts that required daily maintenance. When he worked, he wore a coal-colored pirate's hat, bejeweled with five of his marbles in the rim that released a soft light around him so he could see into his machine. He also strapped a glove to his right hand that gave him an extra thumb on the empty space next to his pinky. The fake digit was carved out of a white aspen wood with one of his marbles fashioned at the joint, which allowed him to easily bend it with his magic. Currently, it held the screwdriver that he just finished using to unfasten the bolts to the mainframe. And while he had just taken out one of the main gears to oil it, he noticed a lurking guest peering on.

"So how is my brother doing?" Marve asked Selice, who wasn't deliberately hiding but standing in silence while she studied the machine from a spot she thought wouldn't bother him. "Still unwavering, boring, and serious?"

"I'd say focused and responsible," Selice replied, and now exposed came closer to inspect his tinkering more clearly.

"Yeah, he's always been like that," Marve said, scrubbing oil off his hands with a rag. "It more than anything is what kept us alive all those years fighting those pointless wars."

Selice gazed at him sideways. "Devane never mentioned anything about that." Though she knew Devane had the fearsome presence of a killer, as far as she knew he never followed through on it.

Marve smiled, resetting the greased gear. "He's always been like that too. Not one for talking much." He smiled, revisiting the past memories, which was the only place he could see his brother for the last decade. "But I am." He added as Selice felt there was a story coming on.

"I was too young to remember where it was, we were born or who too, but we were sold as a set by our parents to some Surveyors who were looking to teach us enough magic to sell to some king who needed practitioners in his army. I don't blame our parents though. They had nothing and we had more siblings than I could count at the time that they needed to feed. If they kept us, we probably would have just starved to death anyway." Selice examined the unnaturally tall stature of Marve that she'd only seen match by his brother. She would've never assumed there was a time either lacked the substances needed to grow.

"They took us to some dump of a training camp and threw us in with any of the other children they managed to scavenge. There they forced us to learn magic and by the gods it was brutal." Marve sighed, growing exhausted just at the thought of those grueling years of merciless training. "They never let up. Sunrise to sunset we would be forced to learn magic, and if you didn't learn it quick enough, you got destroyed by it." Marve tilted his hat up and brushed away long brown hair fading to amber roots. His brother had the opposite ombre effect on his hair but kept it too short to be seen. Veins burned black near his temple could only be seen as he brushed his hair aside. "Of course, when you're forced to learn magic that fast you get some accidents here or there. But I was one of the lucky ones, no matter how much I fried my body my brain stayed good. Devane used to say that's because I don't have any." Marve laughed at the memory of a lifetime ago. "I got a good way with magic too, enough to keep myself alive in those countless wars. Well, that and because I had my brother." The side of Marve's mouth lifted in a smirk, but Selice noticed his eyes stayed sad. "That was the only difference at the end of the day that kept us alive while we watched all our friends die." He paused, recalling all and every one of their faces, and their corpses. "No matter what, I had his back and he had mine. Got us a fancy nickname too. The hell twins, they would say. I think we got it after one of us got too close to dying in a battle and the other lost their mind with rage. I still don't know if I had been the one close to death, or if it was the other way around. But I guess that's why they say furry blinds you."