Chapter One #3
Agitated, he turned his scowl on the rest of his lair.
His mouth twisted at the clutter. When he’d first moved in, the intention had been to keep it minimalist throughout.
The natural cave was deep enough to accommodate a spacious home, with a high domed ceiling and antechambers he’d repurposed as a walk-in wardrobe and bathroom respectively.
A small group of labourers had been threatened into bringing the cave up to the living standards his status as Ranragh’s resident wrongdoer demanded.
Wooden beams for extra support; handsome black and white tiles for the floor, which created a pleasingly ominous thump under his favourite boots.
He’d even forced masons to painstakingly chip a porthole window so he could enjoy some natural light.
Sleek monochrome decor: That had been the plan. “Modern villain,” he’d thought to call it. But it wasn’t long before his innate
messiness began to bleed through. Sometimes literally, as he’d recently been trying out a new hobby (pickling thumbs).
Now, his possessions were scattered across any available space. Wanted posters he had saved for their flattering depictions
of his bone structure were affixed to the walls, alongside his own abstract paintings from his “misunderstood creative” phase.
His living space had escaped the worst of his tendency to drop items as his mood took him, but the bedroom floor had developed
a lumpy carpet of discarded clothes with shades of black and grey heaped over the occasional flash of ludicrously bright pink
or yellow. The burnished blade of a dagger glinted from beneath a discarded sock, awaiting the chance to bite into an unsuspecting
toe. Hundreds of tiny beads lurked in the tufts of his sheepskin rug, casualties of his embroidery attempts.
He needed to tidy up. The thought was abhorrent. Cyrus turned on his heel with a huff. A distraction was required, but he
would not find the answer here.
As usual, he ended up in his vegetable patch, tucked out of sight along the narrow path that led to his door and meandered around the curve of the mountain.
It was much neater than inside the lair: meticulous rectangles of soil lining four raised beds set around a fifth bed in the centre, where bamboo canes coaxed up a crop of cucumbers.
The scents of rosemary and mint hung in the air, undercut by the pungency of garlic growing further down the slope.
Gardening soothed him, as it so often did. The restless thrum of his thoughts settled into something more manageable as Cyrus
tended to the spinach and pulled up some spring cabbage, piling the leafy greens in the wicker basket he kept for harvesting
his produce. A curious sprite, no bigger than his thumb, alighted on the back of his hand as he checked on the carrots beginning
to nose at the earth, a blur of pale lilac skin and iridescent wings until it settled on his wrist. Sprites weren’t interested
in eating his vegetables—they seemed to spend much of their time guzzling tree sap or whatever sweet substance they could
lay their tiny hands on—but unfortunately they were interested in Cyrus himself. He shook the creature off his hand in annoyance and straightened up, gritting his teeth against
the pull in his back.
He turned to survey his kingdom. Everything in order amongst his vegetables, as it should be, and the flowers dotted around
the path looked bright and healthy. The creeping buttercup and honeysuckle twining around the entrance to his lair would benefit
from a spot of tidying, though. The honeysuckle had grown too bold, making an ambitious bid to stretch out over his doorway.
Cyrus concentrated on it, closing his eyes and calling his magic to him.
His skin tingled as his power stirred within, almost ticklish, as though the magic was crawling out of his bones.
Warmth built up behind his eyes, a familiar signal that the usual grey of his irises was shifting to a vivid purple.
Fixing his attention on the plant, he felt the honeysuckle yield to his will, timidly retreating from the door and reshaping itself obediently around the frame instead.
Satisfied, he opened his eyes. He glanced around, but the other plants hadn’t overgrown their boundaries. His magic still
brimmed under the surface of his skin, restless.
The thing was, Cyrus couldn’t really call earthquakes.
Nobody could ever know. This magic—soft magic, plant magic, magic that would have marked him out as a child of Spring in the old days—wasn’t the kind that could ever be associated with a wrongdoer like him.
No, if a wrongdoer had magic, it needed to be formidable. There was a wrongdoer down in the southlands who could rain hellfire.
There was another in Athaca’s capital, Durov, who could whip storm clouds into a frenzy, complete with thunder and lightning.
It used to be accepted that magic was passed down by the four gods of old, each of whom had given birth to a different season.
Summer’s children might be born with the power to manipulate light and heat, as though they could call the sun right down
from the sky. Perhaps magic originating under Winter’s rule could manipulate water and bring about frosts, whilst offspring
of Autumn might find themselves capable of inducing darkness or withering away at something once living. That would be a power more befitting of a wrongdoer, but alas. He had not been so fortunate. He was stuck with Spring magic, and all the delicacy that came with it.
At least the old beliefs hadn’t stood the test of time. Magic was rare—always had been—but sometimes a power emerged that
did not seem to align with any of the four gods, no matter how people tried to rationalise it. In days gone by, those with
such gifts were forced to hide in fear that their existence would be deemed an aberration. But as Athaca’s cities grew and
trade expanded, whispers behind cupped hands turned to gossip travelling the island’s networks for timber and clothing and
food. There were simply too many magic users with abilities that couldn’t be explained. People began to question the old beliefs,
and over time, those beliefs faded. These days, bored indifference had replaced the riots of decades gone by, which was a
shame. Cyrus would have enjoyed the looting.
But bored indifference probably wouldn’t last if people got wind of an allegedly terrifying wrongdoer with gentle, nurturing
plant magic. Other than to his own family, Cyrus had shown precisely one person his true gift—a child close to his age at
the time, a boy with a shock of black hair and bright, smiling eyes who had stared down into Cyrus’s palm as he held his breath
and coaxed the soft petals of a daisy into full bloom. The boy had looked at the flower, looked at Cyrus, and the snort of
laughter had taken him by surprise.
Cyrus didn’t like surprises. He didn’t like being laughed at either. But it was fine, because the boy hadn’t laughed when he was tied to a rickety little sailboat and pushed out to sea before Cyrus went home for his dinner. So they were even, really.
Young as he was back then, that day gave way to a realisation: Nobody was going to fear a wrongdoer whose big bad magical
power was to make flowers grow.
The Eborre earthquake had been sheer luck. Cyrus had still been a student at the Wrongdoers’ Guild at the time, where young
villains learned the ropes in classes designed to directly defy those at the Champions’ Federation. Where the Federation’s
academy taught its starry-eyed youths “How to Be a Hero” or “For Altruism: How to Put Others First,” the Guild helped young
wrongdoers hone their skills through “How to Be an Arsehole” or “For Yourself: How to Screw Other People Over.” He’d begun
his training suppressing his powers and pretending to be magicless. It was easier that way, and it wasn’t like he was alone.
There were plenty of wrongdoers and champions without magic, even if those born with powers did seem to drift into either
camp for better or worse.
Then: the Eborre earthquake. He hadn’t planned to claim it. Cyrus had found himself in a sticky situation with a young champion
on the outskirts of the great northern city. He’d been losing the fight, which came as a shock to him, because he was renowned
for his prowess with his daggers in “Slice Up Your Enemies” workshops.
The champion had backed him up against the forest bordering Eborre’s eastern flank, where a sizable crowd had gathered to watch.
Panic had started to surface with every relentless swing of his opponent’s club.
His tight control over his magic slipped.
The forest heard his instinctive cry for help and his eyes flared bright purple, like the first violet he’d coaxed to life as a child.
But before the trees could do anything, the earthquake happened. Cyrus was left standing on trembling ground with ferocious
glowing eyes and the crackle of magic in the air. There had been screaming, a lot of it, and the champion cried, “You did
this! Earthshaker!” before a chunk of the city wall collapsed onto his head, and that was that.
Far be it from Cyrus to miss an opportunity. To his peers at the Guild (not friends; wrongdoers didn’t have friends) he claimed
to be a late bloomer. These days, when an earthquake occurred, Cyrus simply maintained that something had angered him. Athaca
was prone to the odd rumble; nothing like the great quake that had taken half of Eborre down, but enough. It had proven surprisingly
easy to feign.
Nobody knew the truth of his powers now, only his parents, and as far as they were concerned, Cyrus was a professional florist
who had moved across Athaca in search of better weather. They rarely saw him, and they had no reason to associate their green-fingered
son with the dread Earthshaker they might read about upon occasion in Athaca News. Those scribbled depictions in the news parchments never did him justice anyway.