Shades of the New World

Chapter 5: Facing oppression

The following couple months, Evin spent his time learning the language from the conversations that occurred inside the house. His mother helped him quite a lot, since she would spend most of her free time talking with him about this and that, pointing out objects with her fingers.

After two months, he could already understand most of the words his parents were saying, but decided not to start talking. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how suspicious he looked in the eyes of that mage named Aran.

Aran seemed to be a close friend of his parents, and he would come to his house sometimes for a drink or some other matter.

He learned a few things about his new life from all the conversations with his parents, but nothing that would help him with his magic studies. He wanted to listen to Aran a lot more, even though the man scared Evin to death but just as he was getting the hang of the language, the officials sent Aran to some war with the Southern Islands.

As for some general information, Evin's family lived in Smallwall town, located in the northernmost spot of the Western Kingdom and as far as he heard, there were four major countries in this world: The Northern Tribes, The Western Kingdom, The Eastern Oasis, aka the Varas'hati Empire and the Southern Islands.

Evin's mother was from the Northern Tribes and her full name was Ivelyora Ssatsko, though everyone simply called her Lora. Evin concluded that the relationship between the West and the North was ambiguous at best, due to how others seemed to treat her. Evin couldn't really understand everything that was happening, but Evin heard his parents throwing around words like "citizen grades", and "social levels" quite a lot, but there wasn't a lot for Evin to work with.

There were problems with the other two countries as well. The Southern Islands and the Varas'hati Empire. Most of the dinnertime stories that his father told the family were about the Southerners. As for the Varas'hati Empire, he just seemed to hate the country a bit too passionately.

The Southern Islands were, according to Evin's father, was a nation full of warmongering savage monsters, who didn't have enough land to live in. They constantly waged war against other countries, and it was usually the neighboring Kingdom or the Oasis who took the brunt of their attacks. Evin couldn't really comprehend how a country could perpetually wage war against two countries and still survive in this world. The resources and soldiers that were used up in a war were not a joke. He spectated many battles on Earth, hoping to find someone who will turn into a ghost like himself, so he was not completely oblivious when it came to war related matters.

The other one was the Varas'hati Empire. As the name would suggest, it was supposed to be a powerful country that dominated the continent, but it was actually the weakest and smallest of the four countries. Not only that, the four countries were part of an actual Empire, known as simply, The Empire.

The name that Evin heard most often after coming to this world was the name of the Empire's ruler, The Final Empress. From what he could hear, she was the absolute Overlord of the countries, unmatched by anyone under the heavens. Her single word stood above the united opinion of every individual that lived on the planet, her any order was given precedence over any matter that was happening in the countries. Even the laws of nature and magic would bend to Her Majesty's will. A proper god, as one would say.

Evin saw the legitimacy of the woman's words when he heard that the Empress lived on for at least a millennium, with no signs of aging a single year. This greatly piqued his curiosity since it was a clue to immortality. He hope his parents would talk more about the Empress, but sadly, they would mostly just pray to her, or praise her. He wondered what it would be like if he could live so long, but alive and well. 

Anyway, although she had the full capability and authority to rule the Empire under her rule, the Empress never took interest in anything the mortals under her did. She simply lived in her Black Tower at the center of the continent, only showing herself to the public every decade during the celebration of her eternal rule, also known as the Velvet Procession. This unusual ruling method of hers let the Four countries have absolute freedom to do whatever they wanted.

The countries under Her Majesty's rule were constantly in war with each other, doing everything they could to expand their rule. After Aran left for the war, Theor talked about how the countries used to be more afraid of the Empress, doing everything they could to pull the Empress' favor to their sides. But little by little, they realized that she would never move for them, so they instead started to test the limits of her ire, starting wars with each other, enforcing different rules and laws on their own people. It even escalated to the point where the weakest country under the Empress' rule dared to call itself an Empire.

The Northern Tribes, on the other hand, were considered the most powerful of the four countries, because their magicians had the ability to channel magic of one or two kinds extremely well. They were also well liked by the other countries, due to their benevolence and peacefulness. They never invaded others without provocation, living their lives in peace and harmony, away from the mortal conflicts that happened around The Empire.

It sounded a bit stuck up to Evin, but who was he to judge.

As for his own country, he understood that it was a rather typical medieval kingdom. It had the king, the queen, some royal knights to protect the royalty and various other knights to protect the kingdom. It also had magicians too, and it was compulsive for young magicians to learn the ways of magic in one of the Kingdom's Mage Academies, with the Arcvallen Academy being the most prestigious. Evin learned a lot about this, since his father really, really liked talking about it. Mages were a rare resource, so every country wanted to keep their mages to themselves. They would obviously teach him most things he needed about magic, while the kingdom's officials would be trying to instill loyalty and patriotism in the students during their studies.

Most likely they would teach the students enough to let the young mages know exactly how much they knew and didn't know. After that, the mage graduates could find their elders who were closely associated with the Kingdom and work as their assistants, or they could work in the military and find benefits and resources that way.

Evin's father talked about all of these things, since the man was positive that Evin would become someone important in the future. Out of excitement, he would go out of his way to talk about such difficult topics to a 2-month-old child. 

It was a very shallow knowledge of the geopolitical situation of the world, and Evin really wished he could learn much more, but reality was that he lived in a home of commoners who couldn't really know much about the world other than the various stories that peddlers brought every few months (which may or may not even be true). Not to mention the fact that he couldn't ask them anything for clarification.

But he couldn't really focus on such things as he faced two major problems currently.

One of them was his magic studies, and he still hadn't learned how to use that god forsaken stone. It might have been his imagination, but it seemed like that it got even brighter every time he tried to make it work. His parents called it a lodestone, and from what he could gather, it was an item that mages used to work magic. How? Who knows?

He could only forget about the matter and hope he will find a way in the future.

But the more important problem was the state of his family.

Most would consider his household poor among the many other town populace, but since Evin was the only child that currently lived in the house, it honestly wasn't that bad... In normal circumstances at least. They even had a slave named Elina in their house.

Evin didn't really know much about her, and he couldn't really find out anything new about her as well.

Apparently, Evin also had a sister named Sasha, whom which his grandfather, Ssatsko, took to the Northern Tribes to learn the way of the hunters and receive the blessing of the Ivari founder, so she would be gone for quite a while. His mother mentioned something about a tradition of the Northerners to receive the blessings of the Ivari founder, Selat, when a child reached the age of 7.

Evin's father, Theor, worked as a cook at an inn and his mother made some handmade products and sold them at the said inn. She baked bread, weaved clothes, made trinkets and various other miscellaneous items. She gave them all to Theor and off he went to work.

But lately, Evin could notice the food on the table was getting increasingly scarce every day. Every night his father would come home, drained and drowsy, two dark circles under his eyes. Lora did her best to help him out to reduce the burden that her husband was facing. She never complained about their situation and never tried to argue with him as well.

Evin thought that it was not the first time that the two faced poverty, judging from how calm and collected the two were acting. The child badly wanted to know what was happening to them, but obviously he could not ask them. But one night, Theor came home drunk and started wailing about the unfair situation they were in.

"That fucking 2nd grade bastard, I swear to the Empress, when Evin becomes a mage in the future, I'll show you how to oppress the people under you!" he shouted, the smell of alcohol oozing out of his mouth.

Lora hurriedly put Evin in a different room and closed the door behind her, so the boy couldn't hear his father's shouts, but Evin could easily reach the door from the bed and open it once more.

He silently went back to the bed, so no one would catch him eavesdropping behind the door.

"Just as Aran leaves, he suddenly grows balls and starts complaining about everything I do! Thought he changed, judging by how differently he was acting, but when I told my coworkers that Evin was going to be a mage in the future, the bastard started questioning me like he couldn't believe it. The fucking panic in his voice was so fucking apparent, I'm sure he's decided to starve us to death, before our family becomes a grade higher than his," Theor was surprisingly literate when he was drunk.

He didn't slur his words, nor did he stammer randomly.

"Everything will be fine. If we only wait out a few months, Aran would come back and Norna wouldn't dare to mess with you. We still have some of our savings stashed up, so things aren't that bad. And after that, my father will come with Sasha, and we won't have to worry about food anymore," Lora reassured her husband.

"We won't be able to survive until then, the inn owner forces me to work the whole day and pays me only scraps, I could see him hiding the things you made under the counter, so that no one would buy them. No one will bother buying them from us directly, since we're 3rd grade citizens. We'll starve before then and don't get me started about how we're going to survive winter," Theor snarled.

"Don't worry, when worst comes to worst, we can depend on Liza. She knows that Evin would be a mage in the future, so she won't mind helping us out for some time. I'm sure Aran wouldn't mind it that much as well," Lora said.

"I don't want to depend on Aran!" Theor lashed out suddenly. His inner jealousy seemed to flare up slightly when Lora mentioned Aran the second time.

"Of course, of course" Lora's voice became silent as she tried to make her husband go to sleep.

Evin, who was listening to everything, finally learned of what his family was facing.