User:VampireMirror/The Enlightened Mage

1

”Oh, what have we here?” Sodrara lifted her hands at the scamp, preparing to send him back to Oblivion. “Now who summoned you?”

“I did.” Sarvil said from behind her. She lowered her hands. Sarvil was her fellow mage in the Balmora Mage’s Guild, and though she didn’t know why he had summoned a scamp and didn’t like that he did, she knew better than to mess with his sorcery.

“Keep it away from me and keep it away from Errandil. You’re just begging for him to throw you out of the Guild.” Sodrara said. Her back was to Sarvil because she didn’t want to take her eyes off of the scamp, who was now reaching for a mortar and pestle. She hoped that Thaurron hadn’t left any reagents in it.

“He will find what I’m doing to be very useful. Eventually. I am going to try to make the scamp a permanent ally and if I succeed, I’ll try it with a clannfear. I’m hoping that we can be the first Mage’s Guild in Morrowind to offer a Daedra companion spell that is foolproof and permanent.” Sarvil explained.

“And how do you expect to do that?”

“By breaking their ties to Oblivion. We can hopefully break even the heavily bound Golden Saints and Dremoras.”

“That’s impossible. You can’t break their allegiance to Oblivion.” Sodrara said. Sarvil stepped in front of her for the first time. He looked from her to the scamp then back to her.

“Just watch me.”

2

Several months later, Sarvil stared at a drawing of a scamp in the book he was reading. He thought of what Sodrara had said, and wished he had let her talk him out of his idea.

He not only had been kicked out of the guildhall in Balmora, but he also was fully expelled from the Mage’s Guild. They couldn’t keep a Daedra summoner.

Being from Ald’ruhn, Sarvil didn’t have a home in Balmora; he had just lived in the guildhall. He was now in Ald’ruhn and hadn’t been back to Balmora since being expelled.

He sighed heavily as he wished he could just have his place in the Guild once more. He missed Sodrara, Thaurron, and Errandil. The four of them were the Balmora guildhall’s only mages. Membership had gone down as more mages in Balmora were taking jobs in the temple as healers than joining the Mage’s Guild. The guildhall in Ald’ruhn had too many members, and that’s how he ended up in Balmora. He liked it there instantaneously and it had become his home.

Now he sat in his house and felt empty. He had lost it all. Would he ever regain any of it?

3

Sarvil watched a cliff racer fly in the distance. What graceful creatures they were, he thought. As dangerous as they were, he always felt as a child that they protected him because they flew high above the city, watching down on it.

When he was a child, the only other thing that gave him a sense of protection as much as a cliff racer was magic. He thought his spells would always protect him. Now what had these spells done? Well, they had taken everything that mattered away from him.

Sarvil realized, though, that he had become very narcissistic about his magical prowess. In fact, he had been the most talented in the Balmora guildhall, even more than Errandil although he was more powerful because he was more experienced than Sarvil. Yet Sarvil had great potential, and that went to his head.

No more, he resolved. Magic was safety for him, like the cliff racers, and not something to be narcissistic about. He needed to get back into the Mage’s Guild and now he knew how to gain their trust back.

4

Balmora gave Sarvil that same sense of protection. He took in the sight of it from the silt strider platform, looking across the Odai river, the beautiful river that divided the city. He saw the temple directly across from the platform he stood on, and that was where he was headed.

He entered the Balmora Temple and made an offering to the Shrine of the Tribunal before asking a monk about joining the Temple. While he conversed, he confessed that he had been expelled from the Mage’s Guild for summoning Daedra. The monk assured that by joining the Temple, he would no longer be viewed as a Daedra summoner. He joined.

Sarvil thanked the Tribunal before exiting the temple and walked to the guildhall feeling enlightened.

Errandil was not happy to see him but listened to Sarvil’s tribulation. Moved by what had transpired, Errandil accepted Sarvil back into the Guild, erasing the expulsion.

Happily, Sarvil walked down the stairs and greeted Sodrara and Thaurron. He recounted all that had occurred and thanked the Tribunal once again after.