I remember the first time I used magic. I was ten years old and that day in school our teacher has asked us what we wanted to be when we grow up. It was career week at school, leading up to the last days before summer break. There had been a Take Your child to Work Day and a day when other kids moms and dads came into the class to tell us what they did. I didn’t get to participate in any of those things ,since I didn’t even know who my parents were. I lived with my guardian, Zeke, and he was too busy for that kind of stuff. I looked after myself a lot and Zeke couldn’t even help me with my project for the last day of school, What I Want to be When I Grow Up.
Because no one ever says “I want to be a sorcerer when I grow up.”
And with good reason. Sorcerers are cursed folk born with bad blood. Those high and mighty men who stand on the pulpit every Sunday are always spitting out some nonsense about how people are sinners from birth just because they’re human and that they need Jesus or they’re going to Hell even if they’re just babies or little kids. Now all that is a bunch of bullshit and don’t let no one tell you different. But for sorcerers it’s actually true. Being a sorcerer ain’t so much something you learn as it is something you’re born to. And you have to embrace it, or when Old Scratch comes calling there won’t be anyone around who can save you. It’s a curse and like a lot of bad things you get handed in life, you have to learn to deal with it and overcome.
I hadn’t been going to that school for very long and I didn’t have any friends. Most of the kids stayed away from me and I stayed away from them. But there was this one girl that I was sweet on named Rachel. She was different from the other girls because she was a true blue tomboy who’d rather spend her time running around on the playground playing baseball or basketball instead of gossiping with the girls. So it didn’t surprise me at all when she got up in front of the whole class and declared that she wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up.
A lot of the boys in class laughed at that and gave her a lot of lip about how being a firefighter was a boy’s job. I had noticed that Rachel had a hot temper when it came to people telling her she couldn’t do things because she as a girl. When recess came around that day, she showed those boys just how good a firefighter she could be by grabbing the water hose next to the building and letting that bunch of boys have it as they were walking back inside.
Rachel lived near where me and Zeke were staying at the time, so after school I decided to follow Rachel home and talk to her. I told her that I liked her and that I thought she’d be a great firefighter. I think she was a little put off by the strange, quiet kid that no one talked to suddenly coming up and telling her this but she smiled after I said it and said thanks. Now I wish I could tell you that then was the moment when Rachel and I first fell in love and were childhood sweethearts until we got married after high school and lived happily ever after. In fact, the only good thing that came out of that whole day was that both of us were still alive when we went to bed that night.
I mentioned the name Old Scratch before. In case you didn’t know, the reason sorcerers are cursed is because we all got a bit of His power inside of us. They got a lot of names for it but the long and the short of it is someone took some of Old Scratch’s power a long time ago and he’s been trying to get it back ever since. Every time he gets his hands on a sorcerer, he can take some of that power back. And every time a sorcerer has kids, that power gets cut up into smaller parts. No matter how small that magical spark, a sorcerer can always get stronger but the more sorcerers there are the harder Old Scratch has to work to hunt us all down. And he don’t like that one bit. So he sends his Hellspawn to track us all down.
I met my first Hellspawn that day walking home with Rachel. They can smell us when we come into our power and they’re always on the hunt. Zeke had tried explaining it to me but I had never really understood the whole thing since I couldn’t use magic yet like Zeke could. So I never worried about it like I should have. Maybe if I had, that day wouldn’t have ended in such a mess. Kids are always scared of the dark, under the bed and in the closet, because they think that’s where all the monsters are hiding. Don’t buy into any of that nonsense. It was a beautiful spring day, with chirping birds and barking dogs, when that monster screamed and came flying at me from out of nowhere.
Zeke had explained to me about magic and had even showed some to me. He said that when I came into my power that he’d teach me more and he did. The one thing he wouldn’t show me, though, was Hellfire. He said it was the first magic every sorcerer learned how to use and it was the last magic we should use as well. Hellfire isn’t natural. It burns a sick, green color and it smells like sulfur and brimstone. That smell attracts the Hellspawn, so even if you kill one with it more will be coming. Hellfire was powerful and dangerous and sorcerers who used too much of it always ended up dead. Because I never knew when I’d come into my power, there was one lesson Zeke made sure that I knew above all others back then.
A handful of Hellfire goes a long way.
It came to me a lot easier than I would have imagined. All I had to do was think about it, point, and I blasted that monster off of Rachel and put it clean through a hundred year old oak tree. The Hellspawn didn’t get back up but unfortunately the tree fell on top of it and the Hellfire grabbed onto all that wood and spread faster than you could blink.
Hellfire in small doses isn’t much different than regular fire. Outside of the color and the smell, it just burns hotter and faster. But put enough of it together to burn down something big, like a tree the size of a house, and it’s a terrifying sight to see. The flames rise up high into the air and seem like they’re trying to suck away all the life around them. Beneath the crackling sound of flame consuming wood I could hear the moans of the damned and in those huge tongues of flame that reached into the air I could see souls trying to claw their way out, reaching for me like I’d taken everything good in their world and they wanted it back with a vengeance.
When you see something like that, something that was created by your own hand, it leaves you without a doubt in your mind that you are truly damned. It also doesn’t help when the girl you like looks at you like a monster, even after you saved her, and runs away crying and screaming for you to stay away from her.
I didn’t have time to chase after her and convince her I was actually a really decent guy once you got to know me. I heard the scream of another Hellspawn and realized that the one I’d killed wasn’t the only one tracking me. I ran home. Before it was all said and done, half the neighborhood was in flames from all the Hellfire I threw around. I don’t know if anyone got hurt. I was too busy running for my life. Zeke eventually found me and dealt with the last of the Hellspawn but we couldn’t stay after that. We left town that night and crossed the state line before midnight.
You learn to deal with the guilt of all the destruction you cause, the lives you’ve taken and the people you can’t save. It’s been a long, hard road since the day I became a sorcerer and the road heading forward looks even longer. But I still think about Rachel sometimes and I can’t help but wonder what my life would have been like if I had gotten the chance to grow up and be what I really wanted, like all the other kids in that class.
After all, the world could always use one more firefighter.
