Chapter Nine - First Segment

Lycia, on the border of The Balkanian Empire

It had been nearly a month and a half since the magical incident at Mycenae had thrown apart Tanner’s group and sent the Balkanian Empire into disarray. Tanner, Regal, and Alice had awoken in a densely forested area. Tanner was initially surprised by seeing so much vegetation. His whole life had shown him little more nature than a decaying tree in Pylos square. Still, he supposed that he shouldn’t be too surprised. So far he had seen things he could have never even dreamt of on this adventure.
The three later came upon a small city and realized that they had been flung just outside the Balkanian Empire to one of its neighbouring territories still offering some resistance, Lycia.
The Lycians were a peaceful people by nature and did not possess a large army. There would be no strategic reason to conquer the territory since it posed no threat and had only the natural resources required to sustain itself. Nevertheless, the Empire was vigilant in their quest to conquer the continent and would leave no stone unturned, not even peaceful Lycia.
Lycia was abundant in nature but did have technology. It could best be described as a hybrid city where technology and nature worked in tandem to provide beautiful hillside scenery, fading off into dense forests. If Balkan swallowed this territory as it had the previous ones who offered resistance, much of the city and all of the nature would be destroyed, being replaced by electricity and massive skyscrapers.
Tanner, Alice, and Regal had formed a makeshift camp on the outskirts of the city. Every now and then they would go into the city to trade lumber Regal had chopped into bundles for the supplies they needed. Though, because lumber was so abundant, this usually did not yield an abundance of supplies. Still, they were able to get what they needed to survive.
Their existence was relatively peaceful, but they knew the Empire would come for them sooner or later and began to plan their own attack, countering the Empire before it had a chance to strike first. Also of concern was the dark magic that had seemed to awaken within Tanner at the Mycenae Museum.

Regal sensed something dark within Tanner, something that he hadn’t sensed before. Everyone had some darkness but the darkness seemed to be pouring out of Tanner like a cup overflowing with excess water. It was intoxicating like a bitter-sweet red wine. The more Tanner used the magic, the more he would be consumed by it. If they were to avoid that, Regal would need to teach Tanner the magic of the Outer Circle, something that had not been attempted in Zealonia for five hundred years. But he was no longer in Zealonia and Regal saw little choice. Either he could delve into the dark arts to save Tanner, or he could take the risk of letting the dark magic consume and kill him.
There were good reasons why the Outer Circle magic was not practiced. The first was that the nature of the training put the user’s life at risk. The Outer Circle was dark magic and had to be kept in a certain balance. Unlike magic of the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle required the user to take in dark magic from his surroundings instead of channelling the light from within. This magic was chaotic by nature and was therefore unsuitable for defence. If the user took in too much dark magic energy he would lose his mind and life, being forever transformed into the form of a crazed dark beast, hell bent on killing. This would surely happen to Tanner if he went untrained in the dark arts. The closest analogy would be if one were so drunk he was unable to taste the alcohol he was drinking and drank himself into sickness as a result. In Tanner’s case: death. Regal could not – would not – let that happen.