A quick chat

	Magus invited me to join him on a five day trip to some old ruins so I might be able to find a few of the ingredients I need for a few of the formulas I have been trying to perfect. We also didn't have any ice left for Demir's spells(I will need to find a better way to obtain more. We've nearly existed the villages meager supply.), and Magus mentioned that one of the villages we would be passing through on the way back had a large store of it due to the colder biomes that surround it. We left early in the morning, just before dawn when Tiberius was starting to cook breakfast and the other two were still sleeping, or snoring in the case of my brother. Magus had rented two horses and a pack mule the day before, and had all of them ready when I stepped out. "Did you make sure to pack everything you need? We don't want to come back so soon after leaving." Magus said as I mounted my horse, a simple brown beast with short fine hair and muscular legs more suited to farm work then traveling. "If I forgot anything, it must not be that important. I packed everything I could think of, from cooking equipment to a tinder box." Magus nodded with approval before urging his white and black horse forward, and I did the same. Once we left the village, Magus never dropped the slow but steady pace he held his horse at. After a few minutes of riding with only the sound of the horses hooves trotting along did ether of us speak, and it was Magus who broke the silence. "I never asked, but when did you learn how to ride a horse? I never could get Tiberius to try, he seems terrified of them." "I learned when I was with the traders. From time to time they would ask my brother or I to ride on one of the horses or mules when they had too many or someone was ill. You learn quickly that nothing short of a natural disaster slows the traders if they can help it when there is a profit to be made." We chatted back and forth like this through out the day, Magus being a seemingly endless source of knowledge. He showed me various herbs and flower that we passed, telling me their names and uses in both magic and mundane medicine then quizzing me on both hours latter as when we pass them again. We passed five groups of people through out the day, from wealthy merchants to poor travelers. As we set up camp that evening near a birch wood forest, Magus gathering firewood while I set up the fire pit and start preparing our meager dinner for the cooking fire. While I was doing this, I decided to ask a question that had been bothering me for the last few weeks, and now that Magus was alone with me it seemed like the best time to ask him about it.

	Magus wasn't gone long, returning only after a few minutes with arms loaded with dry wood. He quickly lit a fire while I readied a simple vegetable stew to warm over the fire. "Master Magus, I've had a something bothering me for a while, and I was hoping that you might shed a little light on the issue." He looked a little suppressed, but gave me a simple hand gesture to prompt me to continue. "I read your research log a few weeks ago, as you already know." He gave a simple nod, and I began to wonder if he already knew where I was going with this. "Well, I noticed that the way you documented time was a little... Off. You mentioned years and decades more then weeks or months. For someone that looks no older then his late thirty's, that seemed odd. Then I realized that you have mastered a wide array of magics, some that need life times to master. All of that, before you spent decades with blood magic. This was enough to make me concerned, but the final oddity that I noticed was when you said that you lit the first nether portals. Tiberius and the others simply thought you lit the first portals in this region, but if you are as old as I think your are..." He raised one hand as a sign for me to stop. "So you noticed that. If I'm honest, I had hoped you or any of the others wouldn't. But you are right, I am far older then I look. Yes, I have studied magics that take lifetimes to learn and longer to master. And yes, I was the one who lit the very first nether portals. It is a secret only a handful of people know, as I only try to tell people who ask. You would be surprised how few really put two and two together."

	"That much I worked out myself. But that still leaves the question of how." I told him as I pored him a bowl of stew. His response was one a question I never expected. "Tell me, how much do you know of the churches that dot the land and the beings that they are detected to?" That seems it is coming out of thin air, and it lakes me a few seconds to respond. "Not much. I never pegged you as the religious type, or someone who would bow to those gods." I told him. He gave a light chuckle, and answers me after a quick sip of his dinner. "I'm not, and I wouldn't call them gods. Immortals is a better term." "Wait, you actually believe they exist?" "I know they exist. After all, I killed one of them." This was getting to be more then I could handle. "You killed one! How, when, why?" "Calm down, calm down. No need to get all worked up about the past. Like I said, they are closer to immortals then gods. They can never perish to time, but they can still be killed. When... It was around the time that the Lineun kingdom was was at a golden age. As for why, he didn't leave me much choice since he gave me a formal challenge. Each of the immortals have a certain gift, and the immortal that challenged me had a gift for long term prophecy. He knew what I would become, how many magics I would master and what I might do with that power. Unfortunately for him, he greatly underestimated what I could do then. We fought for three hours strait, but in the end I won." I'm not sure which is stranger, the story he was telling me or the tone of voice he had when tell it: His voice had no hint of pride or remorse, only a cool tone like he had no attachment to what he was saying while only giving the facts. "Alright, you killed the immortal that attacked you. That still doesn't explain why you still live after all these years." I already started forming ideas of what might have happened, but I wanted to hear it from him. "First, he didn't attack me out of the blue. He gave me a formal challenge. The immortals have some codes of honer, so attacking an unprepared opponent was out of the question. We had a fair fight, and I barely managed to win. As for why, I only have a few theory's. The most likely answer I have found is that the there is a set number of immortals in the world. This number never grows or shrinks. When an immortal is killed, something else must take its place. It seems that I took his place when he died, so I became an immortal. That is the best answer I've found, I afraid."