Aristaetus had been something, once. ‘Aristaios.’ Best. Even his name boasted that there had been high expectations for him, that once upon a time, he was supposed to be the unexpected blessing of his family, that once, before it had all gone wrong, he had truly been wondrous.

These days, he only wondered where his next meal would come from.

Once, he had been beautiful: a pure black colt, proud and lovely, with a white diamond on his face and golden flecks spattered across his back like coin raining down to earth. He had been strong, a strapping example of youth, and his sky-blue eyes had only added to his allure. In some cultures, those eyes would have been considered a bad omen; they could cast the Evil Eye, or otherwise, they could curse with just a glance. How ironic that things had turned out even worse than that. 

But, once, he had not known that. None of them had. His blue eyes were a rarity that were cherished, and though he had never had the easiest raising, his two parents splitting his time between them (they were not in any sort of relationship, you see; they had always been honest with him, had always admitted that his creation was an accident they still weren’t fully sure the terms of, but were definitely sure that it had been their alchemy that created him), they had never acted particularly resentful or really anything but patiently indulgent with him. 

From a young age, it was assumed that he would become a dungeon crawler, sorry, an adventurer, just like both of them. They taught him everything they knew: how to hold a torch, how to swing a sword, how to wield simple magic. How to pick a lock and how to keep track of where he’d been so he wouldn’t get lost, how to feed and provide for himself and a party someday. How to avoid getting hurt, and how to patch himself up when he inevitably did anyways. How to befriend a companion and how to recruit his fellow adventurers, how to negotiate contracts, how to look for treasure and how to tell if an area was unexplored. 

They found out that he was a natural at cartography and mapping his way through a dungeon, that he was excellent at negotiation, and that he made a frightful sorcerer when he put his mind to it. They found out that he was abysmal at learning anything about healing, that he could find a way to burn water, and that making friends was never going to be his strong suit unless there was something in it for him. 

That was okay, they decided. His strengths would have to make up for his weaknesses. Both parents leaned harder than ever into swordplay and spells, then just into spells when it turned out that he was better at that than anything else they could put in front of him. He ate up the beginner spell books like they were an appetizer before a promised feast, going through lesson after lesson in the books in fractions of the time it would usually take foals his age to succeed. Quickly he moved on from simple levitation spells to complex illusions and transmutations, but above all, he took the best to evocations. Anything that required summoning raw magic and energy where it had not been before? That was his playground.

His abilities grew exponentially once they’d nailed down his specialty. Evocation called to him the way finding treasure or defeating powerful enemies or practicing swordplay and warfare called to other Coursers. It was his bread and butter, his reason for continuing on. He spent every spare moment practically devouring the evocation spell books, passing the simple tutoring books for foals and moving on to the young adult levels when he was still just a wee Courser. When his studies advanced, he began pouring even more time and energy into this. he would take anything he could get his hooves on. The childlike tutor books, the advanced spell books still aboe his head, the theory books, the ceremonial and oudated ritual books.

He stopped sleeping. He stopped eating. His parents became worried for him. They tried to convince him to take a break. One of them would say, Aristaetus, the books will still be there after you get a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. The other would say, Aristaetus, you have an entire lifetime to learn this stuff. Let it rest for a day and go do something fun.

And of course, he would always say no or I can't or leave ma alone, can't you see I'm busy, I don't want that and I don't want you until he had no choice but to obey. If he could just study a little longer. If he could just master another spell. If he could just do this or that. He got into his head this idea of being all-knowing, or perhaps all-powerful. Or perhaps they were the same thing, to him. But he wanted it all, and he would stop at nothing until he had accomplished it.

When he reached the years that other young Coursers typically became rebellious, set off on their own to find their thing, and generally become a nuisance, he already had a leg up on all of them. He had found his thing already, and he devoted every spare moment to it. The lack of sleep and food made him moody to the nth degree, and often he became snappish and angry at his parents when they would recommend a break or encourage him to go join an event they had heard about for Coursers his age. Ironically, the two of them were never closer than when they teamed up to attempt to parent their brat offspring, either forcing him or cajoling him into doing as they said less and less often until finally they seemed to give up and would only do their best to keep him alive.

No matter what they tried, he was always going to be practicing his evocations.

He had moved on to more powerful books by then. Old books, strange books, hard-to-find books. On the cusp of adulthood, he had taken to locking himself in his room for hours or days at a time, refusing to come out even for meals, stopping his lessons and any ‘family time’ his parents tried futilely to enforce. Instead there was only the books and the spells. He had taken to acquiring them through any means necessary. His parents would bring him what they could if he requested something specific and normal, then he would sneak out and bribe, cheat, or straight up lie to adventurers in order to get them to bring him more advanced tomes he had heard of but couldn’t acquire himself. When the habit of lying too many times caught up to him, he’d switch locations, wandering farther and farther away from home in order to satisfy the urge to learn without risking his own life and limb down in the dungeon.

It was about then that the first of many things went wrong. He stiffed the wrong adventuring party, made promises to the wrong Courser; they came to collect their dues and found him chatting with another colleague, cozied up and negotiating his way into more ancient tomes looted from the dungeons. 

They tried to kill him.

It didn’t go well for any party involved.

He came back to himself in bits and pieces. In his memory, there are only flashes of what happened remaining. At the end of the night, he walked away. They didn’t.

He dragged himself home, gravely injured but too afraid to hesitate outdoors any longer, fearing with a primal, animal sense that they would send more members of their group after him once they found out what had become of the first. He slipped inside, ignored the way his blood dripped and pooled into the grooves of the hardwood flooring, and channeled all of his remaining energy into healing what he could. He slept for a week straight. He did not try that again.

Ashamed of himself and terrified of what would happen if he tried that again and wasn't so quick or so able next time, when he woke from his slumber, the first thing he did was scramble to pack his things. His parents didn’t understand. They raged; they worried. They hadn’t seen what had become of him, but they saw the mess he left behind, and they hadn’t been able to work their way past the heavy wards and protection spells he put on his door to keep them out that week. When he stepped out of his room, all of his most essential books and supplies loaded into bags he carried on his back like a common pack pony, the two of them united one last time to stop him.

He was too young, they argued. Too inexperienced. Too rash. One of them proclaimed that he would be back in a week while the other sobbed, beside herself. Through tears, the other told him that if the next time they saw him was at his own funeral, she would never forgive him. Never ever. 

They told him that he was still their child even if he'd done something terrible. They told him to change his mind. They told him to confess. They told him to come back inside, to think about it over a mug of tea, to give himself some time to learn what he had not yet let them teach.

He did not. 

He left. He didn’t look back.

The entrance to the dungeon wasn’t hard to find. He’d spoken with enough adventurers that, by now, it felt as though he’d explored these depths all by himself many times over. He could hear the echoes of their laughter in his mind. Their grim faces frowned down at him as he ducked into the dark, summoning a floating sphere of daylight to bring with him to light his path with hardly more than a thought. 

It wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be. He’d heard all sorts of things about this place. There was laughter, and friends, and family. There were companions for life, and companions for a night. There were treasures beyond measure, locations beyond belief, beasts to slay that escaped comprehension. And now, too, there was a lone Courser making his way through the first levels of this place.

He felt watched. There was no way to escape the creeping, crawling feeling. Alone, there was no guarantee that anyone but him was watching his back. There was no one to rely on, no one to double check him.

But wasn’t that the way he’d always done things?

He continued on. Minutes turned into hours, which turned into days. Still he saw very few signs of life. There were markers other Coursers had left behind to show the way. There were burnt-out torches and heavy gear and extraneous food or water left behind for someone else to discover and keep. These things sustained him for his first long stretch underground.

There were treasures to be found if you knew where to look. Gold, jewels, fantastic weapons and armor. But he wasn’t interested in any of that. In the dark, he would stop for the night, or what he guessed was night, and study. He would practice down in the caves where there was no one but him for a spell to backfire on if it went wrong. He would read and reread every book he brought with him until he had every word memorized. He would begin to invent spells of his own creation, summoning this and that whenever he needed it. He would remember the location of something and pull it through space and time to keep whenever he needed; he would not remember the location of something else and instead summon it from scratch. 

His skills, once more, began to grow exponentially.

They were the only thing that kept him going. He did not want for material items. He did not want for friends or for enemies. He only wanted for power, and the flood of belonging it would grant him. He never got any worse, only better all the time, stronger and more capable of surviving on his own.

The darkness feared him. He did not fear it any more. If it encroached, he would summon light and banish it away. If it ate at him, he would bite back like a wild dog. If it bothered him, he would summon some sort of construct or homunculus, he was so advanced, and speak to his own creations until he grew bored and dismissed them, too. 

Forget the idea of being afraid. He was long past.