Relatively Disconcerting

The book was treasure, worth more than anything else that had littered the ground after the earlier fracas. Dmitri touched the travel-worn black cover, opening it almost reverently. Like usual, the letters, the words of the spells, seemed to waver, swimming in his vision like there was a wave of heat between them. He invoked a cantrip eagerly, pushing out the magical force in him, demanding that the spell coalesce.

The first one swam up in his vision, setting itself firmly in a neat, and readable, script. He copied it over cautiously to his own spell book, even though it was just another simple cantrip. Line followed painstaking line until it was finished, scribed perfectly. The last mark caused a whisper of power, floating away softly on the night breeze like an unspoken prayer to Gamasen Himself.

"You know," a brusque, strangely hollow voice said, "you're wasting your, and our, time with these little tricks." Dmitri turned in his seat, focusing on the space where the voice had come from. A faint haze formed, shaping quickly into the largely transparent form of a man, middle-aged, cadaverously thin and balding.

"Good evening, Uncle Vasiliy. I'm trying to work here. I'd appreciate quiet."

"Of course." The man rolled his eyes in an almost grotesque exaggeration, spinning them back until only the whites showed in his palely insubstantial face. "And what would I, the great Vasiliy Maltavis, know of such things? I was just a cut-purse, after all. It's not like I wasn't scouring all of Macinar for a cure years earlier than you've deigned to start. I almost had it, you know. Didn't I tell you about the time I almost found it?"

Dmitri finished the second spell, sighing. "Yes, Uncle. You told me about it, just not what 'it' was. The Family has agreed that my pursuit of magic is in our best interest, and this is an important step. If I don't learn, I can't sort out what I'll need to break the curse. You've waited a hundred years; a few more won't hurt."

Vasiliy scowled down at his seated relation. "But it does hurt, Dmitri. It hurt to fail, it hurt to waste away, and it hurts to fade more over the years because nothing is being done." Dmitri frowned at that, but kept working. Another line, another sigh of magic, another spell completed. He smiled, seeing that the next was more advanced finally. He focused, willing it to form for him.

Vasiliy bellowed at him then, absently mistaking his expression. "It's no light matter! If you gave a damn about the Family's plight, you'd..."

And that was it. Resentment, anger, at decades of being driven, pushed, surged up in Dmitri. The spell, for the night, was lost, fading to nonsense again. He snapped his head up, bitter words forming on his tongue, ready to be unleashed in a caustic torrent for his obsessed several-times-great uncle...and saw no one. Vasiliy had vanished, either employing the temperament he'd favored in his living conflicts or evaporating from perception when Dmitri's concentration was lost. The cool breeze, still somehow smelling faintly of the sea, curled into the empty room.

Calming himself with no small effort, Dmitri turned back to the books in front of him, and the hope, however slight, that they represented.