Before his true adventures began, Voltaire Raketta was attacked three times by a wild boar.
It was a crisp Autumn afternoon and Voltaire was a young child. He was patrolling the boundary of the Raketta Estate where it bordered the Deepwood forests, picking up sticks and pretending they were weapons, as boys are wont to do.
Within eyeshot, Lord Seiya and Lady Zenoa of House Raketta — Voltaire’s parents, that is — were following behind him at distance, in conversation with two large men of the Beck family. One was Jenkins Beck, recently back from his wartime duty where he became known as “L’Roi” — “The King” — to those he led in battle. And the other, Jenkins’s uncle Domovoyo Beck, bodyguard to the Lord and Lady. The topic of discussion was whether the younger Beck was yet suited to become personal guard to young Voltaire.
But in the child’s world of sticks and stones, this was no concern. Rather, Voltaire was quite preoccupied with a rustling in the nearby underbrush.
A wild boar piglet emerged. The size of a house cat, it trotted out and sniffed the ground and the boy.
“Hello there piggy,” said Voltaire to the beast. “We shall play together!”
He picked the pig up as if it were a stuffed toy and squeezed it tightly. But the boar, being an animate and willful being, struggled in his arms. It was able to break free of Voltaire’s grasp and, in the process, knocked him to the ground.
“How dare you!” cried the boy. “You’ll pay for that, you swine!”
The piglet had retreated to only a few feet away and was looking curiously at Voltaire. So when the lordling stood and swung a hand at it, the attack connected without difficulty.
Upon the impact of Voltaire’s palm with the face of the boar, an explosion of pure radiant color emanated from the point of contact, briefly radiating the area with bright violet light.
The pig ran squealing back into the woods, but not before Voltaire could get a look at the large violet mark he had left on the face of the boar, discoloring its fur in the shape of his handprint.
Shocked, Voltaire looked at his hand, then to his parents and the Becks — but out of the forest now charged a fully-grown boar, standing taller than the boy and thrice his weight.
It was running right at him and would have been his doom — if Jenkins Beck had not started sprinting to the boy the moment he first saw the baby boar. As it was, Jenkins made it to Voltaire’s side just in time to throw him out of the way of the charging boar.
Beck grappled the animal with his bare hands, halting it in its tracks. With a fluid movement, he briefly released the beast, unsheathed his belt knife, and stabbed upwards through the boar’s throat and neck.
The mother boar writhed on the ground briefly, then stopped.
Beck turned to Voltaire and crouched down. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” the boy replied, trying to sound strong. “Thank you, Mr. Beck’s nephew.”
“Well, you can call me Jenkins, young sir,” said Beck, slightly embarrassed. “Anyway, now we can have pork for dinner tonight.”
The rest of the adults had now arrived.
“Beck, you’re hired,” said Lady Zenoa Raketta.
“Dear, we should get in touch with Rinelm,” said Lord Seiya to his wife. “I think Voltaire’s inherited my grandfather’s talent.”
His magical potential discovered, Voltaire soon began his formal study of the thaumaturgical arts under the guidance of the Wizened Witch Rinelm. As was the family’s practice, private tutors were brought to the estate, and this was especially easy for Rinelm whose Witch’s Tower home also bordered the Raketta Estate’s Deepwood forest.
Years passed as Voltaire learned the rudiments of magic, as well as all manner of history, politics, economics, religion, and every other field of study he would need to master the source of his family’s wealth: international trade. He was gifted his great-grandfather’s emerald-set signet ring to use as an arcane focus and found it much more effective than the whole palm of his hand.
But compared to his vigor for other topics, Voltaire was a slow student of magic. He maintained a certain reluctance to push his powers to their limit, always remembering the accidental violence he had done to that pigling.
When Voltaire was an adolescent, Rinelm took ill — unexpected for one of her apparent agelessness — and the Rakettas decided to take the opportunity for the young scion to focus his mind exclusively on magic in the comfort of Rinelm’s Tower. The Tower was of multifarious, confusing construction and had more floors than seemed to fit into its relatively squat height. And in fact, Voltaire wasn’t the only new student Rinelm was now housing there.
When Voltaire first arrived at the Tower by carriage, there was a boy of around his age hanging upside-down from the entry hall’s low-hanging chandelier by his knees.
“Hi, who are you?” asked the boy.
“I am Voltaire of the noble house Raketta. I’m to be a student here. What are you doing?” said Voltaire.
“Oh! Auntie Rinelm said someone else would learn magic with me. I like your hair!”
(Voltaire’s hair, like that of all blood-descendant Rakettas, was lightning-blonde. At this moment he kept it long and unstraightened. The other boy’s hair was dark brown and short.)
“Thank you. So you must be a relative of Rinelm?” Voltaire asked as he extended his hand to shake the other boy’s.
The upside-down boy reached out with his right hand, then realized it wouldn’t work, and finally managed to achieve an awkward handshake with his left hand.
“Actually, she’s just a close friend of the family. Uh, hi! My name’s Kizil Arijilic.”
Voltaire froze in the middle of the handshake. “Arijilic,” he muttered. After a moment, he dropped Kizil’s hand.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of your family too, Raketta,” said Kizil, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
“That’s exactly what it means!” Voltaire said harshly, then turned around. “Jenkins! Get in here!”
Through the door rushed Jenkins Beck, personal guard to the Raketta scion, carrying a large trunk. He noted Kizil on the chandelier, but addressed his charge, “Sir? What’s wrong?”
“Oh nothing Jenkins, I just want to get out of his presence.” He sneered at the upside-down boy.
They began up the winding staircase, up towards the rooms Rinelm had reserved — or created — for them.
“See you around, Voltaire!” shouted Kizil as they left.
Once they were a few stories up, Beck asked, “What was he doing on that chandelier?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care!”
(He was doing hanging sit-ups; as Kizil’s father likes to say: “A strong body is a strong mind!”)
Over the next few months, Voltaire did his best to ignore Kizil even though they were Rinelm’s only students and frequently needed to study from the same book. And they ate at the same table for every meal. And Kizil made funny faces at him when he did catch his eye. And even when he couldn’t ignore him, Voltaire’s scorn seemed to bounce off Kizil like gold off a dragon’s back.
~
“Hmmph. Weren’t you taught history? Oh, I forgot, you were raised on a farm!”
“My grandparents were farmers who made history! Unlike your family who just run around shaking hands!”
~
“Too busy saving princesses to make it to breakfast, Arijilic?”
“Faff off! Rules are made to be broken.”
“That’s exactly the opposite of what rules are made for!”
~
“Aww, forgot your bit of fleece? It’s sooo cute you need a reminder of your grandmother just to cast a spell!”
“And which of your ancestors was a Pikachu so that your hair is so spiky?”
“Shut up I slept on it weird!”
~
Kizil never seemed put off by Voltaire’s attitude. On the contrary, Voltaire became increasingly frustrated by Kizil’s unflappable nature. He simply could not be flapped. But in the attempt to outdo him in all things, Voltaire made strides in his magical education. He even found himself enjoying it.
One day when Rinelm had her pupils practicing outside by the forest for a change, an opportunity for showing-off arose. After some more organized teaching, the Witch herself was feeling weak and had the dutiful Beck help her back into the Tower.
“Watch this, Arijilic!” called Voltaire as he picked up a stick and began to cast an illusion. A beam of solid blue light erupted from his hand as if the twig was the hilt of a sword. He raised his saber of light and pointed it at Kizil in challenge.
“Oh yeah?” returned Kizil, laughing as he picked up a random stick of his own. “How about some of this!” A red burst of magic flew from it, striking Voltaire’s hand and flinging the stick from it. The disarming bolt dissipated after a moment, as did the blue light illusion.
“Ow, you prick. That hurt.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to!” said Kizil, rushing to Voltaire’s side. “It was just supposed to knock your hand away.”
“Hey, it’s okay. I—” Voltaire was interrupted by a sudden grunting sound from the forest.
Out of the underbrush charged: A boar. Its face was marked by a violet handprint.
“You!” gasped Voltaire.
A piglet no longer. This was a pig in its prime. Powerful legs, razor-sharp tusks, and a drive for vengeance.
You killed my mother, it seemed to say to the humans. Now it’s your turn to suffer.
It charged again — right at Voltaire and Kizil.
In a split second, Voltaire acted. He shoved Kizil out of the path of the boar and began to cast a spell at the beast: Grease, to make it slip and fall to the ground.
The spell failed.
The hateful boar slammed into Voltaire’s abdomen with the force of a falling tree. Its tusks gored him, spilling noble Raketta blood onto the ground of the Tower’s clearing in the forest. Voltaire collapsed there, breathing only in shallow bursts.
From thin air above the injured boy suddenly erupted an Angel. Its seven-foot-tall humanoid form apparently chiseled from pale sandstone, with enormous feathered wings a stark white.
“Well what then is this?” it said in a tongue alien to most: the language of the Celestials. The being looked around, finally settling on the body of Voltaire. “Ah, you I see are another one. It seems to prosper still, your family does.” It shook its head.
The appearance of this new and strange entity frightened the boar enough that it opted to flee back into the woods, deeming its task complete.
Kizil, meanwhile, had gotten to his feet and started to cast what little healing magic he knew on his friend. (Studying that kind of thing was favored by his family — heroism is dangerous work, after all.)
“Idiot,” Kizil muttered as he worked with tears in his eyes, “what was that pig, your arch-nemesis or something?”
“Something like that,” replied Voltaire in gasping breaths, then he lost consciousness.
Finally, Jenkins returned from the Tower, carrying the little old witch in his arms, having seen the Angel through a window. He ran to his charge and set down the enchantress who began a more advanced healing spell.
“What happened lad?” Beck asked Kizil.
Now crying openly, Kizil explained the boar.
“He’ll be okay for now,” said Rinelm in her peculiar accent. “He just needs a long rest.”
The Angel, who had watched all of this with a passive indifference, hummed. It rotated along some fourth-dimensional axis, becoming continually less humanoid and more a thing composed entirely of eyes and wings before disappearing completely.
In a specially prepared bedchamber for the injured boy, Jenkins Beck waited for his protectee to reawaken. This was the first time Voltaire had come to serious injury in the years since Beck became his protector. The man felt shame and guilt that this time he wasn’t there. And he was growing nervous about how he might explain the Raketta family curse to his charge…
“I’d suggest we seek revenge on that damned swine,” Voltaire said wryly, in a weak voice, “but you already killed its mother.”
“Sir! I am deeply remorseful I was lax in my protection,” the guard said, head bowed, “I never should have—”
“Jenkins, while this was a serious lapse,” the scion interrupted, “we don’t have the luxury to go about second-guessing ourselves right now.”
“Sir?”
“I have a serious problem, Jenkins,” Voltaire said as he sat up in the bed. “And I’m going to need you to keep it quiet from the rest of the House. Who do you serve, Jenkins? Me? Or my family?”
Without hesitation, Beck said, “You, sir. Always.”
“Good, good…” Voltaire’s voice now turned from confidence to… haste. “I think I like Arijilic!” he blurted out.
He ducked his head under the covers for a moment, before re-emerging blushing.
“Well it’s natural for a boy your age to start… liking… people,” his bodyguard said slowly.
“Jenkins I’ve read all about that kind of thing!”
Beck chuckled. “Sir there are some things you can’t learn about in books. Love is definitely one of them.”
“I never said ‘love’!”
“Right, sir.”
“I just mean…” Voltaire began, “Our family hates his family. I don’t want Father to hate me.”
“Sir, Lord Raketta could never hate you, nor could anyone else in your family. But I do see your concern. They would not approve of a relationship with ‘those upstarts’ as your Lady Mother would say.”
“Maybe if I could get everyone to see it as a political advantage?”
“Perhaps, sir,” Beck cautioned.
“Yes! I’m sure there’s a way!” Voltaire said brightly.
Beck remained silent.
“Oh, and by the way, what was the deal with that Angel?”
Beck grimaced. “You should really ask your Lord Father about that…”
“Seriously Jenkins?” Voltaire said flatly. “I heard it speak Celestial. I thought the family only learned Celestial to have a secret language we could use in public. There’s clearly something else going on here!”
“Okay, here’s what I know — what little my uncle told me anyway,” Beck sighed. “House Raketta is cursed. Whenever a member is close to dying, that Angel of death appears. Apparently your family call it ‘Elision’, but I don’t know enough Celestial to say what that really means. It isn’t some guardian angel, it doesn’t help or anything. It just watches and talks a little. Somehow your family uses this as a way to communicate across long distances for business, but… that’s none of my business.”
“Huh,” said Voltaire. “That does sound like the kind of thing we need to keep quiet.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll communicate as much to Rinelm.”
The door to the bedroom opened a crack and Kizil’s voice sounded from outside. “Is he awake yet?”
“He is now, lad. Come on in.”
Kizil Arijilic burst into the room, ran to Voltaire’s bedside, and started chatting animatedly.
“I can’t believe you saved me from your evil pig enemy! You’re such a hero under that curly yellow hair.”
“Me? You totally saved me!” the scion of House Raketta returned. “And with magic that actually worked, unlike my grease spell.”
“That was supposed to be grease?! I thought you were trying to attack it!”
“Hey, don’t underestimate grease!”
And they continued laughing together.
Years passed and that burgeoning friendship shifted to romance. But Voltaire had yet to find any argument or explanation that would convince his parents that Kizil’s family wasn’t their enemy. Only the fact that Voltaire’s magical education was much more effective when he was studying, competing, and laughing with Kizil stopped House Raketta from making different arrangements for him. But decisions had been made nonetheless.
Now a young adult, Voltaire Raketta was pacing the outskirts of the estate with Jenkins.
“Tomorrow!? I cannot believe they’re doing this to me. I’ll have to write a letter to let him know… And where in the world even is… Oh, what was it called?”
“Sir the town was—”
“Nevermind, I don’t even care!” interrupted the lordling. “They just want to send me away to try and get me to fall back in line with the family’s wishes. As if I could just forget him!”
Beck continued listening.
Voltaire turned and started pacing back the other way. “Oh, and of course they try to make it sound like such a grand thing — a gift, an honor — for me to lead my very own diplomatic expedition… As if I haven’t already seen how boring they can be every time I’ve gone with Father. And what ‘expedition’? It’s just you and me!”
“Yes sir.”
He turned around again and kept walking. “Expendable, that’s what they think I am. Third child and already more trouble than I’m worth. Just send him on some high-risk journey and maybe he’ll bring back something good.”
Beck remained silent.
Voltaire hummed and peered out into the forest. “Do you see movement in there?”
The underbrush was indeed swaying in a very un-plant-like fashion, and a wild boar stepped out onto the manicured lawn of the Estate.
The animal’s fur had grayed, but its face was still blemished by that violet handprint. It snorted in challenge to the young man.
“Stand back Jenkins.”
“Sir? Are you sure?”
“I’ve got it this time.”
The beast charged straight at Voltaire. The young man swiftly cast a grease spell, coating the lawn in front of him with slippery oil. The boar slipped and fell onto its side, and slid in front of the wizard.
Voltaire stepped back to gain some distance from the animal, but it writhed on the ground and managed to scrape his ankle as he moved.
“Ow! My ankle you swine!” Voltaire cried out. “You’ll pay for that.”
He cast a spell, and three bolts of pure magic shot out from his House ring, striking the pig across its body, leaving the animal squealing and groaning in the grease. Nearly dead, it could do little more than squirm as Voltaire approached, dagger drawn.
“Damnable hog. I don’t know if I hate you or not. Our previous two engagements led me to two of my favorite people in the world, you know.
“Maybe you’re just a dumb animal… but you’re pretty old for a boar. You were at the end of your rope when you came here now, weren’t you? You wish to die in battle like some war-starved barbarian? Well, I guess I was your arch-nemesis, in the end.
“But as for me, I’ve still got a new adventure to start on in the morning.”
He stabbed the boar.
“Well Jenkins, looks like we’re having pork for dinner tonight.”