Next he removed his metal helmet and subconsciously adjusted his embroidered green and yellow headband. His gaze swept over the orchard and the workers who were harvesting the small, yellow lituks. These fruits were one of the mainstay products of the Situ Clan. Slave workers carried straw baskets and ladders and glumly picked the bitter fruits from their thorny branches. The orchard was quiet as the slaves went about their work wordlessly. Adjacent to the mature orchard was a barren field set to be cultivated this year. Out in the center of the barren field, Marak’s gaze halted on the frail figure of a woman kneeling in the dirt and waving her arms. The woman was covered in dirt, obscuring the only colorful portion of her outfit, the broad, embroidered Clan Belt in the green and yellow colors of the Situ Clan. The rest of her attire was simply a dirty, brown tunic that signified the woman’s low status as a slave of Lord Ridak, Lord of the Situ Clan.

The woman bowed her head to the ground and Marak could almost recite the words that were coming from her mouth. The slave was a soil mage and it was her job to prepare the soil for planting of the new orchard. Marak knew the spells by heart, but no one was aware of that fact. All four types of mages in Khadora were looked down upon as simple laborers. Soil mages tended the dirt when necessary for planting or to constrain erosion. Water mages ensured the proper amount of rainfall needed to nourish the crops, while air mages prevented damaging windstorms or dust storms. Sun mages ensured the appropriate sunlight to aid the crops towards a healthy harvest.

Magic in Khadora was simple and menial and many of the mages were slaves, like the dirty, frail woman in the barren field. Marak’s eyes welled with wetness as he watched the woman toil over the soil under the thankless watch of her overseer. The slaves in Khadora were not treated much better than the soil the woman worked over and Marak’s heart wept every time he sat and watched his mother work. Marak spent many days in the fields with his mother when he was younger and it was at her insistence that he hid the magical talent he possessed.