The world seemed to owe a debt to Vizimir. A debt that, to Vizimir, could never be paid.
You see, his earliest memories were of the orphanage at Vanzeer, a crumbling stone building in a back alley slum where thirty children slept beneath a leaking roof and fought over blankets in winter. Vizimir never knew his parents. The matron claimed they had died of fever, though she told so many lies that he eventually stopped believing her. What he did know was hunger. Hunger taught Vizimir his first lessons: it taught him to fight, to steal, and most importantly, to hate. Friendship lasted until the food ran out. People always showed their true colors when they became hungry. Vizimir always did.
He was never the strongest at the orphanage. Even when he grew older, he was weaker and scrawnier than the children his age. He lost fights, lost food, and lost dignity. He came to hate weakness, almost as much as he hated hunger. In time, he came to hate everything, until he was almost as cruel as the world that created him.
His escape came when a traveling magician visited the orphanage. The old man performed cheap tricks for the children: sparks from his fingertips, coins appearing behind ears, tiny dancing animals conjured from smoke. The others laughed. Vizimir watched. That night, without understanding how, he reproduced one of the magician's spells.
A spark appeared at his fingertips as he snapped his ring finger against his palm. The shock startled him severely, and he stayed awake the entire night. Sunrise dawned on a young Vizimir, who had been snapping his fingers all night until he could produce not a spark, but a steady flame that fovered just above his finger.
The matron yelled at him. "No candles!" she barked. "Ya wants ta burn the place down?"
Vizimir stared at her and hid his hands under his sheets. He ran away that same day. He spent the next days and weeks struggling on his own, casting simple spells for entertainment and profit. He slept outside a rowhouse, but ate better than he had at the orphanage. He found the loneliness to be a comfort—after all, there was no-one to steal his food! But time was running out. Winter was approaching, and he wasn't making enough to afford lodging.
Little did he know, but fate was preparing to take a strange turn. You see, one evening in late fall, he met someone weaker than himself. Just some girl, sleeping behind the rowhouse where Vizimir usually slept. He found her with one arm tucked beneath a threadbare coat. The other ended above the elbow.
"Go away," Vizimir told her.
"I'm sleeping," she answered sleepily.
"This is my alley," he insisted.
She didn't answer. Vizimir nearly kicked her, but he stopped, without knowing why. He looked at her arm, and wondered how she fed herself. Welling up in his heart was an emotion he'd never recognized: pity.
"Do you want some food?" he found himself asking.
"Mmmmm, please, sir!" she answered, in a pathetic voice that made Vizimir even sorrier. He took her to a bakery and bought her a fancy pastry that he himself could scarcely afford. When the time to make payment came, Vizimir came up short. Another patron begrudgingly paid the difference, and the two were kicked from the premises. They sat on a front step while Vizimir watched her eat, his own stomach growling.
For the first time in his life, Vizimir knew what love was. And nobody had taught him what it was either. He had taught himself.
Whether by fate or luck—or both—they made it together through that winter. When they slept outside, they huddled together for warmth. They begged, they stole, and they broke into an attic room together once just to keep warm on a particularly cold night. That was how things were.
A year passed, and then two. They were no longer children. And while Vizimir's magic grew stronger, Anya grew more beautiful. He no longer played with flames for tricks, but found a position as an apprentice magician in an alchemy laboratory. Even as his station improved, his love for Anya only grew stronger. She was all he thought of, and the same was true of her for him. It was impossible to say who loved who more; they were like two faint flames which had merged to create a single unwavering pillar of light. A little light in the darkness—that was Vizimir and Anya. One day he even proposed to her, offering her the cut-off end of a copper pipe as a ring. She accepted gleefully, and immediately embraced him, hugging him tightly with her one arm.
Fate smiled upon Vizimir from then on. Well, almost. He had but one tragedy yet to endure before fate would turn its cruel countenance upon other men. You see, while his station and magical prowess continued to improve, he began to cough. It started as a small, nagging cough that seemed like it would end any day. But then it turned worse, and scarcely an hour would pass before Anya would hear a smothered cough from Vizimir's chambers. He went to a doctor, who diagnosed him with tuberculosis. Anya was aghast with horror, but he promised her he would get better. She, cradled in his arms, tearfully nodded, trusting him more than she had ever trusted anyone before.
And he did. The nobleman who employed him had him sent off to a sanatorium, where the clean mountain air was promised to clean his lungs. Anya visited him as often as she could—sometimes daily—and he began to improve, to their mutual delight. The cough faded, and soon Vizimir was declared ready to return to work.
Then Anya began to cough.
It was Vizimir's worst nightmare. She slowly deteriorated week by week, and he saw the pathetic hopelessness taking root in her eyes as he desperately tried to console her. She was taken to a doctor and, just like Vizimir, diagnosed with tuberculosis. But the nobleman refused to pay for her to be sent off to the sanatorium. So Vizimir did, nearly bankrupting himself. He tried to heal her, using his newfound magical powers to their utmost. But it was no use—she died in his arms one cold and snowy morning, far away from the city in which they'd grown up.
His money had been useless. His powers had availed nothing.
When he returned home, a change had come over him that was noticed immediately. He no longer smiled, and he poured himself into his work with tripled effort. He snapped at his underlings and stalked past child beggars as he passed them on the street without so much as looking up. All the kindness that Anya had taught him was seemingly gone. He eventually turned to necromancy, in hopes of contacting his poor Anya from beyond. But necromancy required murder. And that—! Unthinkable!
Or—?
Desperate men do desperate things. It was a cold, overcast day in late spring when he sank to his lowest point. An old woman died at his hands, her throat slit by the blade of a glass dagger. Her soul was captured and channeled through arcane equipment, venturing into the beyond to bring back the one who was dear to him.
"Oh Vizimir, what have you done?!" rang out the voice, clear as day. It was Anya, precious Anya! But her voice was not eager as he'd hoped, but anguished. Vizimir instantly knew that she knew what he'd done, purely because he wanted to hear her one more time.
"I'm—I'm sorry!" was all he could sputter, before the spell died and the channel went dark. He stared at his arcane equipment stupidly, wondering where the hell he had become so dark, so willing to violate nature, his own dignity, and Anya's peace. And that poor old woman! He looked at her deceased corpse with sickening guilt and buried it secretly by night, in a grave he had prepared earlier that day for this purpose.
He spent the next few days—and then years—in careful thought and contemplation. What did he want to do? Who did he want to be? He quit his job and roamed the countryside, acting as a healer and a seer for subsistence level pay. He wore rags, and sometimes slept outdoors as he had so many years ago. It was as if he was trying to pay for his crime, but it was no use. Finally, wracked by guilt, he resolved to end himself.
The rope swayed in front of him, and he tested it. It was solid, and everything else was in place. Vizimir was ready to see Anya again or face justice or whatever. It didn't matter anymore.
But then he heard a voice. Anya's voice—not audibly as before, but deep inside himself. He could hear her protesting once more.
"Vizimir, no!" she cried. Or so it felt.
He sat down, beside himself with frustration, grief, guilt, and a few more emotions that don't have names. How could life just go on? Without justice, without closure, most of all without Anya?
Then with a gradual, dawning realization that had already been brewing inside him for many years, he understood. He was here, and he was now. He could do whatever he wanted, and he owed nothing to anybody. He could end himself if he wanted, but he no longer wanted to. He realized he wanted to help people, to fix his mistake, and to be a different person. He couldn't save Anya, but there were other orphans out there, just as hungry and needy as Anya. He could help them, feed them, and educate them! And not just orphans; Vizimir knew by now that even kings and viceroys and archmages could be lonely and in need of help and advice. They needed love too!
Finally, he did something he hadn't done in years. He tilted his head back and laughed. His laughter turned to tears, and then back to laughter, and then mixed together all at once. The pain of missing Anya was unbelievable, and he finally understood why he had killed that old woman. He forgave himself, first of all, and then he forgave that old matron who'd been tasked with feeding and providing for thirty children as miserable as himself. And then he forgave others who'd wronged him, finally seeing humanity for the broken but far from hopeless tapestry that it truly was.
Years passed, and Vizimir accumulated wealth beyond all imagination. He even allowed himself to fall in love again, though it wasn't like it was before with Anya. He drank and feasted with kings, and counseled them, always against war and greed, towards generosity, humility, and forgiveness. Sometimes they listened. When they didn't, Vizimir understood why, and forgave them for their foolishness. For Vizimir knows in his heart that evil doesn't need to be punished in order to be pathetic, and that love doesn't need to be rewarded in order to be beautiful. Doing the right thing is its own reward. And in time, Vizimir feels confident that you will agree with him.