narrative

Tale of the Ancients

The forest filled with grass and trees seemed to glow with sunlight. There was a crashing of metal, as nearby trees were trampled down by a group of metallic titans. The kingdoms defense system against magic. They often search for scoundrels, which was the reason of their hunt, however, this one in particular was a decent troublemaker. Nobody knew much about them. They garbed themselves in purple robes, fitted with a hood, and mask. The mask and hood sealed the identity of the sorcerer as they conducted acts that the king simply couldn’t stand. Nearby the titans, a bush ruffled, which our purple figure was hiding in. One by one, the titans were taken out. The first with a swift kick to the center core, the second was impaled by a nearby branch, and the third had had their entire body crushed by a rock. The rock was made loose by the first ones stumble. A rather impressive feat for most, but a simple day for one using magic. A simple chain of teleportation that caught the metal giants off guard. The titans were sent to destroy magic users, by first absorbing their magic gems into their core, which, of course, made an obvious weak point, and their second action would be to arrest the now defenseless user, and have them sent to the king for execution. Magic was seen was a foul act, only usable for innocent interplanetary immolation. Many years ago, it was discovered that certain precious gems gained this power, around 1000 years before our purple friend began their conquest. A conquest for magical rights. The figure looted the robots for gems of unlucky magic users, there was a glowing sapphire that almost matched the sky, and a green emerald that blended within the tall, rather viscous in length, grass and bushes.
“Some nice finds, I presume.” Called a voice, startling the sorcerer.
“Who goes there? I’m not afraid to kill any mercenaries sent to behead me.” The purple hunter reached inside their cloak, pulling a bright dagger, light as the sun.
“Okay, calm down. You know it’s me, right?” The voice confessed, the masked sorcerer turned, to see an old friend. It was Rezzyl, a magic user who covertly uses his powers so he can sneak around in towns without being noticed. He uses carbon instead of magical gems in his leather gloves. Since carbon can be compressed into diamond, they’re able to be wielded, but only to those with mastery of the arts as drawing magic essence from them can be quite taxing. He stood with a robe not too different than the sorcerers, but instead of purple, it was a warm orange. His face as visible with a graying beard, looking almost like a stereotypical fictional wizard from thousands of years ago.
“Thank heavens you’re fast with your words,” the sorcerer admitted, releasing their grip on the knife, which faded away into nothingness. “I was mere moments from throwing a barrage of knives into your torso.”
“Whether I’m turned into swiss cheese or blown to smithereens, the association needs you, friend. We cannot complete the siege on our own.” Rezzyl advertised, pulling out a scroll that detailed their plans on the assault of the corrupted castle.
	“I’ve already denied it once, and I haven’t changed my mind.” The sorcerer remarked.
“I haven’t finished my statement. You must help defeat the king, because he has a plan that will wipe out all magic.” Upon saying these words, it bewildered the unnamed sorcerer. How could the king take out all magic? It seems almost impossible to stop it, like stopping all movement and heat energy, causing absolute zero, almost impossible.
“Are you sure he can defeat us all with one action?” The sorcerer asked, slightly scared themself.
“He has made improved prototype robots. These ones don't collect gems, they destroy gems, and their user, by striking the gems hard enough that they explode. Similarly to how the core of the regular robots behave, but on our gauntlets. The magic energy is volatile, therefore able to combust.”
	“Well then, how do I sign up to fight?” The sorcerer wasn’t too sure if this was the correct course of action, but they felt as if their conscious would guilt them for eternity if they don’t at least help the attack.
“Right this way,” Rezzyl commanded, jogging in the dense grass. He lead the purple sorcerer up a hill, presumably to the secret location of the magic team. The hill was like a giant green mountain, filled with wildlife and shimmering light flooding through the tree leaves. But twas no time for sightseeing, as they were running out of time before the king eventually released his prototypes out to the world.
At the top of the green formation there were no trees, rocks, and the grass was extremely short and cut, very different to the untamed lands before, but there was one object. A mechanical titans head.
“Is this a secret way to get in?” The sorcerer asked, skeptical, “How has nobody found you by now? Do you normally cover it up?”
	“Uh, sorcerer? The activation is over here.” Rezzyls voice called. Embarrassingly, the key inside was not the steel skull, but a nearby tree stump with an axe embedded into it. The axe turned like a lever, and the land below the skull gave way, as it fell deep into whatever lay below the hatch, “That’s where the entrance is, but not the way in.” Rezzyl leaped into the pit, and the sorcerer followed not too far behind..
Inside the hill, it was pitch black. The only light was from the hatch above, which eventually closed after a few seconds of falling. Oh, and yes, the fall was quite long. The sorcerer could almost reach out and punch the awkward tension between them and Rezzyl. Then suddenly, the duo whizzed by a shiny stone, then a different one, then another, and another, then it seemed they were falling down a rainbow, but instead, it was the glimmering and intrusive, yet oddly beautiful, light of the crystals deep within the mountain.
“Alright, summon something to soften your fall, wings, a whip, a bouncy cloud, anything! If you aren’t quick enough, you’ll crush your legs!” Rezzyl called out to the sorcerer
“Wait, what? Why can’t you use a ladder-”
“On three! One… Two…”
“Oh for the love of…”
“Three!”
Upon reaching three, Rezzyl summoned a clear orb of arctic ice around himself, while the sorcerer wasn’t too fast. Thankfully, Rezzyl is a kind man, so he threw a glistening ice spear, and pinned the sorcerer to a wall by their cloak. Rezzyls ice ball crashed into the ground, cracking at the bottom, but keeping his body intact. And the sorcerer was just hanging out. Very chill.
“Y’know it would’ve helped if you told me before I could’ve broken my… Everything!” The sorcerer complained, trying to get themselves off the wall. To which they eventually fell, but luckily landed on their feet.
“Well, it’s our only current real defense against those mechanical horrors. The fall is so deep that they get turned into mush. Which reminds me, wash your hands, you probably have robot juices and oils all over you from that wall. Ingesting that would not be healthy.” Rezzyl explained, “Now let's get a move on.”
	The caves glittering magnificence was more apparent on the ground, most things are better when not zooming through the sky with a potential of death however, and the gemstones growing off the walls were in all shapes and colors. Simply being around a single cluster provided almost every color in the rainbow. It provided a spectacular light show that was very pulchritudinous.
	“We chose this cave,” Rezzyl began, continuing to lead the sorcerer, “not only for the defense and secrecy, but to remember to avenge the fallen.” Upon the crystal mineshaft, there were two corridors. One gave off an ominous aura, which, of course, was the one Rezzyl commanded the sorcerer to follow into, much to their, mostly internal, dismay.
	“So… Where are we going?” The sorcerer asked, foolishly
	“The catacombs. These are where we store every body of a magic user we find, and their gems. Take for instance, this one, her name was Jolyne. She was able to create webs out of her magic, but she was slain by a ravenous priest who vowed to kill ‘demonic heretics’” Rezzyl opened a stone coffin, to reveal an odd mummy, it wasn’t your usual that looked like it was wrapped in papyrus, no, for this mummy was the entire corpse, flesh and all, perfectly intact.
	“How does she look so… Alive? Shouldn’t she be decomposed?” The sorcerer asked, getting a bit squeamish at the idea that they may just be hallucinating, and will see a corpse any second now.
	“Magic is a pathway to many abilities some may consider to be, unnatural. Even post mortem.” Rezzyl explained, “If a corpse is close enough to a gem, they are kept alive as a husk, a soulless bag of organs. They look fine, but their soul is still gone. Her preferred gem was a rare type of diamond, that was reddish in color. It keeps her soulless body alive to today. Now come along, the meeting is in that other pathway. They should be expecting us soon.”
	The sorcerer thought to themselves, “Should I really be doing this? I could land up as one of these husks! I should follow Rezzyl and see if then I might change my mind…”
	After following the winding coves of the glowing crystal cave, there was a door that impeded the twos progress.
	“Code.” A voice called.
	“Jane, open the door before I break it open, and send you flying back into a wall. We don’t even have a password.”
	“I can tell there's a different one with you!” Jane retorted
	“It’s them.”
	“Them? You mean that purple scoundrel who should’ve been on our team because of how cool and awesome they are? I mean I’m not being a major fan right now, but-”
	“Jane. The door. Then you can steal the sorcerer's hair, or something equally as disturbing. The meeting starts…” Rezzyl looked at a watch inside his robes, “Right now!”
	“Oh right.” The door flung open to reveal a short female, tiny compared to Rezzyl, who stood 6ft tall. From the looks of it, her hair might’ve been taller than the girl herself, as it almost touched the floor.
	“Sorcerer, this is Jane. She is annoying.” Rezzyl put it bluntly, “Jane, this is the sorcerer. They aren’t annoying. Now let’s go to the meeting.”
	The sorcerer felt as if they have entered an awkward situation, so they slowly walked with Rezzyl toward a door labeled, “The Grand Meeting Hall” and without hesitation, they gently opened the door.
	“Ah! You’re finally here. Come sit! Quickly! We have much to talk about.” Boomed a man in a black robe. His hood covered most of his head, but his nose and lips were visible.
	The sorcerer sit down, and Rezzyl followed them, sitting in a seat nearby, while Jane walked in last, sitting near the corner of the table.
	“Right then. I’ve called you all here for a reason, for the king has devised a plan to eliminate us, so we must retaliate first to gain the upper hand and maybe even impede the progress of these new bots. We have several squads out in the field already. At sunrise we will strike, banding all of our scattered groups together into one. We must stampede through the crowds and enter the king's court, and deal with him and his massive mechanical monstrosities. But, remember. No hurting the civilians. And if we get in a rough patch, leave the king alone and just take out the research for the titans. Got it?” He bellowed
	“That’s Scar. His real name is John but he calls himself something cooler because of his reluctance to heal his battle scars.” Rezzyl whispered, with a slight mischievous chuckle at the end.
	“I heard that.” Scar replied.
And so the team waited inside the grass hill, for their time to strike. They communicated to the squads as they slowly grew into larger groups as the night went on. 1 hour passed. Then 2. 3. 6. 8. The time flew by in the sorcerer's head, as they mentally prepared themselves for a battle with the king’s army, and maybe even the king himself.
“Why do you look so down?” Rezzyl asked the sorcerer.
“I don’t think I’m prepared for an altercation with… Him.” They replied
“We don’t even have to graze him. Just take out the bots, and we’re done!” Rezzyl replied, in a rather buoyant tone, compared to the purple rogues, at least.
“You don’t understand,” they replied, “Can I tell you a secret?”
“If it’s important to the battle, I must know.”
“It’s about the king, his wife had 3 children. He gave them special watches so they wouldn’t get lost. But they were killed by bandits. One by one. Picked off by lowlife scum. Until he had one left, he sheltered the last one with all of his power. Even when the queen was deathly ill, he didn’t leave that child's side to visit her during the last few moments. Magic was eventually banned, which lead to the child wondering and dreaming of magic, much to the kings disgust. He hated it because of what happened to his children. And what happened to his last child was the final straw that broke the royal camel’s back. The child ran away, and joined those bandits.”
“No… You’re not implying that child was…” Rezzyl couldn’t find the words.
“Yes, yes, it was me. I am the king’s last remaining child.” The sorcerer took off their mask, revealing a female face with long cascading hair.
“Well, I expected something different, but this still surprises me…” Rezzyl mumbled, stunned at finally knowing the masked identity of their apprentice.
A few hours before the siege, the sorcerer revealed her face to the others, which both acted similarly, or perhaps to a greater degree, stunned like Rezzyl. But there was no time for idle chit-chat. The squads had formed into one. They had begun bursting down the castle wall with the power of a thousand bombs, condensed into one explosion for the wall, as it tumbled down into a rain of brick and dirt, slowly crashing into the deep water trenches below. The main battalion charged through the now gaping entrance that was made, and slaughtered the mechanical beasts inside. Innocent civilians were shocked that they were next, but they were never harmed, not even from the massive explosive charge that was set. They flew around, some opted for aerial assault, raining fire down upon the titans while others decided to rip and tear at the horrors below like true maniacs. Of course, there was support out on the field to the imbeciles that got too close. It was like a mascarade of robotic genocide.
Whilst the massive group of warlocks fought on the ground, the main four had escaped their hideout, and were silently climbing the kings spiraling castle. The sorcerer looked below, seeing a giant fall below her. The anxiety went into full gear as she began to go into a frenzy with how fast her knives impaled the stone to climb upwards. Rezzyl, beside her, made ice climbing pickaxes out of ice. Ice ice climbing pickaxes made for ice… Near Rezzyl was Scar, who walked upon the side of the wall, whilst Jane provided as an aerial lookout with her wings. The team slowly, yet surely, reached the top, near a glass window. The sorcerer took one knife, and with a few swift, slick, shining slices, cut a hole into the glass.
The four clambered through the window, with the exception of Jane who simply squeezed herself through the window, into the kings laboratory. Prototype robots lay hung around the room, with blueprints of them strewn about. Rezzyl gave a light chuckle before he tore one to shreds with icicles. Scar followed as he commanded the blueprints into a nearby fireplace. Jane crushed robot parts using feathers from her wings, that appeared to be sharper than steel. The sorcerer, however, destroyed the most by far. In calculated cuts, she turned a robot on the wall into a pile of ash and burnt wiring. She did this to many pieces in the room, to a point where it almost gave away their location due to the smoke from her blazing fast knives. However, the room was cleared out, and there was one task left… The king.
“I suppose you want to not be there while we do it? It’s okay if you don’t want to… We understand.” Jane offered
“No. I want to be the one who pulls the trigger. He left my mother in the dust, and forbid the one thing that could’ve saved her. He deserves what will be brought to him.” The sorcerer fumed.
“We’ll leave him to you.” Scar replied, “Rezzyl will stay here and check for any more data, and notify us if you need backup. And sorcerer?”
	“What is it? We’re wasting time.”
“Put that corrupt man 6 feet under. We’re counting on you.” Jane picked up Scar (barely, due to her tiny size) and flew themselves into the battlefield whilst Rezzyl simply nodded as the sorcerer walked to the kings bedroom.
What happened next was a fast course of events. Most of it was simply lost to time due to how swift the battle was. The sorcerer entered, flew toward her father, and pinned him to the wall with knives. Before the king could speak a word, the sorcerer made sure he could see her face while she ended him. He only croaked a single sentence.
“Olivia, I’m sorry...” The king muttered, and with great strength, the entire wall broke down, causing him to be drawn into the cascade of brick. The sorcerer put back on her hood and mask, then returned with Rezzyl to say that the deed had been done.
After the kings death was reported to the masses, magic users had known they had been victorious. Except for one. The sorcerer, Olivia, holed herself up inside of a room in the green giant that the other commanders of the attack had lived in. For she had killed her father, she did have many mixed feelings. A corrupt leader was gone, sure, but the thought dwelled in her head, “what if he had changed?”
Then there was a rapping of knocks at her door, “Excuse me, but may I come in?” Rezzyl responded, she opened the door for him. “We found this at the king… Well… Your fathers grave.” He held up a locket, one that had belonged to her mother up until her demise. “We think it's best for you to have it.”
“Do you think…” Olivia began, “that he could’ve changed? That my father had a chance to become someone better?”
“Listen, his ideas couldn’t be stopped with a mere stern talk. He had a grip upon his viewpoint that would simply never let go. He had to be stopped.” Rezzyl replied, “So… Cheer up, you did the right thing. The rest of us are throwing a bit of a party for being able to topple the king, we’re playing board games like Monopoly, care to come along?”
“Yeah… Just give me a minute.”
“Take as much time as you need.” Rezzyl slowly walked off and closed the door. Meanwhile, Olivia opened her mothers locket. She shed a single tear, and gave a light laugh, before closing it, and putting it around her own neck.
“Thanks, mom.”