The sun sweltered overhead in the clear blue sky as Sorrinn and Orrillimmirr walked the village roads to Lua’s abode. Summer was really starting to rear its head in full force. He already missed the cool, rainy mornings of spring, when he’d stay in all day and practice his mystic manipulation on the general room’s floor, subsumed into the pitter-patter of the rain softly tip-tapping against the walls. It was scorching and dry then, the sting of the heat dancing across the exposed parts of his pale skin like biting ants. The sweat already coated his forehead in a layer of perspiration. His father had slathered him in a so-called “protector from The Sustainer” before they headed out—the alchemy-forged moisturizer/sunblock his father once told him how to create out of the blue. It left an imperceptible, greasy-feeling film over the skin, so he felt like a slab of meat sauteing in a pan of oil beneath that unrelenting heat.
The Sustainer was how that world referred to the sun, by the way. It was another of the great Paragons he kept hearing about: The Mystic Force. The Ancestor. The System (?) The Origin. The Sustainer. His guess was that they were all deities to that world—nameless gods embodying the concepts and phenomena the people perceived around them. Except they all truly existed, and their influence on the world could be observed all around. A cup of wine too many and a steamy night with a curvy foxette certainly didn’t result in the creation of Fox-kin Beast-blood.
He was glad he got in most of his training while it was still cool out. He was too pasty to be slaving under the sun, casting Firebolt for the nth time.
That was the opposite for the village. Things were really coming alive then. All of the village’s men and some young boys were starting to harvest the crops in the fields. There were more mandilleer leading carts filled with produce on the roads than he’d ever seen. Things overall were busier.
That made it all the more disconcerting when a deep, viking-sounding horn sounded in the distance. His focus snapped in the direction of the blowing horn. Everything around him came to a halt as the village people listened to the sound. Someone exclaimed, “Monster attack! A forest golem is attacking from the northern woodlands!” Things accelerated from busy to chaotic at the dropping of a coin. The men mounting mandilleer saddles kicked it into gear, wheels churning as they raced along the paths to safety. The villagers harvesting the crops gathered up the children with yelling voices and scattered to the four winds toward their homes. All the while, the deep, ground-trembling horn continued bellowing in the foreground.
Sorrinn’s gaze whipped upward toward his father for both direction and comfort upon instinct. The nonchalant, reassuring expression on Orrillimmirr’s face told him there was nothing to worry about at all. That so long as he remained by his father’s side, nothing would ever harm him. He had utmost faith in his father’s confidence.
“Shall we go have a look at the golem, little one? It’s quite rare for forest golems to surface from their dwellings in the deep wood. This is a serendipitous opportunity for learning through observing.”
Well, if he was confident enough to bring his child to the monster, Sorrinn didn’t see why not. He eagerly nodded. “Okay, Paba.”
Hand in hand, the two strolled northward, toward the commotion. Lua lived toward the north, at the foot of the northern woodlands. The trip didn’t end up being out of their way all too much.
A battle was being waged in the open of the plains north of the village. Well, something of a battle. A race-diverse group of six, bound in dark leather armor and wielding hammers, swords, and bows and arrows, stood in opposition to an eleven-foot behemoth forged of cobbled bark, dirt, grasses, chunks of stone, and woodish connective roots. The behemoth was headless with a small torso in stark contrast to its four long, mammothine arms and wide, stub legs it stomped forward upon with the stride of a rushing gorilla. The vines dangling from its massive body tossed and swayed as it cumbersomely dashed on all six of its appendages, stone grating and debris falling to its motion, steps powerful enough to tremor the foundation they stood upon. It lunged in a series of heavy leaps, hoisting its great front arms overhead, and brought them slamming down bearing a power which broke and uprooted the ground beneath it. The impact alone emitted a radial pulse of force that knocked some of the village guards off their feet.
They scrambled back into formation like rodents exposed from their hide. The melee fighters didn’t dare move in close against it as it wildly lashed its long arms around it in reaching, sweeping arcs, and the arrows the rangers loosed from their bows bounced off its thick, bark-and-stone-comprised shell. Thankfully, big as it was, it was slow and could be outran. They took turns drawing the golem’s aggression, leading it in circles around the plain—at least keeping it away from the village.
Orrillimmirr and Sorrinn settled a good distance away to watch the happenings.
“It’s a marvelous specimen. By the density of its shell, hmm, perhaps two centuries old. The large quantity of stone comprising its exoskeleton suggests it dwelled primarily in a cave.” His father looked over and down at him in that beautifully graceful and silently enthusiastic way he did when he had wisdom to share. “Woodland forest golems are reclusive creatures born when an abundance of life energy collides and clusters with an abundance of mystic energy into what’s known as a naturally-occurring mystic phenomena. Much of their life is spent hibernating in their dwellings, structuring the clusters of organic material drawn to their cores into strong, durable shells. They only occasionally embark out into the world to gather more material to reinforce its shell with.” Finger and thumb cradling his chin, Orrillimmirr pondered aloud, “I wonder what could have caused it to exit the forest?”
“Why don’t they use magic to win, Paba?”
Rousing amusement forced a loving smile on his father. It was encouraging looks like that which urged Sorrinn to never stop asking questions and being curious about the world. “The people here can manage spells for simple tasks like watering the fields or warding off weak beasts, but no one save for Lua knows the mystic capacity or combat magic prowess to fell a centurion golem singlehanded. Forest golems harness their innate mystic factor to draw life energy from the natural world around them. What I’m afraid of is—”
Interrupting Orrillimmirr’s words, the brightness of the sky flickered down toward an ominous, unnatural dimness. A swarm of green particles converged around the golem’s chest from all things, siphoned through the cracks, into its core. Soon, the walls of its torso gaped. Its spherical core of spiraling, woodish roots emanating an amber-hued energy projected outward. The world violently shuddered as a concentrated beam of life energy flooded from its core, sweeping an instantaneous arc across the plain. Everywhere the beam touched swelled with abundance and overgrowth. It was by sheer luck none of the guards were engulfed by it.
He dumbly blinked. “—That. No organic lifeform is capable of enduring such concentrated abundance of life. Not even we of Elven blood. At the least, I’ve heard it is a peaceful and transient exit from this world.”
The golem started to charge up again. The guards were stunned into inaction before its power. The next time it unleashed that devastation, they were all finished.
“Can I help?” Sorrinn asked, hopeful. “I practice every day, Paba.”
“Indeed, you have, and I can sense how far you’ve matured in the arts. But, no, unfortunately,” Orrillimmirr declined with a shake of his head. “Its core has been amassing resilience for over two centuries. I’m afraid nothing you could muster would so much as scratch at its facade.”
Sorrinn frowned. All of that effort and he was hardly a thousandth up the hill. In the grand hierarchy, he was still insignificant. He didn’t want to see those people die, but he wasn’t the fool who’d sprint into death’s maw off of ego and hubris’s whim alone. Thus, unwanting to see them be wiped out, he closed his eyes.
Then a loud, crescendoing and swift whistling noise fell from the sky, followed by another, and another, and another, and two more after that. There was a silence in his ears which only the breeze casting the grass into tranquil susurrations interrupted. The weight clenching down on the atmosphere uplifted. His eyes peeked open to the image of the golem skewered through the body and limbs, pinned into place by six long black rods as tall as itself. A thunderous boom clapped. Something so fast, it was rendered imperceptible sped inward of the golem in a blink of an eye. It struck. Blustering waves of force echoed across the plain. The golem’s core was obliterated into a fleeing ripple of amber dust.
All he heard was the rattling boom, then saw the golem’s body explode against the pressure into raining debris, and it was over before he could fathom it. The gathering waves of life exploded outward with its demise, causing the entire area to grow vitality-rich, fruit-bearing trees, wildflowers, and tallgrasses.
The guards were shocked but alive. That was something worth celebrating.
“A fortuitous conclusion to this scenario.” His father continued moseying along in the direction of Lua’s house, the image of calm.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Sorrinn watched Orrillimmirr go. Was it him or was his father emanating major mysterious figure vibes? So wise, in control, and even-tempered. Was that what happened when you lived for centuries?
He hurried to keep up. “What happened, Paba?”
Orrillimmirr pointed into the distance, where a figure in dark stood, the black fabric of her hooded kimono-dress billowing in the breeze. It was Lua. “This village is her home too. She cares deeply for its people in her own way.”
So that was what his master was capable of? He childishly awed with those big eyes of his. He was like the chosen one learning from the time-honored wise one. Drown him in all of the knowledge. Amidst his astoundment and intrigue, he ran ahead.
***
“Now show me what you’ve achieved in two month’s time.”
Sorrinn stood in the front yard of Lua’s house, before a circular target of stone the veiled woman had created, his wand in hand. Orrillimmirr had left him to her tutelage, promising to return in time to make it home before dinner. His father was eager to have a run into the northern woodlands to investigate the cause of the forest golem’s abrupt appearance so far away from its dwelling. In the meanwhile, it was him and Lua. Left in each other’s company, Sorrinn was doing his best to overcome the repulsion reaction from her dark constitution. It was like lingering within a bad smell for long enough, he discovered. Eventually, the brain recognized it wasn’t harmful and stopped smelling it. Eventually, his heart stopped pounding when his brain discerned she wasn’t a danger to him.
Speaking of wands: “Can I use the wand my paba made me?” He showed it off to her all proud-like and wearing a big smile.
Lua herself stood off on the sidelines, somehow observing through headwrapping and hood. “Yes. Wands are not a bridge over knowledge and discipline,” her soft, flat-toned voice clarified. “The will imbued into your mystic flow still weaves the gestures within the wand’s gem, and a wand does not permit you to actualize magic you are unlearned of.”
Good to know. He aimed the wand at the target and readied himself. His focus straitened. A vortex of dust converged at the wand’s tip, compacting firm into a smooth, sharp-pointed and asymmetric stone shard a pencil’s length. With a flick of his wand, the shard fired at a quarter of a bullet’s speed and struck the target’s outer edge. It pierced the stone target like the strike of a pickaxe, remaining where it embedded. Immediately after, a tempest howled around his wand’s point. He directed it forward. A focused, fleeting blow of wind burst forth and howled across her property with a force that made his arm recoil and his feet stumble backward upon release. He caught himself before he fell, raising his wand back into stance.
Then ignited a blueberry-sized spark which roused into a contained flame, small yet hot and dense enough to bear its influence upon the world. He fired it forward. It raced through the air, painting a swift, incandescent line. It struck. FWOOSH! The target was draped beneath a sheet of flowing, almost liquid-like flames when the spark hit. In the flame’s stead, within a second’s time, water vapors hissed, rushed, and coalesced in a maelstrom before his wand. A fist-sized orb of water swelled into existence before he whipped his wand forward and unleashed it with explosive force, the wet mass hissing and sputtering as it pierced the resisting wind. It met the target and erupted into a big splash against its face. The flames enveloping the target were doused in an instant, and the sizzle of the steam shepherded the silence in his focus’s stead.
Four minor spells, semi-mastered in two months’ time. It was all in a day’s work.
Sorrinn turned toward Lua with an expectant look, his wand gripped in his both hands, pressed to his chest.
“Well done, child. To be able to soar so high with only a finger pointing the way toward the summit, you have your father’s intellect. It is evident you are much-beloved by The Mystic Force and have strongly inherited The Ancestor’s blood.”
He raised his hand like a grade-schooler.
“Yes?”
“Who is The Ancestor?” That ‘Ancestor’ individual seemed to have close ties to The Mystic Force.
“The Ancestor, otherwise more commonly known as The Illumination. If The Mystic Force is a grand river, then The Illumination is the divine vessel through whom Its wealth flows. The Illumination is the progenitor of all Elves, thus to Elvenkind, they refer to The Illumination as The Ancestor. Many believe The Illumination to be the source of all of the world’s knowledge and the flame that rouses sapient life into being to pursue the knowledge which falls from Their hands. Have I answered your question satisfactorily?” So toneless. So straight to the point. He liked it.
“Yeah. Thank you.”
Lua circled without word and entered her house. The way she moved in her robes made it appear she was gliding over the ground which she walked. She left the door open for him, so he supposed that was her way of inviting him in.
Sorrinn followed her inside. To his surprise, her cottage’s general room was much more like a proper living room. She had a nice leather couch and a floor table before the cobble fireplace. Exquisite decor from what looked like a diverse range of places and cultures adorned her floor and walls. Colorful textile rugs, tribal masks, stylized paintings, mounted heads of fearsome, otherworldly beasts, strange trinkets, curios, furled scrolls, and sealed books bedecking the shelves. It was much more lived-in and personalized than his house, which looked empty in comparison. He hadn’t gauged her as a traveler or a collector, but he supposed she’d been to many places in her time.
“You have a lot of stuff.”
The dark-clad woman pivoted seamlessly and unnaturally like a ballerina in a music box. “Yes.” She hadn’t thought to say anymore than that one word. She simply stared down at the floor beneath veil and hood.
A bead of sweat rolled over his pale brow. “…How come?”
“Where I and my people hail from—the End—exists an Entity revered by all as The Void. The Void drowns all and devours all and leaves only emptiness and silence in Its wake. My time beneath its tide has left my memory dimmed—at times, hazy. I never wish to forget the journey that led me to where I stand now. When Absence drowns my thoughts, I look at all of the things I have collected across a lifetime, and I find clarity again.” She circled and left him for somewhere deeper in the house without word again. Communication didn’t seem to be her strong suit. But, she deserved lenience. He doubted he’d be the paragon of sociability if he’d spent only the divine knew how long in a place called the End, where horrors, evils, and Something unfathomable called The Void lurked in the infinite darkness. The place had literally drained the color out of her. All things considered, she was holding up rather well.
When she returned, a collection of items gravitated in her orbit: a large, shallow bowl, a crystal ball, nine vials containing varied-colored powders, and a bulbous vial holding a transparent substance.
He hadn’t gone anywhere since she left out of well-manneredness.
“Sit,” she said, short-worded.
And sit upon the couch he did.
As if by telekinesis, all of the things floating around her arranged themselves onto the floor table. The big bowl was placed in the center. The nine vials of colored powder arranged in an arc around the big bowl, the bulb of liquid behind them. Lastly, the crystal orb was set in the elevated band at the center of the large dish. “These are attuning salts. They will produce an alchemical reaction with the Ogrikon’s Orb and inform us of what aspects your body harmonizes with, as well as the quantity and depth of mystic energy your body holds.”
So that was how people who couldn’t access The Place Within figured things out?
The things on the table began to move. The nine vials of powder popped their corks and upended themselves into the dish. Then poured the transparent substance, which ran viscous like honey. That was until it contacted the powders in the dish, at which it absorbed the powders and liquefied toward a more watery consistency. The resulting substance stirred around the bowl in a prismatic array of psychedelic patterns. Soon, all of the liquid was siphoned by the crystal orb. The substance swirled around in its confines as a many-colored smoke.
“Touch the orb,” she instructed.
Sorrinn did as he was told. The moment his palm set against the orb, strands of an azure energy began rising from his body. Everything in Lua’s abode softly trembled as the prelude to the beautiful, deep azure pillar of energy that soon emerged from him, enveloping him in its profound radiance. As for the orb, all of its colors remained, but red, blue, white, and purple were the colors of greatest abundance amidst the five others.
Lua’s head lifted from the floor to marvel at the energy’s rich, dense shade of blue from behind her headwrapping. Her ghostly, white-painted lips remained unmoving even before its splendor. “You are a rare existence, child—what is called in legend a prismatic; one in whom all aspects of The Mystic Force dwells to some extent. Red signifies Creation. White signifies Restoration. Black signifies Necromancy. Purple signifies Control. Those are the aspects you are most resonant with. Most are only resonant with a singular aspect and may host some capability with two other aspects. You should now be able to grasp what kind of rarity you are in this world.”
Creation was obvious. Though he was disappointed that Alteration wasn’t one of his big four affinities. Flying wasn’t in the cards. Restoration, Necromancy, and Control, though? That was interesting. He never imagined himself doing any healing, death-summoning, or influencing others’ minds.
He removed his hand from the orb. The uproar of phantom energy faded away soon thereafter.
“A vast potential slumbers inside you. You have been blessed with a copious wealth—as expected of a reincarnation of one of The Illumination’s Luminaries.” Her head descended once again, back to its neutral position. “Tell me: what is it that you seek from the mystic arts?”
His pursuit of the arts was stoked by many things—power, freedom, potential. But the thing that floated to the surface before all of the others and dyed his expression a shade of vehement was the one which had gradually submerged its hooks into his mind the more he dedicated himself to the practice. Sweeter than power; more tempting than freedom; the pinnacle of one’s potential: “Mastery,” he answered, absolute in his devotion. The thing that fascinated and satisfied him most was the process of exploring, acquiring, learning, and mastering. That was something he could dedicate his life to—a flavor on his tongue he’d never grow jaded of. The mystic arts was a vast ocean he couldn’t wait to chart the deepest depths of.
“I see. Then you have my word: The same as your father once aided me in my moment of hopelessness and desperation, I will answer his child’s wish and impart to you all that I know—if you are willing to learn.”