I wake up with sore eyes.
A hacked head
And grasping for air.
I calm down after a few seconds rush by and I don’t want to check my pocket watch in case the time is six O’clock.
But I do so anyway.
Everything feels so fake, so fabricated so – unreal
It is exactly six O’clock and I don’t know why my mind continues to keep wandering but it does so anyway; desperately trying to comprehend reality itself and trying to crake an ancient code.
I get up and run to the door making a loud noise as I stumble across the floor in panic.
I get my shoes on and open the door, right as I do so. A stream of poor, dim light erodes the room for a second.
I see father’s face all bewildered as he starts to speak.
“Where are you going?”
“To hang out with Gaven, Rob and them lot.”
I whisper back to his quiet voice.
“This early?”
I’m about to prepare some excuse put my mind goes blank and I feel like my mind is about to explode from all the different things that were simultaneously being processed.
“Alright then – be careful…”
“You got it.”
As I close the door, I see his lips move slightly, and he probably wants to offer me a quick breakfast and wishes me off safely – he’s that kind of person anyways.
I run aimlessly to the water village for a third time. And right as I see the river extend outwards, I desperately wish that Jim isn’t there.
I hope today he decides to stay inside for a little longer, I hope that part of him wanted to sleep for another hour or today is a rest day for him.
And with the distance of the bridge from me shrinking significantly, I hear a few splashes but convince myself a lack of oxygen has gotten to my head.
I walk very slowly as my sight trembles from my unstable fatigued legs to down below.
I look over.
And he’s there.
‘Alright as weird as it sounds, what if those were both dreams?’ I laugh to myself.
And right as I’m about to shout down below, I look at my wrist.
A drawing of an hourglass in the fashion of a weird, eight stares back. All in straight lines.
Slowly, I start frantically rubbing my wrist in hope it would disappear.
But it doesn’t and after realising, I run down and Jim looks at me with the same familiar expression.
“What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know – but I think you’d know…”
“Ed are you okay?”
He laughs, but his deescalating mood doesn’t seem to change mine.
I turn my palm towards the sky revealing the emblem – he becomes completely still, quiet and somewhat taken back.
“Come then…”
He repeats a set of actions that I’ve seen before identically – he gets out casts a spell to dry himself and goes inside and I follow right before he becomes out of sight.
I sit down, and he seems like he has a lot to say but I start first.
“Look, this is going to be weird I know. But by any chance do you think there is some sort of threat?”
His eyeballs prick yet again at the sight of my sort of one hundred percent accuracy.
“I mean... There is always circulation of threats and wars all year round, on a small local scale. But it is always never true. It’s as reliable as using the stars to predict the future-”
He continues and then I repeat the same line of actions where I tell him in detail what I saw. But this time with more information, and I find it hard to talk about the very idea that mass deaths would occur this every day.
As before, he doesn’t question it – maybe just ‘maybe’ it was a dream, and then Jim would be laughing at me afterwards.
Right as his face becomes sturdy and un-breakable, we are ready to depart in a flash.
But I stop him this time, knowing that if this my dream is really the future.
I am making a grave mistake by wasting every fraction of a second - I have.
“Jim – could you tell me more about this emblem…”
“The time emblem, is probably one of the first emblems to believe to have gone extinct. Any member was hunted down in an ancient war. Because of how threatening it sounds. Now, to why it was threating I don’t know. But the moment the population of an emblem goes to zero. That emblem god no longer has any power to change our world. No subjections – no jurisdiction.”
The only thing that changes the course from my other reality is some few changes in what he says.
We both get up at the same time and rush out the door and up the slope of mud and onto the path.
We run and run.
With Jim being faster – much faster. It’s as if he has much higher stakes to lose than me.
Maybe I just don’t realise the impact of what I’m saying, but I was there – at least in my dreams. That’s at least what I convince myself.
“So, continuing on...”
He says in front of me as I desperately try to keep up.
“There are levels and ranks as you know to emblems – one to ten and then mastery. All I know for sure is that the mastery for time – is time portal.”
I don’t know how to respond – I mean sure it is great I have such information about an emblem I didn’t even know anything about. But mastery takes decades to reach. And if not endless amounts of tedious, laborious training.
Which at that point becomes torture.
Even with the time requirement, that wasn’t all of it anyways, there is still another list of requirements. Even old man Jim hasn’t gotten there and he’s only at rank nine – water dragon.
We get past a second bridge right next to the village and I shout to Jim to go on ahead – he doesn’t question it because he already knows from me telling him earlier that Angela is there.
I walk down carefully this time from the opposite side, and even though I want this all to be a dream – part of me knows it isn’t.
‘If she isn’t here – It is a dream. Please Angela don’t be here’ I say to myself, but I hear her mystical voice singing across the waters completely un-aware of my presence.
“Angela, we have to go now.”
I say softly trying to contain a harsh tone from escaping my harsh reality. She turns her head towards me and reacts like last time – all flustered until I hook her back to reality.
“This is urgent let’s go!”
I say with a loud voice this time. I run at last after the quick stop and then I don’t bother to check back on her trusting, yet knowing she would follow me from my past experience.
We get past the entrance. We get through the main street. And finally, we get to the exit – towards the capital. It's as if there was a stand-off against us and the empty road.
This is exactly what happened last time just without Gaven. The road echoes a gathering of dust summoned by the sound of thumping and a wooden cart going over a rock.
The cart, along with the animal pulling it along looks over to us in innocence – completely unaware to the dangers about to come.
“The man. The man there’s innocent…”
I say to Jim, but he doesn’t respond back, he knows what I told him about the other emblem user and he seems to know more than he was telling me when he said the person possess a ‘dark’ emblem.
As the cart travels closer, the silence only seems to grow more deadly, and when all of it becomes dull.
The man commanding the animal becomes almost completely lifeless, that’s’ when the spark silence was about to light up an entire bomb.
Although I had expected Jim to just use a water spell to kill everyone in the back – he doesn’t. ‘He knows that would be efficient – and the entire town would be safe. But why? Why then does he not do so?’
Slowly all the beasts exit the back, and the real battle starts. Just like before one of them dies with a water spell surging right through them and then the next two.
But I wonder to myself this time – something’s changed…
As they got increasingly closer, Angela is just standing there – this time completely statuary.
Not casting any magic, nor shaking like I’d expect her to. I rush to her to look in her eyes – but they were normal.
“Angela! Summon me something!”
She snaps back to the reality of the situation and summons a barrage of spears.
I grab one from the air and rush to Jim.
“Play safe Jim! They are going to hit you!”
I am not sure if he hears me for certain.
But all I notice is a change in pattern.
He all uses a much more powerful emblem cast.
And just like that nearly wipes all of them out, with one to go.
Which dynamically is wiped out by Angela’s rain of spears flattening any cell or shred of skin, hair and even bone.
Leaving a splutter of blood on the floor.
‘Okay, much better than last time! This trial-and-error thing may be working actually... Just maybe...’
All of a sudden, the cloaked man jumps out the cart from the back.
And a horrible aura arises from his presence.
The atmosphere becomes frozen. Silent. Unable to breath. Constricted beyond possible thought.
“Don’t throw random attacks he’ll just counter them!”
I shout frantically when he starts to chant.
But there doesn’t seem to be away around starting the offensive.
He casts rapidly.
And three beams of water dash towards the person, all from different direction.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
He casts a spherical hollow shield, from a black substance.
And it practically devours the entire water beam, like a thirty desert.
Me and Angela watch unfathomably.
Cast after cast, Jim’s fast-action water attacks don’t do much. But indeed, it does something.
I notice the shield wearing out.
It seems to be flaking away.
Then with one last hit it cracks into a thousand or possibly a million pieces.
Instantaneously, the figure casts something like a thin arrow.
It approaches us rapidly, and then expands into a blanket of spikes.
Angela panics and casts a thick wall of ice, which Jim reacts to by strengthening the all.
As the wall and the blanket of spikes come into contact both dissipate, leaving only a large puddle of water.
Dark arrow after dark arrow he casts, until eventually they can’t keep up casting a defensive ice wall.
The arrows come from every single direction entrapping us.
“Water draak!”
Jim casts and just like that a massive body of water, almost a river summons from the ground around us.
It engulfs and eliminates any of the attacks and sky rockets upwards almost into the skies, engulfing a couple clouds.
With the body of water forming distinct details: enormous plates of scales, a tail the size of a couple houses, wings larger than fields, and a head full of frozen teeth.
He swerves it with his hands like he is leading an orchestra.
The figure casts an array of outstanding spells, directing them simultaneously at the impending water dragon, as well as us.
However, the dragon’s tail effortlessly engulfs anything no matter the direction, or ability the person casts.
Until finally, in a swift ending action, Jim strikes downwards with a tight clenched fist.
The dragon opens its jaws a full one-hundred and eighty degrees, with jaws occupied with a fatal handful of teeth.
Many of which are three times taller than the person in front of us.
Being hit with something of this size and sheer power would be an instant death. And if not, it would definitely be a slow death of bleeding out.
As the dragon accelerates downwards, it breathes with frozen lungs. And the air that comes out freezes the air.
Forming endless snow and ice.
And the ground below turns frosted and frozen. With the person unable to move it looks like.
Or is an absolute idiot for not running away for his life.
The dragon head collides to the ground catastrophically, and shredding fragments of ice everywhere.
And just like a tower collapsing absolute weight of the rest of the body cashes down onto the same point.
Everything freezes for a moment, after Jim casts something. And then quickly he casts something else.
Leaving the structure shattering in a thousand different ways, with slices horizontally, vertically and diagonally.
The silence is more deadly than the opponent.
The uncertain, unknowingly vague result makes me shiver move than the cold plummeted temperature of the ground and air.
The ice melts rapidly, as Jim lets go of any action with his hands.
And all that’s left is an iceberg within the middle of it all.
It cracks.
And starts to violently shake from a strange, unknown force.
Everything clears.
The person is still very much there.
I don't understand how.
And by the looks of Jim and Angela, neither do they in the slightest sense.
Then in equal size within the sky, a strange object appears.
Just like before.
It grows and grows like a swelling ballon. With spikes grows sharper and sharper.
A loud ‘bang’ ensues.
And even though Jim casts a much larger ice shield from us he tells us to run.
We do so.
With me having to pull Angela.
Even so.
Like a hurricane barrage, the spikes of darkness manage to get right past.
Seemingly destroying the very air, and impaling the ground, shaking it.
I notice up ahead at the village, people seem to be screaming.
The spikes keep going.
Round by round it goes.
Until it stops.
Some of the houses are completely flattened.
Luckily, almost the entire village is evacuated by now. So, no one died within the houses.
I look at Jim. Who’s dashing around somehow, dodging the last strike.
We survived this time.
Somehow.
And as the last of the ice wall melts, it truly reveals how much it saved us.
With fragments as big as houses being stopped within it.
However, it’s not over.
That person is surely toying with us.
As the last time he casted such an emblem cast, it was much bigger in size.
Making me wonder.
Who in the world is this person!?
Then he starts running to Jim.
And they in close combat. My eyes can’t keep up. Swing after swing. Jim with his bare hands and casting weapons away with his water emblem.
There doesn’t seem to be a winner any time soon. As both of them repetitively dash around, strike after strike at stalemate.
None of them able for a moment to cast an energy intensive, knowing that if they slip up and throw away any reserves, they will lose the long-term battle.
Jim gets push back a few metres, almost at us.
And the person retreats. All in one swift action.
He cats something, and Jim can’t get to him fast enough to stop it.
Whatever he is about to cast. All I know for certain is that this is not good.
I anxiously watch behind.
With Angela almost constricting all blood flow into my arm, by clutching onto it so tight.
Then I see the first sign of the cast far above, where Jim and the other person are fighting.
An absolute tiny, miniscule dark dot.
Slowly growing in size.
Perfectly spherical, no spikes or edges.
It keeps growing, and I notice soon what it is doing.
It’s sucking in all the surroundings.
This isn’t any usual emblem cast.
This very entity is pulling everything.
Just like a black hole.
And soon enough I find it hard to stand my ground. I pull Angela with me as I try my hardest to run away.
But each step feels like I am carrying ten times my body weight across the surface of Jupiter.
Then I can’t stand it any longer. I can’t combat the force. And I am forced to stand still. Vulnerable. Soon, it starts pulling me off the ground. Angela goes with me.
We enter the dark abyss. I can’t see anything. And even though I went in with Angela, I can no longer see her. I fall infinitely until I hit something with the force of a hundred moons.
I can't feel my body nor can I even feel thoughts being created. Slowly, I lose the conscious awareness. Everything becomes darker than it already is somehow.
I wake up. Another time.
It feels like I am passing through a blizzard and shards had just cut my skin over and over and over again.
With each ice shard cauterising the wound from the sheer coldness, and then repeating in the same manner of cutting me.
Torture with a billion cuts.
All the air in the room disconnects from me and all the air that fills my lungs isn’t able to remove a sense of oxygen deprivation.
‘Do I run to Jim again through all this pain? Or what…’
I look up and imagine all the possible ways I could curse the world, a dream in a dream in a dream? ‘Seems unlikely unfortunately…’
But every time, I wake up I simultaneously feel the anguish of pain and mental torture of grief.
Like I’ve woken up from a nightmare. But it never actually goes away.
‘Welcome to my life’
I stare into the darkness, unable to use rational thinking or ponder reasonable thoughts. Tears flow from my eyes into the pond of my chin.
Only tears.
No screaming, mumbling or the unreasonable jumble of crying yet a sore throat lingers in me.
I finally get up, silent. Not because I didn’t want to wake up the others. But silent because I have no voice. I’d have to explain everything to Jim again, get Angela. And watch everyone die.
Having to watch as everything plays out very much like a rigged chess match. Where I’m not playing but someone else is instead for me.
I open the door and leave without waking father up.
“What now?”
I quietly speak amongst my emotions trying to overthrow the system of my mind. I don’t want to, but I walk to the village. Very slowly this time.
“Think! Think God damn it! What changed last time!?”
“Gaven wasn’t there I guess?”
Sorrowfully and drowsily, I walk.
And it evolves into frantic running realising I had wasted a large amount of time.
I can’t think completely straight – but a weird thought comes to my head, and it ends up with my mind conflicted.
‘What if… we watch…’ the thought seems incredibly crazy, yet I ignore to critique it. As I run towards the bridge, I don’t bother to start a long conversation with Jim.
Instead, as I cross the bridge and step on the path towards the bridge I shout at the top of my voice.
“Jim come, quick!”
I shout, speaking towards Jim as he catches up and stops in front of me.
“Ed! What’s going on!?”
‘Nothing…’ Is what I want to say, so that maybe it becomes true.
“The village is under attack… And I don’t know what to do…”
“Then why are you jogging for! Come on faster! Explain it on the way!”
I explain every gut-wrenching major detail the same as last time however, including a new series of events.
As I manage to look into his eyes for a split second, he seems shocked beyond belief.
The moment we get to the village he stops me by casting a tight grip onto me, and his face reflects the representation of rage.
“Show me your emblem then! Quick!”
I reluctantly raise my arm in fear, and show him my wrist where the emblem is marked. ‘Another new route…’ I think to myself.
As he rushes me and himself towards the other entrance of the village – the battlefield we’ve fought under multiple times.
But it strikes me as we are about to arrive – ‘Angela and Gaven aren’t here’ I worry to myself as stress bursts inside of me. ‘What if the outcome is worse!?’ I worry even more. But there isn’t time.
A cart approaches the village and soon enough it would enter the very stand-off we’d been in before.
“Jim, hide here! Just watch them until it gets dangerous… Please I know it sounds crazy…”
He gives me a look of dis-approval, but follows me when he bites his lower lip and whispers to himself.
“God damn this…”
This is one of the rare times I’ve ever heard this man swear, and hearing him makes me share the same nervousness.
In between two houses, there’s a small alleyway that ends with a set of stairs – leading towards two adjacent roofs. We silently crouch behind the point of a roof and watch. I feel a sense of nostalgia as I discovered this with Rob.
The cart slowly comes to halt in front of us, and just then.
The driver of the entire vehicle drops lifeless, completely untouched however, with a fixed expression of fear on his face – like every time but now in much more detail.
Beasts slowly spread through the city as if viruses, slowly infecting innocent lands with the harsh, brutal bloodthirst aimed onto children, mothers and fathers.
No hooded man exits from the cadge yet…
“We can’t let this go to waste!”
Jim whispers to me sharply.
“You sure…? What if something worse happens? Isn’t he a dark magic user – wouldn’t he be able to-“
“Ed, sometimes opportunities present themselves that you can’t tell everyone, the gods showed you that idea, no one else – they wouldn’t understand it.”
“But-“
“Water Draak.”
He very calmly casts with both of his hands grasping each other, I feel a sort of rumble around me and then from up in the sky at around thirty metres.
A colossal, chaotic being casted from water flows through the air and shrieks a cry. The following beasts stop and dart their gaze back towards it.
The huge being of water sharply develops features and grows a pair of destructive wings with fangs along the edges perfectly designed.
All of a sudden, as if it loses all control. It dives directly into the ground engulfing the cart and even the ground beneath it, before rising upwards as it thrusts its wings.
However, even though my heart is destroyed knowing that the innocent man guiding the cart is dead.
He is completely engulfed and removed from existence, leaving only a figure behind all the rubble of the cart.
The same distinct person who has come before and seems to only continue coming forth, like an unpleasant, cringy memory not leaving you alone.
“Jim long time no see sucker…”
He shouts, as all the beasts themselves simultaneously drop to the ground and fade into piles of hideous dust and burned dirt.
Jim doesn’t react however, although I seem absolutely shocked, as I couldn’t even see the man – but he could see us at this point.
Jim stands up first and I hesitate and follow.
“How about you remove that masking spell you scum!?”
Slowly the mysterious man who I thought I had gotten a clear look at, as he holds his hand to his face as if removing a mask.
Which disintegrates in his hand.
“I’m so, so, sorry Ed…”
The man laughs this time, with the first half of his sentence matching his prior tone, the same tone that just mentioned Jim’s name, the same tone that taunted me and the one which killed us.
Then as he speaks my name, his tone shifts, and becomes very familiar. This entire time, the enemy wasn’t someone random – which was even worse.
My entire mind tries to register the sound, although as much as I try, I can’t deny the fact of who it was, ‘the world is unbelievable cruel huh?’ I think to myself in a nihilistic way.
He lifts his hand from his face. The light shines brightly onto his features and locks onto his hair.
It is Rodger.
The person who had helped me millions of times in the past and even settle in here, yet apparently, he is the same person who had stolen my very core of being.
He killed Angela, Gaven, Rob, Jim – and the many people had seen yesterday as I ran through the very same street.
It was only about now that among the village dozens wake up from the noise the battle spewed out.
The first to witness the event was a boy a few meters away who was just outside a door, he looks in terror and screams loudly.
Jim flips his focus back towards Rodger as he starts to let out a scream.
“Don’t touch him!”
He dashes in between the boy and Rodger; he doesn’t seem to achieve anything as in only a few milliseconds Rodger casts a shard towards the boy.
The shard itself is dark and cuts through the air whilst leaving a sort of darkened cloud flair. As the shard passes Jim, he summons a wall of water to stop it.
But even though the water wall could stop most things, the shard cuts directly through it and strikes the boy in his chest.
He coughs and then tries to scream from all of the inflicted agony, then like the beasts – drops dead as if a mere puppet.
His blood stains the floor and soon one by one villagers see what’s going on.
“Jim, oh Jim who are you going to save securely, them or yourself?”
Rodger laughs in a malevolent way destroying all hope in me.
Rodger doesn’t even look at me anymore, as if to ignore me or leave me till last. ‘But I’m not going to stand still this time!’
As crowds of people start swarming the street in hope of running away, Rodger starts to cast something. I look at Jim hoping he is going to do something or at least planning.
With the dragon crafted and carved from water still hovering above, thrusting its wings upwards I see that as a triumph card.
In the meanwhile, Jim doesn’t seem to be able to cast any more water spells, as he’s probably fatigued from summoning the dragon at full force.
‘But that raises the question… Why did Rodger pass right through the dragon un-harmed? Think!’ And that’s where it hit me as if I had been blind.
***
A few years back, just before I was tasked with hiding myself amongst the crowds with a cloak, I had visited Rodger for the first time. Back then you could have mistaken his age for someone younger.
I was there with Father and he had been with me to get me used to the kingdom – which was much different than previous ‘home’.
He had just shown me around the food stalls and even handed me an entire sandwich the size of my little skull back then.
When Rodger first saw me, he took me into play mode, I was only around ten at the time but still if not more fascinated my magic.
He decided to drink some sort of concoction which glimmered a dark pink, then right as he did so. He grabbed a cup full of some sort of beverage and he tried to drink it.
But to my surprise the drink went into his mouth and right out of his body onto the ground as if he had phased through it.
I watched in amazement, as I hide behind father, and then he said something along the lines.
“However, if a light emblem user, is around me – the effect sudden vanishes as I’m sure there are around here.”
Then he tried to repeat the drink but this time the drink splashed around in his mouth.
***
But that can’t be possible, after all how can there not be a single light emblem user in this entire village?
With the battle already deciding a terrible loss, I feel slightly better knowing that I’d advanced the playfield one more step.
Although I know this is pain staking for everyone. ‘Everyone counted on me without really knowing – but there was one way I could secure my hypothesis. If I tested it!’
As Rodger stops casting, I recall similar words he crept in before – he was about to unleash his ‘dark star’ spell!
‘If I managed to reset here, then maybe no more people would die.’
I sharply think back to Jim’s words – “When an opportunity presents itself take it!”
Still on top of the roof I had been originally hiding against I decide to stand up tall.
It feels so right to do this. Yet so incredibly dangerous. Rodger was only a few feet away from the roof edge.
And I have a crazy idea, just as I am about to launch my attack, a giant apocalypse amounted in the sky – with shards of dark, foul crystals.
“Jim! Now! Launch your dragon at him!”
Jim immediately responds, and if he knows my plan he probably would have not – I’m sure at least there was no convincing that man to practically kill me.
As the dragon opens its jaws and dives downwards picking up magnificent pace. I run towards Rodger on the roof, and finally dive towards him.
I’m on top of him wrestling aggressively, and him returning a furious strength, and with a few seconds I realise something.
This is not any phase spell – as I could wrestle him to the ground!
This must be his rare strength!