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DEIMOS DUST
There stood the most evil, most vile, and most hated magician of all, looming over a recently promoted rank twenty illusion magician scout. That scout is me, Deimos Dust.
A magician’s appearance is influenced by their magical attribute, and I knew this as the tips of my blonde hair were colored an unnatural aqua blue. Just like how my hair was affected by magic, the dark magician’s appearance was also changed: his lengthy, deep black hair, sullied by the grime buildup in his would-have-been shining mane. His black, small eyes stared down and pierced through my soul. His skin was extremely pale and white, paler than even the most sun-deprived person in existence.
For my entire life, throughout school, training, and the occasional mission, I was told that dark magicians were evil; that they were the embodiment of what stood against our nation. I was always trusting, so with my trust in the knowledge given to me by the NMSA and DME, I came to start to see dark magician’s and similarly evil magicians in disdain. I was convinced their very presence was a detriment to society, and that while eliminating them was cruel, it was a necessary evil to keep innocent people safe.
Of course, that meant the actions of the boy, quite close to my age, were unexpected, surprising, and suspicious. What would a dark magician have to gain from saving a ranker in the DME. Rankers such as myself were possibly the most threatening things to dark magicians, and as soon as I ran away from this scene, I could report him to my superiors in the DME. Dark magicians were considered a huge threat and were also quite rare, so my report would spread like wildfire. A squad of high ranking rankers would be assembled to deal with him immediately. The fact that he’s still alive means he’s smart and sneaky, so why would he go out of his way to help me!?
ALEXANDER GALDUR
Why!? Why did I help him!? I’ve been living my life on the downlow, staying out of sight and mind from others, so why did I do something so stupid!? Haven’t I learned my lesson from that time in the orphanage!? I guess not because I decided to go ahead and reveal myself to someone, and that someone was a ranker in the DME for that matter!
We both held very still, realizing the absurdity and severity of the situation. Neither of us wanted to move, so like deer in the headlights, we just stayed frozen. Second passed, phasing to minutes, but neither of us wanted to do anything to make ourselves targets to one another. We kept our breath held, feeling like the most minor of movements could make the other turn to us.
As we kept ourselves frozen in space, a grunt and shuffle came from the side. Our heads snapped to the source of the sound to see what was disturbing the silent, tense peace we held. The woman who had been attacking the boy wobbled to unsteady feet, her air-deprived body surging with oxygen with her returned breath. Her eyes flickered open, and those same brown, unfocused eyes resettled on our forms. The eyes widened in shock as she most likely remembered our encounter. She prepared a warcry with a sharp inhale, but suddenly found herself being tackled by us two adolescent boys.
She hit the ground, the air she sucked in promptly knocked out from her lungs. A wheeze escaped her as we kept our bodies over her.
“Mmpmph!” She struggled out with my hand covering her mouth. The boy next to me restrained her legs and left arm while I handled her right arm and mouth. She struggled under our figures, continuing to try and get away from our hold. I spoke up first, quietly, “Shit! What do we do now!?”
The boy’s mind raced for an answer, a racing mind visibly showing on his facial expression, “I have a pair of cuffs in my back pocket, could you handle her left arm?” In response to his query, I nodded and pressed my right foot on said arm, doing my best to pin it to the ground. He warily repeated my nod and reached his hand into his pocket. The woman struggled, trying to get out under my much less dextrous foot, but still found herself failing to do so. She made one last Hail Mary, shown by her now glowing-gray eyes.
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Both of us realized the severity of the shine, and moved away as best we could. In my attempt to evade, a metallic spike shot from the wall and took a chunk of my right arm with it. A yell of pain escaped my previously tightly-shut lips, and the blood started fountaining out of the cylindrical gape in my arm. The crimson liquid covered the long spear of metal that stretched from one wall of the alley to the other.
At this point, I was wounded and tired from my previous magical exertion. While you can use magic for extended periods of time with extremely complex and intricate spells, that takes training which I didn’t have, so in other words, I was the wiry nerd in the magical world trying to do fifty push-ups in a row. The weak, under-used muscle that was my magic was barely able to use that dark tentacle from earlier, so anything more than this would probably have me passing out; I did not want to pass out in the same alley as a member of the ARO and a member of the DME.
I pulled out a pocket knife from my cloak, one of the many things I kept there for safety's sake. The eyes of the boy next to me began to glow a light blue, and soon after a fog swept over the area. The fog seemed to swirl and change as it blinded the three of us. Although the woman was now left without sight, that didn’t stop her from rampaging. A slight change in the fog appeared, and my instincts screamed at me to dodge.
Following the urge out of panic, my body collapsed into a crouch, and a metal spear flew over head. A crack formed in the ground, and I rolled to the left in response as a spike shot through the fog. Another crack formed elsewhere, followed by another spike. One more cracking noise came from below me, and I evaded diagonally to the right. Preparing to run at the assailant, when I got out of the way of the onslaught of attacks, I went into a crouch. A slight crunching noise came from below me, and when my eyes landed on the rather large crack below, my legs pounded into the ground. Being that the woman predicted my move, I was too late, and a spike shot out, skewering my right leg to match my arm.
The velocity of my sudden sprint suddenly stopped, and I could feel my body freeze as the newly-made hole in my leg was pulled on. A cry and yell erupted from my mouth as I could feel my consciousness slip a little. The pain caused my mind to blackout for a second, but the same excruciating and sharp pain woke me from my slip. Freezing flame held to my wounds, the pain stretching through my body, sprouting from my wounds. The metallic and foreign sense of the spike continued its barrage on my senses.
The panic overwhelmed me, equalling the pain clouding my mind, and the panic and pain fueled my need to escape and find safety. My panicked, tear-filled eyes glowed a dull white, and an orb of pure light formed above my head. With the final push of my delirious mind, the light ruptured into a bright flash. The surprised cries of the two other people in the alley sounded, followed by the stream of slurs cascading from the woman’s mouth. My own vision darkened more and more, the creeping sense of senselessness rapidly covering my mind. The last thing I heard was the sound of the struggling cries of the woman.
DEIMOS DUST
When I casted the magical fog, I was ready for the wild attacks from the woman, but what I wasn’t ready for was the bright flash of light coming from the dark magician. The light, while dimmed by the fog, was still bright enough to blind. Colors that weren’t there filled my vision, swimming throughout it. Blinking rapidly, I hoped to rid myself of my damaged sight, but it appeared more time was needed until it recovered. The same could also be said for my assailant, who was shouting obscenities which I couldn’t help but be slightly shocked by.
I stumbled a bit in the direction from which the slur of slurs originated, and slowly but surely, found the source of the gushing profanities. I finally got close enough, and I leapt at her and tackled her to the ground. We tumbled across the grating road, the magically made fog twisting around us. Her yells and flurry of curses aimed itself at me along with metal spears grazing my sides, luckily missing vital organs.
With a click of the cuffs in my hand, the struggle came to an abrupt end. The metallic spears halted suddenly. Their forms started wavering, distorting, and disintegrating with a dim flash of light. The cuffs glowed a slight blue signaling they had worked as intended and the woman passed out, knowing her struggle was forced to come to an end. With a slow exhale, the fog started dispersing and vanishing from sight. Sweat from exhaustion caused by magical exertion dripped into my wounds forcing a wince out of me as the salt water burned through me. I looked down at the dark magician near me and thought to myself: what do I do now?