WIND WHIPPING HIS cloak around him, Lucifio Lamourn stood on a hill looking at the swirling mists in the distance. Behind him, the sky bled in magnificent colors as the sun slowly rose while above the brightest stars still lingered in the fading darkness at the edge of night. Time moved on in its usual pace and the day dawned with it as the twilight grayness faded from the world around him.
Gradually, with the warm touch of the golden rays making the mists reluctantly disappear, the vast army camped in the distant planes came into view. Seeing how much closer they had come since he last saw them, Lucifio realized that they had marched almost ceaselessly through every last scrap of daylight they could get.
Silently looking at the dark mass that was starting to show signs of movement, he felt a deep hatred well up inside him. He had heard many of his people say that they felt respect for this foe that had destroyed their first home, but he had never shared their sentiment. He had never understood the madness that drove these barbarians, the bloodthirsty urge that made them want to make an adversary of anyone in their path.
Fighting for a thing that had never been clear for Lucifio, the murderous hordes had hurled themselves at the impregnable walls of his ancestors' once magnificent cities until they had ceased being impregnable. One by one, through the ages, they had destroyed all of their lands. And with each generation, his people had been pushed back, one step at a time, up to the age of his grandfather when all in their dwindled numbers had agreed to move on. Since then, it had taken them fifty years, a generation’s lifetime, to find a suitable home. Stragglers were still pouring into their new land where they would start to build their city when his father had died.
It was almost a year ago that the first of the wandering merchants had reported the sudden advance of their ancient enemy. Many had not believed they would come this far just to hunt the ragged remnant of their once mighty civilization, but he had seen the truth from the start. When most were reluctant to even acknowledge the danger, he had been amongst the first few to find out for himself. In the following months, all had seen the realities more clearly and everyone was making an effort to help in the war against the army that was trying to reach their new home.
With the invaders finally stopped at the hills that were the last guard of their new land, it was just three months ago that they had been able to make one of their captives from a battle talk. It was almost by sheer luck that they were able to learn the truth that had made most of Lucifio’s colleagues fall into spiraling despair. For a few weeks, they had been able to keep secret the fact that all this time they had been fighting only a fraction of their enemy’s forces.
Scouts and spies had been sent to verify the terrifying information once the public found out about it all. And, when some of those who were sent finally returned to acknowledge the validity of the claim that had been dragged out of the long dead soldier, many people had decided to start again their search for a new home. Some, though, had gone mad, deciding to kill themselves and their loved ones before the barbarians reached them, while still others had taken a different track into insanity by spending what they thought of as the last of their days in the depravities of life that would have resulted in them being banished from society in any other time.
Lucifio, though, had persevered with his thoughts intact through all the chaos of a civilization that had suddenly been stripped of its hope. While people around him lost all their inhibitions, he had realized running away would do no good in the end while fighting was clearly out of the question with the kind of numbers the enemy was said to hold in its swiftly approaching ranks. So, in the end, he had gone to the one resource his people had always had more than any others they had ever met before, magic.
The seed of his plan having been born in one particularly dreary morning when his mind had still been tangled halfway in the world of dreams, it had taken him days to perfect it by pouring over numerous maps and scrolls. When it was finally done, he had gathered the more powerful and level minded of his colleagues who had been able to hold onto their sanity like him. As he told them of his ambitious idea, he had known that most of them were thinking that he had lost his mind like many other people in the city. But overtime, they all had agreed that his plan might actually work, though none of them were willing enough to say that they would volunteer to find out. So, thinking of the future, he had told them that while the other participants of the plan should be decided when all the parts were finished, he must be at the head of the whole thing if it was to work at all.
In the few number of weeks since he had proposed his plan, Lucifio had seen the remarkable change in the people who at first had accepted it grudgingly. Not only them, but also almost every other person that had decided to stay behind had left their despair to start helping him in any way they can. With zeal to match their previous madness, they had clung to the glimmer of hope he had given them with his idea. And when he had asked for people to drive off the small advance army, four hundred magicians had come to do the deed themselves. Most of them, having caught a slight glimpse of the cold shores of death, had returned to their home supported by their servants as they had fallen unconscious after giving all they had while the invaders that they had fought against for months lay behind them, annihilated to the very last man.
In the sudden respite, they had worked night and day drawing the power line and the proper runes. Seven days ago, when the first sign of the enemy was sighted at the edge of the horizon of the vast open space before him, they were still working. It was at this time that the news of other armies approaching the other posts came, bringing with it sinking hearts to all. The barbarians had divided into three armies as it marched for them, though the largest horde was still coming towards his hill that was the easiest of the routes into the lands behind and to the east of him.
Once they were finished with their preparations, he had ordered all the other participants to rest after setting their wards; there was no practice to check if what they planned would work. Now, having woken from almost three days of magic induced sleep, he looked down at the multitude, feeling the clash of emotions coursing through him. Anger, fear, nervousness and a small amount of excitement vied to dominate his thoughts.
His shadow shortening before him, Lucifio stood alone on the hill contemplating the few hours he had left to live. In the time since he had begun working on his plan, he had come to think of his life more and more. Little details of everyday existence had started to hold a new weight in his thoughts as his mind suddenly realized the limited moments he had to experience them. Because he had known from the start the fatal end that awaited him if he participated in his dangerous plan to the end, he had had a lot of time to accept his faith. But however much he thought about it, deep down he knew even eternity wouldn’t be enough for him to be at ease with his own demise.
A sudden sound of loose earth being disturbed bringing him out of his lost thoughts, he turned away from the view of the army which was still waking up. Even knowing what he would find behind him, he still felt excited as he gazed upon the thing that had started to rise up from the ground where it had rested since its last use. The golden edge, where the markings of power had been etched into the metal, shone in the morning light as it settled in the air, its sunken part facing him while the water it held lay flush with the metal as if the whole thing was still resting on the ground and not hanging a couple of feet above it in defiance of all the world’s rules.
A scrying pan. It was a new invention one of the last messengers had brought a few weeks ago. When it first arrived, he had been pleasantly distracted from his work for a few days, his mind straying to thoughts of how the thing worked whenever he had a spare moment of his own. Unable to wander about it silently anymore, he had finally asked on one of the talks he had with his colleagues who were at the settlements a thousand leagues away from his lonely hill. But even after finding out about its mysteries, he still marveled at the thing whenever he used it.
Stepping closer to the liquid surface which hung at the level of his head, he watched as the water stopped moving and his sunlit face reflected back at him. He wasn't sure but it seemed to him that he had lost weight and added more years since the last time he saw himself some days ago. The man with the receding hairline, the lined forehead with the permanent frown that rested between his eyebrows, one of which was cut in half by a scar that continued back over his forehead to disappear under his hair, and the thin mouth that was bracketed with the edges of the grooves that lined both sides of his nose looked more like a stranger than himself.
As Lucifio tried to arrange his features into a more composed expression, the glassy surface in front of him suddenly changed. Looked as a whole, it seemed like the surface writhed. But he had once looked closer and seen the change more clearly. It was like the moment where a drop meets a watery surface and then rebounds, that moment where the liquid droplet stretches and floats above the surface without breaking contact. Surrounded by the golden edge, thousands of little watery globes stretched. When most of them finally settled back on the surface, all around the once again smooth middle the water still had that odd stretched look to it. Now though, in that glassy surface of the center, it wasn't his own reflection that was facing him.
Feeling like he was looking through an impossible window, he watched the men who stood at the land he had left behind months ago. Talking to those around him, Oyiras Eaelom stood with only his back visible to Lucifio. He thought he could sense the exhaustion the tired bones tried to hold back as he watched the old man’s back, which looked more bowed than ever.
Months ago, when Lucifio had chosen him as the man to coordinate everything, no one had objected to his decision. Even though Oyiras looked closer to death than most, everyone knew of his sharp mind and the raging power his deceptively weak looking flesh held. And in all the days since they had begun transforming his idea into action, his old friend had time and again proven how wise a choice he had made in him.
"Ah, Lucifio," said the old man finally turning around as one of the men beside him notified him of the new addition to his audience. "Everything is ready here, shall we start?"
"We have time," said the man on the hill, "tell me of the others first."
Nodding his assent, Oyiras turned to the map that hung on a frame behind him to first speak of the magicians that were the most important parts of the plan. Across the map, seven green points marked the places where the seven high mages, including Lucifio, stood to work their immense powers. Behind each green point, three names written with white ink showed who the linked backups were for each magician. While, a little distance before where the high mages' positions were depicted, a red line bisected the whole map. And even as the old man began spouting the reports that had accumulated in the three days since he had last contacted them, a woman approached to put a black dot beyond the red line, right in front of one of the green points above the one that marked Lucifio's place. The armies were starting to move.
The old man paused in his speech for a moment, as if he was trying to give all of them time to digest the news. The dreaded war had at last began.
Finally, after he had heard all the reports he wanted, Lucifio took a moment to talk with each of the other six magicians who waited to give their lives for their people. He spent a moment with every one of them; exchanging less of words and more of gazes filled with pure emotion as the scrying pan that Oyiras had looked into was turned to face each of the six other glassy surfaces that hung in the air a thousand miles away.
Most, he knew, had joined him because of his self-sacrifice that he had promised at the beginning of the whole thing. All of them had come to him in their own way, volunteering their considerable services surrounded by a crowd, and with all their well-deserved pomp and splendor, or in private, hiding their bravery in a cloak made of cloth, night, shadows, or all. The form they offered their sacrifice did not matter, now they were living legends.
By the time he had finished with the last of the high mages, one more of the green marks had a dark spot in front of it. He looked away from the scrying pan, to see the bright sky for a moment. While he met with the other six participants of his grand plan, the morning had already aged a bit. Chastising himself for wasting the day, he turned back to his old friend.
"It's time," he said, stopping all action at the old man's side.
Without a word, and leaving his momentary dazed expression behind him, Oyiras started ordering the people around him. In moments, all the six high mages received the command almost simultaneously.
"They have all begun," said Oyiras finally, unable to suppress the awe he felt from staining his voice.
Only responding with a nod, the man on the hill started to turn around only to be interrupted by his friend's voice.
"Lucifio...," started the old man, looking at him through the scrying pan.
"Yes?" he said, turning back to see the wrinkled face he knew so well.
For a time, Oyiras simply stared at the man he had raised; looking him directly in the eye as he searched for the words to show what he was thinking about. "Nothing," he finally said, breaking his intense gaze as he was unable to put into words the thoughts that seemed to haunt him. Trying to make his shaking old lips curve in a smile, he added, "May the stars ever shine on your path," speaking the words of a saying that had been created when their people were still seekers of a home.
"And the darkness never leave your side," whispered Lucifio, a sad smile tugging at his lips as he finished the farewell. With his mother having died before he ever knew her and his father being killed in the hunting accident that the scar on his face never failed to remind him of, it had been the old man that had thought him the secret of the words he had never thought of before but had occasionally heard passing adult lips.
Oyiras had said, "The stars represent knowledge and learning," speaking enthusiastically to the six-year-old boy that he had suddenly been made guardian of, "while the darkness is meant to signify ignorance."
"But," he had said then, forgetting his tragic loss for the first time in days as he looked up at the huge man with the trailing beard, "why would you never want it to leave your side?"
"Well, it's just a way of wishing that one never has to suffer the loss of seeking knowledge," the looming man had said to him, giving him a smile that held no pity unlike anyone’s had done at the time.
Now, looking at the man who still somehow looked like the same larger-than-life figure he remembered from his childhood, Lucifio simply said, "Thank you for everything, old friend."
After nodding a farewell to Oyiras one last time, Lucifio turned away from the enchanted window that showed him his home. As he walked towards the circular stone that rested in the middle of the hilltop surrounded by the dark, barren soil making up the ground around it, he felt the scrying pan move away, heading to a safer place so that the people he was trying to save could watch the historic moment unfold.
Despite his best efforts, the last of his thoughts before he walked on to the disk of magical ground were a riot of longings. Longing for his children who were fleeing as he trod on to his doom, longing to catch a glimpse of his old friend and adopted father for one last time and say the thing that needed no saying, longing for the peaceful life which he could barely remember in the chaos of the recent past, even longing just for the distant sea that shall always be in the blood of his people. But once he stepped off the loose soil and onto the hard surface, his mind was flooded by the magic that was coming from the six high mages who had started on their spells miles away from him.
As soon as his foot touched the rock, the markings all around the stone, which hadn't seemed much to his eyes before he entered the circle, suddenly glowed with a dark-bluish light. Ignoring everything that clawed at his senses only as a strong magician could, he sat cross-legged in the middle of the stone circle before beginning to clear his mind. His mind empty of almost all thoughts, he started moving his hands in the traditional first steps of summoning one's powers.
Within moments, the air started to vibrate in a haze around his straining fingers. And, right as these disturbances of the air began, he felt the spark of his power like he always did. Once he felt that well of force that had been slowly growing in his three-day rest, he put his palms together while directing his power as he said the words of a simple spell.
Nothing seemed to change at first, except for the markings on the stone which seemed to shine with a bit lighter color, but when he pulled his hands apart a small ball of flame was revealed hanging in the air between his unharmed flesh. He watched the fire for a moment, passing his hand around it in an increasingly speeding movement while it grew in size. Then suddenly he brought his hands away from each other, and as he did so the globe of flame parted into two smaller balls, each following one palm as it moved away from the other. And, in that same motion of parting, he brought both palms, fire and all, down onto the stone as if he was trying to put out the flames.
As soon as he did this, the markings on the stone started to brighten as their color became lighter. It was at this moment that he closed his eyes. Picturing himself floating between a gray, shadowy clouded sky above and a black sea littered with thousands of glinting lights below, he searched for the small glint inside himself first, that point where his force had filled up again in all the three-day time he had rested. Easily finding that center of power, which had become the largest he had ever sensed it, he strengthened the flow of energy to his hands as he started reciting the second of his spells.
The words of magic that left his lips made the stone beneath his palms start to melt, while the markings around him became indistinguishable beneath the white light which began to pour out of them. Vaguely feeling the ground begin to shake beneath his body, Lucifio let his power leak out of him, stopping only when there was just enough for him to continue accessing the hidden world he saw in his mind.
Oblivious to the changes in the physical world around him, he pulled out his mind's eye from inside the floating figure he thought of as himself. Above him, nothing had changed in the vast gray sky, but below, the line of power they had spent weeks drawing were starting to flow with the magic that came from him and the other magicians that stood a thousand miles away on either side of him. As he watched, the first flooding of energy came from his left as one of the magicians in that direction started accessing the forbidden power below all of them.
After pausing only for a second in a minuscule moment of hesitation, he approached one of the lights under him. Noticing the difference of shape between each point as he got closer to the bright spots, he moved towards a power that he knew of as being the most dangerous of all to any magician. Little by little, his mind starting to feel the strains of the terrifying pull the small points of light were exerting on it, he let himself fly to his certain death.
While moving in an ever increasing speed with each breath his almost forgotten physical body took, Lucifio remembered all he had ever known about the awesome power he was approaching. The Farzur. Many scrolls had been filled with countless words of it, every generation was told of it from the first moment they start learning the secret arts. But no one had ever really understood it. Not one person that had dared to reach for it had ever returned to speak of its hidden mysteries. Horrifying ancient stories of entire lands being destroyed always accompanied the tales of the fools that had tried to touch its dazzling lights. The one rule forbidding its access told to every student of magic being enforced only by the nightmarish legends surrounding it, the fantastic force had always stayed beyond the straining fingertips of those that hunger for nothing more than power.
Steadying himself above the bright white light, with his imagined body lying parallel to the surface under him, he extended one hand towards it. At first, there was only the usual pulling force he had been feeling ever since he began approaching one of the points of the Farzur, but as soon as he passed some invisible threshold his arm was suddenly yanked into the mesmerizing glare.
Pulling his hand, which had been swallowed into the light up to his elbow, slowly out of the thing that seemed to want to swallow him whole, he tried to close off all his senses from the titanic force that had started battering his mind.
When he finally had most of his hand out of the white point, Lucifio took a moment to steady his nerve and take in some of what his senses were screaming at him. It almost felt exactly as he had expected it would. Almost.
The force that tried to tear him out of existence, that was even now starting to swallow him a strip of imagined flesh at a time despite his straining mind, was more immense than he had expected it to be. The rush of unlimited power he felt coursing through him was greater than he had ever imagined in his wildest dreams. But more than any of these, the one thing that strained the most against his mind's control was the hunger.
It was just like the greed to use up all the power that one felt inside oneself that every student of magic was first taught to control, only blown into gigantic proportions that almost drowned all other thoughts from Lucifio's mind. He had never in his whole life felt a need like this. He wanted nothing more than to plunge into the force before him even though his mind clearly knew that that would kill him more swiftly than he was already dying. He had a deep, wearying urge to let go, not caring what he was leaving behind if he did so.
Yet, despite the terrifying pulling force, despite the consuming hunger, despite the ecstasy of the power itself, he did not give up. Instead, as he whispered in his mind, 'There is no going back now,' a kind of peace finally settled on his tortured soul.
Steadying his mind in a strength of will that would have strained even a high magician's resolve, he pulled away from the light below him, his hand trailing a line of white light that left him connected to the lumbering force that was the Farzur. Slowly, his mind none clearer for the imagined separation he was making, he headed for the line of power that had brightened since he last saw it. He drifted toward the glowing thing that snaked through the dark spaces that separated the randomly placed points of light.
Lucifio didn't pause when he reached the line of force that connected him to the other willing members of his suicidal plan. Instead, he plunged his mind into the stream, letting himself flow in both directions as he spread his consciousness. With the new power coursing through him, it was easy enough for him to find the six high mages, their bodies guiding him as they shone with differing amounts of brightness. Some of them were just beginning to approach the Farzur while a few were in various stages of controlling the massive force that threatened to engulf them.
With his and a few others', those who had quickly learned to think through the battering storm of the forbidden power like him, help the rest of the magicians were supported through the grueling experience of accessing the Farzur in just a few moments. Once this was done, he directed all of the magicians to their appropriate spaces on the power line. With everyone finally in their rightful place, he took a moment to collect enough of his thoughts to ready himself for what he must do next. Then, he spoke the words of the spell that would kill them all.
The line around him flaring with light as mortally incomprehensible amount of power started to flow through it, Lucifio didn't react much as he heard the first of the screams coming from his colleagues. His mind starting to dull with all the force that was straining on it, he unthinkingly followed the plan he had created one foolish morning in a time that felt like another world to him now. One by one, he went to the six other magicians that were on the power line with him. And with each one he reached, a soul was untethered from a body, leaking a surge of energy into the growing power line for a mere second.
By the time he finished with the last high magician, Lucifio barely knew his own self. But the plan persisted, drawing his mind to perform the last parts of the magic that would forever let his people be safe. Letting his consciousness flow down the power line, he located each of the points where only a moment ago a living human had held. Finally in place to finish the whole thing, he didn't even pause to consider what he was doing as he said a single word of power that would change the face of the world.
Magic bloomed in seven place thousands of miles apart while the earth groaned as it strained with breathtaking forces. And, even as he barely finished saying the magical word in his mind, Lucifio was suddenly yanked back to the body he had completely forgotten, just in time to experience the same pain his brethren had felt just moments ago.
For a small time, he screamed in agony, his tortured voice lost in the much grander cries of the world around him. With cold white light spilling out from every opening in his face as well as starting to split his skin as it forced its way out of his flesh, his mind roamed the halls of torture for just a moment before he died. A moment long enough for Lucifio Lamourn to curse himself for ever having thought of the plan which he had just completed to perfection as he experienced pain that would have made even a god shiver in terror.
