• A Dieing Race

    It was a dark and dusty day, like most other days. Our world is in shambles thanks to the devastation of war and famine. Magic users, the root cause of the devastation of this planet. At first, like any thing in the field of magic it was innocent enough. It was filled with bright eyed and sharp-minded people wanting to find the answer to all the world's problems, but magic is power and power does corrupt the soul of any man. Before long, there were many magic users that abused their power to attain riches and control over the lives of others. It was this greed, which led to the vile state of our way of life today.
    The revolt of the norms was inevitable. Control over so many by so few could never have worked. It was this revolt, this all out attempt at eradicating a people that destroyed man's means to sustain himself in even the simplest of ways. We are now a dieing breed. In an attempt to regain power over the norms, many magic users sought out a means to amplify their powers. Finally, a means was found and by one of the most vicious of magicians, Galzar. In searching for power, he, like many others, looked into ancient mysticism and eventually found a stone that held vast powers that was said to be given to the Mayans by one of their Gods for use in war and human sacrifice. Galzar used this stone to destroy the last great cities of humankind and scattering its peoples.
    Amongst all this, we as a race have developed a stigma that all magic users are bad. However, that is not the case, there are still magic users in the world who seek a way to rebuild humankind to its former glory and scores more who use their skills to heal the sick and wounded. These are the people who are hurt the most by this conflict. To have to hide their skill and work from behind the scenes or in secret on the battlefield, it must be frustrating for them. Their work is continually slowed down by stories of a healer's slaying as he worked amongst the fog and darkness after a battle.
    I am a crusader, called thus because I became tired of the state this planet has reached and so I have taken up the holy cause of fighting against evil magic users. I am the most hated of my kind, as a crusader I am hated by magic users because I too am a magic user and viewed as a traitor to our people and I am hated by the norms because as a crusader I make it no secret as to what I am. Though they despise me, they dare not lift a hand against me because they fear the stereotype they hold of all magic users. A crusaders existence is a lonely existence, and it is in this solitude that I sit here in this dark and dusty day, they sky charred black by a century of all out warfare that slaughtered five and a half billion people. I am trying to catch my breath through the pain of my broken ribs. Galzar has not awakened yet, but with the maddening strength of his magic, I know my spell cannot last for much longer.
    Of all the spells I had cast in our battle, not one was successful in destroying him in my shame I must admit that the only spell that I could successfully cast was a simple binding spell and now that I have him I am too wounded and worn out to take his life. The best I can do now is to take away some of his fearsome power, the stone. I must take the stone and escape while I recuperate. With my hands still trembling from the pain, I reach out to tear the magically sealed stone away from his chest. At that moment I feel and intense hatred and blood thirst permeating the air. As I look up to assess the situation, my eyes are met with the fierceness of his stare as he hung there struggling against my binding spell. The chains of magic that bind him to a massive stake were starting to rattle and the lumber of the stake began to crack.

    Bound Sorcerers and Fool Hardy Schemes

    The binding chains moaned as Galzar fought against them. With fury and rage, he thrashed against his magical prison as I grasped hold of the stone and pulled against the seal. If I have any chance of surviving, it lies in getting that stone away from him.
    "You are going to die a painful death when I free myself!" Galzar exclaimed with blinding fury.
    "That may be but I will not die until I have stopped you!"
    With my rebellious attitude, I found new strength and poured it into my struggle against the magic seal protecting the stone. The more I fought the more angry Galzar became and the more he thrashed against his bindings. A binding spell is the most elementary of magic spells. It is more of a trap, really, involving the casting of a magic circle and waiting for the enemy to blunder into your trap. These traps are usually fairly weak but being as experienced as I am my binding magic is a little stronger. Regardless of its strength it is no match for some one like Galzar and he is about to break my spell.
    As I pull with all my might, I feel the stone loosen from his chest. With a smirk, I give a few final jerks and the stone breaks free. Galzar begins to rage against his chains more than ever and though he was noticeably weaker, he began to over power my spell with sheer will.
    "It's too late, I have it now," I said to him laughing and in a final act of rebellion, I put the stone in my mouth and swallowed it. My head swam with power flowing from the stone. It was probably stupid of me to swallow the stone, but I was caught in the moment and I wanted to make sure that I would not lose it. Galzar's rage began to explode. Though he was weaker than before he was still a powerful magic user and with new fervor, he fought against my spell more than ever. The ground began to shake as he summoned all of his magic might. The power was so great that it manifested its self in static arcs and pure white light as he pushed the chains away from his body.
    The power of the stone was beginning to churn my insides and there was an inconceivably loud ringing in my ears, which made my head feel like it might split. The dry dust filled wind made my skin ache and the rustling sound it made as it whipped through the withered limbs of the trees around me made my ears ring even more. Galzar's power only made the wind blow more furiously. It was a great error to swallow such a horrid thing. Now I lie here wounded and too weak to flee as he who would see me dead is about to break free.
    As a great ball of white light pushes the chain to their breaking point, I collapse to the ground. The chains burst in an explosion of fury, everything goes white, and the world fades away into darkness.
    .
    Half a Victory and a Cave of Solitude

    Everything was fuzzy. Was this the intangible void of death or the groggy feeling of sleep? Did Galzar in fact kill me in that blinding blast of light or had I somehow survived? The air around me is cold and wet and the earth is soft and cool. This could not have been the same earth as the hot and dark wasteland I grew up hating. It some how felt inviting. Just then, a cool drop of water dripped onto my face and I started to come too.
    I found myself inside a deep cave, much like those that the norms had used in the beginnings of the magic wars to hide from the destruction. Such caves became horrifying tombs for thousands as they collapsed on top of them, as an earth spell was caste on the ground above. I had never seen a cave in my life seen a cave as they were believed to have all been destroyed with the old landscape of the earth's surface. Had I fallen into one through a fissure opened up by the blast of Galzar's power?
    Bu-bump
    Suddenly a sharp tightness seized my chest. It was the power of the stone, which still tormented me. I struggled to my knees and gasped for breath as the pain of the stone amplified the pain of my broken ribs and my other wounds. Too weak to move any further I collapsed back to the cool earth.
    This is it I thought, the place where I will die, but at least I succeeded in getting the stone away from that monster. Others would have to finish the job after me. With that thought, I laid back in the dark coolness of the cave and for the first time in my life, I rested my body and soul. I awaited my death knowing that my body and the stone may never be seen by any man again. I started to drift off into a long and peaceful slumber as exhaustion overpowered me. I slept for what seemed like an eternity and I dreamed of an everlasting peace throughout the world.
    The scorched black sky was a brilliant mythic blue and it was filled with silver white clouds. The bright yellow sun beat down on the earth and gently warmed the land. Magic user and norm could walk hand in hand working toward a common good. It was a peace that could only be dreamed of by slaves as they toiled on a desolate earth and by the dead as they entered their eternal slumber. It was a dream I never wanted to wake from or perhaps I had died in my sleep and moved onto the next life.
    Drip
    A cold splash jolted me from my dreams and I awoke to the pitch-dark coolness of the cave. The fissure I fell through must have closed up after my fall because there was no light at all in that space. I was still too weak to move much, but I crawled upon the floor to feel out my new world and my tomb. After a short distance, I came across a small stream of water. I took a long drink from it and found some relief from my sufferings. I suddenly felt woozy as the stone mingled with the water and I began to slip into unconsciousness again. It was a dreamless sleep or perhaps the dream was of darkness and a pulse from the stone as that was the only sensation that I felt. It felt like the stone was expanding and contracting in my stomach.
    I wanted the stone to hurry and kill me so that I would not have to deal with the pain any more but, perhaps this was my penance for my arrogance in swallowing the stone just to goad Galzar on. I started to fade away into the darkness once more. No conscious thought no dreams just darkness for what seemed like forever. I awoke once again to the hollow stillness of that cave, my world, and my tomb. My body felt weak with hunger. How long had I been there and how much longer would I linger on before succumbing to starvation?
    I put my hands into the small stream to try to appease my hunger with water when in the bottom I felt something smooth, something alive. There was life even in this place. The darkest reaches of the earth and life still held on. On the surface the world is dieing, even cockroaches are struggling. The one life form that at one point man thought would be his successor to world dominance, but down here, shielded from the harshness of the world, life still holds on. One day after eons of change on the surface and Mother Nature repairs herself and man is long gone, these caves might open up and life will spill out upon the land once more. It will be these creatures that will rebuild this planet.
    "But not these ones" I said as I crunched into the only nourishment I had found since I fell to this place. What ever it was it tasted disgusting. On the outside, it had a hard shell, but when I bit through a slimy mush spurted from it. I searched in the water for more of them and ate what few I could find. The stone made the foul taste even worse when the food tried to settle. I felt around the cave a little more to explore the boundaries of my new world a little more. After some time I found that, the cavern was actually quite large so I felt my way back to the water so that I would have access to it when I wanted.

    Time to Recover

    After what felt like an eternity and far too many cave creatures, it felt like some of my strength had returned to me. The pain from the stone had subsided for the time being, so I decided to try to explore once more. I felt that I could move about a little more easily than I could before, so I began to crawl around the cave searching the boundaries. With time, I found that the cave was quite vast and that there were many other living things inside the cave with me so with time I found my strength coming back even more than before.
    Eventually the time came for me to try to use my magic once again. I was still too weak to use anything powerful, but the least I could do was shed some light onto my surroundings. Therefore, with great care I searched for the right sized rock and caste the spell on it.
    "Novus Illuminatum!"
    With a crackle of static sparks, the new sunstone came to life and warmed the cool cave with its yellow light. Now I could see my surroundings for the first time. The cavern was immensely vast. It looked as if the floor fell into an underground valley, of which I stood on a flat spot half way down the slope. At the bottom, there was a good-sized stream, into which the stream I had found was feeding. I took the sunstone that I had just created and cast it up into the air so that it could fulfill its urge and situate its self in the highest point of the room. As it slowly rose to the ceiling, it began to illuminate many more features of the cavern that I could not see before.
    My new world was truly a strange one. Not like the hot, dark, dieing world of the surface, this place was teeming with life. For the first time I was able to see what had been my prey for so long. Even down here, there is evidence of magic. The creatures there all appeared to be mutated from over exposure. The creatures I had been eating looked like a mix between crabs and centipedes, and were about six inches long from head to tail. I decided it was time to leave my small stream and explore the cavern a little more in depth, so I walked down to the valley floor to explore around the rivers edge. In the river, I could see some rather large fish. White with two tails and antennae they did not seem to have escaped the magic aura from above either. I decided that these looked a little more edible than what I had been eating so I decided to caste a binding circle on the riverbed and see if I could catch anything.
    I walked a little upstream while I waited for a fish to blunder into my trap. After a short distance, I found a level spot that looked ideal for a shelter.
    "Huumas levitory"
    My earth spell failed to manifest. It seemed that I was still weak and that I had spent all the magic I could at that time. All I could do at that point was to go check on my trap and hope that I caught something, by that time I was hungry and I was eager to try something other than mutant centipedes. I was in luck. When I returned, I found a decent sized fish bound to a stake above the waters surface. Since I did not have enough magic to cook the fish, I resigned myself to sushi, minus everything but the fish. It was less than tasty to say the least but it was a lot better than what I had been eating. After eating, I returned to the flat spot I had found earlier and tried to get a little rest.
    As I lay there trying to fall asleep, I stared at the ceiling dotted with sunstones and wondered if I would ever get out of this cave. My thoughts were interrupted by a little pain in my stomach. This time it was not as great as it was before, but it was uncomfortable, nonetheless. I some how managed to fall asleep after some time. My head swam with strange dreams of magic. I was trapped in a warped world of darkness, helpless and alone. A beast of great stature whose form was shrouded by darkness was pursuing me. As I ran for my life, I felt that I should be doing something to stop the creature, but I was griped by fear and I could not bring myself to stop and face it. Just as it was closing in on me, I tripped and fell. I turned around to find the monster towering over me, ready to pounce, but just as it was coming down on me, a great strength came from within my body. I could feel it coming up from the very core of my body. The power was so great that I could feel it moving up my throat, and as I readied myself to shout out a magic spell a great light came from my voice and everything was drowned in a brilliant white light.
    I awoke in a cold sweat and immediately checked my surroundings for any signs of large creatures. I found no evidence of any such beast so I fell back in my place relieved. After such a dream, I was unable to sleep so I decided to get up and do something. First thing first, I needed to do something about sleeping on the ground.
    "Huumas Levitory"
    As I spoke my incantation, once more, the ground began to tremble as the stone and mud of the cave floor began to shift and mold its self into the shape of a small hut. I briefly checked the interior of my new dwelling to see that it met my standards for living and once I was satisfied, I set out to explore the cave some more. I started out by creating a jar from the clay of the cave floor and going to the stream to gather some water. After washing up a little, I started to head upstream to see what else I might find.
    The cavern I was trapped in was truly enormous. I found that it branched off in five different directions and each branch was just as big as the main cavern. The ceilings were at least fifty feet high, and in many places much higher than that. I cast a large sunstone spell on the stream bed and sent the stones in every direction to see the caverns in detail. The walls of the cave were lined in formations that looked a lot like brown curtain drapery and the center of the rooms had huge columns of rock that reached all the way to the ceiling. By the size of them, I would think that they were supporting the weight of the cave its self. There were also very large stalactites hanging from the ceiling. They were so large that they made me uncomfortable standing under them, who knew when one, might fall.
    Along the banks of the stream there were, in many places, large mushrooms growing from the decaying matter that was pulled into the cave with the stream. The mushrooms had a leathery outer skin that made them to hard to eat, but I did take one that was about the right size to be used as a pillow back to my hut with me. Having returned to my hut I brought in some water and caught another fish. This time though I was able to cook the thing over a hole filled with sunstones before eating it. I was surprised at how much difference a little cooking made in the taste of it.
    For the first time since I found myself in the cave I was able to sleep with out being sick or in pain, and with my new mushroom pillow I could even sleep comfortably.