Immortal (PvP)

[Magus]

A sharp chill ran down his neck.

He was betrayed; had to be. Who else would have put a bounty on his head but that decrepit old bastard Lud – he must have thought the deed was done and made to ensure Magus wouldn’t be a loose end.

“Every single goddamn person in this forsaken place is a snake,” he grumbled under his breath, before turning perpendicular to the women who flanked him to keep his eyes on them. “Mercenaries, then? You don’t owe your allegiance to the People’s Army; they’re just paying you.”

Neither of the women made to reply. One, just an ordinary girl, shifted her self into a fighting stance. The other, a ridiculous looking child wearing some kind of futuristic armor and armed with an absurd rocket launcher-looking device. To her credit, she kept the weapon trained on him without waver.

Slowly, the wizard reach up and clasped his robes. He paused, watching for any sort of reaction. When there wasn’t one, he pulled it off with one quick motion and threw it to the floor. His regal, purple cape billowed out behind him, and his combat-honed muscles tensed in anticipation.

“We’re taking you in,” the heavily armed child flatly replied. “We know who you are and what you’re capable of, so just surrender peacefully and nobody needs to get hurt.”

At this, Magus chuckled a sinister and taunting retort.

“You know who I am?? You couldn’t possibly have less of an idea. I am called Fiendlord; the Demon King. I am the Archmage, the one above all,” Magus bellowed. “All I want is to find Omni. If you think to get in my way, to slow me down for even a moment, the wrath I will bring down upon you will hound you ‘till the end of time,” his face twisted into a dark snarl and his scarlet eyes burned as he spoke. “You will never run far enough. You will never secret yourself away well enough. If you stand between me and Omni, not even death will spare you from my anger.”

There wasn’t a response for a long time, which suited the mage just fine. He was outnumbered, and if these two schoolchildren posed more of a threat than they appeared to, he would need all the time he could get to formulate a strategy.

“We didn’t come all this way to back down now,” said the older-looking one. Her voice was quiet but firm, and didn’t flutter with fear as Magus had expected it to. She was like Marle in some ways; confident and strong in spite of her youth. Maybe.

He wasn’t fond of the idea of murdering these children, but if they were Primes as he suspected they were, they were arguably going to be okay in a few days anyhow. And if not… if they wouldn’t wake up again like Omni had promised, well, he had seen worse horror in Guardia and in Zeal.

The wizard clenched his hands into fists and surreptitiously channelled his energy there. If they tried to make their move, he’d hit at least one of them with a face full of dark energy. The unlikely survivor would have to square off against him one on one.

“What have they told you about me?” Magus growled, casting his angry glance from the teenager to the child and back again. “Do you honestly believe that there is any possible chance I might allow you to take me prisoner? You can tell Lud he’s turned his most powerful ally into his most dangerous enemy and begone.”

He was met with a silent response again. The kid with the rocket launcher kept it pointed right at him, and the other girl just kept staring at him with those strange, purple eyes.

He clenched his fists tighter and kept channelling his energy there. As soon as the first one made their move, they were dead.

The girl with the unusual eyes suddenly shifted her stance. “He- he’s trying something!!”

She leapt into a sidelong dive and flicked a dagger produced seemingly nowhere at Magus. At the same time, the psychopath with the bazooka opened fire. Magus leapt in a twisting motion, nearly upside-down as both the rocket propelled projectile and the dagger missed him by less than inches.

Still midair, Magus unleashed a bolt of greasy, black energy at each of his attackers. Just as he did, each narrowly avoided being struck and all the flying projectiles crashed and exploded into the ornate buildings around them.

Amidst the flying rubble, Magus broke into a run and charged the tiny, rocket-launching lunatic.

She may have been a little girl, but she had tried to liquefy him. That was a good enough reason as any for him to backhand her across the face. He’d expected her to be sent sprawling to the floor while he beat a hasy retreat, but instead, the kid used the momentum to connect with a kick to the back of his head, sending him stumbling.

She followed up with another shot from her ridiculous weapon, and Magus hadn’t the time to get out of the way.

Magus gasped and sputtered as the rocket frozen in the air in front of him flickered and shuddered in place. Wind and whispers assailed his ears, and a strange, shimmering liquidness seemed to tease at the edges of his vision.

That wasn’t there last time.

He knew he couldn’t stand in this plane immaterial for too long. Both of his assailants seemed frozen in place, and Magus noticed the one with the purple eyes was gathering some kind of energy in her hands. Interesting. The other one would likely be content to keep shooting him with that damn launcher.

Magus approached the little one, feeling a twinge of guilt as he did so. He would end things for her quickly, at least, and then could focus on the other to do the same. He withdrew his karambit – the one that Lud had given him – and stalked toward the frozen child.

The whispers seemed to grow more frantic, and so did the wind. The strange shadows that flickered and cast about suddenly coalesced into the shapes of tall, elongated people, frozen there, standing before him.

Magus stared wide-eyed at them, himself frozen with fear for a moment. He fought the urge to rub his eyes, fought the urge to avert his gaze. He deliberately stalked toward the weaponized child, taking care to watch the shadow people who’d appeared before him. He was painfully conscious of the ones that could have been behind him.

Once he was close, he thrust his blade at the pink haired girl. Suddenly, he stumbled, like something had pushed him or – or grabbed at him. He made to cut her throat, but instead, plunged the sinister dagger into the girl’s shoulder.

Fuck.

It was too dangerous to use his Shadow Step any longer. He slipped back into Camelot and ran as fast as he could. Sweaty, terrified – and not just of the two people trying to kill him – the wizard manically sprinted into the first alley he came across, hoping to lose them in the confusion.

The wizard pounded down the cobblestone path, his cape trailing behind him. He rounded a corner and kept running, his anger and fury brewing.

Lud and his supposed freedom fighters would burn for this betrayal. Somehow, someway, Magus was going to track Omni down and he would get out of this ridiculous alternate reality. He was not going to be cut down by a couple of crazy, brainwashed kids.

The wizard ran into a widening path that spilled into patios for cafes and restaurants. Finely crafted shops built from bricks and stone and wood dotted his path as he ran. The wealthy patrons of these places took time to remark to one another at his behaviour, but what surprised him was the damn girl with the purple eyes bursting through a door and tackling him to the ground.

The two rolled on the cobbles and Magus swatted her away. She struck back with a fist to the gut. He gasped as an electric pulse catapulted him backward and into a wall. He nearly collapsed from the sudden agony, but managed a strained breath before he straightened back to his full height.

“My, but you are a tenacious one,” he said with a sneer. “What is it they’re paying you with, anyway? You’re a Prime; you can literally have anything you want. If you’re trading for a favour you can forget it. I promised to help that decrepit old bastard in exchange for information, and now you’re here.”

The tiny maniac appeared through the same door as the adolescent with the purple eyes. Great. One big happy reunion.

“What are you looking for, anyway?”

Magus didn’t miss a beat. “Omni.”