To the Stone City

[Magus]

He gazed down at the boy, paralyzed by doubt. Something was… off. He had been entirely focused on the boy who had clearly been playing an instrument, and hadn’t seen him put it away. And yet, it was gone. What was more, he seemed to be in a different spot than he had been before, without actually having moved.

It wasn’t teleportation. Magus couldn’t explain why he knew, but he did. Perhaps because of the music, the boy had somehow distorted his very existence within space and time, if only for a moment.

He must have been staring a bit too long, because the boy asked him if anything was wrong. Magus cringed and blinked the surprise out of his eyes. “No. I-” he rubbed at his eyes, and then, with renewed composure, he started again. “Nothing is wrong, boy. I saw you working some very powerful magic with your musical instrument; I had thought perhaps it was dangerous. As a mage, I have a responsibility to understand the magics being worked around me.”

That much was true, mostly. Magic users of Zeal were all expected to use caution and restraint, and effectively kept one another in check. Unless, he reminded himself, one of those people became unfathomably powerful by drawing on the energy of a dormant extraterrestrial, and whose madness and sheer potential couldn’t be checked by anyone.

“Oh, no, I wasn’t-”

“Don’t lie to me, boy,” the voice was curt, flat, but without malice. “You wrought incredibly powerful magic just then. The notes themselves reverberated with it. You couldn’t possibly hide that even from an apprentice of the arts.”

“Uh… well...” he was reluctant to answer, that much was clear. Magus didn’t blame the child; carrying that kind of potential with you, especially as a child, made him a clear target. The boy was blond, clad in green cloth and leather fabric. It looked like adventuring gear, and it seemed thematically suited to Camelot, just as Magus’ own clothing did.

The child’s sword and shield, both slung over his back, also resonated with a hardly audible buzz of power. It wasn’t nearly as powerful as some of the artifacts he’d wrought – or faced – but Magus had to grant that his own artifacts had been severely weakened here, too. So, the child wasn’t a stranger to the road, then, and had most likely seen his fair share of adventure. And treachery, Magus reasoned. It made sense that the boy wasn’t keen to share information.

“You are… from the fountain?” Magus inquired, eliciting the exact response he’d expected: the briefest chill of surprise, followed by acknowledgement. He’d created a hint of common ground.

“Yes,” the boy responded after a brief pause.

“Me too,” the Fiendlord replied. He hesitated for a moment, and then added, “I am called Magus. Arch Mage and King of the Mystics,” he still felt the bittersweet taste of that title on his tongue.

It was a lofty position, but it wasn’t who he was. He was Janus, Prince of Zeal, brother to Schala, Princess Zeal. But he couldn’t afford to expose himself, certainly not now. The young lad was hardly out of diapers, true, but he was a Prime. If Thrall and Bradley were to be believed, that counted for a great deal in the Omniverse.

“I am Link, of Hyrule,” was the response. Magus knew of no place called Hyrule, from any of the time periods he’d been to. He began to wonder if there were more realities than simply his own and that of the Omniverse. Given what he’d seen in the past few hours, it wouldn’t have been terribly shocking.

Magus extended a gloved hand, offering a handshake. Link accepted the gesture, and the two traded grips for a moment, before the taller of the two – by a wide margin – broke away. “Link, I am also a practitioner of the arts. Watch.”

He raised his hand, palm up, and almost immediately, the air just above his palm seemed to shimmer and dazzle, before becoming dark and greasy. It coalesced into a tiny dragon, and seemed to solidify as a statue.

Before Link could comment, the statue suddenly threw its head back and roared a tiny, high pitched squeak of a roar. It leapt from Magus’ hand and beat its tiny wings, sailing around Link, who twisted his head this way and that to track its movements, before it came to rest in front of his face, beating its wings to hover in place.

“You see?” Magus let his arm drop and the dragon flashed into dust, carried off by the breeze. “I understand what it’s like to practice magic. What it’s like for people to fear you for being different. I assure you, I do not fear your magic. I had simply hoped to better understand it.”

“Yeah, well, yeah. The song… was supposed to send me home. It didn’t work,” Link replied. He seemed to be holding something back, but it did make a certain kind of sense. Perhaps that was what had ‘shifted’ the boy. It had begun to work for a split second before Omni’s domain negated its power, perhaps.

“Hmm… yes, I wouldn’t suppose this ‘Omni’ would have made things so easy for you,” Magus responded, devoid of sympathy. He had wasted enough time talking with the urchin. The only reason he’d shown the boy the modicum of respect he had thus far was because he wielded primal powers far beyond the boy’s own constitution. He was holding back, and he would find out exactly what someday when he wasn’t in such a hurry. “The capital of Camelot; it’s that floating island, right?”

“No, actually, it’s called Minas Tirith, apparently. It’s right by there, though, on the surface, I’m pretty sure,” Link explained.

“Good,” Magus turned away from Link and thrust both hands forward, channeling Omnilium this time, rather than magic. He closed his eyes, and reached deep within himself, latching onto the foreign material, shaping it in his mind’s eye. It was… different than magic; more tangible but… sloppier. It was, above all else, infuriatingly slow to manifest. “I need to leave for the library located there immediately.”

“Why?” came the response, as a vague, greasy black blob began to appear before Magus. The blob trembled and quivered, before stretching and shaping into a vague representation of what he was trying to create.

“What do you think of Omni?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you happy he brought you here?”

“No,”

“Do you support what he’s doing? Do you think he’s a good or a bad person?”

“I think he’s selfish,” Link answered. “I think he has a lot of power but not a lot of maturity. I think he created all of this for his own amusement, and he’s playing with us like we’re dolls. It’s sick.”

Magus arched a lavender eyebrow as his creation became more and more defined. The boy showed remarkable insight for his age. “I discovered that there is a way to confront Omni. I seek to challenge him, to demand he send me back. I have… business to take care of in my world.”

“You can do that??” Link’s blue eyes lit up.

“Apparently so,” Magus answered. “Thrall told of a way to Omni that could be discovered through the library. He was annoyingly determined I not discover it, however, and refused to simply tell me the way. So I head there to figure it out, and then on to Omni himself.”

“Confront Omni and… go home,” the boy summed up. He seemed to study his hand with strange intensity. “I didn’t know that was an option,” he looked up at the caped wizard, his back turned to Link. “Can I… come with you?”

Magus stifled a scoff. Anyone else and he’d have refused in a heartbeat. However, it did represent an opportunity to keep Link’s primal magic close. Perhaps he would get a chance to study it after all. “If you get in my way, slow me down, I leave you behind. No second chances.”

Link nodded, his expression severe. “They suggested summoning pegasi to get there faster.”

Magus’ lips curled up in the tiniest of smiles. He snorted derisively. “Who needs a Pegasus when you’ve got one of these?”

With one final push of effort, the creation Magus had been working on during their conversation coalesced, a giant version of the dragon he’d made for Link earlier. The huge, black, winged beast bellowed a thunderous roar into the air, and then lowered its head to the ground. Smoke poured from between its mighty jaws, though the wizard was unable to provide it with the ability to breathe fire, at least for now.

He clambered up onto the mighty creature’s head, and Link followed. “Fly, Dragon! To Minas Tirith!” the creature roared again and beat its mighty wings, building up lift before throwing its enormous frame into the sky.