The Ancients

by Adam-Clay Webb

“I know that you are an arcanine,” Vis said in a lowered voice. Vis saw the boy’s face change. “The sudden chaos will distract everyone from your defiance,” Vis said.

  “None here can stand against me,” the boy said, his face recovering its collectiveness.

  “That I know more than you,” Vis said, further interesting the boy. “But if you make a stance here, you will never be able to kill your enemy. No one here is of any significance in the grand scheme of things. No one but us.”

  The boy was quite intrigued with Vis’ words. “What do you know about my enemy?”

  “Oga is alive,” Vis said. There was the expected look of disbelief on the boy’s face.

  “Do you want to be killed for standing against the statue of Oga, or will you sacrifice your pride and cloak yourself with ignorance and simpleness until the day comes when you can destroy Oga?”

  From where they were, the two boys could hear clearly a teacher cast a spell to diffuse the fog. The mist cleared quickly, and by the time the mist had cleared, Vis and the boy he had saved were at opposite sides of the re-joining mass of worshippers.

  “We are not under attack! The mist will be explained at a later time! For now, let us resume our worship!” The principal was irate. He was sure that one of the students, in the name of mischief, had summoned the heavy mist. But there was no way he could figure out which student had done it – not at his level of magic anyway. All he could do was to continue with the exercise.

  Vis stared over at the boy and nodded, and in a forced motion of compliance, the arcane boy bowed down.

  About an hour past midnight that night, when the exhausted campers were asleep – most of them anyway – Vis felt his dream become strangely uncomfortable. He tossed and turned in his sleep until he finally awoke. He looked around in the darkness, frightened. His heartbeat raced. He had fallen asleep in a camp of hundreds of people, pretty close to a massive fire that was providing comforting heat. But now, all of a sudden, he had awoken in this cold dark place. He groped around, realizing his blanket was replaced by an uncomfortably damp sand.

  “You finally awake,” Vis heard a voice. He turned quickly, but soon recognized it to be the same boy from earlier, even in the darkness. “I shifted us out here a while ago,” the boy said.

  “Where is here?” Vis asked, trying to make out the surroundings. But the moonlight could not pierce through the heavy clouds below it.

  “I don’t know. About fifty miles from the camp,” the boy said.

  “Who are you?” Vis asked immediately, as if his first question was relatively irrelevant.

  “I am Alzabekh,” the boy said. “My name is from a foreign language. It means Shade.”

  “Shade…”

  “And you, what is your name?” the boy asked, sounding a bit awkward, as if this was his first attempt at a conversation.

  “Vis.”

  “Vis… You interfered…” But before Vis could make the reply that his clenched fists preceded, the boy continued. “You have my gratitude.”

  “Your level of magic, how did you attain it?” Vis asked straightforwardly. “An arcanine your age is unheard of. Who are you, really? And what is this hatred toward Oga all about?”

  “Even when I roused my magic, the teachers could not sense it. How is it that you managed to perceive it?” Shade asked.

  “My questions came first,” Vis said.

  The moonlight finally filtered down, and Vis saw that they were on a beach. The two boys sat on the sand. Even being total strangers, they somehow felt it – that their fates were intertwined.

  “Truly, my enemy is not Oga – but the creation of Oga,” Shade said.

  “The Council?”

  “No. Magic itself.”

  Vis was tempted to ask many questions, but he just listened and allowed Shade to say what he would.

  “I am from a special strain of sorcerers. The history behind it is complicated, but the important thing is that my parents, my sister and I were the last of this strain. We climbed through the levels of magic unnaturally quickly, reaching black magic by around age 12.”

  Vis was no doubt bamboozled by what Shade was saying. A special strain of sorcerers that reached black magic at age 12? This was totally insane.

  “My parents were very careful not to reveal their arcane power. We lived a simple life, even though we had the power to crush armies. My father was a farmer and my mother a seamstress. Somehow, though, the council got wind of the family’s concealed power. One day a councillor came by. There was this big fanfare and gathering as the nobleman entered the community. No-one there had ever seen one of the councillors in person. He rode in on a white horse, with about twenty horsemen before and behind him.

  The councillor stopped at my house and asked to have dinner with my family. Of course, anyone else would consider this a great honour, but even my little sister knew what was going on. He was there to read our magic. There my family sat, having dinner with an Ogal Councillor, a finger of the hand of God. We exchanged quick and nervous glances while we ate, wondering if the councillor had confirmed that we were indeed arcanines.

  He left after eating, and thanked us for the meal, as if all was well.”

  “But then he returned,” Vis figured.

  “He did. In the night, he and four other councillors appeared and attacked.” Shade paused as his mind sifted through the all-too-familiar scenes. “We were strong, but against the councillors… even our strength was like nothing.”

  “But how? If even you are an arcanine--”

  “What about my parents? Well, attaining a high level of magic is one thing, but having the training to use it is another. The councillors had set up a barrier around the house, preventing escape. They killed my parents and my sister easily.”

  “Then how did you escape?”

  The look on Shade’s face told Vis that even he himself was not sure of the answer. “I ran out to where the barrier was. Somehow, when I touched it…” The look of puzzle was evident on Shade’s face. “It just melted. And I shifted away.”

  “So you destroyed a barrier erected by four Ogal Councillors? Without even knowing how?”

  “Yes.”

  How can he be so calm, telling me all this? His family was executed before his very eyes, Vis thought.

  “I have already gone through all the stages of grief. There is nothing left. Nothing except that which has become my destiny. Honestly, I cannot blame the councillors for killing my family and trying to kill me.”

  “Huh?” Now this certainly puzzled Vis.

  “They were simply carrying out their duty, and I have no qualm with them, or anyone for that matter.”

  “How can you reason like that?!”

  “Being as strong as we were, they had to kills us. We could have become a serious threat. The real problem is not with magicians, but with magic. If we were not arcanines, then we would not have been targeted, and if the councillors weren’t magicians, then they would have no power to target anyone. The invention of magic has brought imbalance into this world, and has caused immeasurable pain to many.”

  “And how do you plan on solving this?” Vis asked curiously. “Do you think that killing every sorcerer will destroy magic itself? Do you even think that such a mission is remotely accomplishable?”

  Shade hissed. “I am not foolish,” he said. “I will train so that I attain the sorcery of Oga, and when I unlock the final stage of mana, I will travel through time, into the past, and destroy Oga when he is a child.”

  Vis shook his head and laughed a little, trying not to insult Shade too much, but he couldn’t help it; this was ridiculous. “No man can achieve such sorcery but Oga himself. And besides, if fate would have it that magic exists, then another would be given the power of magic. Naturally, if your plan succeeds, you will be known as the first magician, and the beginning of magic.”

  “I will kill myself after Oga is dead. It is the only way. And fate – there is no such thing.”

 
“You can’t be serious,” Vis said. “And if you are dead, how will you know whether you have succeeded?”

  Before the boy could answer, Vis continued. “If you should have any slight chance of succeeding with time-travelling, then you will need two things, both of which I can give to you.”

  Now this caused the most notable change on Shade’s face.

  “The first is an item that I will create in the near future.”

  “Before you go on, why are you helping me?” Shade asked.

  “Because this thing I will create…”

  “You need my help.”

  “Yes,” Vis didn’t hesitate to admit. “I have the blueprints all worked out, but I will need someone with your level of mana.”

  “What is this thing you plan on making?” Shade asked.

  “Something that will give you the power to wield all conceivable spells.”

  By Shade’s face, Vis knew he was quite sceptical. But who wouldn’t be?

  “The second thing you will need,” Vis continued, “is truth. Absolute truth.”

  “Truth?”

  “There is a man who knows,” Vis said.

  “A man who knows what?”

  “A man who knows everything.”

  Chapter 20: Oracle

  Some weeks later, the two reached the house of this man who held in his grasp real truth. Before Vis could make a knock on the door, it was opened unto them. Jin’s eyes immediately fell on Shade.

  “So you have brought him here,” the old man said in a solemn tone. Vis immediately felt jealous. “Enter,” the man told them, and they went inside.

  Although Shade reacted far less fanatically than Vis did upon first entering the house, it was clear that he was quite amazed by the books and scrolls and maps lying about. Jin invited Shade to sit, but Shade replied with a question. “Who are you?” A natural question, and one that would have been answered with an unknown tale.

  For three straight hours, Jin and Vis taught Shade the truth of the gods, the truth of the Zagans, the truth well-hidden from the world. Hearing these things from Jin, Shade resolved in his mind that he would never return to that school.

  Jin would go on to a piece of history that not even Vis was told about. “I have told you all these things,” Jin said. “But I still have not answered your question. You want to know who I am.”

  “It is clear, you are some sort of oracle,” Shade said.

  Jin laughed a little. “Before you can begin to understand what an oracle is, I must first tell you of the beginning of this lineage.”

  And so Jin began to explain…

  Witch sought after Wizard after the battle of the gods, and had children with him in order to rebuild the Ogal Council. Their firstborn was a boy they named Oracle. He learnt the truth of his grandfather and his ally, Kizer, from Witch. Unlike his siblings and mother, who had comprised the new Ogal Council, he looked at Kizer and Oga, and by extension his own mother, with disdain, and saw them as villains.

  He foresaw that truth would decay over time based on the plan of Kizer and Oga, and this would lead to them being seen as heroic gods, and the Zagans as villainous demons. Oracle could not bear for this to happen. He was truly a just man, and he resolved that he would fight against this wretched scheme.

  When he was seventeen, he fled his mother’s sight, and disappeared from the world. His mission was not to be an Ogal Councillor. His destiny, he was certain, was to be the keeper of truth. Truth, he knew, would be the only weapon that could thwart this sinister plan that the gods had set in motion.

  He compiled books and scrolls, all manner of truthful knowledge. For decades, he wrote history and explanations of things gone and things to come. He then sealed these things into his soul, and used a high-level arcane sacrificial animation technique to give life to the knowledge itself. In order to achieve this, he had to sacrifice his own spirit. Oracle, therefore, created, in essence, a spiritual embodiment of truth, embedding in it the will stay alive, and also specific instructions that would ensure that this will was realized.

  Knowing that Kizer and Oga were watching from the shadows still, he could not allow this truth to spread across the world like wildfire. Still, he had to ensure that at all times someone had this knowledge. This spirit of truth would find a host and teach that person all things. At the death of the host, the spirit would seek out another, and so on.

  Oracle believed that if truth was preserved in this cautious way, in the right time, it would find a way to reach to all the world. After thousands of years and hundreds of ‘oracles’, this spirit reached out to Jin. But as millennia passed, the spirit grew weary, and degenerated over this great time. As such, its ability to communicate with its hosts diminished, falling from constant communion to infrequent and often times obscure dreams.

  “Vis…” Jin said, looking at the boy intently. “You did not come to me by accident. The spirit brought you here, and I expected you. Neither have you met Shade by a chance encounter.”

  Vis now began to see all this in a new light. “What are you saying?”

  “The spirit is dying, Vis. And I too am nearing death. This means the time has come. The time has come for this truth to be spread across the world. You, my boy, will be the last of the oracles. Shade, with his anomalous magic, will be by your side. He will guide and protect you, and with his power, will ensure that your mission is carried out.”

  Vis stared at the old man with wide eyes. Could this have been all fated? Orchestrated by the spirit of truth? Was he really the last oracle?

  Shade, who did not even know when he had seated himself, stood firmly. “This is not my mission. My goal is not to advertise truth, but to rewrite it. I will destroy this reality, and eliminate magic. That is my destiny.”

  There was a dim look in Jin’s eyes, like he had expected these words from Shade. “Shade,” he said. “Kizer and Oga will return. The Zagans also will return. If the world, by then, is still in ignorance as it is now, mankind will marvel after the gods and side with them, only to their own demise. Following this, a dark age will come upon the world, from which it will never recover. But if the world knows of the gods’ villainy, then together with the Zagans, people will fight against the gods, and defeat them!”

  “Foolish old man,” Shade said, now fully annoyed by Jin’s conviction, “there is only one way to destroy the gods – and that is to prevent them from existing in the first place.”

  “You will never attain the power to travel through time,” Jin said. “Only Oga’s magic can allow such powers.”

  “That I will have to find out the hard way,” Shade said. He turned toward Vis. “Each must follow his own path.” With that, the boy vanished in a black cloud.

  Jin hissed.

  Shade’s words left Vis in contemplation. My own path… He had just remembered what his own goal was.

  “Vis, seek after him,” Jin said. These words took Vis by surprise. He had thought that Jin would have wanted him to stay away from Shade, since his ideas were against what Jin had believed was the best path. “You will need him. I have taught you all that I know. I will now head to a sacred place, where the spirit had found me. There I will prepare the spirit for you. Until then, do not leave Shade’s side.”

  “What?”

  “I saw in that boy’s eyes a power far beyond what he now possesses. He needs you to retrieve this power. Only together can you both reach your potentials.”

  Vis’ face was all wrinkled. This was all quite sudden. He was nervous. The boy could see a sense of urgency on Jin’s face, as if he had received some frightful revelation just then. The man opened a nearby drawer and pulled from it a grey hat. He dusted it off and laughed a little. Then he went over to the boy and fixed it on his head.

  “Find him,” Jin said, then grabbed on to Vis’ shoulder. Vis felt his mana take a drastic hit as the old man vanished in a blue cloud.

  In those few moments, everything had changed. Jin and Shade, the only two persons Vis had ever been
close to, had disappeared, and he had no idea where to find either of them, or what he was supposed to do.

  “Jin! Come back!” he hollered, then proceeded to wreck the place in frustration, even tearing to threads some of the precious literature.

  Suddenly, he got a hold of himself. He stood frozen, wondering how this uncharacteristic fit had overcome him. He sighed heavily, then fixed the hat on his head.

  “Jin, I can trust. Nothing is without reason,” he told himself, and sat in his chair, himself calmed. He sighed again.

  After some minutes of contemplation and slight dozing, he went into the kitchen and botched some scrambled eggs and fried bread. He washed it down with an entire mug of heavily fermented wine, which he drew from under Jin’s bed. He laughed a little. If Jin was there, he wouldn’t have been able to have even a taste. Then he lay in the old man’s bed and slept.

  The next few days were tiresome and drab, frustrating even. He would go home, appease his parents with rehearsed conversations, have dinner, and sleep. Then he would go off to school, search for Shade and not find him, then he would leave school before half the day was done, and stay at Jin’s place. There he would read, but he had absorbed all the knowledge there was in the place already. There was nothing new there for him to learn, and this frustrated him.

  After two weeks had passed, he suddenly remembered a lie he had told Shade, that he was working on an item that would enable the use of all spells. It was at Jin’s house he began to seriously consider this.

  “Could such a things be created?” he pondered. He laughed madly as hundreds of ingenious ideas rushed through his mind. He moved jitterly about, gathering scrolls and scribbling theories and equations. There, in his time of frustration and confusion, his mind birthed the idea of the Crystal Eye.

  For three full days, he ignored food and sleep, and did not leave Jin’s house. He had already put together a list of items that he would need to create this object, and a sequence of spells that would need to be used.

  When exhaustion got the better of him, he finally succumbed to sleep. On the floor he slept for eighth straight hours, then he awoke with a frightening suddenness, like a nightmare had struck him. He panted. He was sweating, and his body was weak. He knew that what he was feeling was no nightmare.