The night after I killed Dame Orpha, I wandered through the rainy night. Despite having magical abilities, I was still freezing cold and tired. Given that I had never previously left the orphanage, I went to the place closest to the orphanage. As I fell face first into the mud thanks to a rock, I lifted my head and marveled at the exact place I had to be.
“The Bibliotheca Secretorum used to be a regular old university,” I remembered, Dame Orpha said, when I was little, “until Necron became king. He made the library a prison for all books that weren’t mag propaganda. No human can open its doors.”
Of course, I learned I wasn’t a human per say, so I figured that maybe my newfound powers could open the goblet door. The Bibliotheca Secretorum was huge, seemingly reaching to the heavens.
I approached the massive library, with my hand leading to its goblet door handle. As I gently laid my hand on the handle, it glowed and the goblet came to life.
“Welcome to the Bibliotheca Secretorum,” the goblet exclaimed, as it glowed. “I see that you are trying to seek the answers to your new life as a magician.”
I screamed as it said this.
“What’s the matter pretty?” the goblet mocked, slowly opening its doors for the first time.
“Are you really that scared of your own creation?”
When the door fully swung open, it revealed the massive library inside. The Bibliotheca Secretorum was disorganized, with books littered all over the floor. It was also mostly marble black, seemingly untouched by time. However, that changed when my powers managed to animate the books, flying them across the room as they repeated the word ‘creation’.
I slowly walked back from the door, covering my ears from all the noise. That was when a single book went in front of my face, opening its pages like a door. A white steam emitted from the pages, which blurred my visions as I fell unconscious. I went into a dreamlike trance, with everything being completely pitch black at first.
“My name is Divin, son of Maru,” a voice said within the abyss I was in, muffled by the vastness.
Soon, a faint light surrounded the area around me. Despite that, it was still rather hazy, and I could only see warm colors without any real shapes.
“Are you sure you can protect him?” a motherly voice asked in the distance, with a bit of concern in her voice.
At first, I couldn’t quite understand what was going on. All I knew is that I must have been seeing through the eyes of a toddler, given that I was laying in a caged bed.
“Of course I can,” an eerie male voice softly spoke. “As the Lord of Fotia, your foolish boy will be cured into a strong magician. He has all the potential, afterall.”
That was when a figure loomed over the bed, being as clear as daylight. The figure was cloaked in darkness, with its only noticeable features being its sickly green eyes. Its outline resembled that of a starving man.
“I was born blind and with changeling sickness,” Divin said as the darkness began to enclose me once again. “But the Lord of Fotia saw my true potential as a magician.”
Slowly, faint lights began to appear once again. It was still dark, only barely blue. I noticed that my legs were short and sore as I hid under a table. Before me was some sort of tablet, which my fingers stroked gently. I must have been a young boy this time, hiding away from something.
The room began to light up, but not because someone purposely lit up the room. I was completely frozen as I saw the same sickly dark green figure as before, which I guessed was Lord Necron himself. He approached me, his cold presence screaming to me like a banshee. I cried as Lord Necron picked me up by the arm.
“You better prove yourself to be a true magician,” he whispered to me, his hand turning into the void. “Or I will have to make you into another example.”
I screamed as the void once again consumed me, not even being able to close my eyes.
“After I was unable to use my powers to become a true magical warrior,” Divin’s voice spoke through, giving me some comfort as I was unable to escape the nightmare that I began to realize was his life. “I decided to end my own life.”
Finally, a dark greenish light outlined the floor below me, though I was a great distance above it. I looked down to my feet as I heard the faint sound of water gently passing through a stream. I noticed that I was much taller than I was before, but it was harder to guess my age now.
My stomach began to turn as I leaned my back against what must have been the cold stone brick bridge, my head pulling me towards the water below. I crashed into the depths, my senses overwhelmed by the horrid smell and the coldness of the river. Despite that, I was surrounded by figures, who unlike Necron were opalescent and more detailed. I stared into them as they told me that this didn’t have to be the end, that I didn’t have to be a warrior in strength to be a warrior at heart. That was when the surrounding water lit up with colorful lights, showing people and events like it was a festival.
Unfortunately, as I marveled at the beautiful display, the darkness soon engulfed it all, and I was once again left completely blind to my surroundings. Eventually, little lights appeared like candles in massive numbers. I noticed movement, which I soon realized was me, walking towards something. My heart stunk when I saw Necron once again, his presence snuffing out a lot of the light surrounding me. I realized that whatever this was, it was a confrontation.
Necron’s figure began to glow a sickly green as he raised his hands up, like holding something in each hand. I was frightened by a vision of a ghostly skeleton head before dodging each attack that Necron threw at me. Necron tried to swing a punch at me, but I managed to avoid it and reach for his neck. I saw his figure begin to flicker like a broken lightbulb as I wrapped my arms around him. Suddenly, a burn hit my eyes and I fell to the ground crying.
“I gave you everything you could have ever wanted child,” Necron grimly stated as I rolled from my side. “But instead I get the disappointment your mother feared that you would truly be. It’s so pitiful that I don’t feel like killing you anymore. I’ll just sentence you to live out all of your eternity in this forsaken library, with the only possible exit when a good magician finds good use in you.”
Everything went black once again as I heard the long slam of a door shutting. Eventually, ringing in my ears woke me up, with me laying on a checkered ceiling.
The sudden appearance of light from the real world caused me to rapidly blink, so I turned my watery gaze away from it by rolling onto my side. I was then startled by the sudden appearance of a strange man pinning a profile picture to a collection on the wall. His head swiftly turned around, his irisless green eyes going into all kinds of directions. The man’s hair was curly and black. He had a lanky figure, as he gestured his hand to my general direction. His skin was a sickly pale color, which made him appear more as a ghost in the faint darkness that was the room.
“My name is Divin,” the man tried to reassure me as he noticed me trying to move back.
Eventually, I moved back so far that I accidentally fell off the table, startling Divin with my scream. As I lifted my face from the ground, I felt the wetness of a caine noise hover around my face. I faced the creature that was sniffing me, realizing that it was a white fox. Its beanie eyes stared into me, equally as surprised as I was. The fox then stuck its small tongue to lick my cheek, which tickled a little.
“That’s my best friend Kistie,” Divin said, walking over to the curious little fox.
He petted Kistie’s fur as it drew closer to its master.
“Why did you take me?” I muttered, with my head still ringing from confusion.
“Oh, did I take you?” Divin exclaimed, “sorry about that, it’s just that I noticed that the doors of the Bibliotheca Sectreum were opened for the first time in 100 years. No, it was 500 years. Sorry, Lord Necron imprisoned me here for a very long time.”
“He said that only a magician from the outside could ‘see the good in me’ and finally open the door with their powers. Like what I said in my autobiography. Did you like it? I made it myself, hence it being an autobiography. It’s one of those special books made off the wood of a tree called an “experience”, which when chopped up can be embellished with specific magical spells to make the reader see first hand what the author wrote. They are my favorite type of books, but I like all books.
“Right now, my favorite book is…”
That was when my powers activated again, flinging books across Divin.
“Oh yeah,” Divin laughed as he dodged each book effortlessly. “I forgot, you are a magician. And one of the few that wasn’t born over a solar eclipse. I’ve been waiting for your arrival for centuries.
“You see, ever since I was imprisoned, I had visions of a plucky magician. She would team up with me, and we would finally overthrow Lord Necron and bring peace between the humans and the magicians.”
“Look,” I said, holding my hand against my forehead, “I like your optimism. But I just got my powers yesterday. Everything feels like a dream, and I can tell you right now that I really want to wake up from it.”
“You mean like a dream of the future. Those are the dreams that I have every hour of the day. I have planned out everything in order to overthrow Lord Necron. We would unite a plucky group of magicians and combine our powers to overcome him. I even have a profile of each magician we must assemble.
“The first one we should contact is Abjura, who was once named Abjurn, the son of Adan. He never got adopted by Lord Necron, but did go to his boarding school for the most elite students in Fotia. After Abjura’s sister Belovia died of old age, he ran away. He eventually encountered the dreaded Transmun, who transformed him into a girl and forced him to be his servant.”
“You really think that we should go after this random transformed guy to liberate Fotia?”
“Don’t worry, I know exactly where we have to go.”
“Wait, the Cimeterium is the long forgotten graveyard. You’re telling me that Transmun, the magician that makes Lord Necron look like your friendly babysitter, lives in a graveyard?”
“Apparently he’s known to be a bit eccentric, considering that when he was told by a shopkeeper to buy a quill to write to his mother, he turned the guy into a peacock to pick off one of his feathers and left him naked at a nearby beach.”
As a kid, I remembered terrifying stories about Transmun.
“And then he cursed them to be corpses,” Dame Orpha would tell me when I stayed past my bedtime. “And he’ll do the same to you if you don’t fall asleep at this instant.”
Honestly, Transmun was the only reason I had to fear any magician, considering how he uses his powers to completely mutilate you and leave you in a fate worse than death without a second thought.
“I can try to lead you to where the Cimeterium is,” I exclaimed, wanting to confront this monster that was really just a spoiled mama's boy.
“Great,” Divin exclaimed himself, “I can’t wait to finally go and see the outside world again. Don’t worry about the map, I got the map. It’s quite a distance, so do you mind building a carriage with horses?”
“How would I be able to do that?”
“Maybe make a small wooden carriage with horses and animate it with your powers, like what my visions showed me.”
Divin laughed as he spun his finger around, gesturing me to turn around to notice the scraper and piece of wood on a shelf nearby. I slowly lifted myself up, feeling the sores of my sleepy legs as I looked at the objects.
“How much time do you have?” I asked, my voice still a little shaky.
“Time,” Divin bursted out, “We got literally centuries!”
I turned my head back to the scraper and wood, before gently picking them both up.
“Give me until sunrise.” I said, with Divin responding with a wide smile and two thumbs up.
So I worked all night to make the carriage and horse, with Divin staying up just to play with his fox friend. After a stressful weekend of watching my entire life completely change, it was nice to finally be able to do my crafting again. By the sunrise, I had completed my figure. The carriage was simple and somewhat crude, but it looked manageable.
“Now use your powers to bring it to life.” Divin said, clasping his hands together around his fox.
I gently touched the wooden carriage, only half awake as it began to light up. It grew until I was pushed back, nearly crushed to death by the sudden growth. As I lifted myself up, I marveled at how strange it looked, still looking like a wooden sculpture. Even the horses looked like figurines as they jumped up and down.
“Come on,” Divin exclaimed, following his fox onto the carriage without a second thought, “It’s fully functioning.”
I chuckled a little as I hopped onto the carriage myself. To my surprise, it was even little white ropes attached to the horses, despite the fact that I had never designed them in the sculpture. Divin grabbed onto the ropes, whipping them aggressively to provoke the horses. It worked too well as the horses ran like the sunlight, breaking through the library walls with ease. The ride to the Cimetreum was a dangerous one through the forest, with me trying to direct the horses while Divin was completely oblivious to the obvious dangers like trees and rivers.
As the trees were far from the side, there was the Cimetreum. It was a creepy place, with the fog setting in as twilight dawned. Despite this, the moon was as clear and as bright as the sun was on a hot summer day. It shines over the stone cold pillars that were the grave markings of the deceased, which were as tall as the people buried underneath them must have been. As me and Divin got out of the carriage, I noticed the large marble statue as the centerpiece of this place, which was carved to be an old woman looking soberly to the ground.
“Do you see anyone?” I asked Divin, sneaking through the graveyard as quietly as I humanly could.
“You know I can’t see,” Divin snarked, “but I do sense a presence here.”
That was when the shuffling of leaves punctured my heart, as my head swiftly turned around to see what had caused the noise.
“That presence,” Divin said, pointing towards a blonde woman in a white gown.
While she was very beautiful, her figure was in many ways grossly exaggerated, with her breasts and hips being so unnaturally huge that they were arguably cringeworthy.
“Who are you?” the woman defensively said, holding her hands in front of her.
“Totally regular magicians,” Divin shouted, “Would you happen to be a certain Abjura?”
“It’s true that I’m Abjura, but why do you come here?”
“Sorry,” I said, “we were looking for you because we wanted to form a team. Maybe even rescue you from your master Transmun.”
“Rescue me?” Abjura laughed, “Oh, my maiden in dirty washcloths, there’s no need for saving. But try, cause I know that Transmun have been itching for a fight for many moons.”
“Blue moons to be precise,” A strange voice from the distance spoke, “Not so much into memorizing months.”
I dashed my head around to see a darkish man emerge from the pillars, his clothes being a black suit covered head to toe with gothic jewelry.
“It’s him,” Divin cried out, slowly backing away from him, “Transmun.”
My heart began to race as I stared into Transmun’s sly black eyes, biting his lip while doing so.
“Glad to see the annual meeting of the magicians.” he laughed, walking towards me.
“If you count hundreds of years as annual.” Abjura snarked.
“Well, there should be one in my humble opinion.”
As Transmun began to walk closer and closer to me, goosebumps covered my skin. My breath grew as sharp as a knife as he gave a wide smile, still staying silent on his intention. Eventually, I was back into a pillar and Transmun pointed his finger towards me, still smiling. As I was about to scream, my powers revealed themselves when the ground below me quaked. Transmun swiftly moved out of my view as I saw rotting hands crawl out of the ground, like weeds in a garden.
“Divin!” I cried out, rushing into the glowing corpses to see if he was okay.
I sighed in relief as I saw him on top of one of the grave pillars, his legs dangling safely. Unfortunately, I heard a petrifying scream from behind me. I turned around to see Abjura swarmed by the undead as they began to tear her flesh apart. As my hands covered my mouth in shock, Abjura crawled away from the corpses, her wounds glowing as her body began to reassemble itself.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried out, trying to safely step over the corpses, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know,” Abjura signed, “I know you want something that I can already tell you, you’re not going to like in any way.”
She then raised her hands into the air, radiating a glow over her whole body. As I tried to motion the undead creatures back to their graves, they continued to try to claw at Abjura. I awed as Abjura was left physically untouched by the corpses, even her torn up garments were protected.
She turned her head over, worried for the safety of her master Transmun. He was busying skipping around the undead, like it was a game for him.
“If you could stop slacking off,” Abjura cried out, motioning her hands towards Transmun. “I could really use your help.”
“You know what they say about a teacher helping out a student on their test,” he snarked, not really looking at her as a stream of light from her hands surrounded him.
“You are going to be the death of me.”
I tried to approach Abjura during this time, still trying to deactivate the corpses.
“I’m serious,” I begged, finally standing face to face with her, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Like I said,” Abjura assured, “I’m also trying to help you right now, but if there's anything I have learned over the past centuries, it is that helping rarely involves being nice.”
I was then blasted by a shot of light that shielded her, falling onto the undead. The light was a bubble that encased Abjura, still glowing a white glow.
“Consider this an act of mercy.” she said to me, pointing her open palm towards me.
As it lit up, I was yanked from the ground and hurdled several feet backward. I screamed as my body was pushed against a stone wall, with my vision becoming a bit of a blur. As I began to regain composure, Divin was also thrown against the same wall. As I saw the grayish tint that now surrounded me, I began to hyperventilate at the realization that somehow, Abjura had banished me into the reflection of one of the grave pillars.
“Oh come on,” Divin groaned, banging his hand against the invisible wall imprisoning us from the world. “I didn’t even do anything.”
“I know,” Transmun chuckled. “but this is the way that we keep newcomers from messing around. You’ll be fine.”
He creeped up to the grave pillar as I kept banging the wall. Whatever Transmun had planned, it would manage to make my already terrible week worse.
