Jacobo_Curious
Dark Magician Girl
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2002
- Posts
- 4,060
Danger! Danger! JC Posting!
<< --- OOC: --- >>
This entire post, since I had to be offline while writing it, totalled up to 9.5 pages in Microsoft Word. Also, it has nothing to do with anything that's happening right now -- but it DOES have a lot of neat crazy stuff in it. Even so: you have been forewarned!
Arararar!
<< --- IC: --- >>
PREVIOUSLY
The young magician girl had listened quietly as Ritsuko explained her story back at the camp, getting the weight of her pain off of her chest. Now, sitting a bit away from the group, lost in her own thoughts, Shizura Relawell bowed her head, dark ringlets of hair cascading down over smooth, defined cheeks. Her soft brown eyes gazed at the ground as memories and questions circled through her mind, preoccupying her thoughts.
There had been a wizard; he had used teleportation magic, and that could give her a trail. But to what? And more importantly, at least to her, to whom?
The monsters were organized, yet at the same time fighting with abandon. One would assume that the same intelligence that would allow for tactics and strategy would also allow for a desire for self-preservation and cunning based on that; instead, the monsters seemed to be throwing themselves all over, chaotically. Based on the enemies the group had fought so far, and the ones Shizura had fought on her own while trying to catch up to the team, they seemed to be quite willing to die as long as they pressured the adventurers. As though this were all some sort of test.
What with the appearance of Ritsuko, it seemed that there could be other problems at hand, but Shizura knew that her main Quest here was to subdue the monster threat and find out who was responsible. At first, she had hoped it would just be a tough fight up to the Boss, a few moments to hear his Evil Plan, and then it would be time to kick his butt.
But things may not be that simple…
Seated with her back to a tree, the young magician girl tilted her head up to look at the sky – and despite herself, Shizura found her mind straying back to her last conversation with Dyne at the inn, the third member of the team she and Wain had made, adventuring around their home town and practicing their skills…
* * *
"So are you going trollhunting alone?" Dyne asked.
"No," Shizura replied. "I have a group of friends. They've been shopping for a while. I should've told them where I was going... but I'm sure they're still around. We're going to track the trolls and goblins back to their lair. We think someone is controlling them somehow. It's a scary thought. They're very organized."
Dyne stiffened.
"Dyne? Is something wrong?"
He paused for several long moments.
"The Void is both infinitesimal and infinite. It consumes and does not grow, and it is the source of all lust and desire. But, as desires come, so to dreams, and so does love. Love is connection, and love is home. Our home is all within the Void. We all belong there, and we are all connected. We can all understand each other through the Void."
Shizura stared at Dyne, her jaw slack.
"D... D... Dyne...?"
He stared straight into her eyes.
"That was one of the last things Wain said to me before we split up at the capital."
A shiver traveled down Shizura's spine.
"What are you talking about?"
Dyne's expression was stony. "Shizura, the rumors said that Wain was doing illegal research on the Void, and claimed that it should be released to the public. He wanted the College to fund him, too. They thought he was crazy, of course. And nobody knows where he is now…"
* * *
“Our home is within the Void,” she whispered to herself. “We are all connected…”
Why does that seem so important right now?
Slowly, silently, she stood and walked past the tower, stepping into a glade of deeper trees while her allies continued to talk amongst themselves. There was no danger, not at the moment, and she needed to think, away from the people who were becoming her friends, and away for the people who made things complicated – like Lavastine and Zarl. Monsters, not exactly acting the way monsters are supposed to. And looking back, Wain had always been vague on the subject of monsters as the root of all evil.
"A creature at war with itself, trying to keep some semblance of self-control, a feat impossible by a being unable to see pure truth of anything due to the constraints of perception -- a human."
I always thought that applied to monsters, better. That night with Seth, I thought maybe I knew what Wain meant by that. And yet now that I look back on it: how can I say I knew what he meant, without suggesting or even concluding that humans are the same as monsters? And that just doesn’t make any sense. Humans don’t leave Crystals. And everyone knows Crystals are manifestations of great Voids. Thanks to our Holy heritage, we can resist the Void, because we are human, the greatest of the Lightfolk, the strongest of the Fae.
We aren’t controlled by delusion – monsters are.
So then why have I been struggling so much lately?
What secret did Wain know? And what was he looking for in all his Void research?
The pretty magician girl suddenly stopped short, jerked out of her introspection but the unfamiliar surroundings, and she blinked a few times before quirking her mouth down in a cute little grimace. She hadn’t realized she had already walked so far; she hadn’t even told anyone she was leaving. That wasn’t fair of her. She’d have to go back, right now.
Placing a hand on her mace out of habit, the young magician girl turned on the elevated heel of her boot and stepped forward – right into the waiting noose on the ground.
It was all accomplished with startling efficiency. She jerked upward into the air, only dragged on the ground for a split-second before being hoisted up upside-down, and before she could even react enough to emit a shriek of surprise, a large, foul-smelling, meaty green hand clamped over her mouth – it might’ve been a mile thick for how much sound it was letting escape. She was hoisted up even more, even as she felt the rope drop from the tree and coil on the ground. Whoever was holding her was very big. Big, green, and hairy…
An Ogre!
“I am Lieutenant Skahceo,” a surprisingly well-composed, deep, gravelly voice spoke calmly in her ears. “Master ordered us to capture you in particular.”
She could hear someone gathering up the rope, and a squeaky voice emanated from there, beneath where the ogre was hanging her. “Yeah – Master has good taste!” The voice of a goblin is unmistakable. “I hope he rewards us for our hard work. From the images the, aha, late Master’s apprentice showed us, though, it looks as though there’s plenty sweet flesh to go around in that group… lucky for us!”
At this, Shizura promptly began to kick the Ogre in the gut as fiercely and quickly as possible.
And the last thing she heard before a meaty fist sent her spiraling into oblivion was a gravelly “Now, now…”
<< --- >>
“In the Ancient War of Gods, the great hero Cecillian was the one who emerged as the greatest general. With a bizarre monster named Lhao, a giant flying eyeless worm, as his greatest friend, he acquired the Sword of Kings, and legend has it that he became the Great Summoner’s guardian. He was honored as the one who allowed her to reach the top of the mountain – though, quietly modest as any true warrior, he would always say that though he helped the Great Summoner reach the top, it was only the potential inside the Summoner that allowed the Goddess herself to be brought to the Planet.”
Shizura listened quietly, as promised, though she didn’t stop trying to distract Wain by hiking her skirt up around her hips just a little. It didn’t work, of course. It never did. “Um, Wain,” she asked, her fourteen-year-old voice sweet and girlish, “how come Cecillian’s best friend was a monster?”
“To be honest, that’s something most scholars don’t like to touch on, in the books that I have read.” Naturally, Shizura took that to mean that no one talks about it. She highly doubted there was a book about Cecillian that Wain hadn’t read. “However, I imagine that a monster ally was a great aid to Cecillian in his travels. As to why Lhao was willing to fight against his fellows for a human friend – well, perhaps monsters don’t all get along, just as humans don’t all get along unless they find a common enemy, such as monsters.” The handsome young man smiled slightly, his grim, sardonic smile that the girl magician-in-training always found to be the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. “This, of course, brings up the interesting concept that humans are only orderly because of the chaos of monsters, and that we only exist because we have something as our dual – but I’m getting off-track.”
“A giant flying eyeless worm,” repeated Shizura quietly, growing a little smile of her own. “What a funny best friend! I wonder what he ate?”
“…in any case, Cecillian was the finest of warriors. Even before he acquired the Holy Sword, or the ‘Sword of Kings’ as most works call it, supposedly drawing it from his own soul, he was an undefeatable warrior, and later became just as famous for his great artistic abilities and the nuances within his paintings. His only work of literature, both a manual for fighting strategy and a cleverly disguised philosophical treatise, was the Book of the Fifth, where he described with a surprisingly pragmatic air the way a true warrior, a warrior-poet – a true Human – should live his or her life. In the first chapter, the Way of Earth, he—”
“Wain, I’m getting bored,” complained Shizura, leaning back and stretching out her legs, again in the vague hope that the pale, creamy flesh of her young thighs would attract the older boy’s interests toward more enjoyable pursuits. “Let’s do… something else.”
A long pause. Complete silence. Blinking once, Shizura raised her head and looked up, but Wain was already off in the distance, walking back toward the town, shaking his head quietly to himself. “Wain!” groused Shizura loudly, her eyes narrowing. “You big jerk!” she said, even louder. He still failed to notice her. Sighing quietly, too decent and demure to shout any louder, she simply collapsed backward again and lay invisible in the grass. The young magician girl listened for a few moments, and hearing nothing but the sounds of the insects and the breeze through the trees, her lips curled up in a naughty smile and she reached up to cup her own breast, beginning to massage it slowly.
“Well… Father said they’d get bigger soon, if I was of my mother’s blood,” Shizura whispered quietly to herself, as though speaking to a diary. “Then mom smacked him, and he laughed and held her, and she laughed, and then they went off to… what did dad say? ‘Take a nap’?” She sighed softly to herself, half in resignation and half due to the slowly growing warmth. “Well, I hope these do, just a little bit more. At least before my seventeenth birthday. I mean, by that point, Wain and I need to be engaged!”
“Wain…”
The massaging grew a bit rougher as her free hand drifted down to her skirt. “W-Wain… you jerk… I’d do whatever you asked… y-you know me… I’m a good, decent girl… I’d be very obedient… you’d just… tell me what to do… and I’d do it… uhmm…”
Actually, the massaging was getting very rough. Extremely rough. She was squeezing and tugging, and it was getting kind of painful. Weird. She never did anything like this…
<< --- >>
CURRENT TIME
“…ooh… uhhm… ouch! Ow! Ow ow!”
The pretty magician girl’s large, innocent brown eyes cracked open and gazed weakly at the somewhat surprised goblin standing on her lap. Her back was leaned against a tree, her arms were tied behind the tree, and her mace was on the ground, out of reach. And her white and blue tunic was pulled up around her neck. And there were grubby goblin hands roughly squeezing her breasts.
“I guess I should’ve been gentler,” the little green monster said reflectively. “It was a lot of fun while you were moaning.”
Shizura only blinked once before screaming at the top of her lungs. The goblin clapped his hands over his ears for a moment before finally just smacking her hard across the face. “Nobody can hear you here!” he snapped, his squeaky voice derisive. “You’re at the entrance to Master’s Dungeon. Though,” he added, a hint of pride coming into his voice, “we’re so organized, calling his abode a Dungeon is almost an insult.”
“W-Why have you brought me here?” she cried, only to gasp breathlessly as the goblin continued to grope her chest roughly, exploring her thoroughly. The magician girl squirmed wildly, but the bonds around her hands kept her tied tightly to the tree.
He slapped her again, just for the fun of it. “Don’t speak unless I command you to!” The goblin smirked as she stayed silent, her eyes beginning to brim with tears, just squirming at his constant touch. “The Master commanded you be brought here, but did not want you brought inside the cavern – he will come out later. I, Sergeant Yaneks, was set to guard you. And since I was given no explicit orders not to have a little fun – well, I’m going to!”
And so saying, the monster’s hands drifted down to the waistband of her tight leggings, pulling them down around her waist. A speck of drool glistening at the side of his mouth, he reached his small hands toward her pink panties, staring fixedly at his ultimate goal.
“Oh no! No no NO!” Shizura shrieked, kicking her legs and trying to twist away, but when she turned the goblin only slapped her hard on the rear. She squealed and kicked out, but he was too close in for her to hit him, and so the magician girl could only tremble in abject terror as the goblin began to slowly slip her panties down, obviously savoring the moment.
Help! Help! Oh, Goddess, won’t somebody rescue me from this…? This wasn’t supposed to happen to me…
…I’m not strong enough to stop this monster…
…not strong enough…
* * *
“SOLAR SPIK—unngh!”
Shizura was knocked back and slid across the floor, the remnants of her magical energy fizzling around her. The goblins tackled her to the ground, and outside, she could hear the sounds of the townspeople fleeing. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she began to scream hysterically as her father’s limp body, trailing blood, was nailed to the--
“Run, Shizura,” hissed her mother, that beautiful face streaked with blood, those deep eyes glimmering with incredible magical energy. “You cannot be killed as well. Because… you are my daughter… and--
“Wain said that if I was going to be strong, I had to be the strongest,” whispered Shizura, her face frozen in shock as she watched her house burn to the ground from a distance. “I have to be… the strongest… so--
“…never forgive you, monsters! Ever! You--
“Your mother brought this on us, Shizura! You know the monsters followed her wherever she went! That’s why your family came here three years ago! She knew that we’d all be in--
“…Mother…”
“…never forgive you, monsters!...”
“…have to be… the strongest… so…”
* * *
“…So…”
“Uh?” Yaneks looked up – and his eyes grew wide.
“…be strong… so…”
Shizura’s eyes blazed with magical light. The ropes around her hands seemed to wilt away under the force of her power, finally just catching fire and dropping to the ground. Before the shocked goblin could even move, two hands were gripping his neck tightly, and he was being hoisted into the air.
“…so… I’ll never lose… AGAIN!”
Determination fuelled by fury and hatred burned in her eyes. And the air began to crackle…
“SOLAAAAAR SPIIIIIKE!”
A surge of electricity streamed directly into the goblin, shell-shocking him entirely. His arms and legs spasmed wildly as smoke began to drift from his head, his eyes rolling back in their sockets as he shrieked, the pain completely engulfing him until his brain couldn’t take it anymore and simply shut down. The goblin slumped, quietly smoking, comatose. Shizura tossed him aside, and stood quietly, completely still, for several moments, before collapsing to the ground.
It was a few minutes before she finally caught her breath and remembered where she was.
What happened?
She shook her head, readjusted her clothes, and reached out for her mace weakly.
He was going to rape me, and then… I fought him off? Where did the sudden power come from? I… don’t remember… there were… fleeting images?
“…It’s easier just to not think about it, isn’t it?”
Shizura’s head snapped up. A figure in a dark, hooded cloak was standing in front of the cavern, speaking in a quiet, masculine voice.
“Remember some things, forget others. Believe some things, ignore others. Such is the way of ‘intelligent life’. If I had any emotional involvement in the notion, it would disgust me. But it is none of my concern. It is the way things have to be.”
The young magician girl slowly rose to her feet as the man continued.
“You see, humanity is controlled by the Void. The desire to improve oneself, greed, lust, even the desire to fight for what one believes in right – everything comes from the Void. The Void is the emptiness inside of you. The need for you to do something, anything, to make things change. It keeps you all moving, fools that you all are. That’s why humans have hope. That’s why humans have boredom. So they will continue to act. In a great cycle, a great experiment – that at this point, I imagine, the Goddess is finding quite boring. After all, the Void makes you all so predictable. Your Beauty and your Art, so simple-minded… this entire physical world is entirely too pathetic for my tastes.”
Shizura just stared, numbly.
“I wonder why the so-called Gods don’t just end this game. We must end the joke that is individuality and return to the Void, to the Consciousness. After all… they are one and the same. Light must cast a shadow – but then, if that shadow is a vacuum, it will inevitably just consume the light, and everything else around it. And so people are inevitably consumed. Instead of finding balance within themselves, as the great warrior Cecillian wrote in The Book of the Fifth, people must constantly shift between Love and Strife. You know, the last chapter, the fifth chapter, of that book? It wasn’t the Consciousness Way, or the Void Way. It was titled ‘The Way of Life.’ And it described both Consciousness and Void, one and the same, and how humanity can only find perfection within inherent imperfection by finding that internal equilibrium. Unfortunately, Cecillian was not a magician, and couldn’t apply his truth directly to magic, only to his life. But I am a magician. So I can finally complete the Great Quest…
…to end all suffering in this world.
After all you have suffered, wouldn’t you like that… Shizura?”
Slowly, the young girl’s fists clenched, her knuckles turning white.
“Wain…”
“It’s too bad you’ve learned nothing from your pain,” Wain continued. “People with true wisdom must be both analytical and empathetic, and from that, they can learn to understand the concept of paradox. Paradox is truth, Shizura. And, sadly, I have always found that you have none of those qualities. When things contradict what you think you know, you grow confused. When two things contradict themselves and yet both exist, you ignore them. When your past frightens you… you forget it.”
“Wain,” whispered Shizura, “before, were you trying to say… monsters and humans… are the same!?”
A long pause.
“How pleasantly irrelevant,” Wain responded, his tone not changing in the slightest. “Of course they are – any idiot can see that – but why should I care? I’ve been explaining important new things to you, and you haven’t even noticed. You have always focused on the simple-minded things. Like trying to... haha... seduce me.”
She blushed deeply. “W-Wain, y-you…!”
“What, you’re actually ashamed about that old stuff? Why? It’s the truth, isn’t it? So what’s the problem? Protocol? Oh… was I just not supposed to mention it? Like everything else you don’t want to hear?”
“Wain!” she shouted, her eyes widening. “Don’t treat me like this! I’m not a little girl anymore!”
“But, as I expected, you haven’t changed a bit. You were always the makings of a self-righteous little magician girl, and – look! Now you are one!”
“Wain!!”
He sighed quietly and shook his head. “I was hoping you wouldn’t waste my time like this. But… hoping for what cannot be… such are my own human flaws.” He shook his head quietly. “Shizura, suffering has, to a degree, granted you willpower, though you don’t understand it, so you can’t truly utilize it. You have potential, but you’ll never realize it. Inevitably, your Void will consume you, as what you think are your defenses against vice will break and crumble under the weight of reality, and you will hurtle into the standard delusional, insane state of every human being. You are doomed. Your righteousness is unfounded, and is no weapon against me.”
Shizura shook her head quietly, and finally, she spoke. “What… I… This doesn’t make any sense, Wain! Why are you HERE? Why are you doing this? Why to me?”
“Around you talking about doing Yaneks to you, or do you mean just in general? Actually, I apologize about Yaneks, and I ought to thank you for teaching him a lesson.” That little sardonic smile was visible under his hood. “But in general… I told you, Shizura. I’m going to end the Planet’s pain. And you happen to be part of my research. Consider yourself honored.
If you and your party can make it through my Dungeon, through the cadre of monsters I have carefully strengthened – but not made too strong! – you will demonstrate your worthiness to me a subject of my new Spiritual Magicks. And we shall watch as your stupid courage sends you plunging into the abyss of the Void.”
His physical form began to fade. “Go back to your allies,” he said. “They will need your assistance, and you will need theirs. I will be waiting…”
“Wain!”
He was already gone.
“Wain… you… I…” The magician girl stared at the mouth of the cave, where her closest friend had been standing.
“You… you think I’m so weak… and maybe, at the moment, I don’t know what you’re talking about… about me, about you, about humans and monsters, about suffering, about the Planet… but I’m going to show you my strength isn’t the strength of some stupid, blind animal!”
Shizura’s eyes narrowed, and light, true passion, gleamed within.
“…I’m going to show you the true strength of a human, Wain!!”
Her words echoed through the trees, and only silence greeted her, as the clouds slowly drifted overhead.
<< --- OOC: --- >>
This entire post, since I had to be offline while writing it, totalled up to 9.5 pages in Microsoft Word. Also, it has nothing to do with anything that's happening right now -- but it DOES have a lot of neat crazy stuff in it. Even so: you have been forewarned!
Arararar!
<< --- IC: --- >>
PREVIOUSLY
The young magician girl had listened quietly as Ritsuko explained her story back at the camp, getting the weight of her pain off of her chest. Now, sitting a bit away from the group, lost in her own thoughts, Shizura Relawell bowed her head, dark ringlets of hair cascading down over smooth, defined cheeks. Her soft brown eyes gazed at the ground as memories and questions circled through her mind, preoccupying her thoughts.
There had been a wizard; he had used teleportation magic, and that could give her a trail. But to what? And more importantly, at least to her, to whom?
The monsters were organized, yet at the same time fighting with abandon. One would assume that the same intelligence that would allow for tactics and strategy would also allow for a desire for self-preservation and cunning based on that; instead, the monsters seemed to be throwing themselves all over, chaotically. Based on the enemies the group had fought so far, and the ones Shizura had fought on her own while trying to catch up to the team, they seemed to be quite willing to die as long as they pressured the adventurers. As though this were all some sort of test.
What with the appearance of Ritsuko, it seemed that there could be other problems at hand, but Shizura knew that her main Quest here was to subdue the monster threat and find out who was responsible. At first, she had hoped it would just be a tough fight up to the Boss, a few moments to hear his Evil Plan, and then it would be time to kick his butt.
But things may not be that simple…
Seated with her back to a tree, the young magician girl tilted her head up to look at the sky – and despite herself, Shizura found her mind straying back to her last conversation with Dyne at the inn, the third member of the team she and Wain had made, adventuring around their home town and practicing their skills…
* * *
"So are you going trollhunting alone?" Dyne asked.
"No," Shizura replied. "I have a group of friends. They've been shopping for a while. I should've told them where I was going... but I'm sure they're still around. We're going to track the trolls and goblins back to their lair. We think someone is controlling them somehow. It's a scary thought. They're very organized."
Dyne stiffened.
"Dyne? Is something wrong?"
He paused for several long moments.
"The Void is both infinitesimal and infinite. It consumes and does not grow, and it is the source of all lust and desire. But, as desires come, so to dreams, and so does love. Love is connection, and love is home. Our home is all within the Void. We all belong there, and we are all connected. We can all understand each other through the Void."
Shizura stared at Dyne, her jaw slack.
"D... D... Dyne...?"
He stared straight into her eyes.
"That was one of the last things Wain said to me before we split up at the capital."
A shiver traveled down Shizura's spine.
"What are you talking about?"
Dyne's expression was stony. "Shizura, the rumors said that Wain was doing illegal research on the Void, and claimed that it should be released to the public. He wanted the College to fund him, too. They thought he was crazy, of course. And nobody knows where he is now…"
* * *
“Our home is within the Void,” she whispered to herself. “We are all connected…”
Why does that seem so important right now?
Slowly, silently, she stood and walked past the tower, stepping into a glade of deeper trees while her allies continued to talk amongst themselves. There was no danger, not at the moment, and she needed to think, away from the people who were becoming her friends, and away for the people who made things complicated – like Lavastine and Zarl. Monsters, not exactly acting the way monsters are supposed to. And looking back, Wain had always been vague on the subject of monsters as the root of all evil.
"A creature at war with itself, trying to keep some semblance of self-control, a feat impossible by a being unable to see pure truth of anything due to the constraints of perception -- a human."
I always thought that applied to monsters, better. That night with Seth, I thought maybe I knew what Wain meant by that. And yet now that I look back on it: how can I say I knew what he meant, without suggesting or even concluding that humans are the same as monsters? And that just doesn’t make any sense. Humans don’t leave Crystals. And everyone knows Crystals are manifestations of great Voids. Thanks to our Holy heritage, we can resist the Void, because we are human, the greatest of the Lightfolk, the strongest of the Fae.
We aren’t controlled by delusion – monsters are.
So then why have I been struggling so much lately?
What secret did Wain know? And what was he looking for in all his Void research?
The pretty magician girl suddenly stopped short, jerked out of her introspection but the unfamiliar surroundings, and she blinked a few times before quirking her mouth down in a cute little grimace. She hadn’t realized she had already walked so far; she hadn’t even told anyone she was leaving. That wasn’t fair of her. She’d have to go back, right now.
Placing a hand on her mace out of habit, the young magician girl turned on the elevated heel of her boot and stepped forward – right into the waiting noose on the ground.
It was all accomplished with startling efficiency. She jerked upward into the air, only dragged on the ground for a split-second before being hoisted up upside-down, and before she could even react enough to emit a shriek of surprise, a large, foul-smelling, meaty green hand clamped over her mouth – it might’ve been a mile thick for how much sound it was letting escape. She was hoisted up even more, even as she felt the rope drop from the tree and coil on the ground. Whoever was holding her was very big. Big, green, and hairy…
An Ogre!
“I am Lieutenant Skahceo,” a surprisingly well-composed, deep, gravelly voice spoke calmly in her ears. “Master ordered us to capture you in particular.”
She could hear someone gathering up the rope, and a squeaky voice emanated from there, beneath where the ogre was hanging her. “Yeah – Master has good taste!” The voice of a goblin is unmistakable. “I hope he rewards us for our hard work. From the images the, aha, late Master’s apprentice showed us, though, it looks as though there’s plenty sweet flesh to go around in that group… lucky for us!”
At this, Shizura promptly began to kick the Ogre in the gut as fiercely and quickly as possible.
And the last thing she heard before a meaty fist sent her spiraling into oblivion was a gravelly “Now, now…”
<< --- >>
“In the Ancient War of Gods, the great hero Cecillian was the one who emerged as the greatest general. With a bizarre monster named Lhao, a giant flying eyeless worm, as his greatest friend, he acquired the Sword of Kings, and legend has it that he became the Great Summoner’s guardian. He was honored as the one who allowed her to reach the top of the mountain – though, quietly modest as any true warrior, he would always say that though he helped the Great Summoner reach the top, it was only the potential inside the Summoner that allowed the Goddess herself to be brought to the Planet.”
Shizura listened quietly, as promised, though she didn’t stop trying to distract Wain by hiking her skirt up around her hips just a little. It didn’t work, of course. It never did. “Um, Wain,” she asked, her fourteen-year-old voice sweet and girlish, “how come Cecillian’s best friend was a monster?”
“To be honest, that’s something most scholars don’t like to touch on, in the books that I have read.” Naturally, Shizura took that to mean that no one talks about it. She highly doubted there was a book about Cecillian that Wain hadn’t read. “However, I imagine that a monster ally was a great aid to Cecillian in his travels. As to why Lhao was willing to fight against his fellows for a human friend – well, perhaps monsters don’t all get along, just as humans don’t all get along unless they find a common enemy, such as monsters.” The handsome young man smiled slightly, his grim, sardonic smile that the girl magician-in-training always found to be the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. “This, of course, brings up the interesting concept that humans are only orderly because of the chaos of monsters, and that we only exist because we have something as our dual – but I’m getting off-track.”
“A giant flying eyeless worm,” repeated Shizura quietly, growing a little smile of her own. “What a funny best friend! I wonder what he ate?”
“…in any case, Cecillian was the finest of warriors. Even before he acquired the Holy Sword, or the ‘Sword of Kings’ as most works call it, supposedly drawing it from his own soul, he was an undefeatable warrior, and later became just as famous for his great artistic abilities and the nuances within his paintings. His only work of literature, both a manual for fighting strategy and a cleverly disguised philosophical treatise, was the Book of the Fifth, where he described with a surprisingly pragmatic air the way a true warrior, a warrior-poet – a true Human – should live his or her life. In the first chapter, the Way of Earth, he—”
“Wain, I’m getting bored,” complained Shizura, leaning back and stretching out her legs, again in the vague hope that the pale, creamy flesh of her young thighs would attract the older boy’s interests toward more enjoyable pursuits. “Let’s do… something else.”
A long pause. Complete silence. Blinking once, Shizura raised her head and looked up, but Wain was already off in the distance, walking back toward the town, shaking his head quietly to himself. “Wain!” groused Shizura loudly, her eyes narrowing. “You big jerk!” she said, even louder. He still failed to notice her. Sighing quietly, too decent and demure to shout any louder, she simply collapsed backward again and lay invisible in the grass. The young magician girl listened for a few moments, and hearing nothing but the sounds of the insects and the breeze through the trees, her lips curled up in a naughty smile and she reached up to cup her own breast, beginning to massage it slowly.
“Well… Father said they’d get bigger soon, if I was of my mother’s blood,” Shizura whispered quietly to herself, as though speaking to a diary. “Then mom smacked him, and he laughed and held her, and she laughed, and then they went off to… what did dad say? ‘Take a nap’?” She sighed softly to herself, half in resignation and half due to the slowly growing warmth. “Well, I hope these do, just a little bit more. At least before my seventeenth birthday. I mean, by that point, Wain and I need to be engaged!”
“Wain…”
The massaging grew a bit rougher as her free hand drifted down to her skirt. “W-Wain… you jerk… I’d do whatever you asked… y-you know me… I’m a good, decent girl… I’d be very obedient… you’d just… tell me what to do… and I’d do it… uhmm…”
Actually, the massaging was getting very rough. Extremely rough. She was squeezing and tugging, and it was getting kind of painful. Weird. She never did anything like this…
<< --- >>
CURRENT TIME
“…ooh… uhhm… ouch! Ow! Ow ow!”
The pretty magician girl’s large, innocent brown eyes cracked open and gazed weakly at the somewhat surprised goblin standing on her lap. Her back was leaned against a tree, her arms were tied behind the tree, and her mace was on the ground, out of reach. And her white and blue tunic was pulled up around her neck. And there were grubby goblin hands roughly squeezing her breasts.
“I guess I should’ve been gentler,” the little green monster said reflectively. “It was a lot of fun while you were moaning.”
Shizura only blinked once before screaming at the top of her lungs. The goblin clapped his hands over his ears for a moment before finally just smacking her hard across the face. “Nobody can hear you here!” he snapped, his squeaky voice derisive. “You’re at the entrance to Master’s Dungeon. Though,” he added, a hint of pride coming into his voice, “we’re so organized, calling his abode a Dungeon is almost an insult.”
“W-Why have you brought me here?” she cried, only to gasp breathlessly as the goblin continued to grope her chest roughly, exploring her thoroughly. The magician girl squirmed wildly, but the bonds around her hands kept her tied tightly to the tree.
He slapped her again, just for the fun of it. “Don’t speak unless I command you to!” The goblin smirked as she stayed silent, her eyes beginning to brim with tears, just squirming at his constant touch. “The Master commanded you be brought here, but did not want you brought inside the cavern – he will come out later. I, Sergeant Yaneks, was set to guard you. And since I was given no explicit orders not to have a little fun – well, I’m going to!”
And so saying, the monster’s hands drifted down to the waistband of her tight leggings, pulling them down around her waist. A speck of drool glistening at the side of his mouth, he reached his small hands toward her pink panties, staring fixedly at his ultimate goal.
“Oh no! No no NO!” Shizura shrieked, kicking her legs and trying to twist away, but when she turned the goblin only slapped her hard on the rear. She squealed and kicked out, but he was too close in for her to hit him, and so the magician girl could only tremble in abject terror as the goblin began to slowly slip her panties down, obviously savoring the moment.
Help! Help! Oh, Goddess, won’t somebody rescue me from this…? This wasn’t supposed to happen to me…
…I’m not strong enough to stop this monster…
…not strong enough…
* * *
“SOLAR SPIK—unngh!”
Shizura was knocked back and slid across the floor, the remnants of her magical energy fizzling around her. The goblins tackled her to the ground, and outside, she could hear the sounds of the townspeople fleeing. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she began to scream hysterically as her father’s limp body, trailing blood, was nailed to the--
“Run, Shizura,” hissed her mother, that beautiful face streaked with blood, those deep eyes glimmering with incredible magical energy. “You cannot be killed as well. Because… you are my daughter… and--
“Wain said that if I was going to be strong, I had to be the strongest,” whispered Shizura, her face frozen in shock as she watched her house burn to the ground from a distance. “I have to be… the strongest… so--
“…never forgive you, monsters! Ever! You--
“Your mother brought this on us, Shizura! You know the monsters followed her wherever she went! That’s why your family came here three years ago! She knew that we’d all be in--
“…Mother…”
“…never forgive you, monsters!...”
“…have to be… the strongest… so…”
* * *
“…So…”
“Uh?” Yaneks looked up – and his eyes grew wide.
“…be strong… so…”
Shizura’s eyes blazed with magical light. The ropes around her hands seemed to wilt away under the force of her power, finally just catching fire and dropping to the ground. Before the shocked goblin could even move, two hands were gripping his neck tightly, and he was being hoisted into the air.
“…so… I’ll never lose… AGAIN!”
Determination fuelled by fury and hatred burned in her eyes. And the air began to crackle…
“SOLAAAAAR SPIIIIIKE!”
A surge of electricity streamed directly into the goblin, shell-shocking him entirely. His arms and legs spasmed wildly as smoke began to drift from his head, his eyes rolling back in their sockets as he shrieked, the pain completely engulfing him until his brain couldn’t take it anymore and simply shut down. The goblin slumped, quietly smoking, comatose. Shizura tossed him aside, and stood quietly, completely still, for several moments, before collapsing to the ground.
It was a few minutes before she finally caught her breath and remembered where she was.
What happened?
She shook her head, readjusted her clothes, and reached out for her mace weakly.
He was going to rape me, and then… I fought him off? Where did the sudden power come from? I… don’t remember… there were… fleeting images?
“…It’s easier just to not think about it, isn’t it?”
Shizura’s head snapped up. A figure in a dark, hooded cloak was standing in front of the cavern, speaking in a quiet, masculine voice.
“Remember some things, forget others. Believe some things, ignore others. Such is the way of ‘intelligent life’. If I had any emotional involvement in the notion, it would disgust me. But it is none of my concern. It is the way things have to be.”
The young magician girl slowly rose to her feet as the man continued.
“You see, humanity is controlled by the Void. The desire to improve oneself, greed, lust, even the desire to fight for what one believes in right – everything comes from the Void. The Void is the emptiness inside of you. The need for you to do something, anything, to make things change. It keeps you all moving, fools that you all are. That’s why humans have hope. That’s why humans have boredom. So they will continue to act. In a great cycle, a great experiment – that at this point, I imagine, the Goddess is finding quite boring. After all, the Void makes you all so predictable. Your Beauty and your Art, so simple-minded… this entire physical world is entirely too pathetic for my tastes.”
Shizura just stared, numbly.
“I wonder why the so-called Gods don’t just end this game. We must end the joke that is individuality and return to the Void, to the Consciousness. After all… they are one and the same. Light must cast a shadow – but then, if that shadow is a vacuum, it will inevitably just consume the light, and everything else around it. And so people are inevitably consumed. Instead of finding balance within themselves, as the great warrior Cecillian wrote in The Book of the Fifth, people must constantly shift between Love and Strife. You know, the last chapter, the fifth chapter, of that book? It wasn’t the Consciousness Way, or the Void Way. It was titled ‘The Way of Life.’ And it described both Consciousness and Void, one and the same, and how humanity can only find perfection within inherent imperfection by finding that internal equilibrium. Unfortunately, Cecillian was not a magician, and couldn’t apply his truth directly to magic, only to his life. But I am a magician. So I can finally complete the Great Quest…
…to end all suffering in this world.
After all you have suffered, wouldn’t you like that… Shizura?”
Slowly, the young girl’s fists clenched, her knuckles turning white.
“Wain…”
“It’s too bad you’ve learned nothing from your pain,” Wain continued. “People with true wisdom must be both analytical and empathetic, and from that, they can learn to understand the concept of paradox. Paradox is truth, Shizura. And, sadly, I have always found that you have none of those qualities. When things contradict what you think you know, you grow confused. When two things contradict themselves and yet both exist, you ignore them. When your past frightens you… you forget it.”
“Wain,” whispered Shizura, “before, were you trying to say… monsters and humans… are the same!?”
A long pause.
“How pleasantly irrelevant,” Wain responded, his tone not changing in the slightest. “Of course they are – any idiot can see that – but why should I care? I’ve been explaining important new things to you, and you haven’t even noticed. You have always focused on the simple-minded things. Like trying to... haha... seduce me.”
She blushed deeply. “W-Wain, y-you…!”
“What, you’re actually ashamed about that old stuff? Why? It’s the truth, isn’t it? So what’s the problem? Protocol? Oh… was I just not supposed to mention it? Like everything else you don’t want to hear?”
“Wain!” she shouted, her eyes widening. “Don’t treat me like this! I’m not a little girl anymore!”
“But, as I expected, you haven’t changed a bit. You were always the makings of a self-righteous little magician girl, and – look! Now you are one!”
“Wain!!”
He sighed quietly and shook his head. “I was hoping you wouldn’t waste my time like this. But… hoping for what cannot be… such are my own human flaws.” He shook his head quietly. “Shizura, suffering has, to a degree, granted you willpower, though you don’t understand it, so you can’t truly utilize it. You have potential, but you’ll never realize it. Inevitably, your Void will consume you, as what you think are your defenses against vice will break and crumble under the weight of reality, and you will hurtle into the standard delusional, insane state of every human being. You are doomed. Your righteousness is unfounded, and is no weapon against me.”
Shizura shook her head quietly, and finally, she spoke. “What… I… This doesn’t make any sense, Wain! Why are you HERE? Why are you doing this? Why to me?”
“Around you talking about doing Yaneks to you, or do you mean just in general? Actually, I apologize about Yaneks, and I ought to thank you for teaching him a lesson.” That little sardonic smile was visible under his hood. “But in general… I told you, Shizura. I’m going to end the Planet’s pain. And you happen to be part of my research. Consider yourself honored.
If you and your party can make it through my Dungeon, through the cadre of monsters I have carefully strengthened – but not made too strong! – you will demonstrate your worthiness to me a subject of my new Spiritual Magicks. And we shall watch as your stupid courage sends you plunging into the abyss of the Void.”
His physical form began to fade. “Go back to your allies,” he said. “They will need your assistance, and you will need theirs. I will be waiting…”
“Wain!”
He was already gone.
“Wain… you… I…” The magician girl stared at the mouth of the cave, where her closest friend had been standing.
“You… you think I’m so weak… and maybe, at the moment, I don’t know what you’re talking about… about me, about you, about humans and monsters, about suffering, about the Planet… but I’m going to show you my strength isn’t the strength of some stupid, blind animal!”
Shizura’s eyes narrowed, and light, true passion, gleamed within.
“…I’m going to show you the true strength of a human, Wain!!”
Her words echoed through the trees, and only silence greeted her, as the clouds slowly drifted overhead.
