Chapter Text
There is pain in magic.
A shock to your fingertips, a burn in your eyes, an ache in your throat. It is the price of magic, one could say. After all, we are not beings of magic, but of flesh and bone. The pain is the cost of our mortal bodies taking on something unnatural to it, adjusting to it, fighting it. Pain in magic is to be expected.
This pain - this magic- however? This was like something nuclear exploding in your bones. It was fireworks in your head and ice pooling in your lungs. Stars danced in your vison, and the earth shook from the force of the onslaught of pure and unhindered magic.
You always told yourself you’d remember this pain, convinced yourself that you’d be ready for it. How could you even begin to forget the feeling of every cell in your body convulsing in agony as an energy it could never accept tried to twist and manipulate them into something they weren’t?
But you did —-every time.
And just like every time before, the pain forced you into a crumpled heap in the mud, useless and powerless to stop the calamity before you.
You gasp, mouth frantically opening and closing, trying to draw air into your unwilling lungs. Your eyes are filled to the brim with tears, obscuring your vision, but you can still make out the dizzying array of colors that fill the cavern that will eventually be your tomb. Rainbow colors that splash and collide like waves of light and energy, dancing and spilling into the pores of the earth itself as a kaleidoscope of flowers grow and die and grow again. And at the center of this splendor of colors was the Calamity. As brilliant and blinding as the sun, the Calamity is a being of uncontrolled energy, and the true beacon of all your failures culminated. All that time, all that effort, now wasted.
For a moment, despair consumes you, swallowing your down like a beast into a void. Faces flash, all smiles and hopes and dreams now dashed and lost and gone from you. You’re sorry - so so so sorry.
This is how it ends again. You were too weak again, too late.
And then, like a knife, an almost primordial rage sears its way through you. For a moment, you forget the pain. You tear yourself from the flowers that have grown around you, into you, ripping flesh and greenery alike as you stand, holding tight your sword once more. It is not your rage, but the rage of a hundred lifetimes that all scream in one unified voice of anger and grief from the depths of your soul. This is the end. How dare this be the end.
It is a brief feeling, albeit valiant.
The Calamity seems to regard you, as if it could hear the echoes of the past within you, and suddenly you are filled with a sense of complete and emptying calm. The voices within you silence themselves as quickly as they came and you stumble, almost falling back to the ground as your sword slips from your grasp. There is no pain, no grief. Your mind and vision clears. There is no past, no future. There is just now, in the peace at the center of destruction, and you are soothed with the knowledge that this is where you are supposed to be. There is no need to fight it anymore.
Oh, how could you forget this peace? Why would you fight this truth to begin with?
With an almost childish tilt, the Being turns from you and to your companion kneeling amongst the stones and over growth just a few yards from you. Magnus Rasmodius, the Wizard and your friend, rendered powerless, stares at the Being with an almost reverent sort of awe. His mouth moves in silent whispers and he holds his hands in welcome. His skin shimmers with a crystalline glow of magic that is not his own as he is bathed in warm, golden light. The Being reaches out to him too, almost throwing itself into his embrace. For an instant, the Wizard and the Being are one amongst a sea of colors. Then another wave of magical energy takes hold of the cavern, sending the rainbow light away from Rasmodius and through you to the walls and ceiling, erupting into a cascade of glittering raindrops on impact. The earth gives one more groaning shake before it settles. The flowers that grew around you shrivel and seep back into the ground.
With that, all the magical light dissipates, leaving you with a dim candle lit glow, and there is silence.
Released from the pain and the peace of the magic, you collapse once more, boy aching and spent. A sob tears itself from your throat, rough and broken sounding. You know what comes next.
“Ras,” You choke out, forcing yourself to move to him, but it’s not enough. Rasmodius turns to you at the sound of his name, startled like he forgot you were there. His mouth opens, your name forming on his lips as he reaches out to you before his body gives out, kneeling form falling sideways. You can just see the glimmer of fear in his eyes as he hits the ground, like he knows what's coming too, and then he crumbles. Glittering, shimmering dust take the place of your friend, and his gone.
You are alone here now.