The Warlock's Shadow

Clash of Powers

(The Day of the Celestial Shadow)

Today was the day. We spent all of yesterday and the day before preparing our magic circles and making sure they actually work. We had a few mishaps along the way. On one of my attempts at drawing a circle I mixed up the runes. Rather than making a protective dome to stop anything physical from passing through, it turned into a miniature landmine. As soon as I tested it by trying to step over the circle to see if it would keep me out, it exploded. It wasn’t a large explosion but it knocked me backward on my ass. Sasha also had their own mishaps as well. Rather than a circle to repel offensive spells, they ended up summoning a squid about the size of a truck, which Kur went and promptly snapped up and swallowed. He apparently liked seafood. Overall we had a hard time getting these circles down pat. We even found a clearing in the woods behind the school to do the whole ritual. Yesterday we went and visited Kur and got to practice the sealing ritual a few times, without having to worry about getting caught by any of the cultists around. We found out that the spell was very bright, very loud but wasn’t the full strength of the spell. No matter what, we were going to draw attention to ourselves. Kur said that we wouldn’t see the full potential of the spell until the Celestial Shadow was in full effect and the Void was beginning to open. The main event was supposed to be pretty intense and spectacular. Plus with the added strength of the energy that the amulet has been storing.

Speaking of which, since yesterday my amulet was at a constant glow. No pulsing, no flashing. Just a bright constant violet colored glow. Flipping through some of the books we inferred that the amulet must be at a full charge. All day yesterday it didn’t do anything else weird. It just basically just stayed inert, minus the constant glow of course.

We stayed up late into the night last night over crystal balls trying to formulate a plan. It was about three in the morning when we finally decided on an idea. The plan was simple: Mom was going to take us all to the park to watch the eclipse. The park was going to be packed with people so we would slip away into the woods and do the ritual at the right time. Hopefully everything will go off without a hitch and we won’t encounter anything bad and nothing will stop us. Yeah right.

“Okay, Kiddos,” Mom said as she grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Are you all ready to go?” Sasha and Lisa showed up early in the morning so Mom could escort us all to the park. Glace hopped up on her shoulders and our dragons did the same. I grabbed my bag which held the remainder of the books we needed to draw the circles we needed. We walked out and towards the park. Traffic was pretty busy and there were even crowds on the sidewalks sitting around waking and setting up places to watch the event. Things were looking up if it was going to be this crowded all over. We walked past Crowly’s store to see that the windows were back in place and the door was as well. I went to look through the windows to see they were darkened and the store was still a mess.

We moved on towards the park to see a huge display. Food trucks and performers and vendors. Many of them seem to have been selling various forms and styles of sunglasses with a card attached to them. The card had a spell to turn the sunglasses into eclipse glasses and back again so your eyes didn’t get burned watching the moon move into position. We went and checked one of them out since it seemed like it would be a good idea to have, so we can look and time our spell correctly. Mom stood close behind. Annoying.

“Fifty Favors are you kidding?” I asked in astonishment as I checked out a basic pair. They did sell the spell cards separately for much cheaper but none of us had glasses to use them on so we begrudgingly paid the man fifty Favors each and gave him some dirty looks for scalping all that money just for sunglasses and a simple spell. We all did the spell on our sunglasses and slipped them on. The instructions on the card simply said to give the corner of the glasses a tap and the function would switch.

While moving through the crowds we intentionally fell behind Mom’s lead and broke off. We stuck together and tried to get out of the crowd while moving towards the school and the woods behind them. It took a lot longer than we anticipated. The crowd started to “ooh” and “aww” while pointing up at the sky. We tapped our glasses and looked up. The eclipse was starting. We only had minutes left. We deactivated our glasses and pushed through the crowd faster. Once we were free we ran for the woods and for the clearing. I put my bag down and passed around books so we could start drawing circles at the same time to enclose ourselves in for protection.

“How much time do we have left?” I asked.

“About twenty minutes and thirty-three seconds,” said an all too familiar voice. We all stopped what we were doing and froze. We turned and saw the face we all saw on the news not all that long ago. The distinguished grays in his hair had crept up a bit more than before now showing his age. His once handsome face now sporting a very deep pink scar across his face branding him the Warlock that he now was. I swallowed hard realizing just how far into the lion’s den we were. I thought we had picked a place where we wouldn’t be found, at least not until the spell was in full swing.

“Don’t let me interrupt your preparations,” Mr. Roland said casually. His black cloak flowed in the slight breeze that blew through the clearing as he walked towards us slowly. All three of our dragons were immediately on edge like the other night. Growling and hissing. Their eyes became small slits full of anger and malice.

“It seems your little companions remember me,” Mr. Roland pointed to Nocturne and gave an evil, slimy grin. “Especially that one.”

“Remember you?” I asked while I glanced at Nocturne, who looked like he was about ready to tear a throat out. “What do you–.” My eyes widened in realization. Mr. Roland noticed and let out an equally dark laugh to match his smile and appearance. He dug through an inner pocket to his cloak.

“Lisa, Sasha keep going with the circles,” I said.

“I assume you’re probably wanting this as well?” Mr. Roland held up the familiar black book that was taken from me the other night.

“It was you,” I said. I started to shake from fear and anger. He had almost killed my friends, and my companion. I couldn’t just let it go.

“Yes, obviously it was me,” he said. “I would have thought that as smart as you were you would have figured that out faster.” He started to encircle us as Lisa and Sasha kept at making the circles and runes as fast as they could while keeping an eye on him.

“After I saw that your element was darkness I just knew that it was a calling. Master Blight always said that there would come a time when another dark user would surface. He knew at that time that he would be sentenced to the Void and told us that this person would be a key to freeing him.

“Once I found that you, Alex, were an Essence Weaver it was the perfect opportunity to mold you into what I needed. I took a peek into your bag after you had that journal from my Master one day without you realizing. You were so easily distracted.” He paused in giving Lisa a glance. “Things sometimes work out just too well. Once I confirmed what this book was and saw the Void summoning circle within it I had to have your help. So as you well know by now, I disguised our ‘training’ that day as a means to try to summon my Master. But you just had to listen to Elowyn didn’t you? ‘You must find the light in the darkness.’ Such bullshit.” He spat.

“Yeah but I didn’t get corrupted by my magic because of him,” I shot back. “If anything he’s the one that foiled your original plan.”

“Perhaps, but this backup plan is so much better,” he snapped and revealed on the ground the same circle I had helped him draw in the courtyard. The runes and circles that Lisa and Sasha had drawn were erased at the larger circles awakening. Mr. Roland’s circle glowed bright with a deep violet light like it did before.

“This took a bit longer to draw and charge than I care to admit,” he said. “But now it’s finally ready. Blight will be freed in the next fifteen minutes, he will make a statement by killing as many in that throng of people in the park to mark his return and there isn’t anything you can do to stop me.

I looked back at my friends who looked just as helpless as I felt. Our dragons were still being protective and on edge. Mr. Roland continued to circle us, walking around the perimeter of his final work drawn into the ground. What could we do? There was no way we could go up against him. Even if he was alone, he literally flattened us with just a word a few days ago.

‘But’, I thought to myself, ‘he hurt my friends. He hurt Nocturne.’ I felt an anger begin to fill me. I glanced at Nocturne and realized that I was sharing his emotions. I felt the inky blackness begin at my fingertips and crawl up my arms. The confidence that the magic gave me, came up behind the anger and filled me as well. Quickly both arms up to my elbows were covered in pulsating living shadow. But this time I didn’t feel the gross tar bubble in my brain. This time, for the first time, it felt right.

I raised my hand and a black, two dimensional-looking, ball formed in front of me and launched towards Mr. Roland. At the same time Nocturne screeched and flew off with Zero and Topaz. They attempted to scratch at his face distracting him from my oncoming, improvised, offensive magic. As soon as the ball of shadow was a few feet away the dragons flew higher in the air and Mr. Roland was hit square in the chest knocking him flat on his back. He quickly got back up with small bobbles of shadow evaporating off of him. The rage in his face was visceral and almost primal.

“You little brat,” He shouted and shot a ball of fire towards me. Before it could get close a jet of water shot out extinguishing it in an explosion of steam. Mr. Roland and I looked and saw Lisa had shot out the jet of water. She gave a snarky smile.

A small tornado of air formed picking up dirt and leaves. Sasha gave a fanged smile and moved their arms showing how they manipulate the air currents. Though it wasn’t much taller than Mr. Roland, it still tossed him around and slammed into him and flung him into a tree.

Again, quickly getting up from the ground. In one fluid motion he swiped his arm towards us in an arc. A white sickle of magical energy flew through the air and hit us all in the stomach knocking us back and winding us. Our dragons came back down from wherever it was they were hiding and tried to bite and claw at his face again. He moved his hands under them removing the air so they couldn’t fly and they dropped to the ground. He flicked his hands and a root lifted itself out of the ground and clamped down on our dragons holding them down.

Over the next several minutes Lisa and Sasha threw spells towards Mr. Roland. Without Nocturne I couldn’t do much but I still pushed out balls of shadow towards him. He countered with his own spells towards us. Both of us wasted time while the eclipse was moving forward, getting closer to totality. The whole small battlefield was alight with the ebb and flow of magical energies.

“Insulant brats,” He shouted as he thrust his hands down which dropped us all to the ground, face first, like he did the other night. “There is only ten minutes left until the moon casts its shadow on the earth, then the fabric of reality will finally be thin enough to properly use this circle and bring back Blight,”

“Why do you want to bring him back anyway?,” Sasha yelled.

“Because he is going to bring this world to order,” He used his weird gravity spell again and pushed us further into the ground. “Dragons are not our companions, they are tools, they are our lessers. They bond to us instantly and do our bidding whatever it is, and in turn they increase our magic power while asking nothing from us.”

“Dragons are so much more,” I struggled to say. “They’re living creatures with feelings, and emotion,”

“Yeah,” Lisa chimed in. “They feel pain and bleed just like us. The bond between a dragon and their companion is intimate. They help us figure things out about ourselves that we wouldn’t know otherwise,” My amulet started to glow from under me.

“You’re all just fools.”

“No,” I shouted. “She’s right. Even if I can’t hear Nocturne. He has helped me grow in more ways than you can imagine.” A brighter glow started to shine under me. I could almost feel the energy from the amulet

“And Topaz has been the closest friend I’ve ever had, aside from Alex of course,” Sasha struggled. After a moment they started to lift themselves off the ground. Both Lisa and I started to get up slowly.

“Know your place,” Mr. Roland pushed his hand down again. Though we felt the push we stood up. My amulet glowed brightly. Mr. Roland tried again and again to push us back down but to no avail. We stared him down, no longer afraid.

“We know our place,” Lisa said defiantly. She came up to my left and held my hand. The amulet around my neck grew brighter.

“Our place is right here, together,” Sasha continued and came up on my right and also held my hand. I smiled at my friends. An odd feeling of different energies and magic began to surround us. Our dragons shouted and screeched and finally broke free of their botanical restaurant and flew to us immediately. As soon as they touched us the magic surrounding us grew exponentially.

Mr. Roland began to growl in frustration. He pushed his hands towards the ground and unleashed a strong jet of air and fire to leap into the air and landed on his circle, a few feet from the center. Upon his feet hitting the ground the circle grew brighter than before. Then the sky began to grow dark. I squinted as I looked up. The moon had nearly finished eclipsing the sun.

“Yes,” He shouted and began to laugh maniacally. “Yes. The time is at hand,” A strange magical energy began to build in his hands as he fell to one knee and thrust his hands to the ground. The circle grew even brighter and an inky mass began to form in the center.

“Oh crap,” I said. “He’s doing it. He’s opening the Void,”

“Quick, break the circle,” Sasha cried.

“But there’s too much magic running through it,” Lisa said. “If we break the circle now it could explode,”

“It’s better than the alternative of bringing Blight back,” I said. I knelt down and tried to smudge the circle but nothing happened. I dug into the earth but the circle didn’t break.

“What in the world?” I said.

“He must have rooted the circle deep in the ground,” Lisa said. “That’s why it took him so long to make it.”

“Damnit,” I shut my eyes and pounded the ground the circle was embedded in. “Damnit,” Rage started to course through me and I could feel the disgusting tendrils of corruption creep over my brain making my head hurt. I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands. My fingertips were starting to darken and started to trail down. My heart pounded as fear overcame me. As I felt my mind and thoughts start to get consumed, I remembered what Ms. Nephinea has taught me. He had given me a few tips to strengthen my mind and fight back should anything like this happen again. She told me to find the light, that darkness wasn’t bad. So I tried to do what she told me months ago but it wasn’t working. Nocturne squawked at me in alarm as I tried to shut my mind to the corruption.

“I’m trying. I’m trying,” I said desperately. Just then I felt a hand on each of my shoulders. Suddenly my mind was as clear as it had ever been. I looked up and saw Lisa and Sasha.

“Hey, it’s alright. We got you covered,” Sasha said with a wink. Lisa just smiled.

“Then we need to do the ritual now,” I said. The dragons seemed to agree with my assessment.

“Then let’s go,” Sasha said excitedly. We joined hands in a circle of our own and did what we had practiced with Kur. We let our magic flow through each other. I could feel magic swirl in the pit of my stomach, push out my left arm and hand into Sasha’s hand. On my other side I felt Lisa’s magic flow into my right arm and mix with my magic. After a few seconds of our magic being harmonized and becoming homogenized we focused on pulling up energies from the earth’s ley lines. We felt the energies come up from the soles of our feet unifying with our own magical energies. A bright bubble of raw magic formed around us. It kicked up a roaring wind within and around the bubble as energies intensified and combined together.

My amulet brightened to an almost white glow. This part was completely unknown territory for us. We had no idea exactly what would happen with adding the power my amulet had stored up and how it would react.

I could barely see through the bubble of magic that surrounded us but it looked like we were in direct competition with Mr. Roland; seeing who could accomplish their goal first. I could see the black tendrils whipping around as his spell was coming to a peak. I had sudden flashbacks about my own experiences with that spell. For a moment I wondered what Mr. Roland felt as he cast that spell. Sure he wasn’t using the same kind of magic I was so it took him longer to put the circle together, but did he actually enjoy the disgusting, sticky, tar-like feeling that filled the brain? That feeling of corruption was addicting, so perhaps he learned to enjoy it. It must have taken a sick mind to actually enjoy feeling that disgusting. Outside our bubble I could see the sky become night. The eclipse was here. The purple glow from Mr. Roland’s circle brightened as the Celestial Shadow seemed to amplify his spell.

As if on its own my amulet floated up from my chest and grew even brighter, if that was even possible. The bubble around us grew wider and wider. I could see that the bubble consumed the entire space Mr. Roland’s circle encompassed. Immediately the black forms that he summoned to rip open the Void dissolved as soon as they were inside the bubble. Even Mr. Roland couldn’t seem to summon any magic while inside. The roaring of the swirling magic and wind was almost deafening by this point.

Suddenly everything went silent. The bubble disappeared, the circle on the ground was gone. Mr. Roland looked almost as confused as we were. We looked up and saw the eclipse. The swirling rays of the sun behind the moon were beautiful. They were soft and white. Extending, from our perspective, an inch from the shadow of the moon. The silence was eerie and unnerving. As fast the bubble burst a beam of light shot out from the circle Lisa, Sasha and I made far into the sky. Looking like it pierced the moon. The beam widened quickly and faded off into the distance. All was dark again, save for a faint glow my amulet still gave off.

The sky began to brighten up as the moon passed from the sun. A bright point of light peeking from behind the passing moon gave the illusion of a ring and jewel for only a few seconds before the moon kept passing on indifferent to the events that just unfolded.

“No…,” Mr. Roland muttered. “No, no, no, no,” He glared at us with murder in his eyes. He ran for us and before we could react my amulet shot a beam of light from it and hit Mr. Roland square in the chest and flattened him. He staggered to his feet, a large smoking scortch mark on his chest clearly weakened him. My amulet now lay against my chest, completely quiet, dull and inert.

“Don’t you worry,” he said. “Blight will return. I will succeed as his only true disciple. And when he does return. I will make sure that he knows that the child of his nemesis is the first on his list of examples to make.” He pointed a trembling finger at me “You will suffer, you will beg for death. Mark my words.” He held out his hand to the trees.

“To me,” He shouted. Out of nowhere his bright red dragon flew from the thick of trees, grew larger and carried Mr. Roland off to who knows where.

“Should we go after him?” Sasha said.

“No,” I said. “We will tell the Knights we saw him and the direction he went.” I fell to the ground landing on my butt exhausted. Even our dragons looked absolutely done. Lisa and Sasha both realizing how woozy they were on their feet also sat down with me. We found our sunglasses on the ground and tapped them, switching the glasses to eclipse mode. We all lay back on the ground watching the remainder of the eclipse.

#

We took our time going back to the park letting the crowd thin out a bit. Once we all actually got to the park we found my Mom, who right away saw we were a little beat up and scratched again. We apologized and we told her everything we had done, what the whole plan was and basically everything that happened. However I did leave out that we went to the Faewild and left out Kur’s existence. It was a relief to finally let go of all that secret holding.

“You mean to tell me that you’ve all been secretly planning all of this? Why didn’t you all go to the Knights with this information and let them do their job? That’s what they do. You all could have been killed going against a warlock,” she scolded. Then she pulled us all into a giant hug.

“Are you going to tell our parents what we did, Mrs. Umbra?” Lisa asked.

“No,” she said simply. “No I won’t. I’m just glad you’re all safe and sound now. That’s what’s important. We will just say you had an adventure in the woods and tripped. And We will notify the Knights before we leave that you saw your former teacher over in the woods and he got away.”

“Did anyone see the light show we put on?” I asked as Mom let go of us.

“Light show?” She asked, confused. I explained what happened with the sealing spell and the beam of light that was made at the end of the fight.

“Oh, everyone thought that was part of the Celestial Shadow,” She picked up the amulet that lay on my chest and held it in her hand. “And the last bit of magic in here, injured him?” I nodded

“It’s kinda like Dad was there, helping protect me,” I said. Mom looked at me and shed a few tears and held me close. “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t breathe,” I said as I struggled to get the last word out. She let go and we all had a small laugh. Mom went and found the nearest Knight and told them that she’s the one who saw Mr. Roland and where he flew off. The Knight whistled and suddenly a few more came out of nowhere and followed him into the woods. Sasha went to go find some food in the meanwhile.

“Guys,” Sasha came rushing up with a huge basket of pastries. “Guys. I just got a whole basket of faery cakes on sale,” We laughed and started to each grab one or two of the small confectionaries out of the basket and laughed together. As we all started to head home.