Apprentice - Nexus

With the earth torn out beneath me, great strands of energy stretched out in all directions, forming ethereal banners of light. Fluttering through the air wildly, with no destination or purpose they ripped apart stone and wood with ease and seemed to bend the very air as they moved. Beyond this, further at the core of this disturbance, at the nexus of this beautiful destruction was a seething sphere of pure light.

I dared not tough the eddies of power before me for fear of the great strands lashing out in reaction. I knelt behind a fallen pillar, expecting more protection than I knew it could provide from such a force.

It had begun small, a simple pin point of light in the hand of a master magician, swiftly though the light had grown far beyond his size and control and through this grand nexus of energy I could see him with his bare arms plunged far into the energy, a mask of agony on his face as the light grew ever stronger.

Beyond the low roar of the energy and the ghostly whispers of passing strands I heard the scream of the old man as the power began to fully overtake him. His scream ended abruptly, the air grew still and the strands seemed to pause their wild motions for a moment. Then sharply they reversed, penetrating the magician's flesh and threading through him like a needles of pure light.

A truly brilliant flash lifted everything from the ground and cast it away as though it were little more than a fallen leaf. I found myself lying amongst more rubble, finer pieces and bits of larger columns… the air was still and silent, no strands of light danced on the air nor did the roar of energy rattle my bones. No, before me, beyond the debris, was a large crater in the earth.

Where the old magician had once stood casting his magic there was nothing more than overturned earth and shattered rock. I stumbled over the rubble and peered into the crater, much to my surprise I saw a young man, possibly younger than me standing at the base of the crater, looking around, seemingly perplexed.


He looked at me. "Ah." He said, "You must be my apprentice then, come, we have much to do." He then climbed out of the crater.