Death-like Magic

Death was on the cards, that day. But not for Smaz.

Hearing those echoing words from King Yutah, Smaz’s heart froze. There was a malicious pause in which time seemed to slow around the knight. Either that or he had taken something earlier and the room was now in slow-motion. The assassin known as Aera smiled and without even glimpsing down to where Smaz was in her position, she slowly moved her blade across Smaz’s neck.

There was a swift moment in which everything was colourless to Smaz. His mind raced back to the thoughts long gone. Back to his childhood. Back to his past.

**********

“How could you?! After everything we’ve been through?!” There are two voices shouting at each other violently. Everything is in echo and no colour is around at all. These are Smaz’s thoughts of his past in a split second – there is no time for his mind to deliver the colour it needed. Either that or he was colour-blind when he was younger. Or his mind became colour-blind to its own memories, for some bizarre reasons that the narrator does not wish to delve into.

“That’s the problem with you women!” a harsh, but deep, voice replies, almost snarling in retort, “You’re all become too clingy, like a leech that latches itself upon a creature. You suck money away from those you latch upon and you demand emotions in return! You disgust me!”

Hearing these violent voices, Smaz wakes up and heads towards the staircase, a teddy in hand, rubbing his eyes from being tired. A top the stairs, he clumsily takes a step down.

“If that is such a problem, then WHY were you sleeping with someone else?!” This voice is from a female’s; Smaz’s mother’s.

The smaller Smaz, his memory through his eyes, almost falls down the stairs when he hears this. He clutches the banister tightly with his left pawed hand and hugs the teddy with his right. All he is wearing is a dark blue pair of bedtime trousers and a blue night cap of the same colour. Peering through the banister to his left, he sees his parents arguing in the kitchen.

“Perhaps because she didn’t cling and suck away my life. Women do that. I don’t know why I bother!” his father growls angrily, standing as tall as he can.

“What do you mean ‘didn’t’? Have you been seeing other women, too?!” Smaz’s mother is almost in tears of emotional pain. Smaz can feel the pain of his mother as he watches, his eyes stinging from the salty water working its way up to the surface.

“And why shouldn’t I? None of them commit to me. They don’t feel a need to. A bit of sex here and there shouldn’t go amiss, no matter how stupid the woman is.” The attitude of his father is very much sexist. He thought lowly of women, and it is an amazing he is still together with his mother. Smaz is only five at this point, but this memory is still very clear to him.

“Why do you say such cruel things about women, Rove? WHY?!” She is in floods of tears by this point, and very much smaller in comparison to her husband’s full height. She fells so weak, that her knees are buckling from the distraught, as Smaz could see.

“They are stupid creatures and are inferior to men in every way. All they are good for are bearing children, growing fat and dying.” His voice is strong, and he obviously felt comfortable about his beliefs. There is a slight pause before he continues. However, this is not from indecision about what he believed in. “Oh yes, and for having sexual intercourse with.”

Smaz drops his teddy onto the next step and grabs a hold of the banister, clutching them as tightly as he can. He is, indeed,  furious, but back here he is also shy and weak. He fiercely wants to run into the kitchen, but can’t. All he can do is kneel there on the stairs, watching in pain and fighting his temptation to run down… all he would do was hurt himself, or worst still, his mother.

“You LIE!” screams his mother, grabbing a pan from the side and swinging it at Rove with hate, “Why stay with me this long? WHY?!”

“You gave me sexual pleasure… the thing I need after a hard night’s work away… and you gave me a child. Not one I particularly love, but one I know I can bring up to be strong and follow in my footsteps.” It is a simple reply, but there is truth in his words. Smaz’s hands loosen from the banisters.

He is angry, yes, in a time before his emotions are suppressed, but he currently feels more the wash of disappointment, and realisation, drown him with despair over his father and himself. After all, if his meaning of life is apparently to be like his father, then there is no life for him at all. Also, his father feels no compassion for him and to discover this is mind-blowing.

Smaz’s mother screeches and thrusts the pan directly in front of her, aiming to whip Rove on the head with it. The effort is futile, however. Smaz’s father is skilled. She may not have known where he worked, but wherever it was, it taught Rove the skills of dodging, evading and all-out strength. This is just a weak woman with little to no strength in Rove’s clouded eyes. So needless to say, he catches the pan with his right hand in what looks like a blur of his arm.

Waterfalls come from Smaz’s small eyes as he sees the action unravel in front of him, through the bars of the banisters. He stifles the sniffles of his long nose, but keeps watching, knowing what he should do, but not knowing why he isn’t doing it.

There is a swift blur, again, but this time as Rove’s left hand swings forward at a ferocious force, smacking his wife’s face with incredible power, and sending her automatically flying back into the kitchen table with the blow. There is a loud crack as her back hits the table, sending her to screech as both the table and her back shatters into pieces. The tablecloth stops the wood from splintering everywhere, but not from the damage Rove’s punch has caused.

“I did not love you. I used you for a kid. Someone to take over me when I am gone. I could have discarded you long, ago, but Smaz needed to grow under your care whilst I worked with my plans. Now you’ve turned against me, so you’re time is up.” Rove walks towards the fallen mother of Smaz and brings his hand up in front of him and to the direction of the paralysed woman. “May you float to paradise as I blast you to the underworld, Maranet!” And with that, a large red light fills the room, which seemingly emanates from his outstretched hand. What Smaz sees next is to scar him for life, and what bore to be the memory that would change his direction in life forever. A snake-like string of red light waves itself down Rove’s arm towards his hand and his face gives little to no emotion towards his actions. The light congregates into a large ball at the tip of the hand until it is larger than the hand, itself.

There is a huge wave of red light as the ball swiftly explodes into a sharp sword-shape, directly towards Maranet’s body, piercing her furry hide in no time flat, at all. There is no scream. There couldn’t be – she is paralysed from her broken back, and so only severe pain in both her, and Smaz’s feelings as he watched, could be noted… with the red light being the only colour in Smaz’s memory. The sword seemingly is made of magic, but that can’t be possible – there is no such thing as magic. The red sword only lasts three seconds, but it feels like an eternity to Smaz, and when it evaporates, the crimson colour of death dispatches, too.

Then Maranet, Rove’s wife and Smaz’s mother, dies.

Unable to bear this anymore, Smaz runs down the stairs with all of his clumsy might, shouting at the top of his lungs. Blind from the pain of what he had seen, he trips on the stairs and falls down the last three steps, landing on his back.

Rove hears this and whizzes into the hallway and bottom of the stairs without even being seen. As Smaz looks up, his eyes somewhat blurred from the tears. He sees his father’s face, looking sternly down at him. He grabs Smaz by the scruff of his neck and pins him to the wall to the right of the staircase.

“Your mother is dead.” He simply states.

“Nooooooooooo!” Smaz cries out, the tear water flowing freely down his face.

“Either you come with me, son, to fulfil my plan, or you are no son of mine.”

“Nooooooooooo!” Smaz wails in reply.

“Then you are a disgrace. All my hard work created and yet vandalised by the same woman that lies dead in that room.”

“Nooooooooooo!” Smaz repeats, wailing unhappily.

“Shut up, you little runt. You deserve death. Mourning is for the weak. If you wish to go to your dead mother’s body and cry pathetically, then be my guest. I don’t even know why I’m wasting time with you.” He throws Smaz down at the ground from the wall and walks towards the front door. As he does so, he stops half way. There is a pause, but he does not turn back towards his Son. “If you wish to find me, locate the Seal of the Seas.”

Smaz’s last memory of this place is of his father, Rove, walking out of the door, and away from his life, forever. He remembers getting up, groggily, and saying to himself “You’re no father of mine… either… I’ll hunt you down, and kill you.” He wouldn’t dare say this to his so-called ‘father’s’ face, since his shy nature prevented him from doing so.

**********

Whenever something bad happened, Smaz’s thoughts trickled to this memory, summoning courage from it. He often dreamed of this memory, too, as well as several others, keeping him alive, and giving more meaning to his life than what he was initially brought up for. Despite this, though, he never found out what the Seal of the Seas was, and disregarded it as idle mockery after several years after joining the King’s side and many years as an ‘orphan’.

Now he found the memory returning to him once more as he faced death. Well. As the back of his head faced the one who was to kill him. This memory was the jolt that Smaz needed, however.

Summoning the restrained strength from within his body, Smaz fiercely elbowed Aera in the stomach, causing her to loosen the cut across his neck, but not let go of him. This was all he needed. Seeing the blade now inches in front of him, he lowered his head and grabbed the blade with his teeth, jerking it away from Aera’s grip.

More than surprised by this fancy and unpredictable move, Aera dropped her guard.

“NOOOOOOO!” Smaz shouted out, either from his memory repetition or from his swift reaction to his near-death experience, “You will not take me alive!”

He immediately turned around, whilst crouching on the floor, and swiftly kicked Aera in the leg, causing her to lose balance. However, Aera is the world’s greatest assassin, and knows more than to be fooled by such a manoeuvre. As she fell, she arched her back and managed to easily place her hands on the floor, causing her to turn upside down. With her legs in the air, and Smaz jumping up to his feet, Aera placed her entire might into her right foot and long boot, whipping her leg across Smaz’s face from the air.

“Aha! This is the fight I wanted to see!” The King clapped in enthusiasm, “Maaaaaaaarvellous!” He squealed, backing away from the proximity of the fight.

Smaz fell to the floor from the force of the kick and immediately back-flipped to get back up. A slight bruise formed on the right side of his face, but there was no time to worry about that in the current situation.

As soon as Smaz had gotten back up, Aera was upon him in what looked like a whizzing blur, to Smaz, reminding him of the speed in which his father had moved at all those years ago.

“Tyaaaaaaaaaaar!” screamed Aera, kicking Smaz hard at the bottom of his chin. The force was incredible, sending not only a buzz of pain throughout Smaz’s head, but also sending Smaz to fly up into the air.

Smaz had closed his eyes from the pain, but now he opened them to see his position, and yet out a slightly comical yelp. There was a whoosh of sound, and Aera materialised directly in front of Smaz in the air. Her face was directly in front of Smaz’s, and so close that their noses touched.

“Die.” Her voice was so smooth, yet so calm at the same time, and neither very high in tone. It confused Smaz in the manner in how she was so swift in her speed, and yet remained so calm at the same time. She threw an impressive punch into Smaz’s stomach, sending him into the nearby castle wall.

“Oh my!” gleefully cheered the King, “Punch him, kick him, do what it takes to get me that box!”

Smaz could only lurch out the blood that had appeared in his mouth as his body smacked into the wall. It was evident that everything had returned to the normal speed of things, and was no longer in slow motion. How Smaz wished everything would return to the slow motion it was before the cut on his neck, since at least then he would be able to see Aera before she pounced upon him.

He could feel the nausea as his innards dropped from the fall to the floor that was coming next. Only, just before he fell, Aera appeared above him, in a wash of impressive speed, once more. However, Smaz saw her this time, and despite the shock of the force of the last impact, he maintained his cool and kept his wits about him.

Her dark red furry paw barely missed Smaz as he moved his neck left to avoid the impact. As it did so, he raised his right hand and grabbed the arm of Aera, feeling her warm fur and somewhat built up female arm as he put his strength into the next move. He then threw Aera down towards the floor with as much force as his one arm could muster in such short time, however, before he let go, he kicked off of her body, not only causing her to fly downwards faster, but also causing him to rise into the air, more, too.

King Yutah swiftly stumbled off of his throne, which he had comfortably resumed sitting in for the fight and stood up in shock.

“AERA!” He boomed as she fell at full-force towards the stone floor. An impact would be severe.

Aera was constantly impressed by Smaz’s reactions, and craved to fight him more. She had only ever had one worthy opponent before in her life, and smiled as the floor neared. As quick as a lightning bolt, and in the same flash reactions as before, she grabbed the blade that resided on her back and swung it to in front of her, at the floor.

The katana embedded itself in the stone floor, if at all possible, and Aera mildly jumped to avoid the inevitable shock impact the blade would raise to her body. As she did even this, Smaz grabbed the hilt of his own blade from his left side and threw it downwards towards the assassin.

Aera looked up and narrowed her eyes. It looked like she would have to get serious. Smaz’s blade gleamed in the torch light as it whizzed towards Aera. Seemingly impossible to avoid in time, and still in the middle of her jump, she grabbed her blade’s handle from her air position. The blade was still in the floor, but the grip gave the stability Aera needed to cause a one-handed hand stand on her blade’s handle.

As Smaz smiled and started to fall from his height, he saw something indescribably awesome, in his eyes, occur in front of him – his own sword was suddenly caught in mid-air. Not from any distraction, nor Aera’s hands. No, from her FEET. Smaz looked on in awe as he started to fall. Aera looked up and smiled maliciously back, her long black boots both on each side of the sword’s blade, not embedded nor caught within the sharp sides of Smaz’s sword.

Both of the fighter’s minds were racing at this fight. It could mean death for either one of them if they made even one slip-up. With this in mind, Aera grabbed Smaz’s sword with her free hand and arched her back so she would slickly place her legs back on the floor. Smaz was now helpless. Aera looked at the sword with her purple irises and saw Smaz’s sword was also a katana in design, but less as thin as her own. Between the handle and blade, itself, were three crystals, also of the same purple her eyes emitted. A small intricate crescent moon caught her eye on the handle and she admired it, but not forgetting Smaz was still above her.

“Well, it looks like you finally shall meet your end after a rather interesting struggle,” Aera coolly called up to Smaz, but without actually looking up, herself, “I must say, I was impressed with your style – it’s been a long time since I’ve actually had to try, but now it’s enough. Say your prayers!” She sharply grabbed her sword from the ground and pulled it out, but with more force than to simply take it out of the stone… with enough force to hurtle it upwards as a dangerous projectile towards Smaz!

Smaz fell downwards, with only the castle wall at his back for any kind of support. Even that wouldn’t be enough to save him. Knowing all was lost, he started to close his eyes… which was when a glimmer of hope flickered to his left and slightly behind him. In the form of a flame from a torch. Knowing there would be pain, he grabbed the torch and it’s wall-supported and swung his body to the wall, kicking his legs away from it and propelling his body swiftly away from the uprising blade.

“I think you have been gravely mistaken, Aero!” Smaz laughed as he moved away from the wall. Aera sniggered.

“You never cease to show me how comical you are, rodent! However, I am NOT a chocolate bar, and I’m afraid YOU are the one who is mistaken… to your GRAVE!” Aera shouted, and launched Smaz’s own blade upwards towards his new position.

**********

Smaz yelped. This time there was no help. There was no wall, and nor was he high enough to grab one of the chandeliers on the ceiling. He was, as some people may say when preparing a turkey, as stuffed as an edible balloon. For some reason. There was a brief elapse of time before the blade hit, and it was a strange progression. No sooner had Smaz closed his eyes, was he covered in a miraculous white aura, stopping him dead in mid-air.

“What?!” King Yutah yelled in irritation. Aera was in shock, too.

Smaz felt warm inside, too, and never had he done so before. Warmth were such feelings as happiness, love and compassion, all of which he could never remember having the comfort of. His family ceased to exist, he had never loved any female due to his isolation and he could never have compassion for when he killed those enemies of the Kingdom, he must not think of such a trivial feeling to hinder his actions. Yet, this glowing aura was causing this sensational feeling. Where did it come from, and why?

The blade rushed upwards and sharply skimmed the side of Smaz’s face, causing a nice gash to appear. Had Smaz’s eyes been opened, he would have lost his left eye from his own Moonsuya blade. No doubt this would leave a scar at a later date. If he survived.

“So you know magic, too, eh? You truly must be skilled, sir knight. Not even I can control true magic, only that in speed and evasion.” Aera’s voice showed how impressed she was. The talk caused Smaz to open his eyes and he gasped in amazement at the aura he could see around him. Also at Aera’s explanation. This meant magic DID exist, and somehow, Smaz was using it to hold himself in the air, saving his life.

The blade suddenly halted and floated there, slightly above his head.

“Tell me, Smazzy boy, how the Hades do you know how to use magic?!” The King’s voice was angered and the emphasis on ‘Smazzy Boy’ was so painfully noticeable, Smaz looked at him from his height. “I never taught you to use such advanced skills, and nor did anyone else in this kingdom! After all, you have been here for as long as I can remember, and you were never as greatly talented to use magic such as that levitation skill there!”

“Not talented enough?” Smaz’s voice had become very cold. “Apparently not loyal enough, either.”

“Ah yes… about that… now I know you can use magic, I’ll let you stay – you shall be paid handsomely as my top knight and valiant protector to me! Magic is a rare ability that only the truly skilled know… I under-estimated you… now give me the box, and I shall let you live if this is the case…” The King’s voice was reassuring, but it was all an elaborate ruse. Smaz could easily tell this.

“Ha! I have served by your side for twelve years, now. TWELVE. And you think I cannot tell when you lie? You are a FOOL!” Smaz angrily shouted. The truth was, Smaz did not know how he was using this magic, and nor did he know how to even get down from there. All he knew was that he could use such an incredible force, that it really did exist, and that the King was somewhat afraid of him, because of it.

“Forget it! You’re a thorn in my side, anyway. Aera – do something!” The King angrily retorted. However, before the assassin could, Smaz unleashed his rage in a deep growl, but was unaware of the consequences to unfold.

The Moonsuya blade; Smaz’s sword, sprung into action and after a short quiver, hurtled off downwards towards the King at full speed. There was no time to react – the speed was far too great to even register. Faster than Aera and faster than the previous throw of the sword, earlier. There was a short ‘cling’ as the sword hit something metal with force.

As Aera turned around to the King, Smaz also looked on from the air in devastation. There, sitting on the throne and held up by the Moonsuya sword, was King Yutah. Dead.