The Life and Death of a Monster in a Magical World

If I evolve I continue this miserable life. There is nothing but pain. All of the happiness comes from the world behind the world.

How to access said hidden world is the question of all ages. The mages of old worked the bindings of spell books to tatters securing lodging in the mystical realm of the Second World, though, most failed pursuit of the elusive end and died having not attained the goal of life. Such was the fate of humanity, save a select few who singed their bones and sinew with honest work of the craftmage. Imbued with magical support, men who worked properly cut the illusory layer appearing to separate the two worlds. Only a blade of magic smithed in the mage’s fires can cut through an object of non-matter. Thus, the thought matter that comprises the layer of illusion was made gross as a block of sheep’s butter and dealt with easily as a herdsboy offering to his mother’s pot.

Swordsman fools blindly wielded blades attempting to sever a layer not perceived by foolish organs of sense. Such men madly waved iron until sinews collapsed into heaps of ash and spread to riverbanks in the cool wind of a ground’s night.

Boys listened to songs of the Second World in the fields and threatened to reach the realm of true mages when scolded and put to work yet most stuck not to the sworn path and became men of weak will. The ones who knew not to swerve grew strange in the eyes of the village and were shunned by the sin-hearty field boys who held to warm cottages and sought safety in thick drops of brown liquid.

The strange boys on the true path grew silent and soon forgot the customs of the First World as they followed their masters into the depths of the Second stepping further into the pits each round. The further the round the harder the layers to peel. The first layer drops as a dried fruit skin, easily and without skill. But the next and next take effort and craft to release. The more strength offered the tighter the layers cling and the talons grip, and the First World is incited in the minds of the mages increasingly. Such is the stage most return to the warm huts of old and find comfort in the stale homes which the talons crave to fly.

Though, this was the way before the collapse and before the wise ones left the desolate lands to fester. Before the vegetation charred and the animals fled to hills lest they starve on the scarred black lowlands. Before the villages and walled cities cracked and wild minions of dark magic ravaged civilization. Most regretted lacking cultivation when the pathway to the Second World opened and the strange mages calmly walked to safety to continue their strange practices. Most left behind tried to live on but left both worlds soon thereafter.

Some mages lacking proper knowledge of both worlds wandered the broken lands helping those plagued ones left behind. There was not much help to be had but they tried nonetheless.

My work is deceiving mages and devouring their magic. A collapsed Second World bred vast lands of ignorance and dense chaos. I am a creature spawned from the ignorance and find abode in the waters of chaos that afflict man who had not succumbed to the initial reckoning of the great sheath’s collapse.

The seven great mages are rumored to have abandoned the First World, when the darkness sprang forth, and held to hiding in the folded vacuum of the Second like an unsprouted kernel awaiting the natural force of a realized young mage to open the connective layer once again and flood the barren land of magic with pure seasons of light.

Who is to rise above the mire and strike balance upon the perpetual darkness in which my wretched knowledge thrives? I await the one who cultivates so thoroughly as to make himself my better in a duel of craft. All the rest I devour and feed upon; all unfortunate masters I render to ash. For centuries I’ve continued in this way, growing more knowledge with each victim I skewer; each noble villager I snatch and slaughter from the path of the true mage feeds my mass and I grow until I envelope the matter of a region down to the particles of sound so when I have concluded a feast nothing remains but soft speckles of dust that float between the blackened land.

I am to feed until I am defeated. Only then are my sins expiated. This is the duty incurred for the sins of my previous life, falling from magehood and betraying the Second World by worshipping the dark pastures of the First. I await the one who ends my wretched play. If I evolve I continue this miserable life. If I’m not slain I fear what’s to come.

“Wretched beast! The reign of ignorance is complete. Fiend, your dark blood is past due!”

The voice came from a young, old world mage cloaked with the markings of one from the isles. He hovered before me and rose to the level of my leathery eyes with a burst of magical craft. He bore into me with a look of one who had seen the Second World and knows the trouble of the loss of the great sheath.

“I know what you seek, young mage,” I rumbled.

And when I spoke, for it had been at least a century since roused to word, the ground which was once forest shook as though earthquaked and the worms which remained straightened and the birds nesting in the folds of my still, mountainous frame took flight sensing a righteous battle.

“I seek nothing you offer, O servant of darkness,” the mage said.

“You speak with haste, not knowing of my knowledge that may free the flesh of the evil which binds you,” I said.

I could see the curse which clung to his flesh, a spell of the wicked First World. His blinding power surely unleashed a power equal in darkness which sought his companionship. He would be sought until the last strings of magic dried and his magehood collapsed into madness.

Such a mage I hadn’t yet encountered. Though hope dared not stir. Who could be more powerful than I in a land which the true mages had been driven from? Unless he had trained in the Second World and made the forbidden sacrifice to return he was but another false mage made of rubble. I had never heard of one so powerful to cast the rumored sacrifice of return. But such evil which clung to him could only be summoned by one of such lofty deeds.

“I fear not the evil which seeks my embrace, nor do I fear the evil before me. I am born of this world but traveled to the Second World and back and set out to free this land of that which light cannot enter,” the mage said clearly, his voice as strong as the wise ones of old.

I rumbled with delight, though to the mage it must’ve appeared as large-scale environmental disaster; the mountains on the horizon cracked and the riverbed west of my ancient hand burst with a fresh current of molten liquid as though a geyser from the core of the world broke upon my interest with the mage and created a lavaway of hot orange to swallow the one defeated.

“I fear the grounds for my defeat are long extinct, young mage. It is best if you return to the Second World and leave those without power to grovel and suffer bone by bone. I do not wish to inflict the world further with poisoned matter but I myself cannot be free of my past as a fallen wise one until I am slain, which I fear will never come; thus, I am condemned to eternity as the bringer of darkness upon this mound.”

The mage stared thoughtfully.

“In the Second World they tell songs of your former deeds, old mage,” the mage said.

“I knew not the Second World had taken to darkness. Why celebrate the deeds of a monster and call him mage?”

“Not the deeds from this life but that of the last,” the mage said. “A life in which you destroyed the evil threatening to encompass this same mound you now root. By this act of power an equal force was unleashed and you were possesed with evil desire. And so you lived the remainder of your existence in shadow. But what greatness you instilled by your righteous hand. For that I will free your duty from this monster you inhabit.”’

I had long forgotten the nature of my past, only that I had committed a great offense. I knew not whether to believe the words of the great mage.

“Gratus the Wise, prepare for your departure,” the mage called out. With that he spiraled in a cloud to the ground below.

And the geysers erupted with a final thrashing. The core of the world opened and the rock burst forth with a stream of enveloping light.

I was freed merely by the utterance of my former name. To be shown mercy and remembered for my deeds was the expiation I had waited for these long centuries. Only a great one such as this Second World mage could see beyond my monstrous form into the light of my former nature. I hadn’t heard my name in nearly a thousand years.

I laughed in surprise when he unsheathed a non-visible sword potent with crafted knowledge and tore through the first layer of skin that hadn’t been pierced since I sat here and hadn’t gotten up again, becoming a part of the desolate landscape. When he shouted a spell that lengthened his blade and broke through the back of my chest the lavas reacted to my plight and overflowed, streaming through the cratered tributaries around the battlefield.

The world sang with the defeat of a great monster of the First World.

And when I fell the flesh became stone and the great young mage placed a shrine upon my peak and mages for generations took pilgrimage up the forested slopes of the mountain I became and worshiped Gratus the Wise.