A Tremor in His Reality

[Magus]

The dark prince had found a niche. A niche of solace despite the turmoil of his life, before Ayenee and during his stay there, a niche that allowed the Magickian to allow his darker parts to settle.

He was a human, enlightened by birthright and thus susceptible to strong emotions, to magic, and the darkest desires of all. Revenge, Power, Ambition. Yet, this enlightened One had seen more than any of his long-extinct race, and honestly, it had grown old. Terrible. His mind had scars along with his body, and now, the dark prince spent his days in quiet solitude.

He was known as Magus then and now, as a title or a name, but Janus Zeal cared not for such things. He was doing his best to resist the callings of fate, for his quests had been completed as much as could be hoped. His last had sent him into a plethora of mental breakdowns and lost causes. The presence of those damned red shards that had terrorized Ayenee and culminated in...something.

He remembered the last days when his memory was clear. He was running from something, and there was a girl, Mayu, he remembered her name to be. Running from some damned and terrible thing. There had been a presence so great along the coils of the Multiverse that it had outstripped anything the Warlock had ever seen.

Then it was gone.

After a confrontation of some sorts, there was no afterwards. The last thing Magus remembered was walking alone in a forest, nearby the Ayenee Capital City - in a glade he knew well. It was the glade where the original violet gateway had brought him to Ayenee so many years before.

Now he had ventured a bit from that spot, to a little village outside the suburbs of the capital, and for a full year and several months had rested there, content not to ask questions or go searching. Within, it bothered him only a little, mostly for the fate of that girl, Mayu.

His previous quest had more or less been answered. He had searched the realms for Schala, his long lost sister, and had found her, and they had parted ways again on peaceful terms. She had become a Paladin, of all things! He saw her not anymore, but he was content to know that she was alive and not dead or worse at the hands of that ancient nemesis of his, the long-dead alien thing called Lavos. Those days were behind him, and little but a blurry memory now.

Janus Zeal was, as best he could admit, happy.

----

He was getting old! He realized this as he rose from his bed and felt a dull ache running up his back. His body was finely toned, the muscles trained by years of adventure and battle. Yet, no-one could resist the pull of age, and at the idea of him as a crotchety old geezer sent a small smile to Janus' face.

The morning light had quaked about the small rooftops of Norfandell, the little mixed village of elves and humans he had come to call home, and Janus' sharp eyes took the light in without turning his head. It would be a good day.

Or so he thought.

Most days had been good days, even the miserable, rain-choked days that threatened floods and disrupted the peaceful springtime air of Norfandell. He had seen much worse on sunny days in the past. If there was no war today, today would be a good day.

After doing his morning wash and grabbing a bit of breakfast, Janus Zeal stepped out onto the little porch that adorned his little house. He lived alone in a small cabin near the outside of town, a meager, humble thing that served his ends. Despite his retirement, the mage was still a mage, and all of his important items were hidden away properly - forever, he often hoped.

The sun was stronger now, and the air was warm. The simple forests that surrounded the town couldn't contain the rising sun, and it now sat nestled between two puffy clouds and allowed him a bright view of the village and in the distance, the little hills that ran for miles before reaching further towards heaven in the form of the Despot Mountains.

A voice interrupted his thoughts, and the magician turned his blue-haired head to the source of it, knowing full well who called his name. As he turned his head, he tried his best to make his mouth into a scowl and turn his brows down. He figured he looked absolutely vicious. But not -too- vicious.

"Mr. Janus! Mr. Janus! Come show us the woods again today!", the source of the voice called, a fairy, childlike voice resounding from the little girl named Haliea. She was angelic, a child just into her 9th year and still holding onto the innocence of the young. She had seen no battle.

When Janus turned to her with the scowl, she jumped back a few feet and turned her head down in. "I-I'm sorry Mr. Janus...I just thought-"

"You thought?!", he grimaced, "You thought?! Really? Well...obviously not! You didn't think much if you came asking for me to take you exploring and you didn't even have your backpacks ready!", The blue-haired man crossed his arms and quickly shifted his scowl into a hearty smile, a knowing smile, and inside he felt warm as the little girl's face brightened to match the sun at her revelation of events.

"Oh, you'll take us Mr. Janus! I knew you would! Let me go get Beshar and Illuvias! They'll be so happy...they already have the backpacks ready, and the walking sticks!", the little girl shouted even as she turned on her heel and skipped off towards the thickening cluster of houses within the village.

Janus turned as she vanished around the side of a wooden cottage and allowed his smile to rest comfortably on his chin. It was still strange, so easily smiling - there was a time when a smile was something alien, much more alien than the notion of blasting a group of human soldiers away with a thought-out fireball.

Janus shuddered and stepped into his house. A once-around located his thicker walking cloak, a pair of leather gloves and a gnarled old walking stick the children had found for him one of the first times he had acted as their guide into the woods around Norfandell. He enjoyed the present, and really it was a nice walking stick.

Janus stepped again into the sun to see the three children running towards his porch, each packed out and looking like honest, miniature adventurers. Instead of swords, they brandished walking sticks and he knew their backpacks contained lunch, compasses and paper and ink for drawing maps, not containers of acid, or crossbow bolts or scrolls of fireballs.

It was going to be a good day, Janus felt as he stepped off his porch and headed towards the nearest path into the forest, a group of children dancing around him and his head shaking in amusement.

----

 

[Magus]

The Forest

Janus Zeal knelt beside Illuvias and observed what the boy was doing. There was a compass sitting on the rock, and Illuvias had his paper and support board out and was busy drawing up a simple, but colorful, map of the forest.

Janus smirked. "And what is that little brown thing over there?", he said, pointing at a picture on the map.

"That! That's where the bear hides are!", Illuvias smiled sharply at the adult and got back to scribbling. Honestly, it wasn't as much scribbling as Janus would have thought, and he found himself nodding at the detail evident on the 10-year old's map. It represented the forest pretty well, and Janus knew, having dabbled in cartography before in his life.

He thought about that strange place marked on the map. It was a clearing deep in the wood where several old bear hides were nailed into trees and formed a circle around the edges of the open space. It unsettled him, but the kids didn't seem to mind it. Janus couldn't offer much of a guess at what it was, but the most evident explanation was a Ranger Circle or Druid Glade, if so, the bear hides were their Animal Skins, part of themselves used in ritual.

Janus stood up and moved toward the jumble of boulders Haliea and Beshar were sitting, his soft boots making nary a sound against the pine-needle and moss covered ground. The children were looking at the stream a few feet below them, Beshar standing and leaning against a tree trunk and Haliea sitting, her arms wrapping around her little legs.

"It grows dark soon, we might be getting back before your parents have my head!", Janus said with a light chuckle. It felt so good to laugh, and these children made it so much easier. They didn't judge, as some of the older folks did when he first came here. Now the village accepted him, and trusted him, but Janus had grown up trusting no one.

The children were, of course, less than enthusiastic about leaving. The sun was marking the treetops with a warm glow, signaling that sunset would be within the hour, but Janus allowed them a few more minutes of play. He took the time to walk along the side of the stream, keeping the children in sight but giving himself room to think.

It was serine out here, and he found himself lulled by the sweet sounds of the forest. Before he rarely had the time to bathe in nature, but living here had given him a new appreciation of the simpler things. His eyes followed a squirrel gathering up acorns, indulging itself after the winters frost. He smiled. He was happy.

Janus moved to turn back to the group of children when something overcame him. A sudden shock, a rustle in his lull that a strange sensation through the back of his mind. Confused and for a moment disoriented, he felt a sharp tingle on his chest. Janus drew out the pendant that always hung there, always underneath the tan folds of his shirt, and gazed at it.

It was his treasure, the one thing his sister had given him, and his memory of her. A clearly magical item, Janus hadn't given it much thought in the last year and few months - but now, there was something wrong. It was glowing, the ruby within it shedding off a strong whitish light from behind the red.

His eyes narrowed, and Janus scanned the trees. Nothing was amiss, but something was wrong. He carried his step back to the children, who were playing as they were before.

"Alright, it's time we head ho-..." but something cut him off. A flash in his vision separated him from the scene. A violent shock of emotion flooded through the mage, and he saw faces. Ghastly, twisted faces, and a roiling sea of black nothing. He couldn't move, didn't know where he was. Janus Zeal was unable to comprehend his place in reality.

The faces morphed in and out of the Nothing, but some looked familiar. Presences. He couldn't place the meaning, and with every second his mind skipped. Presences from the past. There flashed an image of something great and horrible, a broken horn and a lake of blood, boiling and that image was transposed upon the silhouette of a burning city. He knew, after a few moments of disengaged thought, that it was a particular city. The Capital! And there was something dead about it.

Then Janus was back, his hand clutching the trunk of a small tree and his knuckles white with tension beneath his soft gloves. Beads of sweat had gathered upon his pale brow and it took him a minute to orient himself.

"Are you alright, Mr. Janus?", Haliea called to him, standing a bit behind the turmoiled man.

"Y-Yes...I'm fine, it's alright." he said after a moment, and then stood up and walked a few steps. He was a bit dizzy, but otherwise no worse for wear. A quick scan located the other two, who had just finished replacing their packs on their backs and were now walking to meet them.

"Ok! Well...Race you guys to the village!" Haliea shouted in the sudden mirth of a child, and the three broke out into a run down the path. Despite his anxiety, Janus smiled. Children. Yet he couldn’t get over what he had seen, even though the images were quickly fading, the sensations did not.