Rise Of The Mage King

Chapter 4

The falling stopped. The wind stopped. The cold stopped.

Drogo Payne expected to feel the hard, crushing blow of the ground. He expected his bones to shatter. He expected the sweet, final darkness of death.

But there was no ground. There was no hard stone.

There was only silence. It was a perfect, deep silence. It was quieter than the slums at midnight. It was quieter than a closed tomb.

Drogo opened his eyes, but it did not make a difference. The darkness was absolute. He could not see his own hands. He could not see his feet. He was floating in an empty black sea without water.

“Am I dead?" he thought.

He felt his chest. The sharp, blinding pain of his broken ribs was gone. The heavy, burning poison of Lord Vargus’s "Mana Slag" was gone too. His body felt light. It felt like nothing at all.

A heavy sadness washed over him. Tears formed in his eyes, but they did not fall. They just floated in the dark.

He had failed.

He thought of the seven copper coins scattering across the beautiful marble floor. He thought of his mother, coughing blood in the cold, leaking shack. She would wait for him to come home. She would wait, and the sun would go down, and she would die alone in the dark.

And then he thought of Tiana. His sweet, smart little sister. Vargus was going to send his men for her tomorrow. They would take her away. They would put her in a pretty dress and lock her in a gilded cage. They would break her smile. They would turn her into a toy for a cruel man who burned people for fun.

Drogo closed his eyes tightly. He wanted to scream, but he had no breath. He clenched his fists in the empty void.

“I cursed them,” he remembered. As he fell, he had screamed his hatred to the world. “I said I would eat them all.”

Suddenly, the silence broke.

It did not start with a loud noise. It started very softly. It sounded like dry leaves sliding across cold stone. Then, it sounded like a dozen people breathing in his ear. Then, it grew into a chorus. Hundreds of voices, thousands of voices, all whispering at the exact same time. The voices were deep and high, old and young, male and female. They spoke together, but they did not use words Drogo had ever heard. Yet, somehow, his mind understood them perfectly.

"He falls. He falls into the forgotten dark."

Drogo twisted his body in the void. "Who is there?" he asked. His voice sounded small and weak in the endless black. "Are you death? Are you the gods?"

The chorus of voices laughed. It was not a happy laugh. It sounded like bones grinding together.

"The gods?" the voices whispered. "The gods threw us down here, little Null. The gods of light and fire built their bright empire on top of our grave. They fear this place. They throw their garbage here. They throw their mistakes here. And today... they threw you."

Drogo swallowed hard. He was scared, but the anger in his heart was stronger than the fear. "Where am I? What is this place?"

"This is the bottom of the world," the voices answered. "This is the Heart of the Abyss. Here, all magic goes to die. The mages above send their poison down into the dark. They send their broken spells. They send their toxic waste. They think the dark just swallows it. They do not know the dark is alive. They do not know the dark is hungry."

The voices seemed to circle Drogo. He felt a cold breath on his neck, then on his face.

"We have waited for a very, very long time," the voices whispered. "We have waited for a vessel. We tried to enter the bodies of the mages who fell here. But they were full. They had a 'Core.' A cup that is already full of water cannot hold the ocean. When we tried to enter them, they exploded into meat and dust. But you... you are different, Drogo Payne."

Drogo's breath hitched. "How do you know my name?"

"We know everything that touches the dark. We tasted the poison in your blood. We tasted the 'Mana Slag' the fire mage pumped into you. You are a Null. A dirty word to them. A useless thing. You have no Core. You have no magic. You are an empty cup. A perfect, endless, empty void."

The darkness around Drogo began to shift. Small, tiny specks of purple light appeared in the blackness. They looked like dying stars.

"You hated them as you fell," the entity said. The voices were getting louder, pressing into Drogo's mind. "You did not beg for mercy. You promised to eat them. Did you mean it, little empty cup? Did you mean the words you spat into the wind?"

Drogo remembered Vargus’s smiling face. He remembered the guard's steel boot breaking his ribs. He remembered his mother’s pale face.

"Yes," Drogo said. His voice was no longer weak. It was hard like iron. "I meant it."

"Even if it costs you your human soul? Even if you become the monster they already think you are? To save your blood, will you spill theirs?"

Drogo did not hesitate. The "good boy" who worked hard and kept his head down was dead. That boy died on the marble floor when Vargus looked at his sister like a piece of meat.

"Make me a monster," Drogo said clearly. "Give me the power to tear their world apart. I don't care about my soul. I only care about her."