Doom IV
Under the trapdoor…beneath the village was a large tunnel leading down to the deepest part of the Island. A place so deep that it stretched underneath sea level. A large room of rock was at the end of the long tunnel filled with turns and twists.
The room was empty except for one man in the middle, with his legs crossed and facing away from the tunnel entrances. He wore a black cloak and a purple Valkyrie headdress with white feathers. His skin was dangerously pale, to the point that it had a gray tone.
In front of him lying on the ground, was a six-foot-long scepter covered in darkness. The top of the scepter had a purple orb encased in a dark black spherical wisp-like wrapping orbiting around the orb. The scepter gave off a deep growl, a sensation that clung to the man’s mind. His will served as a slave to the scepter’s power. The original owner of the scepter had such a powerful grasp in shadow manipulation that the remains of their power imbued on the scepter carry its owner’s manipulation energy.
Subconsciously, the man grabbed the scepter as if noticed a presence
“Marua,” A voice called out to him. Marua opened his purple-iris eyes, stood up, and turned around to the entrance of the tunnel where the voice originated.
He saw three young mages. One with silver hair, another with black hair, and the last with wraith-like black hair. Upon looking at the silver-haired mage, who knew what their goal was. He had encountered the mage on six different occasions until then, on which the mage had tried to defeat him or take away his scepter. Each time Marua would leave the mage with more bruises than the last time, but the mage was persistent enough to come back again every single night. He saw him as nothing more of a daily nuisance, but now that the mage had brought in comrades things were different.
Augustine, Lucien, and Marianna stared down the corrupted chief in their scheduled position. Lucien in the middle of Augustine on the left, and Marianna on the right. They had been planning for their strategy for about a day.
“With our combined power level, I’m sure we can overthrow him.” Augustine thrust his finger onto the table. “Look, I’ve seen what the bastard does. If you’re weaker than him, he’ll just choke you out, literally…” he pointed at his neck, scaring Lucien and giving Marianna a knowing gaze of concern
“But, with this method, I’m planning out, we might be able to get the drop on him.”
“What is it? You’ve been talking about it to us for hours, but have never really specified.” Marianna gave him an underwhelmed expression
“Heh…fine…we’ll surround him. Lucien, you’ll be at the front. Fire at him with your shadow magic. Let’s see how he reacts to his own magic. If he’s somehow immune to it (I doubt), it won’t matter because Marianna and I will already be beside him, ready to flank him!”
“Y…yeah…that’s a good idea,” Lucien remarked
“And if it doesn’t work?” Marianna asked
“Then…we’ll just wing it. Capisce?”
“Capisce…?” Lucien looked at the both of them looking for an answer
“Uh, nevermi-just, improvise if it doesn’t work.” Augustine gets up from the table “We strike…at night!”
Back in the cave, Augustine looked at Marua with a face of chance -Let’s see if we’ll be able to defeat this guy together on our first try. Even if we don’t…I’m sure these two won’t give up. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut, if we’re all defeated, it won’t make me look as bad. Ah, that doesn’t matter. This is a fight against evil!-
Marua raised and pointed his scepter at the three of them, and a powerful shadow blast much more powerful than Lucien could make on command forms on the scepter’s point without a magic circle. He fires it at the trio.
“Dodge!” Augustine shouted as he and Lucien jumped to the left, and Marianna to the right.
Lucien forms a magic circle on his two palms and starts firing puny shadow blasts at Marua continuously. The blasts didn’t seem to be inflicting any sort of damage when Marua blocked them with his scepter, mainly because of how weak they were.
Augustine and Marianna surrounded his back and at once fired a water-wind magic combination at him. Marua realized and surrounded himself in a dark transparent spherical forcefield that blocked off all the attacks.
“WHAT?” Augustine shouted with pure shock “he’s never done that to me!” -is it because he’s never had to…?-
Marua releases the forcefield and fires a shadow blast at an evading Augustine. Not realizing what the person in front of him was wielding. He tilted his head out of the way of Lucien’s fleeting dagger. Lucien swung the dagger sharpened by shadow magic at Marua multiple times, and during the onslaught stream of water knocked the chief hurdling to a wall.
“Good one, Marianna!” Augustine raised his thumb and charged toward Marua, who swung his scepter and created a shadow shockwave that flung the wind mage back. Marua fired another shadow blast at Marianna, who evaded just as Augustine did. Lucien fired a concentrated shadow blast at the chief which actually seemed to do some damage, and Augustine used the opportunity to start strangling the corrupted chief.
“Aha! I couldn’t do that before since now your attention is directed towards three people, ay?”
Marua slams Augustine into the wall with his back, loosening his grip. He grabs the wind mage by the neck. Lucien and Marianna fire a water and shadow blast at the same time to free him, but Marua uses the opportunity to use Augustine as a body shield and raises his back to the approaching magic blasts. They both hit nail him in the back, followed by a pained scream
“AUGUSTINE!” Lucien and Marianna shout in unison.
Marua tosses Augustine to the ground like pathetic trash and he rolls to the two other mages. “Damnit, Lucien…I told you not to hit me with one of those blasts…” he closes his eyes and shifts off to sleep.
“A-Augustine…” Lucien looked down in disbelief. -this is bad…now Marua’s attention has lowered down to just two people. I can’t let him get me or Marianna-
Marianna with an angry expression ran towards Marua, sidestepping away from every shadow blast that was thrown at him. She was right about to close the distance between herself and Marua when she just seemingly got her neck snatched by nothing and started floating up. The air started escaping from her lungs.
“W-What’s happening?” Lucien wondered. But he remembered the red marks on Augustine’s neck. And what he said about getting choked out. -What am I doing just standing here?! I have to do something! He might only be able to use it on one person at a time!-
Marianna grabbed her neck, trying to unbind herself from this dark pressure. It was useless, until…
baaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
The sound of erupting shadow came from Lucien’s magic circle, hitting Marua and freeing Marianna. Lucien started swinging his dagger at Marua to the center of the cave without giving him a chance to cast any spells.
Lucien had learned that Marua needed to position his scepter when he was casting his spells, and in a fight at close range, he had no time to do so. The man tried hitting the boy with similar magic using his scepter, but he was unprofessional with how he was swinging it. Lucien could dodge the attacks easily. He charged the magic dagger with shadow magic and sliced Marua in the cheek, making deep-black blood pour from it. -what the? Why’s his blood…- Marua growled and finally whacked away Lucien while he was still stunned by the odd blood. Now that there was distance between the two, Marua snatched him with his dark pressure. Slowly, Lucien ascended with his lungs pushing out all of the air into the atmosphere. He grabbed his neck in desperation and his neck started turning red. His vision was starting to blurr…when…
“Got you.” Marianna grabbed Marua by the neck “You weren’t putting your focus on two people, and now you’ll pay the price.”
Lucien fell down and caught his breath. A body-sized magic circle formed in front of Marianna’s hand as Marua is engulfed in a water bubble, depleting his oxygen supply. “I’ve been working on this one move. I didn’t want to use it on anyone…but you’re an exception.”
Marua grabbed his neck, gasping for air. Marianna couldn’t utilize the technique for a long period of time, so she ended it by blasting Marua into the wall facing the entrance.
“Wow, Marianna…I didn’t know you could do that…” Lucien picked himself up.
“I just gave him a piece of his own medicine. That’s all.”
Marua got up, with a deep purple glare, and started charging up an attack, but it was like no other. His cloak started flying upward with the wind, and the shadow magic started floating up in small orbs. The air started vacuuming, and Lucien and Marianna slightly shifted to him while he was charging.
“What’s he doing…?”
“I don’t know, Lucien…but it’ll be powerful…and dangerous…”
“Powerful and dangerous huh?” Augustine gets up.
“Augustine? You can still stand?” Marianna looked at his back
“Of course I can. You think those measly magic blasts actually did damage?” he lied. “He’s used this attack before, but it seems like it’ll be more powerful than last time. I have an idea of what to do. Normally this wouldn’t be possible without having at least more than one person. Also, I’ll be alright, okay?”
“What does that mean?” She gave him a weird look.
“OH MARUA!!! YOUR TIMES OVER, BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!” He charged toward Marua with a wind magic circle on his arm. At the climax, Marua with his scepter, creates a massive shadow explosion that pushed back both Lucien and Marianna.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
As soon as the explosion hit, the cave itself started rumbling and shaking. The whole place was unstable, and the small pieces of the roof started falling off onto the ground.
“T-This whole place is going to cave in!” Marianna looked up at the ceiling.
“But…what about…Augustine…” Lucien looked at the settled dust, and there it was: Augustine completely discombobulated on the ground, and right behind his knocked-out head, was the shadow scepter
“THERE’S THE SCEPTER!!” Lucien rushed in and grabbed it, but when he did…there was a feeling of dread and corruption that shrouded his mind. The scepter seemed to be calling out to him, to be its next successor. Lucien felt some sort of connection on a higher level, not just the corruption, but another energy within the scepter that its user originally had. The scepter wanted to have a relationship with him not as a slave…but as a friend
In his awe at the scepter, he saw Marua without the scepter. He reached out, and a ghostly “nooooo” came out of his mouth
Lucien knew that the scepter was evil, and he used the fact that the scepter wasn’t preying on his willpower to his advantage. He cried out and cracked the scepter with his knees.
CRACK!
A rush of purple and black energy escaped out of the scepter, and now all of its evilness was gone, it was now just a regular stick. After it cracked…Marua’s eyes transitioned from purple to a modest black, and his skin started turning a tan color. With his mind now gathered…he muttered a final word “Sorry…”
SLAM!!!
A ginormous stone hunk fell onto and crushed the Doom village chief. Lucien looked in shock, witnessing the abrupt death head-on.
“Lucien, LET’S GO!!!” Marianna took Augustine’s busted-up body and started dragging it to the entrance of the cave. Lucien dropped the broken scepter and helped Marianna drag Augustine. They leave the room before it fully caves in