REMEMBRANCE OF THE MAGIC THIEF
PART 1:
From the beginning, I never found an interest in much of my surroundings.
Other children often used to jeer and laugh at me, calling me a dull boy for never bothering with anyone. Though, I never paid much mind to that, after all, they were technically right, weren’t they?
To me, the world was a dull and shallow grey with no vibrancy to it, no passion, and all the things that could be enjoyed were shallow, and superficial at best. But, my feelings on that changed the day a mage visited our quaint little village.
It was the first time I had ever seen something so magnificent, it was truly, truly beautiful. He came to our village and showed off his fire magic to the children, telling us that even we could become mages like him if we put our hearts to it.
Looking back on that day, I chuckle. What a bold faced lie that man told. It’s funny, after he left. I started devoting nearly all my time to the study of magic, to the point it left me heartbroken after I learned that magic was genetic, and that no matter what I did, I could never become a mage.
Well, normally that would be the case.
I don’t know when it happened, or even how it did. But– Whether by coincidence, or by a twist of fate– I found myself face to face with a Curse, of course, at that time I did not know what a Curse was, but I found myself entranced by the strange, violet glow of the cube.
I touched the cube with my hand, and in a brilliant flash of purple light. It just disappeared, melded with my body. I was shaken, but after some time, I accepted what happened as just “a strange occurrence” and nothing more.
But one day, when bandits wielding magic came to our village. Burning and destroying everything in sight, a small voice whispered into my ear. Beckoning me to its call. It was only then that I was able to realize my true destiny.
One of the bandits came up to me. My arm was broken and bruised, I looked up at the bandit with an empty gaze. He laughed maniacally at me, as though he found me an amusing specimen, before charging a magic circle of light and preparing to fire a blast of magic at me.
‘CONSUME’
‘ABSORB’
‘TAKE’
‘CONSUME’
‘ABSORB.’
Though it was I who was sitting on the ground, broken and bloodied, and it was I who was the magicless, powerless boy. I looked at the man with an expression that one would only have when looking at a persistent roach or worm.
The noisy whispers in my head compelled my arm to move. I pointed it at the bandit, and then made a gripping motion with my hand, as though I was grasping onto something. And though there was nothing in my hand but air, I caught something, and I clung to it.
Whatever I was grasping on, I pulled it closer to me until I could finally feel it become one with my body. I felt it meld, fuse, and condense into my very essence.
When I looked at the bandit, I saw his circle of light dissipate, and his body collapse on the ground. Writhing in pain. I didn’t know what I had done, but I liked it, I enjoyed the sensation of magic entering my body.
It was fun.
After that, I made quick work of the rest of the bandits. I grasped onto their magic, and then tore it from their bodies. Turning it into a weapon of my own. There wasn’t much they could have done, aside from run.
I was celebrated as a hero by the village after that incident, though they did not understand my powers. They still cherished me for my ‘bravery’. Some even thought that my strange powers were a result of my hard-work and efforts studying magic. Funny, as if effort could ever produce such miraculous results such as this.
I spent a few years at that small, insignificant village in the middle of nowhere. I do not remember much, for the days after the bandit raid were… uninteresting, to put it politely. I could not bear staying there, the magicless peons there were insufferable to say the least, constantly asking me for favours. So eventually, I left.
After that, well, you know how the story goes.
I found mages, and stole their powers. Some of them were more interesting than others.
There was one mage who wielded a wind-like magic that could cleanly cut through solid steel with but a single snap.
Another wielded fearsome, red lightning that tore through flesh.
There was also a foe who used a strange sort of water magic that glowed luminescently
I encountered many, many different mages but all of them, in the end, fell before me. Broken and defeated. My streak of victories even made a name for myself, they started calling me “Magic Thief”, or “Fiend of Acheron River.”
Acheron.
The river of pain.
I liked that name. Eventually, it became my alias, of course. It wasn’t anything close to my real name. But I didn’t mind much, after spending so much time roaming alone. Even I forgot my original name.
One day, I encountered a strange and eccentric man. It was a weird experience for me, for it was the first time that it was I who was being challenged, and not the other way around.
“Has my name already been spread so far? I’m surprised.”
“When a devil like you roams here and there, bringing calamity to everywhere you go, you best bet men like me will come to strike you down.”
I smiled, “Alright then, let’s see how you fare. Daredevil.”
I attempted to grasp at his magic like I did with the rest, but something was… unusual. It was as though I was trying to use a bucket to drain the ocean.
No, it was closer to… attempting to contain a flowing river, though it was possible. I needed to slow the flow of his energy. My smile grew ever brighter, I was curious. I hadn’t ever been this excited, not since I had absorbed my first magic.
“Hah! Such a pitiful trick like that won’t work on me, fiend. I am not like those third-rate mages that you defeated. No, I am a Curse user. I am–”
I blocked out whatever jargon he had to say next, I wasn’t interested in his identity. But more so in what he possessed. A Curse, I was curious to learn more about it. I couldn’t wait until I absorbed his power and made it my own.
Suddenly, a boulder came flying my way. I dodged out of the way and turned my focus back onto the Curse user.
“…Are you even listening to what I have to say? Your lack of focus will be your downfall.”
His arm turned to dirt and he took up a fighting stance.
We battled for hours, or perhaps it was days? Maybe even weeks. I do not exactly recall, but what I do recall is that when the battle ended, a mountain had been destroyed in the wake of our battle and I stood over the man’s half-destroyed body of magic.
As the sun rose and dawned over the man’s body, he asked of me one final request before his destined departure “Kill me already… I do not want to suffer this indignity…”
I thought about his final wish for a moment, but I couldn’t exactly grant it. If I killed him just now, the ‘river’ of magic that was his Curse would disappear. And I didn’t want that to happen just yet.
I gave him a soft smile, “No.”
For the next three hours or so, I sat there slowly absorbing the man’s Curse. It was an arduous and tiresome process, but eventually. I was fully able to acquire his Curse. The power was truly… magnificent, it was nothing like I had ever experienced before. My body became one with magic, it felt liberating.
However, I learned a certain caveat of my ability. It was not absolute, not really. Unlike the original wielders, I could only turn my body into magic for a few minutes or so before I inevitably returned to a neutral state. It was quite the unfortunate revelation.
It seemed as though I could not fully access the Curse’s true power, was it due to my own inability? Or was it because of the instability caused by possessing so many different magics at once? After spending some time thinking about it, I was able to come to a conclusion.
I did not possess the powers that I used, rather, they were all contained by something else. That ‘something else’ being my absorption ability. To explain briefly, the reason why I couldn’t fully access the power of the Curse was due to the fact that while my strange ability allowed me to contain and access various different magics, there was still a limit to the output of magic energy I could produce.
Every time I used the Curse, I was forcibly outputting an amount of magic that was far greater than my own limit. And that meant I could not fully utilise it. Well, not unless I increased my output drastically.
Though I had been sorely disappointed when I found the limits of my own power, I had also found it fascinating. The fact that there were limits to it meant that there were rules to it, and the fact that there were rules to it meant that there was a logic, a sense of reasoning behind it.
And if there was a ‘logic’ behind its functions, that meant it could be studied.
For the next few years, I spent tirelessly, diligently studying magic energy and its principles. The fruits of my labour did not go unrewarded, as I was able to create many different hypotheses and theories for the workings of magic.
Resurrecting the dead
Combining energies to create a volatile burst of power
Even the mutations of magic, which had previously only been seen as a ‘strange phenomenon’ by the rest of humanity, had their secrets unravelled by me.
However, there were two major problems. First, most of my hypotheses had gone untested, as I never had anyone to test them on.
Second, I could not test my hypothesis on magic mutations as I only had three at my disposal, and after analysing mutations for so many years, I had realised that I myself could not mutate the basic magics that I had in my possession. Perhaps this was a result of not having the ‘gene of magic’ within my blood, or for another reason related to my strange power of Absorption.
But now that I had deemed my knowledge of magic suitable enough. I decided to go out and venture into the greater world, to ‘test’ some of my theories and of course, to have a little fun using magic. Because that’s what magic’s for, right?
