The Last Mage

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

On the night of a total solar eclipse was a child born to the pride and joy of the kingdom Ruidia. Thirteen years before this, during a total lunar eclipse that child’s elder brother, Crown Prince Wren, became the sorcerer that drowned the world in shadows. The Dark Prince, the Umbral Mage, did he become known as, and with the revealed power to bend darkness to his will did he steal the shadow cast onto Earth by the eclipsed moon and spread it across the globe like a plague. He then disappeared into the worldwide and eternal night, leaving behind a sister who knew of her brother only by word-of-tongue and the legacy he left behind. Each night as she grew, she watched from the window of the empty, quiet room which no occupant of the palace dared open save for her.

Each night, she awaited the return of not only the sun, but her brother..

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That morning, Arian had woken to again find Jasper seated by the window, gazing out at the dark sky and dry, barren fields dusted with ash like a middle of the night snowfall. He rose from the bed with a stretch and low-groan turned sigh as he padded over, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and leaning into the crook of his neck, inhaling the scent of leather and sweat. His hands, as Arian wrapped them between his own, still buzzed with the magic of re-fortifying the palace. The two rose, and Jasper began dressing himself whilst Arian strode to the calendar and crossed another day off.

Neither spoke of the monotony of their mornings, for they knew the time would soon come, and everything would change after that.

For the better or worse, none could tell. They could only hope.

Despite the grim nature surrounding their world since the Umbra Mage’s disappearance, the castle seemed abuzz with the renewed vigor that came with trying to ensure that Crown Princess Zara had a grand birthday celebration. This year, however, everything would need to be perfect, for it was the palace staff that would busy her with the extravagant festivities, while the King and Queen met with the high Mage to discuss plans for the coming days.

The Solar Eclipse.

The Umbra Mage was no foolish child. Despite masking the powers he’d discovered in his youth, he had become accustomed to them, knew their strengths and weaknesses. The Royal Mages had discovered his secret library of dark magic books and scrolls, stolen in secret over the years from the restricted sections of the palace library. He had trained tirelessly for his big attack, and along with that, knew that despite the powerful nature of such a spell as the Shadowed Sun, it did have its way of undoing.

Every Sun Mage in the kingdom- though few there were- would soon be going to war with the lone Umbra Mage, and they had only a few days until the time came.

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That morning, Jasper had woken to find Arian seated by the window, but instead of looking out at the same monotone landscape that greeted them every morning, he stared at the floor with a balled up fist supporting his head. Jasper kissed his head tenderly in an attempt at breaking his contemplation, and for a moment it seemed to work as Arian half-turned his head in his direction, meeting his eyes, but Arian could see the cloudiness of thought in his gaze.

“Must you go? Surely, they don’t need every Sun Mage in the entire kingdom.”

Arian hummed noncommittally, finally moving in the act of lifting a finger to his boy’s face and tracing it down the length of his chin. “You know they do, darling. I will return to you, you have my word. You better leave soon, too. Don’t you have the Princess’s party to attend to? They are asking that every staff member that is not involved in the Hunt attends.”

“I am certain they did not mean me.”

“It would not hurt,” Jasper whispered, pulling their heads together. “Just keep a close eye on things, keep a close eye on yourself. You will be fine, my dear. You can handle a little party.”

Arian sighed, running a finger through the gentle waves sitting atop his love’s head. “I do not want you to go.”

A bell tolled in the distance only for a moment, and only did Arian move, jumping from their tight-knit position to turn towards the door, the direction of the sound from the clocktower above their heads in the opposite wing. Jasper remained silent, finally turning his gaze to the window.

“We will finally see the sun again,” he mumbled, before rising from the chair and grabbing his cloak from the bedpost and throwing it over his shoulders. As he strode towards the door, his path became blocked by a body thrown into his arms. He leaned into Arian’s arms wrapped around his neck as he pulled his boy closer, inhaling the woodsy scent that skirted the pulse of his throat. Arian pulled back, peering up into piercing dark eyes.

“When do I get to see my sun again?”

Jasper traced his thumb across Arian’s cheekbone and the stray tear carving its path down to his chin. “I will be with you within the week’s end, darling. Remember, you are not to wait idly for my return. You are the only one able to protect the kingdom while we are gone. You are just as important as we are, do you hear me? I need you to be on your guard and ready for anything. Can you promise me that?”

Arian nodded with the second bell’s toll, and Jasper turned away from him once more towards the door. “Stay strong, my love, and I will do the same for you.”

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Sure, he had been what he would considered “appropriately late”, but all was worth the smile on the Princess’s face once she saw him come through the ballroom door.

“Ari’! You are late!”

“Well, well, my lady. I suppose you do not want your gift? I can certainly leave, I am rather tired,” he teased with an exaggerated yawn, stretching his arms above his head. The Princess let out a whine and tossed those infamous pouting eyes his way, earning a strange but playful sparkle of a glance from her father on the edge of the room before he continued speaking to another of their kingdom’s nobility. The ball was filled with the same old familiar faces of those who had been trapped in the castle by the Umbra Mage that fateful day, for he did more than plunge the world in darkness. The Prince’s cousin, visiting from the neighboring kingdom of Cairron had been the first to fall to the shadows. The monster the darkness turned one into was how the Prince had grown his army of darkness to serve at his side. Prince Maxon had run after his cousin, only to fall to the ground as he choked on his own screams, grabbing furiously at his body as though he could fight the shadows attacking his mind. When he stilled and rose, his skin was gaunt and pale, a purplish tint and his eyes empty, blackened pits.

His mother, in attendance at the very ball they found themselves in and seated away from the festivities in a corner, never found her smile quite reaching her eyes again, for she had seen from a window what had become of her only child before he ran after the Prince into the night.

As the Princess encouraged Arian to dance with her, the sound of shattered glass resounded from above them. The room stilled and the Mage’s eyes instantly met those of the king. Arian nodded, moving swiftly and handing the Princess to her father and the guards that had also made way to the sides of the Royal Family. “Stay here, and I will be back.”

He closed the ballroom door and threw a group of sigils across the door. They were different from the ones Jasper would use to reinforce the wards of the castle and keep the shadows out. His would repel the darkness. Arian’s served to absorb and contain the dark within itself. He made his way up the stairs to the corridor above his head, an empty wing that became eerily familiar once he realized why it was left so often abandoned.

The Prince’s room was in this wing.

He’d requested at an old enough age to be separated from the rest of his family. The king had merely laughed it off as a young boy being just that and agreed to allow him some space. No one had been any the wiser.

A window had shattered, spilling glass onto the burgundy carpet. The entire corridor was pitch black, but Arian could see well enough to maneuver his way to the open door of the Prince’s room. As he inched closer to the door, a snarling sound could be heard along with things being thrown and scattered. Jumping into the doorway, Arian conjured white orbs of light to his hands and recoiled slightly at the screech that came from the room. Turning back, he noticed the tinted skin, but also the familiar, now tattered robe and cloak.

“Prince Maxon…”

The ex-royal seethed, rearing back and throwing himself at the Mage, clawed fingernails flailing recklessly. Arian filled the room with radiant white light and the beast before him screamed before diving from the window. Arian ran forward, leaning out the window just long enough to see that the boy landed on his feet before he reeled backwards, shaking the dizzying feel of the oncoming darkness from his body. Thinking fast, he ran to the hall and slammed the door shut, rushing through the same series of sigils in hopes of keeping the darkness contained to the room.

Why would Maxon break into Prince Wren’s room?

His question was answered with a sudden uproar from downstairs, which led Arian to surging down the corridor and back to the ballroom door, his hands wavering to undo the sigils on the door from the far end of the hall before he could reach it and wrench it open. The room had gone dark, and as Arian lit his hands aglow, bathed in a faint shimmer, he noticed the slowly churning movements of muddled shapes across the floor. That was when his ears picked up the quiet groans, the choking sounds of agony that he knew he had heard before– the day the kingdom fell.

“Arian–”

The name came out a spattered gag, and he hardly picked up on it, but turned to find the King, eyes fading into a hazy black and poring into his own desperately. “Zara…please.” With those two whispered words, the King fell back, an inky tear sliding down his cheek and staining his painted skin. He followed his Lord’s pointed finger to the open window and strode towards it. He knew he could stop to think of a safer option, one that would not cause Jasper any worry when he and the other Mages returned to find the castle in as equal ruin to the Kingdom outside its walls, but he also knew the Princess had no time. Whatever situation she had found her way into, he was the only Mage in the kingdom left for a reason, a reason only shared between himself and his love.

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Arian knew the Prince, for better or worse, would not go far beyond the border of his kingdom. He thanked every heavenly body that his Princess had put up such a strong fight, as he found the two at the edge of the kingdom’s land, the Prince towering over her as she struggled in the shadows grasping at her, encroaching upon her mind as she fought with abandon to shake them off, buy herself time.

“Prince Wren, I demand you stop this immediately!”

The eyes that whipped around to face him were familiar only in the memory of those that took their place before, now pitch black caverns that told of his endless years of pain hiding everything about him, terrified of becoming the very creature he had in his desperation to outrun the legacy of Dark Mages. “Little Arian, was it? My dear sister’s favorite. I remember you, he whispered, his quiet words carried to Arian’s ears by the chilling wind. “I remember feeling a similar darkness to my own in that palace…” he chuckled, ending on a sigh as the shadows seemed to carry him closer. Arian threw his hands up, moonlight flooding to the surface of his palms and leaving the Prince faltering in his approach. With one hand remaining stretched towards the Prince, he changed course of the other, launching a sigil of warding at his Princess and watching as she was surrounded in a thin bubble of hazy light, the shadows retreating from her. She looked up, meeting his eyes with confusion and gratitude, before her hands started pressing against the wall of the bubble, trying to reach his side.

“The thing about your kind,” the Prince mused, hands raised in a faux gesture of peace that left Arian just that more wary of his every move, “is that even the moon thrives in darkness. You need me! Just imagine what we can do together, my friend!”

A rustling came from the trees, before a solitary ray of sunlight exploded through the dark and struck the Prince in the shoulder, dropping him to a knee with a gut-wrenching shout. Arian found Jasper as he ran through the trees, taking the scene in with a sweeping gaze. Being closest to her, he planted himself in front of the Princess before he dared to let his gaze linger on his lover. “My Prince, this needs to end. We will let you leave, but only if you leave the kingdom peacefully. Let us remove the shadows and end this night.”

“No!” he shouted, firing a wave behind him and laughing as Jasper barely managed to throw up his hands, incinerating his shadows with sun. “No, because who was there to end my night? All of the talk about the evil of Dark Mages, well what would they have done when their own Prince was born a monster?! Did anyone ask if those Mages ever wanted this curse, this hopelessness and agony? The darkness is nobody’s friend, it has no Master, merely vessels, and I? I accept it willingly, for all of those before me who were left with no other choice except to!”

Jasper, catching Arian’s attention, tilted his eyes up towards the sky. Peeking through the shroud of the darkness, one could vaguely make out the dimming form of the sun behind the slowly eclipsing moon. The window was closing.

Arian knew they had to make a move and fast, but with Jasper alone– he did not want to surmise where the other Mages had gone– the plan had to change. Before, at least two Sun Mages were required. The moon blocking out the sun would strengthen the sun’s magic with that of the moon’s, but it would be that much harder to harness the sun’s power. One Mage alone did not have the power, but with the merging of Sun and Moon came too an increase in the power of a Lunar Mage as the sun powered the already-radiant light of the Moon.

A Lunar Mage that the other Mages Jasper had traveled with did not know existed, done by Jasper for his own safety. They worked tirelessly to train Arian as a soldier, convincing the High Mage that he was in fact a Solar Mage, but his powers were simply underdeveloped so that when the time came to battle the Umbra Mage, Arian would be left out of the battle party.

Now their secret had come to light, and with only one Solar Mage left between the Kingdom and the Umbra Mage, Arian hoped the apology in his eyes would convey well enough to his lover, hoped that in some future he would have, Jasper would find it in him to forgive him.

As the moon inched further and further over the Sun’s surface, Arian felt the light in him burn bright, and his hands began to glow in the heavy blanket of darkness. Jasper, catching on to what he was doing, begged him silently in his gaze to stop. Arian instead begged him one final time to forgive him, and felt his light stretching out in a vortex above him, pulling the darkness closer and taking it into its own.

His Prince had been wrong. The moon did not thrive in darkness, it found equilibrium. The moon was married to the night, and for that, they thrived within each other. He could not quite destroy the darkness, but taking on the dark…

“Arian, please!” Jasper shouted, gaining the attention of the Prince, who had since turned his attention back to his sister. At first, Arian had wondered his motives in coming after Zara, until he realized everything she represented. The Golden Child he had been before he snapped, before the shadows he found solace in took over his mind completely. The Kingdom’s pride, the sun of their family.

He had already taken the sun in a literal sense. Now, he would destroy the only sense of sunlight left. The Sun Mages, and their families’ radiant light.

“I love you, Jas’. Please, remember that.”

He felt the trembling in his body as his hands began absorbing the shadows in his immediate proximity, spreading out like a vacuum and filling his body with shadows and horrors that attempted to corrupt him. He could vaguely hear his name screamed from Jasper's mouth as he peered through a film of black.

He just needed the right moment.

Once the shadowed light of the eclipse peeked through the clouds, with one trembling hand, Arian felt the shift from absorption to corruption, felt the fog in his mind lift as the moonlight in him, strengthened by the eclipse, corrupted the shadow.

His hands shook fiercely, his temperature rose, and he could half-feel his body drop to his knees, only truly registered by the fact that Jasper, from where he stood, had to be looked up at.

"Arian, please, you can stop! It will be ok!"

"It will be ok..." he paused, choking back a scream as he noticed the terror in young Zara's eyes. He tried to give her as comforting a smile as he could muster, though he could feel himself slipping. "...because you will see the sun again. Everyone will."

As he let out one final scream, feeling the raging moonlight in him burn away the remainder of the absorbed shadowy veil over the kingdom as it burned through his being, he fell back, felt his eyes blinking tiredly.

Everyone except for me.

Leaning into Jasper's touch as he finally reached his side, after managing to subdue the young, now weakened Prince Wren, he smiled with a blue tint to his lips and black film over his eyes.

"My sun," he whispered. "I see you, and I love you."

That day, with the death of the last Lunar Mage, did the entire kingdom of Ruidia finally see the sun again.