Nicholas's Otherworldly Tales

The Time of Wizards

The young warrior entered the straw and animal hide hut belonging to the village elder, the room dimly lit by a small lantern on the floor. The elder looked up from the tapestry she had been sewing and saw the young warrior.

"You've come to hear the story then," the elder stated, the warrior nodding, "The story everyone wants to hear; you want to hear about the wizards."

The elder began her story.

When I was just a young girl, things were peaceful. Our village was prosperous, the soil was good for growing our crops and our warriors kept us safe from the bandits. It was a peaceful time, a good time for any child to grow up. Unfortunately, the peace was not to last. As I was around thirteen years old, it all came crashing down.

A group of bandits the warriors had chased off a few weeks earlier was back, in greater force. It was a difficult battle as our foe was numerous, but at first, we thought we might hold out, but then came the second wave. They came riding living metal beasts.

We had always known the metal beasts, seen their long dead corpses littering the ancient pathways, sometimes harvesting their iron hides for armor and weapons. As children we imagined what they would be like alive, the immense long-necks with their powerful jaws, the lumbering hollow-shells, the herds of crawlers. We envisioned the herds traveling the plains, wondered about how they lived, but we had never thought we would ever see them living, well, somewhat living. They were still covered in rust and holes, still broken and bent, but somehow alive, eyes blazing with yellow and red light.

The first came in riding on the backs of the small juveniles, still only two-footed, wielding long spears and lances. Our spearmen couldn't handle the charge, they came in too quickly, they broke through the lines and entered the village. The other warriors were able to hold them off until a hollow-shell came barreling into the village, stopping right in the village center. The back of the shell opened and out came a whole party of bandits, armed with strange weapons which made thunder and killed very rapidly.

The final blow to the village came with the arrival of the war beast. A metal beast unlike any we had ever seen. Its skin thicker, its feet strangely formed, with a long snout which spewed fire. It trampled over any in its way, breaking wood, stone, and flesh. It spat fire at the chieftain's hut, obliterating it entirely. I turned and ran with many of the other villagers. As we fled the village, I saw several others drop dead around me, falling prey to the bandits' thunder makers. Once we made it into the forest, the bandits stopped following. We went to the sacred grove and regrouped.

Over the night others arrived, those who had run off in different directions met us there. Many of us had escaped the destruction of our home, but none of our warriors arrived. We treated our wounded as best we could and rested fitfully through the night.

In the morning we sent scouts out to see if the bandits had gone. The scouts returned, sickened, saying the bandits had left but we wouldn't want to see what they had left behind. Try as they did, the scouts could not convince us to stay away, we needed to see.

When we arrived at the village, no one could hold back tears. Most wept loudly, some vomited at what they saw, but all of us were shocked, we saw why none of our warriors had returned: they were slaughtered. Many bodies were trampled by the metal beasts or killed by thunder makers, but those that weren't had been executed, their bodies strung up on or nailed to pieces of wood, erected by the bandits, a gruesome warning not to stand up to them again.

Over the next few days, we were able to steel ourselves and stop weeping long enough to get the bodies down and bury them properly. We cleared away some of the wreckage that we could and held funeral rites for the warriors.