When the Final Seal Breaks

1st Entry

When I was fifteen, I wandered into another world by mistake and ended up taking part in the fight to seal the Demon Lord.

We were visiting a large nature park that was far out of the way, an hours drive from home, and I wandered into the paths around the forested area instead of staying on the playground. When I got to a bridge over a creek, I thought I heard something underneath it like music, so I circled around the side and passed underneath it. On the other side I found another world. It was a world of magic, being threatened by a Demon Lord. As a visitor from another world, I was blessed with powerful magical abilities, and they came to me as naturally as breathing. Just by waving my hands, immaterial weapons made of flame appeared before me and followed my every wish, but my favourite was my bow. Even though I was average strength for a normal fifteen-year-old in any world, I could use it to fire off arrows faster and farther than anyone else. I'd say it became my symbol.

I was young enough to not worry about politics, young enough to not question what I was doing was right. I spent two years fighting, then once the seal was successfully placed on the Demon Lord, I was sent home under that same bridge I came from.

Only two weeks had passed. I had noticed I wasn't really growing much, but I had other things to worry about while fighting the war. I put on my old clothes, too embarrassed to wear otherworld fare back to my own, then I walked back to the park, counting missing person posters of my own face taped up. But it was a time before children had cell phones. I was reunited with my family and decided against telling them what had happened.

But I was old enough to know it was real, old enough to know that what I had done in that world had really happened. It wasn't a figment of my imagination.

I had two souvenirs: magic power I had gained when I crossed the border, though I could only use a fraction of what I had when I fought, and a pair of earrings that were keystones for the seal. The earrings were gold fish hook style posts, with red tapered crystals about a centimeter long. My final task was to wear them as much as possible and use my remaining magic to protect the seal. Of the sixteen keystones used to seal the Demon Lord, I was the only one with two. Each of the sixteen fighters that participated in the final battle at the Demon Lord's sky domain kept a stone to protect, but one of my friends gave me theirs. So long as just one stone was kept intact, the Demon Lord would remain sealed.

I was smart enough to not try to explain what I had gone through, but let me tell you, it was a lot to deal with on my own. I went from algebra to war, then was expected to pick right back up with the algebra again. And unlike your average teenage delusions of grandeur, I literally was different from everyone around me. And I let it get to my head. It was hard to be intimidated by anything when I had faced down a Demon Lord.

But that's not really what I want to write about. That's not going to help anyone. So, I digress.

I wasn't going to come back here. Then on a day just like any other, after fifteen years, my right earring suddenly burst. It shattered to pieces, and those pieces turned into light and dissipated, leaving me with only the ominous aura of the Demon Lord, like a flash of miasma. I saw his face in my mind.

The resonance centered on the left earring, so reflexively I brought my hand to it and pushed every last bit of magic I had in me into it. Was I too weak to sustain the seal? Or had the Demon Lord been slowly getting stronger and was pushing back on it?

I was driving to work at the time it happened, stopped at a red light, and once the person behind me had honked me back to focus, I took off the unadorned post and popped it into my center console, and continued to work.

At the time I hadn't decided what to do, but after I caught a glimpse of my eyes in my rear-view mirror, I felt like myself from fifteen years ago was looking back at me, judging me for not immediately taking responsibility.