One Shots

Magic? Seriously? (kellic)

this will have a part 2 for sure

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Kellin's POV

The stench of battle is absolutely horrible. It smells like rotting blood and death, piss and bad breath. It's not fun and it's not pretty.

Thank god I've been assigned a different task. I'm not much of a fighter. At all. I'm horrible at wielding weapons. Most of my kin, the elves, are good warriors, which makes me somewhat of an outsider. I mean, they're all super graceful when they fight and I look like a lumbering whale.

Elves are beautiful, that the movies got right. But we aren't always elegant and noble. Our hair isn't always perfect and we don't wear flowy robes. Currently, my face is covered in dirt and I'm wearing jeans and an old military jacket the Command threw at me. Nothing pretty about that.

It's true that we tend to live in forests, but a lot of us live in cities amongst humans too. I never took a liking to cities; I never liked the crush of people and the smell of car exhaust fumes. I stayed in the forests.

But for me, going into a city wasn't a good option in the first place. I'm a sorcerer. A person of the old, ancient arts. Not many of us are left, and the magic wielders that do exist are older than me.

I'm the youngest, if you managed to get that. I don't think they particularly trust me either, though I have a very strong affinity for magic. It's difficult to use, but I understand it. Better than a lot of them.

So yes, the task I was given is crawling through under ground tunnels. I need to infiltrate the Senate's base. I'm a spy. It's tricky and definitely not fun, but I can do it. Hopefully.

It's very dark down here and it smells like... Dirt. I don't have anything else to describe it as. It just smells like wet dirt and earthworms; if earthworms even have a scent. I managed to create a light, a small, glowing orb that hovers just a few yards in front of me. One of the easiest tricks in the book.

The light isn't very strong, but that's okay. At least I can see better. My senses are heightened from an average person's, but it's not to the point where I have perfect and clear night vision. I absolutely hate the dark actually.

I guess I have to deal with it.

My hand hits something above me. I've been searching for exists out of this tunnel, and I think I might have just found one. The light stops moving and floats over to me. I look up (as much as I can in these cramped quarters) to see a small, metal trap door. Big enough for an average sized man. Big enough for me (and I'm quite small next to many of the other elves).

I push against it, but it doesn't budge. I should have known as much. With a sigh, I begin whispering an incantation in the Old Language. My fingertips glow. Every time I perform magic, my fingertips glow. All magic wielders have a quirk like that. Some of them float a tiny bit, some people's hair gets staticky. You get the idea.

Finishing the incantation, I hear a soft click as the trap door unlocks. A wave of tiredness passes over me, but I quickly dismiss it. Too much magic in one day strains a person, but I've done more magic than this before.

I push open the metal door. It's not easy. I'm not the strongest elf, at all, and the metal is thick and cold, reminding me of iron. Though, it is not nearly as heavy as iron.

I manage to get it open with a clang that makes me flinch. I hold my breath, counting to ten. No one comes to investigate the noise, no one is going to slice me up into pieces.

I haul myself out of the tunnel. Once I'm out and the light has popped out of existence, I close the metal trap door and lock it again.

I straighten up (which is painful, I've spent possibly more than an hour in a cramped dirt tunnel) and look around. I'm in a lower level hall of this massive building. I've heard stories of it being like a giant fortress and holding a village of vicious warriors in the center. The halls of the Senate are enough to make my skin crawl and my spine shiver with the evil lurking here.