Destiny Spell: It Begins

Bad News

The sea air was pretty warm when Sage awoke. As he had been too excited to sleep last night, he woke up at 4 in the evening instead of 10 in the morning. Normally—that is, if anyone else had been sailing—it would have meant he had missed the port by a good 12 nautical mile. But he was such a terrible sailor that oversleeping had actually evened out the distance.

"Wait, that's the port right there...guess a current must have pulled me back on course." he said, oblivious to his dumb luck.

The Nash islands were a beautiful place, but like all things, beauty fades over time. The first time Sage had visited, the port had been freshly painted, blue and silver. Right past the docks there was a road, and after you crossed it, there was a long, crescent-shaped line of buildings.

People were in and out of shops like worker bees in a hive. Fishermen were ever-present on the docks. He recalled the feeling of stepping foot on the island for the first time: how the lamp stands had been enchanted so that the sea air never got too salty, or the smell of fish unbearable.

The memory made Sage feel old. The paint had faded, and so had the charms, and fishing didn't bring that much money anymore. The exposed stone had eroded away, leaving tacky looking dents and scratches in some buildings.

Right off the docks, Sage took notice of a very disturbing fact.

"Excuse me, sir..." He walked up to the only man on the boating docks. "Do you know where all the people are?"

He pointed across the road to a tall but narrow blue building.

"Thanks."

It wasn't uncommon to find all the people gathered in the Town Hall; this was a very close community. But these meetings normally happened late at night, and that wasn't the Town Hall.

. The building was packed full of people—you could tell by the shadows cast on the window—but there wasn't a sound to be heard. A building full of people and not one sound....No shouting...no threatening. Then he looked around the street. Not one person. He couldn't hear any people farther in town, either. Just the sound of the sea breeze, and the waves crashing against thwe banks below, just to his left.

"Hello, young-ling."

He stared straight up into the face of an 8 foot tall mass of heavily wrinkled skin clothed in a feminine blue silk robe that covered everything but her face (if it was a her; Sage wasn't sure). He could barely see its eyes under its wrinkled brow, but its smile, the largest crescent shaped crease where its mouth should have been, was very visible.

It was by far the strangest thing Sage had ever seen; he was just about ready to scream.

"Are you worthy?"

Sage was an expert when it came to monsters, plain and simple. A couple months ago, he'd nearly been swallowed by the mother of all worms, outran man-eating horses and let himself get captured by a tribe of cannibals, just so he could see the giant goat headed altar. Okay, that turned out to be a statue, he remembered, wish I had known that earlier. Those cannibals were persistent. But he'd never seen anything like this; he couldn't even tell whether it was evil or not.

He answered, "Are you here to fight?" His voice shook despite his attempt to control it.

The woman, (Sage was still not sure of its actual gender yet, but it was dressed like a woman) seemed pleased with this answer. She disappeared with a WHOOSH.

Was...was that a monster?...no...It was something else.....it was.....old. Older than anything I've ever seen...

"Hey, kiddo!" The familiar voice jolted him back to reality.