Just a Prologue

This is the Prologue for a story I have been working for a while now entitled Arvalaunt's Prophecy. If you read it and like it, then you can find the rest of it on fictionpress.com under cloud9cas and the same title. Enjoy!

Tears were useless in this barren wasteland of refuse and ruin. What once was a great city had been razed to the ground, the inhabitants thereof mutilated or taken away captive to be sold into slavery. Magic had been lost to the Darkness and those who could claim it were left to toil in ignorance of their once proud heritage. The great mages who could have stopped this madness had sealed themselves away with their terrible knowledge in houses of stone, only to awaken when the world was cleansed once more and worthy of the magic they had at their disposal.

Unfortunately, the tyrant Caugran discovered the mages’ self-imprisonment and in ways unknown to the peoples of the world had located one of the great mages and freed him from his confines. With cunning deceit, Caugran led the mage to believe that the world had been set to rights and that he had been elected to receive the knowledge and right to the Great Magic. The Mage, blinded by his desire for this to be true and furthermore being blurred from his magical prison, taught Caugran all he knew, gave him all the books in his possession that pertained to magic, and then informed Caugran of his imminent departure.

Unknown to the Mage, Caugran had in his greed learned of the ability and mastered the art of sapping the power from mages and lusted for the power of the old mages. Caugran’s selfishness led to his desire to be the Ultimate Mage. He stole the Mage’s powers, killing him, and locked the books of magic faraway beneath his fortress, never to be seen by any but himself.

However, for Caugran, the power of one mage was not enough and thus he hunted down the other mages’ self-constructed prisons one at a time, awoke the mages, and sapped their powers from them stopping only when their hearts ceased beating. However, Caugran soon grew tired of his mage hunts and let those that were left sleep on…

His hunger for power left only three of the once Great Mages. This destruction of the balance of the forces of the world awoke the last mages and stirred up their hearts to anger. The Three Mages united against Caugran and challenged his power with their own combined powers. Although they were mighty, Caugran had the power of 10 such mages and therefore proved too great a foe for the combined powers of the Three Mages.

The fight, however, proved to be long and arduous, destroying Caugran’s castle in the process and many of the servants that resided within his gates. He took down one mage and then another but as the imminent end hung over the last mage’s head, the mage known as Arvalaunt, the mage released his power into the world of man to keep it from the hands of the self-proclaimed Mage King. With his dying breath, he mocked Caugran with the promise of a shining star that would rise out of the Darkness created by the final mage left in this world.

“A youth of dreams and hopes

Radiating the dew of the morning light

One acquainted with sorrow

That still has the hope for a better ‘morrow

That is what awaits you, O King of the Shadowed.”

In Caugran’s anger, he struck the mage dead and howled his rage at having been thwarted from his long awaited goal.

Caugran never forgot the prophecy made by Arvalaunt, and neither did the scribe who had lain in wait in the cover of the rubble… and that’s how this history has been related and the prophecy of Arvalaunt’s Shining Star has been whispered throughout the entire world.