Marco
swept the floors. It's what he did on Fridays. The hallways to the
boy's dormitories, and the entire second floor. It took time and
patience. Marco had both.
The explosion didn't surprise him, he just kept on sweeping. With the
second explosion he stopped. Dust was falling with every explosion
making the work fruitless. He sighed. Twenty years he'd been sweeping
these floors now. He was turning into an old man.
Twenty years ago, when that damn girl had beaten him, he had
begged for his life. He considered going and polishing the silverware.
Nah, he liked to do that on Saturdays after the all school rugby match.
Blasted people, seiging the blasted school. He knew he'd have to go sort
this before he could get on with sweeping. Twenty years ago, she stood
over him with hands raised in the spell of ending. He begged for his
life, of course. It'd surprised him when she spared him.
"Promise me you will end your evil ways, and live a clean life from
now on, and I shall spare you." Marco had agreed, of course, he didn't
want to die. He hadn't meant them at the time, obviously, but she had
bound him to those words with the spell of fates. Strangely, he came to
mean them as the years wore on. More strangely was how very literally his conscience had taken those words.
He made his way to the front door. The teachers where weaving spells
of discharge, and protection, and denial, and divination. The barriers
where good, but the spells from His Darkness were starting to make cracks in the spellwork.
The Headmistress was directing every student with above grade 3 magic
to create a basic shield around the the whole student body. Marco could
feel the shield spell they where making was actually reasonably good,
although when he was at his peak could probably have cracked it in under
a minute. Nah give the kids their due, perhaps two.
The headmistress saw him, and directed the students to continue. As
she walked over Marco flashed back to the day, her standing over him,
his promise. She still had that bloody smirk on her face, even now.
"I thought you would want to skip this one, what with how..." The headmistress said.
"What with how he feels I betrayed him, and should have died instead?
Yeah, well I was going to, but he's making a mess up on the 2nd floor
and..."
She knew. He couldn't have the place a mess.
"So you going to help us? I know you haven't used your magic in a while but..."
"I'm not here to cast shields on kids or anything. I just thought I'd have a word with him to knock it off."
The headmistress gave Marco a look but he merely shrugged
and walked towards the door. It should have been impossible to open a
door so heavily warded. Marco twisted the handle and it opened with a click.
As he walked through, and out into the grounds the entire faculty was
cursing him, and swearing about having to reset the wards.
He walked out and stood 20 feet from a group of cowled and masked people. Marco recognised most of them. They had never been friends but they had been close once.
"Alright Derrek" Marco said, nodding at the tall man in the pale
white robes (a stark contrast to the blacks and reds of his
compatriots).
"You..." the pale man hissed "BETRAYER". The other people in the crowed hissed with him, as they began to recognise who he was.
"None of that Derrek, you know why I had to leave you, and why I am
here. On that note, would you mind, rather, sodding off? you are making a
mess of my school grounds. It's Friday and I like to sweep the..."
The man interrupted by gesturing to his friends "See this? See what
she has done to our once beloved Master? Such a pity Marco. You where
our greatest. But we learned from you. We learned the secrets of the
dark arts from you, and now, ashamedly, you shall die to the spells you once taught us".
The pale man gestured and a blue flash arced at Marco. He didn't
flinch, and the spell bounces harmlessly away to destroy a nearby
box-hedge.
Marco shrugged "Groundskeepers problem that. Just keep your
shenanigans away from the school and we'll be fine". Marco half turned
to leave.
"KILL HIM" Derrek squealed. With a dozen flashes the people around
him starting firing bolts, and lightning and one began encanting the
ritual of darkest heart. They never had a chance to finish, as one bolt
of green tinged magic shaped vaguely like a swordfish arced off Marco's
defenses and removed the roof from the girls toilets.
Marco sighed and ground his teeth. "Shouldn't of aught to have done that".
The ground rippled, and half of the group fell over. On the second
wave of magic three sets of robes fell empty on the ground (actually
filled with the serpents the people had become). Upon third wave of
magic the air began to get hot.
"Petty Tricks" the pale man yelled. "We know all your spells as you taught us them!"
"You don't know everything about me" Marco said, shaking his head.
The temperature continued to rise. "And I only taught you everything you know**".
Robed figures began climbing back to their feet, and those standing
already held hands and began chanting. "We learned more than you think
old fool! We read the secret texts in the archives, we formulated our own ways to use them.
A powerful bubbled of magic grew around the robed group, shielding
them. The magic kept growing into a spire of light that reached the
clouds, which swirled around the growing power.
Marco could hear shrieking from inside the school, as they panicked over the growing power.
Marco scratched his bum and waited to see what they did next.
The power grew, the Cowled Ones closed the circle as the final
members joined the ritual. Derrek stood in the middle yelling the Words of Power from the book of A'tash Ar'Myen, summoning the sky to rupture and sunder Marco (and inevitably the school) into pieces.
"ooh" Marco said. "Pretty. You learned a lot whilst I was gone I see. But one question Derek.."
Derek wasn't listening.
".. Did you ever word out the weakness of that spell? I did."
As the spells power grew to it's peak, Marco sent the tiniest little
bit of power through the tiny little hole he had bored into their
shields. Normally it wouldn't have been enough to wake a sleeping
kitten. But when you are inside a ritual amplifying all power.
Marco's spell prodded at a robed figure whose head promptly exploded.
This set up a wave of instability in the spell, and one by one, Marco
watched as his old gang exploded. Panic crossed Derrek's face, as he
tried to leave an ongoing ritual spell. Derrek turned inside out, but
didn't die. Not at first.
The power of the ritual dissipated, as the bodies of those casting it cooled.
Marco looked at the mess. "The things I never told you Derrek, where
the following. Firstly, never monologue until you won. Secondly, the
dark rituals are about as stable as the ancient wizards who created
them, and" .. Marco said walking towards the dying thing that had been
Derrek. "I lost against the girl because I was sick of the whole thing. I
never expected her to actually spare me. Not after what I did. But
she's a better person than me." Marco nodded, looking at the twisted
mass of flesh that had once been his apprentice.
"Groundskeeper's problem that." He nodded, and walked back inside.
Writers note: silver- wear where were ware. God there is a lot of ways to write the same sounding word.
