Ar! I hate getting sick! It hinders one's… ability… to… think… hmm, what? Oh right, the disclaimers. Here they are.
Disclaimer: I do not own 'Fairy Tail' or the backdrop this story is based off of, and neither do I own any characters that might appear in this story that wasn't created by me.
Acknowledgement: This story is based off a fanfic for 'Fairy tail' called 'That's a bit optimistic' written by 'InsertDecentNameHere', whom I would like to thank for giving me permission to write this story.
WARNING: Since this story is a separate project, spoilers to 'The Phantom' may or may not be present.
BTW, this chapter is kinda boring, but I had no choice – it's essential to the story... kinda, so without further ado, here's chapter two! Enjoy!
Chapter two: They are illusions of the past
[Imagine cool song]
(Two years after Daímotheós was sealed)
(Back at the guild)
Marvin sat crossed legs in a magic circle he had drawn on the stone floor of his private chambers. It was crudely made, having nothing to draw with except the wax that dripped off the candles as they melted.
Six such candles now burned, the only source of illumination in the otherwise dark room. Each was placed at a corner of the circle to form a perfect hexagonal, as well as the points for a six pointed star that was created by also using wax inside the circle. In the middle of this sat Marvin, eyes closed.
Two weeks ago, he had stumbled upon a book in the guild's archives (of stolen books) on the subject of illusionary magic, documenting its uses and methods on how to wield such magic. Marvin was fascinated on the subject, and wanted to learn more. However, he didn't think his master would approve, so he had stolen the book and set out to learn the art by himself.
Now, after two weeks of sleepless nights doing research and experiments, all his hard work accumulated in this one moment.
He took a deep breath and concentrated, conquering up the image of a card in his mind. After a few mind bending minutes, he opened his eyes to see… nothing.
Undeterred, he tried again, this time concentrating for almost half an hour, trying to project the image of a card out in front of him.
He opened his eyes, and was greeted with the jaw dropping, disbelieving, unimaginable image of nothingness.
Frustrated, he smashed his fist against the floor, accidentally scraping off part of the circle; the circle with which he was using as barrier to control his magical energies as he let it run loose.
A sudden gust of wind swapped through his room, seemingly coming out of the walls. It was so strong that it threatened to flip his heavy wooden bed over. The gale started swirling, carrying some of his books and clothes around like a hurricane.
Through all the chaos, Marvin noticed that the candles were the only thing unaffected by the storm.
A thought occurred to him: 'What if the candles are the ones taming the magic, and the circle was just a medium used to expand their area of influence?'
He immediatelyset his theory to the test. He connected himself to the candles through the surviving lines. Then, since the magic running wild was that of his own, he opened up his mind, allowing it to channel through his body into the candles.
The winds seem to gather around him, swirling above his head. Small tendrils appeared and connected onto his back.
With the wildly behaving magic connected to him, and him connect to the candles, he started funneling the chaotic energies into the candles, where they were contained and could be controlled.
Then, as he has just started, images started appearing around him: tarot cards, orbs of fire, burning clouds, among other things. The most notable one was that of his master, his face full of disappointment. They appeared to be a random bunch, but then Marvin saw a pattern: they were his thoughts, or more specifically, his thoughts on what he would feel if he was found out practicing a new magic, alone, without his master's approval.
'So that's how you do it,' thought Marvin, 'it's not about projecting the illusion out of one's mind, but the sensation that the illusion is trying to convey. Interesting.'
That sorted out, he closed his eyes and concentrated on controlling the wild magic.
It took a while, but eventually he was able to channel all the magic into the candles. As soon as he finished, the maelstrom of books and clothes fell to the floor.
Marvin lowered his head, breathing heavy. That had taken all his mental strength to accomplish, and he was drained. He looked around his messed up room, and sigh. Perhaps he wasn't destined to wield two kinds of magic.
'Might as well give up now,' he thought. Just then, his belly growled. He decided to head down to the guilds underground tavern to get something to eat. It was late, but his guild never real slept.
'If only it had a fire place, then the tavern would be perfect,' thought Marvin.
He got up to leave. Just as he reached the door, he remembered the candles on the floor that were still burning. He turned around, planning to extinguish them, to see a small fire burning in midair.
He stared at the dancing flames, intrigued. He took a step closer to it, and when it did nothing, he took another. After five steps, he came face to face with the mass of heat and light. He could feel the heat coming off it when three feet away, so he knew it was hot, but how hot? He looked around, picked up an unused piece of paper, and held it into the flames.
Nothing happened, the paper didn't burn; his hand that was holding the paper, though, that was a different story. It was sweating, and he could feel it getting burned. The heat soon grew unbearable, and he yanked his hand back as quickly as possible, the flames licking close to his fingers.
The paper, however, was spotless. There were no burn marks, no charred edges; it had nothing but nothing (BTW, does this count as a double negative?).
There was only one explanation for this: the fire was an illusion.
Marvin stood there for a moment longer, thinking. He raised his right hand, gathered his remaining magical energy on that palm, and imagined feeling the soft, cold wetness of snow.
He closed his eyes and waited, and waited, and waited.
When a tiny, almost inconceivable sensation touched his hand, he opened his eyes and smiled.
Two years later
Seven year old Marvin stood in the middle of the guilds training area with his master. He wore no shirt, just a pair of wore out brown pants. He was sweating, having just completed his physical training.
The training area they were in was a sixty (in length) by fifty (in width) by forty (in height) feet room made of bricks. The ceiling was held up at the sides by support pillars, except at the eastern wall, which extended twenty feet out of the face of the mountain the guild's base was located in. The wall was lined with windows, letting the just rising morning sun's rays into the training area.
The western wall was lined with roll upon roll of training equipment – wooden weapons of all sorts, punching bags, human dummies, and wooden targets.
It was still early in the morning, but there were already a handful of people there training. Marvin paid them no heed. His concentration was solely on the animal in front of him: a two feet goblin. The semi-intellectual creature had a swampy green hue to its slimy skin; its oddly shaped hands and legs had three two inch, dirt stained claws. Its misshapen head had two pointed ears, two small black eyes, a wrinkly nose, and a thick lipped mouth.
It was also an extremely vicious creature, the reason it was locked securely inside a magically reinforced metal cage.
"Me kil humon! Humon dai whe' my get's ot 'f hear'!" it was screaming, exposing four two inch canines, two on the top jaw, and two on the bottom jaw, "Eh, ye herd I? Me tok t'o yo, humon san 'f ai b–"
Marvin blocked the vile creature's words from his mind. He focused instead on the life energy surrounding the thing. All living beings project different forms of life energy, but they all look like an aura surrounding the creature.
In this case, the aura surrounding the goblin was sickly green and was just plain nasty. Ignoring the foul taste growing in his mouth, Marvin took out a plain tarot card.
He crossed his left palm perpendicularly over the back of his upright right hand, which held the white card. He held his hands out stretched, with the card facing the goblin.
He closed his eyes and chanted the words of a spell he had memorized just days ago, "Δήμητρα, η μητέρα όλης της ζωής? Εκάτη, η βασίλισσα όλων των μαγείας, οδηγός χέρι μου. Πάρτε αυτό το πλάσμα πριν από μένα, είναι εξορίσει από τη σφαίρα της ζωής και στο χώρο αποσκευών αυτή την κάρτα!"
(For those of you interested, here are the pronunciations and the English translation. May not be accurate, though. If any of you can translate the English version, and this turns out to be wrong, please translate this for me.)
[Dí̱mi̱tra, i̱ mi̱téra óli̱s ti̱s zo̱í̱s ?̱ Ekáti̱ , i̱ vasílissa ólo̱n to̱n mageías, odi̱gós chéri mou. Párte af̱tó to plásma prin apó ména, eínai exorísei apó ti̱ sfaíra ti̱s zo̱í̱s kai sto chó̱ro aposkev̱ó̱n af̱tí̱ ti̱n kárta!]
[Demeter, mother of all life; Hecate, queen of all magic, guide my hand. Take this creature before me; banish it from the realm of the living and into the hold of this card!]
A ring of six purple magical circles appeared, sandwiched between two larger versions of said circles. They hovered above the raging goblin which was still ignorant of the circles presence. A violently violet radiance shone down from the circles, illuminating the goblin and the floor around it, alerting it to the circles for the first time.
As Marvin watched, the glare intensified, until it was blindingly white, forcing everyone present to close their eyes, Marvin and Lawrence included.
Because of the glare, Marvin couldn't see what was happening to the goblin, but he could still hear it, and it was screaming in pain and anger. After what seemed like a life time, just as an eerie silence settled in the training room, the glow died down.
As Marvin opened his eyes, he saw that the cage was empty. He held up the card and saw that it wasn't blank anymore. On it was the image of the goblin, standing up right, with the words Goblin kin written at the bottom.
"I did it…" muttered Marvin in disbelieve. He had mastered his master's most powerful spell, 'Sealing', and that meant only one thing.
"Well done, Marvin," his master and stepfather, Lawrence, said. He walked over and clapped his shoulder, "You have mastered all of my spells, and that means you are, as of now, a full fledge mage."
Marvin turned to look at his master, his face full of mirth, "Does that mean I get to choose my guild now?"
Lawrence laughed merrily, "Why of course! So, what guild are you going to choose? Phoenix's feather? Lynx's paw? Eagle's eye?"
Even before Lawrence was finished, Marvin was shaking his head violently. In the end, he said, "I want to join Κλέφτης μάγος (Kléfti̱s mágos)!"
Lawrence's smile flattered, and there was a slight tremor in his voice when he said "Um, I don't think that is such a good idea, Marvin."
"Huh? But why?"
"Your magical talents are best used for something else – somewhere else, anywhere else but here."
"Why? What's wrong with wanting to join my master's guild?" demanded Marvin.
As if on cue, a large man with only a thin strip of hair in the middle of his head said from the side, "Ye don't know what kin of guild Κλέφτης μάγος is, do ya?"
Marvin tilted his head in the brute's direction, question marks in his eyes, "What kind of guild? Whatever do you mean?"
He was about to answer when Lawrence said in a stern voice, "That's enough, Beaufort."
The man name Beaufort nodded sheepishly and retreated back to his training.
Lawrence sighs and puts his right hand on Marvin's left shoulder to lead him away, "Come, boy. We'll talk outside."
Marvin looked on in curiosity at Beaufort's actions a minute more. He then reached for his shirt and coat before letting Lawrence gently urged him outside.
…
Lawrence had guided Marvin up and out of the guild, onto the summit of the guild's mountain hideout. It wasn't a steep mountain, and the 'summit' wasn't a peak, but more of a gentle hill hundreds of meters above the ground. At this elevation, there were no trees, just a few patches of grass amidst a sea of different sized boulders and stones.
It was early spring, and the area around them was still covered in a blanket of white. Needless to say, it was cold, and despite his thick coat and the fact that he had just done his morning exercise, Marvin shivered slightly. As always, Lawrence didn't seem the slightest bothered by the change in temperature, presumable because his clothes were magical ones.
The pair stood there in total silence, admiring the tranquil scenery before them. After a while, Lawrence said, "Beautiful, isn't it?"
Marvin, as usual, didn't understand. He had thought his master was here to tell him about the guild. Nevertheless, he responded with a "Yes, master, it is."
"Such a beautiful place… yet so dangerous at the same time. Bears prowl the rivers looking for food after a long hibernation. Chimera's stoke the area waiting for prey; and Lamia's rule the night, killing everything in sight."
"Despite its apparent beauty, it is a dark and dangerous place," as he finished, he turned to Marvin, "a very dark place, indeed."
Although he was just seven, Marvin caught on to the reference, "Master, are you trying to say that this guild… is a dark guild?"
Lawrence nodded sadly, "Yes, my boy: this is a dark guild. Do you know what Κλέφτης μάγος stands for?"
When Marvin shook his head, Lawrence explained, "It means 'mage thief'. As the name implies, we are a thief's guild, and not just any thief's guild, but a guild of thieving mages!" Lawrence said this proudly, as if he came up with the concept himself, which he did.
"So, you use magic to steal?" asked Marvin, more curious than alarmed.
Lawrence's joyful smile flattered and he said, "Marvin, you are a very talented young boy. There are plenty of other options for you to pick from. You shouldn't waste your future here, doing disgraceful acts just to survive."
"But I'm not," said Marvin, smiling widely, "I'm doing this to repay you, master. You saved my life before my parents killer could get to me; you took me in and treated me like your son. You even taught me magic! This is my way of saying thanks… stepfather."
Lawrence seemed surprised by this, delightedly so. He hugged Marvin tightly and said, "Thank you, Marvin."
"So, I take it I can stay?"
"Oh by the gods, child, give it a rest already. Fine, by all means, join. I do not care anymore!" Lawrence said, but he was clearly pleased.
As he released a smiling Marvin, he said, "Now off you go, off you go." As Marvin ran back into the hideout's entrance Lawrence called out, "Oh, and take a bath; you reek of sweat!"
Marvin waved back and nodded, "I will!"
Lawrence keep up his smile until Marvin was gone, and even after that, his smile remained, even as a person covered completely in black walked out from behind one of the rocks.
"Valkyrie, I see you've returned."
"I see he agreed," Valkyrie said. She was wearing a cloak, so her features were unreadable. Only her eyes, two crimson orbs, could be seen from underneath her hood.
Lawrence nodded, "Yes, he did. Beaufort even played his role perfectly."
Valkyrie shook her head, "Be careful with that one, Lawrence Fortune. He is powerful, even for people of our strength," warning saturating her tone.
"I would watch what you say when you are around me, slave." Lawrence said, his voice void of emotions.
Valkyrie bowed, "Forgive me, it was a slip of the tongue."
Lawrence smiled, "Of course it was. And do not worry, Valkyrie Vermilion, I have him right where I want him. He won't betray me."
…
Later that night, while in his room, Marvin started contemplating about his master's sealing magic. He knew that his master had made it to capture living beings, but then why use the living energies as the target and the medium of the spell, instead of only the target?
He decided to test out a theory of his. He took out one of his tarot cards from his deck as if by memory, and summoned an actual ball of fire.
Next, he readied a plain tarot card and replicated the pose required to perform the 'Sealing' magic. He focused on the magical energies of the orb of floating flames and started to recite the spell.
However, instead of his master's incantation, he altered his to read, "Εκάτη, η βασίλισσα όλων των μαγείας, οδηγός χέρι μου. Πάρτε αυτή τη δύναμη μπροστά μου, να μετατραπεί από έναν εχθρό σε σύμμαχο και σφραγίδα σε αυτή την κάρτα!"
(Again, the pronunciations and the English translation. And again, may not be right.)
[Ekáti, i vasílissa ólon ton mageías, odigós chéri mou. Párte aftí ti dýnami brostá mou, na metatrapeí apó énan echthró se sýmmacho kai sfragída se aftí tin kárta!]
[Hecate, queen of all magic, guide my hand. Take this power before me, turn it from an enemy into an ally and seal it in this card!]
The flames shot towards him and Marvin almost flinched away.
Almost.
The fire struck the card and disappeared into it.
Marvin remained in his pose for several seconds before he hastily turned the card in his hands to face him. On it was the image of a fire ball, and the words Flame orb, the name of the spell, was written at the bottom.
He jumped with excitement. He actually managed to seal a spell! To capture magic in a tarot card!
'I could use my enemies own attacks against them!' he thought triumphantly.
Almost as an afterthought, he aimed the face of the card with the picture of the fire ball towards the far wall of his room and said, "Ελευθέρωση!"
(Elefthérosi, or release)
A ball of fire erupted from the card and sailed towards the wall, slamming into it before disintegrating into nothingness.
He shouted a mental "Yes!" before looking at the card and found that it was again blank.
"…" he was speechless for a moment, before saying to himself, "Well, at least I get to use it once…" or so he said to comfort himself…
[Imagine cool song]
Apologies for the greek words, apparently they are not supported here. I don't know about you, but I felt that that was boring, but hey, that's probably me just being hard on myself. As always, please review!