The Magica Fourteen-The Fourteen Kinds of Magic

Magma: Manipulate metal.

Leaf: Speak and understand every language.

Serpent: Manipulate and conjure poison and venom.

Light: Concentrate and manipulate light

Traveler: Teleport yourself and others to different dimensions

Root: Communicate and awaken matter of the depths

Fire: Manipulate and conjure fire.

Nature: Communicate with, awaken, and stimulate nature.

Mental: Read minds and very rarely foretell a few minutes into the future.

Tamer: Speak to and connect with animals.

Rune: Unlock one of the Primordial Arts.

Reef:  Conjure and manipulate water.

Darkness: Concentrate and manipulate darkness.

The Primordial Arts: The darkest magic, with power to (classified information)

Prologue

The fortress was burning. The grey, imposing slab of fortified stone was burning to the ground under the heat of unnatural black flames. The reason: a three year old inside held the most powerful magic in all the known realms. That same night, all but one inside the fortress would die from the fumes of the fire - and a three year old elf with verdant green skin and ocean blue hair would survive.  

Chapter the First - Soup and Spirits

The smell of crackling fire greeted Rune as he lifted the pot off the stove. Rune the elf was surprisingly good at cooking-especially baking, especially considering the fact that he was thirteen. His pale, dark blue robes fit loosely around his arms as he stirred the simmering pot.

"Now Cranberry, you have to wait until I sit down to eat, so that I can at least put your soup into a bowl, all right?"

Cranberry sat down on his cushion and frowned, but the half mushroom's expression immediately changed when Rune reached into the brick oven. Delicious smelling fumes cleared out of the way to reveal a baguette, Cranberry's favorite food. Cranberry only brightened when Rune reached into the rich smelling

oven to reveal a great slab of venison, cooked and seasoned to perfection. Then, setting down these two final additions to the already heavily laden table, Rune removed his apron and sat down on one of the cushions. He could practically hear the table groaning as it struggled to support the countless dishes. 

"Rune, what happens if the Cottage gets jolted?" Cranberry asked worriedly.

"Don't worry, we're traveling on a nice, flat, dirt road, not a gravel one."

When Cranberry had sized up his house to make it hospitable to an elf, he had also enchanted it to move around without any horses pulling it. Cranberry had the amazing power to enchant most plant-related objects. Rune, on the other hand, had the power to understand any language, and to speak it as well. And then there was  

his secret magic: he could gain the magic of anyone he spoke to for three days.  He quite liked that aspect of magic-but on the other hand, he hadn't seen it in any of the books; so he thought it best to keep it quiet. Halfway through their excellent meal, they heard a slight hiss; not the hiss of wind on grass, but the soft hiss of a snake stalking its prey. Cranberry lifted his face from the hollow in his baguette, bread crumbs covering his face. 

"Did you hear that?" Cranberry said nervously.

"It was probably nothing." Rune said, but didn't believe.

Suddenly, the lanterns ceased giving their light, and the Cottage descended into darkness, except for the starry, moonless night sky glimmering through the window

After some stumbling and bumping, Cranberry found a match and relit their hand-held lantern. Rune gasped, and Cranberry whimpered. Long, black tendrils were sluggishly reaching from the lanterns, gaining speed each moment. Reaching into his belt, he withdrew his dagger. It glinted with blue light, indicating a shadow presence. Slicing it through the air, it snagged on one of the tendrils. But instead of withering on the ground, it only withdrew. Suddenly, a fell voice hissed,

"Your time is ever waning."

And suddenly, a blackened blue hand tore through the window. But instead of falling to the ground, the shards of glass levitated in the air. A sudden instinct took hold of Rune, telling he put every ounce of his concentration into attempting to draw some sort of force from the spirit. And he did, with the result of the spirit unleashing an unearthly cry and disintegrating into a tiny pile of glimmering black

dust. 

"What?!" Rune exclaimed. That didn't make any sense. A spirit that could tear through a window with its bare hand - gone in a matter of seconds? "I think we had better change course to Drudia Village ;I wonder if anyone else has been attacked."

"I think we should go to the market while we're there, to get some food!" Cranberry said as he munched on a baguette.

Forest nudged the ominous pile with the tip of his sandal. "What should we do with this stuff?"

Cranberry shrugged, then walked over and picked up an armful. Then, he threw it 

into the crackling fire. With a high pitched humming sound, the powder crystallized into the darkest,pitch black gem shard. 

"Cranberry! We don't just throw random spirit powder into the fire, do we? The same rules apply to gunpower, remember?" Rune scolded.

Cranberry grinned sheepishly, then ran up to the gem shard and picked it up. Then, with a yelp, he dropped it.

"Too cold!"

"Too cold? It was just on fire!" Rune exclaimed, scolding all but forgotten.

Bending down over the dropped midnight shard, Rune touched it, and immediately withdrew from it. It was as cold and piercing as a thousand icicles. Then, the second after he touched it, it evaporated into nothingness.

"We had better get some sleep. this was quite the night, and there are only six hours until the sun rises, all right?"

Rune sank onto his bed, and then, feeling suddenly very tired, sank into peaceful sleep.

Chapter the Second - A Terrible Eye

Rune woke up to a cloudless day, with rays of beaming sunshine streaming through the window. His anticipation of going over to the village just behind the next hill was exhilarating. When Rune heard a crash in the kitchen, he threw on his blue-gray hooded robe and quickly walked in to investigate. It was Cranberry. Of course.

 "I was hungry, and you weren't awake!" Cranberry looked up from a bag of potatoes sheepishly.

"Cranberry, I'm positive you won't be hungry after the market trip. By the way, did you make anything to sell at the market?" Rune asked. "And do you have a backpack?

Cranberry held up a half eaten potato.

                         ***

"All right, Cranberry, remember to not wander off, or steal anything from a food stand."  Rune said for the millionth time.

"I KNOW." Cranberry said in an exasperated tone.

Hood on, the pair walked towards the market, with Cranberry on Rune's shoulder. The noise was overwhelming. Countless elves, humans, demons, angels, and other  random humanoids were walking, running, teleporting or gliding around

the marketplace. Rune kept walking, with Cranberry bouncing up and down on his shoulder. Soon, Rune found what he was looking for: "Best Banking, Bartering, and Trading". Walking up to the stand, he saw who was running it this morning: A glowering, imposing demonic figure, with a hood that obscured every feature of their face. The main currency of this realm was Tokens, gold and rusted verdant green coins, with tiny trees printed on one side, the other side a copper sheen. 

"What do you want?" Asked the demonic creature in a low hiss.

"Just to exchange some goods for Tokens." Rune said in a calm tone.

The demonic humanoid took off their hood, and fixed the pair with a glare. Cranberry attempted to arrange his face into one, but the result looked more like a

confused toddler. Despite the trader's malevolent demeanor, the demonic trader willingly accepted some rare mushrooms, relatively fresh venison, useful herbs, and paper. Cranberry and Rune got one hundred and two Tokens out of the deal.  As was their usual custom in the market, they bought all the essentials first: among them were magically preserved chicken and venison, perfectly mashed applesauce, new wizard's robes, candied peanuts, and freshly harvested wheat and strawberries. 

After stashing all the essentials in their backpacks, they had twenty Tokens left. Then they went to each of their favorite stands: The Mini Bakery (Cranberry's favorite, of course), and The Mobile Library. First they visited the Mini Bakery.

As they approached, countless rich and mouth watering smells. At first, Cranberry wanted a baguette, but Rune persuaded him to purchase a jelly filled, hot, sugar glazed donut. Cranberry bit into it with a suspicious expression, but his expression immediately morphed into a mixture of joy and wonder.

As Rune and Cranberry jogged to the library, they heard a distant cry of terror and pain. Rune immediately turned course and ran to the sound with all the speed in the world. It was the Mini Bakery. Horrible black flames were consuming every inch of the painstakingly constructed stall. In the middle of it all, a fell, terrifying, horrid eye with blood red, spiked tentacles was focusing its awful gaze on the shopkeeper. The elven shopkeeper was pale and seemingly paralyzed, whether with terror or some instantly spread sickness it was hard to tell.

The monster inched its vile tendrils toward the pale elf, and when they touched the shopkeeper's ankle, the shopkeepers entire leg immediately became a sickening green-yellow bruise covered limb, with a single drop of blood oozing down its side. Rune then did the only thing he could think of to stop the fell eye: 

"What do you think you're doing?" He shouted at the violet purple eye.

To his complete surprise, it answered in a smooth, oily tone:

"Looking for you." It paused, then slowly turned its full gaze onto Rune and Cranberry. "I knew you would come, and so did Xarnoth."

Then, staring into its terrible eye, he fell into black unconsciousness.

Chapter the Third -  Interrogation and Information

Rune woke up with two sides surrounded by midnight black stone, a heavy purple and blue fog obscuring his vision. Iron bars denied his moving forward.  Suddenly, the bars lifted. A cold, malevolent, ringing voice hissed out from the mist

"Proceed to the Maze."

Rune looked around for Cranberry, but he was nowhere to be seen. He took a cautious step forward, and another, and another. Then, he ran through the seemingly endless corridors of the maze.

                                                                          ***

After what seemed like forever, Rune encountered a tiny mushroom, curled up and 

shaking with terror.

"Cranberry!"

Cranberry looked up with relief.

"Come on, let's proceed."

After several miserable hours running through the endless labyrinth of midnight stone, the pair encountered a demonic, midnight blue skinned, cloaked figure, whose robe was green, spattered with orange. The figure seemed almost exactly his age. Rune fingered at his dagger, expecting an illusion. The figure whirled around, with a handful of menacing shurikens.

The figure's face had glowing red eyes, and then proceeded to throw each shuriken with pinpoint accuracy - had Rune not felt the familiar wave of energy he got when meeting a new entity, and with a seconds thought, summoned a tendril of ivy to block the deadly assault. Upon seeing Rune's face, the figure let out a sigh of relief.

"You're the boy who was stupid enough to face off with Occulent!" She said.

Rune ignored the insult, and noticed that as she finished assaulting his intellect, she manipulated his ivy tendril to retrieve her daggers, and upon further observation, sheathed  two glinting katanas. Rune decided to look over the insult, and instead asked who Occulent was.

"Occulent? The giant eye you faced off with! Not very easy to forget! Or do you just 

not remember anything?"

"Well of course I remember things! How was I supposed to know its name?" Rune argued.

Cranberry nodded in agreement with Rune , frowned at the demonic girl, then withdrew a piece of jelly donut from his robes and threw it at Rune's insulter. She skillfully dodged, caught it, and threw it with a splat into Cranberry's face. Cranberry glared at her, dripping with raspberry filling.

"Where have you been? There was news all over about Occulent! He's been attacking people all over the place! And some have reported seeing a giant slenderman thing, and then the entity who saw the slenderman thing would just fall

over and lose their magica!" She explained with an eye roll. "Seriously, where have you been?"

"Who's slenderman?" Rune asked.

"Never heard of Earth? Never mind." The demonic girl said in an exasperated tone.

Rune stuck out his hand. 

"I believe an introduction would be in order." He said.

"Fine." She then crushed his hand with a positively freezing hand. "I'm Vine. My Magica is Nature."

"I'm Rune. My Magica is Leaf." Rune said, determined not to wince. "And the mushroom on my shoulder is Cranberry."

Cranberry was still dripping with fragments of the donut.

                                                                    ***

"Any plans on how to get out of this maze?" Vine asked. "Not that I expect you to, with that brain of yours."

Suddenly, an array of clocks confronted the trio. Each one had a different, menacing name; 'know naught but fire', 'mortal flesh is weak', 'a display of my dark power', and 'I summon the dark abyss'. Before Rune had any time to think, Vine was muttering a rhyme under her breath, then slammed her hand on 'Mortal flesh is 

weak'.

"What were you thinking?" Rune exclaimed angrily.

"It seemed the least terrifying, so I figured it was the best choice! I'm sure 'I summon the dark abyss' would have just been a nice cakewalk!" Vine argued.

Before Rune could respond, the countless clocks sank down, and then the entire maze seemingly rose up - but then Rune realized that the ground beneath them was slowly sinking in sync with the clocks. Then the purple mist above them disappeared, and the converging black stone above dropped them into darkness. A small spurt of flame from Vine quickly battled away some of the darkness.

"Oh, did I mention? I have Fire Magica too."

Rune quickly sent up his own spurt of flame. 

"Did I mention? I have a bit of Primordial, too."

"What?" Vine took a step back. "It didn't occur to you to mention 'oh yeah, I have the most malevolent Magica in the world'?

"It's fine, okay? Rune said, attempting to match her personality. "I'm not evil."

"Fine. But you had better watch it." Vine warned.

Suddenly, a shaft of light shone down from seemingly nowhere. A cardinal flew past in the ray of light, then suddenly froze. A sudden ray of pitch black darkness suddenly shone down on the cardinal, and the red bird turned into a pile of dust.

"Is that it?" Vine wondered.

"I guess," Rune said. 

Personally, Rune found the instant disintegration of the bird somewhat alarming. Then, out of nowhere, the purple mist came back, and they were surrounded by black stone and metal bars again. Suddenly, Rune felt a sudden searing ray of pain in his chest. Then the same oily, slithering voice from the market spoke:

"Exactly what is your Magica?"

Cranberry had his face planted on the stone, moaning. Vine had a slight grimace on her face. Rune assumed they were in a similar condition.

"Why would you want to know?" Vine exclaimed. It appeared the pain was almost nothing to her.

"Merely that Xarnoth wishes it." The fell voice hissed.

"I can enchant plant stuff!" Cranberry said immediately.

"I have a bit of Primordial and Leaf!" Rune confessed.