7: Not a Believable Story

“Tell me your name.”

“It’s Adam.”

“Your full name.”

“Adam Pajawan Trystaff.”

The scribe dutifully noted this down while the commander continued his interrogation. Adam had been brought off the battlefield to a nearby guard tower.  He sat on a bench in a cell. The barred cell door remained locked and the commander, guards and the scribe were outside the cell. The paralysing effects of the weapon that had brought him out of the sky had, eventually, worn off, but one of his guards held on to the weapon, knowing that it was likely to be effective a second time. Adam hadn’t had much of a chance to look at it, but it appeared to be a hollow metal rod of some kind that glowed with a strange blue radiance. Whatever it was, he had dropped like a stone when it had hit him. His muscles still ached. It had been a most unpleasant experience.

“And how,” the commander continued, “did you come to be fighting against us in that battle?”

“I was being paid to.”

“So you’re a mercenary?”

“You could say so.”

“Why?”

“Clearly, someone in authority thought that my power might be useful to them.”

“Ah, yes… your…”

“They were wrong.”

There was a pause.

“Right, and…”

“Apparently.”

There was another pause.

“Yes…” the Captain said, pausing again to see whether Adam was going to say anything more. When no further interruption was forthcoming, he continued. “Let’s talk about this… er… ‘power’… of yours.”

“Magic.” said Adam, his voice dripping with boredom.

“What?”

“It’s magic.”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” said the commander, as though speaking to a five-year old. “Magic was destroyed in the Cataclysm, hundreds of years ago.”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t have any other way to describe it,” he said, inspecting the ceiling.

“Are you expecting me to believe that you can use magic?”

Adam looked down at him. Wordlessly he reached out to the green river that flowed beneath him, drew up a filament and directed it towards the cell door’s lock.

“Pow,” he said. The lock exploded into fragments. The commander and his guards ducked, and even the scribe looked taken aback. As they stared at him, Adam simply leaned back against the stone wall of his cell and put his hands behind his head. The guard carrying the glowing metal tube raised it and pointed it at him. There was a pop and a blue flash, and all of Adam’s muscles stiffened. He fell to the floor.

He was moved to a different cell and the door was locked. For good measure, a bench was pushed up against it, for all the good that would do.

Adam made no attempt to escape, and the commander did not return that day. Eventually he lay back on the bench and tried to sleep.

He was flying, using the green magic. Others were around him using the same magic while spread out below were thousands of other men and women, all grimly readying themselves for the upcoming battle. Rivers of colour ran through the army – all shades of green, red, blue, purple, with blotches of yellow and black being prepared. This was the largest and most powerful army ever raised, but they were all going to die.

Their enemy surrounded them. For every one ally there were a hundred stalking, flapping, flopping demonic forms waiting to annihilate them all. As he watched, the ghastly horde surged forward.