Darkness Within
The world creaked and groaned as a tremendous boom rocked the earth and created shockwaves.
Mountains in the distance crumbled into fine dust.
As the dust that rose in the process settled, a boy could be seen lying in a crater.
He opened his mouth and coughed up blood as he slowly stood up and observed his surroundings.
He could see the panic on peoples faces, he could see them screaming yet all he could hear was a high pitched ringing.
He stared at the barrier that separated him from them in confusion.
"What's happening?" He asked aloud, at least he thought he did, he couldn't hear himself.
The people began moving erratically, pointing towards different directions.
'Dog-no, dodge. Why are they telling me to dodge?' He pondered but jumped away.
As soon as he moved away, a figure appeared and punched where his head was.
The simple motion of swinging its fist generated wind currents that threw the boy away.
He stumbled but managed to get his footing before skidding to a stop.
The figure in question had a humanoid physique with a body that was covered in grey wisps of energy that appeared alive.
'What the hell?' The boy wondered as the figure blurred and vanished.
It appeared in front of him and threw a punch to his stomach that connected and sent him hitting the other end of the barrier.
'How exactly did I end up here?' He wondered as he saw the figure lean forward.
'Ah. How could I forget? It was only six months ago that I found that crystal.' He remembered as the figure lunged at him with frightening speed.
******
6 months ago——>
A boy with pitch black hair and hazel brown eyes sat cross-legged on the bare ground in a forest, his clothes barely above being called rags due to their dirty and torn state, his body covered in dirt and blood.
His closed eyes flickered as he mumbled in a language that was only to his hearing, his hands forming signs.
Wisps of darkness gathered about half a meter in front of the boy, it slowly condensed until it formed an uneven sphere the size of a ping-pong ball.
"Dark Shot!", the sphere shot off following the cry from the boy, the sphere flew uninterrupted to pierce through the trunk of two trees before dissipating, and left in the holes created by the attack was wisps of darkness that corroded and enlarged the hole by a few millimeters before stopping.
"Still too weak." the boy, Logan, cursed himself, after observing the damage caused by his attack before standing up.
His body shifted slightly as a wave of dizziness hit him, his already white skin looking pale.
"Only one E rank spell is enough to put me in a state like this, perhaps being an E rank mage is beyond me." he sighed before approaching a bag made of wool a few meters away from him.
"On the bright side, dinner is available." he smiled looking into the bag that contained the dead bloodied body of a rabbit.
Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he headed towards the peripheral region of the forest.
Getting close to his destination, he could already hear the rushing, and distant thunderous roar he had gotten used to over three years.
His destination slowly revealed itself to his vision, a beautiful running river that led to an odd waterfall deeper in the forest.
He approached the river and despite the azure light of the sky behind him, could see his reflection quite clearly, the black hair he had inherited from his father and the brown eyes from his mother.
He smiled wistfully as the memories of the time they had spent together flooded his head but when the memory of how they died surfaced, a scowl twisted his gleeful expression.
Logan's parents had died from a magical disease that had been cooked up by a guild of mad alchemists.
His dad had always traveled around due to his status as a rogue mage- a mage not belonging to a guild.
Somewhere or somehow, he had caught the enigma known as the Mirror Plague.
This disease was insidious in its effect- it changed the elemental affinity of a mage to its counterpart.
Light became darkness, Earth became wind and in the case of his father, water became fire.
After the inversion, the conflicting elemental energies within the mage either led to a massive detonation or a loss of magic.
His mom, Lily Kress, had just handed him his first spell and was telling him about the magical world when his dad entered the house.
His mom noticed the signs of the infection, red streaks that denoted an affinity for fire littered his dad's hair instead of the usual blue.
His mother drained herself by casting a powerful spell to save him from the ensuing explosion but in the process doomed herself.
"Yellow streaks for wind, Blue for water, red for fire, brown for earth, silver for light, and black for darkness. My yellow streaks show my affinity for wind magic." Logan muttered word for word the last words his mother had said before the incident.
The words that marked the end of a semblance of a normal life for him.
Luckily for Logan, his parents had kept a small cottage in the safe part of the forest for their retirement.
His mom had used her spell to send him there because not only was it safe, it had three other spells waiting for him.
Dark Shot(E-rank)~ Creates a sphere of pure darkness with corrosive properties. It was also the spell that Lily gave him.
Draining Touch(F-rank)~ Feast! Feast!! Feast!!!. Let us feed on the world and let it decay at our touch. The spell created a membrane that allowed the caster to drain vitality and strength from the victim.
Dark Shield(F-rank)~Creates a shield out of darkness.
Death Arrows(F-rank)~Creates arrows out of darkness.
Logan clenched his fists as anger filled him.
"I swear that I'll hunt down those responsible for this plague." He said through clenched teeth.
He shook his head vehemently to shake off his emotions when he caught sight of a mass of flames flying overhead.
He watched it crash into the distance with a boom.
He immediately left the river and ran to the location.
He avoided branches and jumped over roots to save time but was forced to slow down at the sight of ash falling from the sky like snow.
He walked further until he saw a crater in the ground with smoke and ash billowing from it.
The trees, bushes, shrubs, and wildlife that were unfortunate to be in the mix died in an instant.
Logan approached the crater with caution and slid down the sloped entrance.
In the center of the crater and floating a meter in the air was a multicolored octahedral crystal that gave a faint glow.
Despite the odd situation, Logan felt a strong urge to touch the crystal, and without thinking or hesitation, he did.
Upon contact, a dense black substance left his body and was absorbed by the crystal.
Logan watched in horror as the crystal turned white before he passed out.