| Here's another odd little story, I'm pretty satisfied with this one. There's a LOT of stuff running through this. You won't catch it all the first time , I can be pretty certain of that.
The Apprentice Mage
The apprentice mage sat down.
It was impossible, he said to himself. Impossible. He looked at his surroundings. Grass seemed to stretch on limitlessly. Every here and there there would be a little hut. Far off to the distance he could see mountains that seemed never to get any nearer or further away from him. He had been walking down a dirt trodden path for hours, but it seemed as if he never got any closer or any farther away from his goal.
What was his goal any ways? He looked at the path as it kept on going...and going... and then it stopped, far out on the horizon, at a little black dot. The black dot never seemed to move any closer or any farther away from him. He knew what the black dot was, and he wasn't particularly fond of meeting it.
The apprentice mage grabbed that thought. There! Maybe that was the reason that the dot didn't get any closer - it was because he didn't want it to get any closer. He thought about it. Then he spoke aloud ,"I'm not afraid of some old stairs...". He closed his eyes and started walking towards it, but he knew it wouldn't work. He was, whether he would admit it to himself or not, a little worried about what might happen down those stairs. He opened his eyes and found that he was right.
He then had another idea. I do want to get out of this place...don't I? he asked himself, and he responded "Yes." So, he thought, I'm going to have to confront those stairs sooner or later. May as well do it sooner. He kept on walking with this new resolve and - yes, the stairs were now moving closer as he was walking closer to them. Well, so much for half of the puzzle, he thought to himself. He kept walking, but there was no one there to watch this strange looking human apprentice mage wearing a blue cloak slowly move closer and closer to the stairs.
He got to the stairs fairly quickly. He looked at them. They were huge stone stairs, grayish in color, with no guide rails. On each side, there was a huge pit. He looked around himself - the stairs looked so out of place with the rest of the peaceful grass scenery. Each step was at least two feet high. He could see the bottom from the top; it was only about ten steps away. He started to walk down. He didn't get anywhere.
He tried walking faster, but he just kept putting his foot on the step he just left. He tried jumping down the stairs, but he failed at that too - he just landed on the top step again. He took a few seconds to console his fears. Surely anything down there he could handle, right? After all, he was one of the most promising apprentice mages anyone had seen in a long time. This boosted his ego, and he walked down the stairs with no problems.
He looked around himself. There was a path that branched into two, with a door on both sides. On whim, the apprentice mage took the door on the right. He opened it, and looked straight at the dead end. Well, it must be the other door. He walked over to the other one. Dead end.
He walked back into the center of the fork. He tried to remember something his teacher had told him. He didn't have to think very hard, because the mage's voice nearly spoke in his voice "There is only one true path to your destination."
One true path...one true path... He closed his eyes, and walked straight forward, where he imagined that the true path would be. He kept on walking... and walking...and he hit something that made a dull noise ring out.
He opened his eyes. Right in front of him there was a switch. He looked around. It was another dead end. Since there was nothing else he could do, he pulled the switch. The wall in front of him slid down. He saw two switches there. He pulled the right one, and the right wall slid down. He decided to check the left one, but then the right wall slid back up. Looked like he couldn't leave the whole maze open at one time, just passageways. He decided to use one of his mage skills to get him through the maze. He said an incantation while moving his hands in a complex gesture - a spell he had learned from his master to point him where he should be going. A little arrow appeared in his mind for a few seconds and pointed him left. He also felt the lust for power that every apprentice mage will feel until they truly become a mage. How nice it would be to use his powers for personal gain! No one could stop him! But he stopped these thoughts, and walked through the left passageway.
Continuing on through the maze like this, the apprentice mage slowly made it to the exit. Occasionally while he was making his way through the dungeon, the entire thing would start to shake. He wondered why. He hoped that it wouldn't collapse.
He made it through the maze, but he started listening to that little voice inside his head. It had a good point. After all, what could happen if he conjured a few coins out of thin air? Nothing bad, right?
He looked at the huge door that he suspected was guarding the last challenge. It was intricately weaved with gold around the edges. It looked ominous.
The apprentice mage opened the door without fear.
There was a little girl standing there.
"Hey you, sir, you mage. Do you think you could give me a coin so I could go buy some food?" The mage looked at him, and then created a coin from air and gave it to him. The seed of greed in his mind grew, and the dungeon shook. The kid got older, and turned into a grown woman, who looked pretty attractive, at least to the apprentice mage.
"That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, I know why you're here. You want to know if it's wrong to use your magic for anything other then absolute good. And I'll tell you - its not. A few coins here and there, a little bread stolen from a cart never did anyone wrong, did it?"
The apprentice mage found himself being swept along by her words. Then he realized that something was wrong. He discovered with horror that this was her plan all along, and that this was how an otherwise morally correct person could slowly take the wrong path. "No!" he shouted, and aimed a bolt of fire at her.
"How dare you defy my logic!" She screamed, and then turned into a huge beast. It had eight legs like a spider, but it had a head like a lion. It threw a spell at him, and the mage barely managed to deflect it with a magic shield. He hurled a freezing bolt at her legs, but the spider dodged it easily. It then threw a freezing bolt back at him, and it got one of his feet frozen to the ground. The spider ran up for the kill, but he used a teleport spell at the last second and managed to get away. The spider looked around for him, and he used the distraction time to fire a bolt of pure light.
It was a direct hit.
The spider thing slowly withered away. It shouted "Don't forget me", and the mage knew he wouldn't forget her any time soon. Whenever he was feeling greedy, the memory would come back and he would always be able to think more clearly.
Indeed as she disappeared, his thoughts became more clear, and the seed of greed disappeared.
He then woke up.
The master looked down at his pupil. He could tell right away what had happened. "Good job." he said, "You have completed the final task." |
