#they became this dead wasteland because magic was being continuously sucked out of it

[princess-of-morkva]

i see merlin trending, i wanna post something.

no but seriously how did that happen. not that i'm complaining

[yoekko-novels]

To Touch The Sky - Weighing You Down - #005

Synopsis: A strange voice calls out to a weary Hubrid. The books he carried makes his body frigid and his robe weighs him down as he tracks through a barren wasteland covered in mud and dirt as he experiences something new for the first time.

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Sitting on the ground Hubrid feels hopeless. His stomach rumbles as he crosses his arms around his belly. This feeling of hunger was something he’d gotten used to long ago. However, this amount of loss was something he’d never known. Everyone and everything precious to him was gone.

He begins to nod off and hears a voice as the air becomes stiff.

“Hubrid!” A voice similar to Druchess’s shouts out to him.

“Huh?” Hubrid looks around, darting his eyes across the mass grave only to see the freshly dug holes he’d made.

“You should give up on going to Arupio!” It shouts out again.

“Who are you?” Hybrid retorts as he begins to hear masses of people talking.

“You’re being played for a fool Hubrid. Do not free that demon from her Bindings!” The voice begins to sound more distant.

“Druchess?” Hubrid shouts out as his voice echoes across the plains.

“You’ll doom this world! Turn back now to the cavern and live your life naturally!” The voice becomes deeper.

“I don’t know who you are, but I have to see them again!” Hubrid shouts out as he begins to try and run towards the voice.

“She is not the benevolent god you think her to be, Hubrid,” the voice says it nearly becomes inaudible.

“You’ll never see any of your family again. Deep down you know that so just give up on them and become your own person!”

Hubrid stops looking around and sits still on the grass.

“I’ll see you again too,” Hubrid says while looking at Druchess’s grave.

“The path you’re walking will kill many people Hubrid!”

“If the path I walk kills people, they should find their own paths and get out of my way.”

“Are you dense? Look at the graves you’ve dug. Do you want to dig a million more holes?” The voice retorts as it becomes gruff, nearly unrecognizable.

Hubrid sits in silence as his right hand glows brighter than it ever had before as he reaches into the sky. It illuminates the ground, breaking it free from the shadows of Arupio.

“What are you doing?” The voice shouts as it becomes nearly unrecognizable.

“When all seems lost, just look at the sun and smile,” Hubrid says as he stares at his hand glowing viciously as he raises it above his head. Hubrid closes his eyes and torts the sadness on his face into a smile. His face trembled as his facial muscles tried to keep it down but he continued to smile with gaiety with every ounce of will to his name.

“You will come to know true loss as you carry on with your goals Hubrid,” the voice says as the air once again resumes.

Hubrid awakens to see the graves he’d dug once again as he begins to leave. The robe he wears begins to feel heavy, he takes it off and as he does so he begins to gasp for air. The robe falls to the ground and he puts it back on in a hurry.

He catches his breath as his hands turn pale and his body cold. He lets out a breath of air and a red mist leaves his mouth.

Hybrid begins to walk back from where’d he come as the air becomes more chilly. He decided to listen to Druchess and educate himself so he could walk upon the clouds of Arupio. He read books along the way back to the cove as his emotions dwindled with each page he flipped.

He read of massacres, wars, famine, and death. He felt nothing, it was something that he’d been through before. His fingertips became frosty as he continued flipping the pages of “Erased History,” the book told stories of heroes and villains. Hubrid could no longer tell who was who though.

In one of the books, there were old stories about the early days of the world, there were tales of two kingdoms fighting. The Kingdom on the ground and the Kingdom in the heavens.

The strong users had once been their own kingdom, they reigned over all of the ground and oceans. The Strong Users prohibited the people of the clouds from coming to the ground. The people of the clouds began to starve and plotted a way to usurp the kingdom of the ground.

They thought they were siphoning the powers of Aaura by sacrificing their weak and feeding them to the strong. The stronger Magic-Users ate the aura of the weaker by stealing it from their bodies. They would stab their prey through the heart with a special straw that could suck the essence out of their bodies.

Eventually, the Strong holders could no longer face the Magic Users as their power continued to grow and their numbers dwindled. The army that’d once been large enough to settle across all the lands of the planet turned into a small number of 10,000. 10,000 soldiers wiped out the millions of people on the ground without being able to fight back. They went past the sea to the farthest edges of the earth making sure none could escape.

The last of the Strong-Holders were royalty. They’d been spared so that they could be herded up and tossed into a pin, forced to imbreed with one another and work for the rest of their lives along with their children.

Hubrid slowly began to realize who, and what he was. His people had started the fight with their selfishness, unable for his emotions to take hold, he continued to read the stories.

There was a single Strong User who was not affected by the Magic-Users but he could not fight their numbers alone. So he hid away with his family in a cave. The cave could not be sensed or detected by Magic-Users. He hid away living off of the land as he watched his people suffer from afar. He often dreamed of saving them from their torture, but he knew it wouldn’t be possible as he was.

Hubrid’s fingers become even more frigid and worn as they begin to shrivel up when he turns the next page.

On the next page were events and years along with hand-drawn photos, however, Hubrid still hadn’t known what year he was in, but he read anyways.

110 - The beginning of the war against Strong and Magic. Because of the greed of the ground, the people of the sky were forced to use questionable magic in order to gain control of the ground to feed our people. The picture shows malnourished children and adults, sitting on the ground waiting for their lives to end.

112 - Our numbers dwindled because of the sacrifices made in exchange for power. Our entire nation had dwindled down to 10,000 people, all soldiers willing to fight and die for Arupio. A picture of a legion of soldiers is shown. They all wore white robes and looked healthy, they nearly looked like they were the opposites of the people in the last picture.

113 - We Arupians won the war, the only thing to do now was to clean up the mess. A picture of dead bodies littering the ground is shown. Close-ups of their faces are shown, it looked as if they were begging for mercy as their photos were being taken.

114 - We scoured the continents in search of strong holders that’d fled. We found small tribes, unaware of the war that had taken place, living in peace. A picture is shown of Strong holders in strange garments staring at the drawer.

The years 115-190 are unreadable to Hubrid. The language was different from what Druchess had taught him, even his large vocabulary from the page of the book Druchess burnt was of no use. On top of that, it was scribbled over in a spot of black gooey ink that dribbled down the pages making it nearly useless.

Hubrid flips the pages looking for more information until his hands are too cold to move. With his hands shivering he puts his book away and continues walking on the purple grass as the sun did nothing to give warmth to him. His body wavered as he trembled with each step he took.

The wind blew voraciously but Hubrid could not feel it, the robe grew heavier, Hubrid could not feel it. Eventually, Hubrid found the cave that he and Druchess had come from and walked through the exit that Druchess had made earlier, pebbles crunched against the ground as he walked through the cavern. The wall closed itself seamlessly and Hubrid found the room he’d lived in for the past couple of months.

Hubrid sits on his bed attached to the stone wall and it crashes to the ground from the weight of the robe. He felt every sin of its past wearers, it was heavier than any hay bale or boulder he lifted on the farm. He began to lay on top of the broken stone bed as he began to rest so he could prepare himself for the next day.

The cave had usually felt damp and humid, today it was lifeless and chilly, not even the bugs that usually danced around Hubrid would appear. The grey and black rubbled that the ground was made of stared at Hubrid as he fell asleep wearily and began to dream.

“You believe the silly stories of that book?” An unknown voice speaks.

“What else can I believe in?” Hubrid responds to it with nonchalance.

“... Do you want something to believe in?” The monotone voice asks curiously.

“Like what?” Hubrid retorts.

“Revenge.” The voice states as it deepens even further than it’d previously been, nearly startling Hubrid.

“Druchess told me revenge was a bad thing, he said it would only create a perpetual war or something like that,” Hubrid says to the voice as it begins to cackle and cough.

“And… Where is that old man now?” It says as its cackle turns into full-fledged laughter.

“He’s Dead,” Hubrid says as he awakens from his slumber with a jolt and feels his body quivering. His body still frigid and his emotions halted, his dirty body spread a filthy odor throughout the cave. Despite the pain, he’d had in his bruised hands and the dirt full of bacteria filling his wounds along with small amounts of poison magic, his robe and body felt lighter than they ever had before.