Black Magic - Prologue
Prologue: Premonitions
I dreampt of a distant, peaceful place atop a green and grassy hill. Amidst a field of gardenias and violets, perhaps a splash of marigolds too, there stood a large cherry tree in full bloom, proudly towering in the center. Resting in the shadow of the tree, enjoying the cool summer breeze, was a mysterious figure who's name I did not, and still to this day, do not know. Sitting attentively at the stranger's side was a wolf, oddly familiar to me and yet still so unknown at the same time, almost as though I'd seen the noble creature once before. As I approached the comfortably shadowed figure, a young boy with glimmering silver hair, he began to sing. His song had a sad and painful sound to it, though he sang it in a language that I could not understand. When the boy finally took notice of me, he smiled, stood up, and casually spoke my name. The wolf followed suit and padded over to me, presenting itself and sniffing at my outstretched hand.
"Welcome, my friend, I have been waiting for you." He would say with a kind, innocent smile. I'd seen that same smile somewhere before, warm and comforting, but I couldn't place the memory. "I need for you to lend me some of your strength and courage as it seems that I now lack enough of either to undo what I have already done."
"What?" I questioned, stunned and confused.
"I have committed a most heinous crime." The boy explained in reply, his voice growing weaker with time; his hand dropping to absently scratch at the canine's ears. "I, in my great arrogance, tried to reverse the sands of time and selfishly bring the dead back to life. My sin is far too grievous and great to bare alone, so please, will you help me destroy the monster that my crimes have given birth to?"
"Revive the dead?" I muttered to myself, scratching my forehead in confusion. "Why try something as impossible as that? It could only ever end badly..."
"Indeed." Retorted the boy; a solemn, lonely tear rolling down his cheek. "The greed caused by my solitude drove my desires and blinded me from the truth."
As I tried to comprehend all of the things that had just happened, few as they were, the surroundings suddenly became less inviting. I turned my head to see a rotten, worm-eaten tree standing before me and a field of dried flowers quickly withering into dust. The sky grew black and thunder roared from all directions. The ground beneath my feet became hard and infertile, unable to bare the burden of green life. I looked to the boy for some kind of explanation, but found that I was standing alone in this dead, tainted place. When I walked towards the tree, my gaze fell upon the cold, gray skin of a long abandoned corpse sitting beneath the brittle branches. It was the boy, obviously, still waiting for me to assist him in his mission of redemption. Did I hesitate for too long to answer his plea? How long had he been calling out to me for help? What would have happened had I agreed to assist him? The confusion mounted and mounted in my head until it was all I could do to remain standing and keep myself from toppling over like a timbering redwood. I staggered a few spaces and then fell to my knees as a furry face brushed up against my hand. Looking down, it was the wolf; thinner from malnourishment, shaggier from years of neglect, covered in an enormous array of scratches and cuts, and quite possibly near death. However, it wasn't the lupine's general appearance that caught my attention, but rather his abnormal appearance instead. A pair of curling ram's horns extended from the feral beast's temples and branched out like antlers at the tips, stretching and spiraling and splitting like lightning.
"Are you happy with such failure?" Questioned the wolf morosely.
Awestruck, I stammer, "But I... I didn't... No, I didn't do anything..."
To which the wolf retorts, "Precisely. You did nothing."
And with those words said, the wolf closed its eyes, swayed unsteadily from side to side, then fell hard into the rough and dusty ground. A second passed and, as though by magic, all that lay before my feet and quaking knees were the dried, broken bones of a deceased beast; the canine's flesh no longer present to assist me in questioning myself as a man. Though no physical presence remained, the spoken words lingered and consumed me like a fire, burning my skin and marring my perception. It is here, in this moment of confusion and regret where I question all of the decisions that I made and failed to make, that I wake up. I rub the dust from my eyes, wondering if all of it is in fact mine and not some of the horrid, arid soil that I'd left those corpses sprawled across, and try hard to recall everything that I'd just experienced. Mulling over every broken thought in my brain, I somehow fail to remember even the slightest detail in the end. I've no doubt that I will forget it all again in the few short seconds to come; the emptiness will take hold, as it always does, and with it will spawn the feelings of self-loathing and hatred fueled by my own inability to understand myself. It feels as though I were just told a fortune, as if I had witnessed a brief glimpse into the future. Was this dream just a dream, or was it a premonition of things to come?
And if it was indeed a brief glimpse into the future, was it absolutely certain or written in pencil with an eraser in mind? As the milliseconds tick by, the answers grow decidedly more vague. I wish I knew even a single one.