The Chronicles of the Magical Programmer: Chapter 1
The smell of smoke in the air. Sounds of explosions and giant thuds. The feeling of hard,glossy wood underneath my hands. The muttering of annoyance and yells of anger. I smelled something familiar -the smell of a thousand year old chalk. My parents often used them when they were making bounded fields* or rituals.
My eyes flutter open as I look around my surroundings. I see a twenty-five year old woman with blond curly hair and crystal blue eyes -my mother. Confusion crept onto me but happiness came first. “Mom!” I shouted as I ran towards her much like a soulless office worker runs towards coffee. Shock crept upon my face as my hands went straight through her body.
A jolt of fear spread through my body as I heard a loud,booming laughter. “You can’t touch them, child. We are simply viewing your memories. I’m shocked that as the Sorcerer’s Supreme’s apprentice you couldn’t detect that” I had turned back to see who had said that. In front of me was a floating head which was completely burnt black. It was mostly likely due to the flames which surrounded it.
I didn’t have to ask something like “Who are you” as I knew who he was. His code was the same and even the sense of wrongness I had. “D-Dormammu?! What do you mean by memories? I don’t remember any of this” The floating, blazing head responded in such a tone that one would expect kings or noblemen to have. A tone of superiority. “Your memories that were sealed. That I sealed” My mother had continued to write runes on the floor with sweat pouring down her face.
“Who the hell gave you permission to mess up my memories!?” I said with my face contorted into an expression of anger and hatred at having a key part of me hidden for most of my life. However, everything stopped. My mother’s sweat drops freeze in the air. A younger version of me was stuck right when he froze the door.
“I don’t think that you understand. I am Dormmamu. The Dread One, Eater of Souls, Lord of Darkness, Lord of Chaos, Lord of the Dark Dimension, Keeper of the Mindless Ones. I don’t require permission. I could’ve killed you multiple times by now. I didn’t. Pray, I don’t change my mind.” Dormammu says with a burning glare. I gulp as he lets the memory continue. He goes straight through a wall. I felt a compulsion to follow him so I walked looking back at my mom for a couple seconds.
As we go outside of the house, I hear the sounds of incantations and spells firing off. Once outside, I see men and women wearing black cloaks with lines of white and an owl. The family crest of the people who banished us. The Grimstones. My mouth twisted into a face of pure hatred as I watched them attempt to break through the bounded field.
The Grimstones. My mother told me stories of them as a way to warn me if I were to meet one alone. They were powerful mages and old ones at that. It was said that they were descended from the first mage to exist. I had asked her why we were running from them. She told me how they would often use us as machines to make spells and wouldn’t allow us to have any fun. They would steal our spells. The last part enraged me as my parents put their blood and tears into those spells. Yet to have it stolen! That pissed me off.
One of the cloaked attackers came to the bounded field and touched it. I could tell it was a man due to seeing the sigil on his arm. Females didn’t have sigils as only the heir to a branch would have them. His eyes glew as a blue outline forms around them. Magical blue circles form around him as they flip over and over.
In the man’s hand was the bounded field of the house in a miniature form. He examines it -attempting to find the weak point. He smiles and dissipates the bounded field. He then began to pump a precise amount of mana in a specific part of the bounded field causing it to fall down. All of them charged in. However, much to their surprise, some of their comrades had spontaneously combusted. Even I was confused until I looked at the house. Then I smiled.
It had multiple layers of bounded fields -each with their own effect. It would take them several hours at least to get through. “Wait. How do we see this if I’m not anywhere near here.” I asked before he was quickly answered. “I simply gathered replicas of the memories of everyone here to create a full simulation of what happened. I thought I was quite obvious about what I was doing. Only a novice mage wouldn’t know”
I ignored the not so subtle insult as I began to walk back into the house and notice that the sun was going down faster. I assumed that Dormammu must’ve sped up the time of the memory to make things quicker. Several of their men were down by now with only ten left. But there were no more bounded fields left. As much as I love them, my parents can’t handle them in an actual fight. They had way more magic and more powerful spells.
Author’s Note: A Bounded Field is a type of magic which is another application of enchantment magic. It consists of knitting a network of magical energy and spreading it on base area, such as a piece of land or a building, to create a mystic boundary line that separates the inside from the outside. By definition, it should not be possible to move them once they are set.
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