• "Lewis?" I cried out in the dark.
    Silence.
    Where is he? He should be here by now.
    I looked around, trying to see through the darkness that covered around me like a thick black curtain.
    "Lewis!' I shouted this time louder. He was supposed to me here, here in the darkness that I did not know of. He was supposed to come and get me so we could go to the Doors of Hell for our mission from Lord T'Fui. He was supposed to help me.
    I walked around for a bit, feeling around in the darkness with my fingers.
    Magic was no use in here, I already tried. Everything I tried, from the Fire Spell to the Sun Spell... nothing. Absolute darkness.
    Suddenly, out of the darkness, I heard a sound.
    A hiss to be more precise.
    Hisssssss.....
    I looked around. It seemed as if the sound was everywhere, echoing off through the walls of darkness.
    "Agnius Marckal!" I shouted trying my most powerful spell that I was ever taught. A spell that could lit up an entire room and, with enough power, destroy everything in it.
    My fingers were out in front of me, as my magic was waiting to come forth. But nothing..
    One tiny spark flew from my fingers but that was all.
    That was when I started to cry.
    Hisssssss.....
    And then a small chuckle erupted in the darkness. A sound that chilled my heart to its very core. A sound that told me that someone who was out there was not a very good person because it had a hint of threat and danger in its laughter
    "LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" I screamed loudly. My heart was pounding like a drum, sweat flowing down from my head, my breaths shorter and shorter.
    "WHO ARE YOU?!" I shouted in the darkness.
    Hissssss.....
    Hissssss.....
    HISSSSS.....
    The sound was now closer, much closer. "Come my little fearful friend," a voice said piercing through the darkness like a knife in water. The voice was neither male nor female and it was unlike anything I've ever heard. It was like listening to an old man with a sore throat. But the scary part was what was also in his voice. A hint of darkness, a hint of death.
    "WHO ARE YOU?" I screamed again as tears flowed down from my eyes. I had never been as scared at this ever in my life. Not even during the time when I had the Test of Mortals, where I had to battle against a creature of the Underworld, where even the weakest creatures are powerful to advance wizards and witches.
    "I am...." he said with a hiss. "I am whom that you fear."
    "What?" I asked my voice so small I could barely hear myself.
    "You are here... because I have led you here," he continued. "I have waited a long time for this. A long time to finally defeat the Son of the Ancient Magician. To finally see his own body and soul to suffer what I have suffered."
    "Who are you?" I asked not knowing what he was talking about.
    "Oh dear, my little fearful one, you don't remember me? Don't you remember me, Markus Gradier Sfaeir?"
    The name sounded familiar. "Markus Gradier Sfaeir," I whispered. Suddenly, it clicked. Markus Gradier Sfaeir was the greatest Magician on earth and was famously known to defeat the dark Lord Mortax, the number one evil lord in the ancient years, two centuries back.
    "Wait," I said, remembering what he said. "Are you saying that I'm Markus Gradier Sfaeir?"
    "Yesssss," the voice said. "You are Markus Gradier Sfaeir, the man who defeated me two centuries back. And Ive been patiently and impatiently waiting during those two long centuries to finally have my revenge. To finally see the man who dared to confront me, the most powerful warlord to have ever lived on earth. You destroyed my dreams of a powerful empire, an empire in which other empires would cower at by just hearing the name. A magical empire, an empire so powerful it will be above all others. I am Lord Mortax! And you are Markus Gradier Sfaeir!!"
    "No... NO! You got it all wrong!" I shouted, finally realizing what he was saying.
    "I'm not Markus! I'm Kairo, son of the merchant Edward Haest and Catherine Haest!"
    "No you are not Kairo, Markus," the Lord said. "Remember when the last time we met, in that battle, the battle you are familiarly known as the Battle of the Century."
    Kairo heard about that Battle. He learned that just a couple weeks ago in the History of Ancient Magic class.
    "It was you against me. And you should remember this, during the last second of the battle, when you were about to finish me off, I warned you that I will come back when you least expect it, when you are not yourself, when you will live when you died. I used a spell to transfer me into the Underworld, to regain my pitiful amount of strength that you didn't manage to destroy with your Hakim De Sagnir."
    The spell Hakim De Sagnir is a spell that would instantly paralyze the body and diminish the energy in the body. This spell is only taught in the highest, most advance and best classes.
    "But before I managed to vanish," he continued, "I laid a spell on you. A spell that would allow you to reincarnate into a new young body of a baby until I will finish you like you have almost finished me. Now I have come to finish you. My powers are unbelievably strong for I have gained magic from the Underworld from creatures that you nor anyone else could have ever imagined."
    "No, No, NO!" I shouted. "Ghakmai Nartak!" I shouted raising my palms up to where the voice was the strongest.
    But nothing, no blue magic, as was the color of my magic, not a spark, nothing.
    "HAHAHAHAHA!" Mortax laughed, something that I heard in some of the horror movies. The evil laugh.
    I shivered even after he finished laughing and as he continued, "As you have already seen Markus, I have laid a spell on it so that no spell can escape you. I am the only one who can use magic to destroy you. You are defenseless."
    "No... Please no!!!" I shouted, my voice shaking.
    "Have your courage failed you during your reincarnations?" he shouted back. "Get up you useless piece of vermin. I cannot believe that once you were the most powerful wizard of all times! GET UP!'
    Instantly, purple magic flew from the darkness and circled itself around me. It lifted me up in the air and then that was when it started.
    The veil of magic circled around me, getting tighter and tighter until suddenly I couldn't breathe.
    "Please," I gasped, searching for air. "No..."
    "Hahaha," he said. Footsteps echoed through the darkness. He must be getting closer. "You almost destroyed me. You almost took away all my power that I had from years of effort. You took away my dream that I had ever since I was a young man. You made me suffer for two hundred years. And now it is my turn."
    Silence.
    Suddenly, a flash of purple erupted from what looked like two hands from the darkness and leaped at me.
    "AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!" I screamed as the magic went inside my body and began eating everything inside. "AAAAGGGHHH!"
    The Dark Lord waited a couple moments before he snapped his fingers and instantly the magic faded away.
    I slumped downward and if it weren't for the veil, I would have been nothing but a pile of flesh.
    "This is better than I thought. I can do exactly what you did to me two hundred years ago and I can do more. I will make you suffer unlike anythign this world has ever seen."
    "Please," I gasped. "I'm not... Mark...us."
    "No, you are Markus. For two centuries, I have been keeping my eyes on you. I kept you safe so that one day you will be perfectly healthy and fit so that I could torture you longer without you dying."
    "No..."
    "Yess," he said hissing again. "Now, I will use the Magna Dar Magnifius," he said. "Do you know what the Magna Dar Magnifius is?" he asked.
    Without waiting for an answer he answered, "It is a spell that is worst than the Thorem Ghamn that I had just previously sent to you. The one that would the inside of your body and then the outside. It is worst than that. It will make you feel as if your on fire. It will make you feel as if you are stuck in a block of ice, it will make you feel as if someone is squishing you to death, it will make you feel as if someone is stretching you beyond belief... all at the same time. This is the truest of all torture. I invented myself a coule decades ago when my powers were beginning to increase. There is no counterattack spell for this, I made sure of that."
    Suddenly a hand touched my cheek
    "Would you like to feel it?" he asked touching my cheeks. It was as if a block of ice was slapping against it.
    I shuddered, unable to answer.
    "Yes," he said answering. "Yes you will feel it."
    He grabbed my cheeks and pulled me up close to his face. In the darkness I could not see it well but I could barely see the face of the Dark Lord who has been waiting for me for two centuries. It wasn't exactly like a face. Instead of eyes, there were two dark purple holes in the pale white face. The lips were deformed and the nose was broken so it was barely hanging on.
    "Oh yes, and I just want you to know... I have finished Lewis. I met that poor little critter as he was walking up to here. I followed him, secretly, he never guessed, that young blind fool. He was making enough noise to scare even the mammoths away. He's dead."
    "No... no you didn't."
    "Oh but I did. THat stupid fool never saw it coming," he said darkly.
    There was silence for a long moment.
    My heart began to beat faster until it seemed as if it was beating faster than the beating of the wings of a hummingbird.
    He took a step back. "I will not stop, just remember that Markus. No matter what you say or do, I will not stop. Your screams of terror and horror and pain will be like musical notes for me. I will not stop. DO YOU HEAR ME MARKUS?" he screamed. "I WILL NOT STOP!"
    And then an explosion of purple magic flew from him and came straight for me like a lion leaping up to attack me. It flew at me with the speed of light and attacked me before I could even blink.
    Then that was when I felt the pain, the horror, the terror... the torture.
    (Wait for more of the story in the next story from Funkiespunke)