"Flight Part I (Arcane Realms Alpha)" by Jeremy Campbell

Thorn slammed the door behind him as he entered his room. The spartan quarters were cramped. Books filled the few shelves in the room and over flowed into great piles on just about every flat surface. The compact man didn’t notice, he knew where every book in the room was. To him they were part of the fixtures. He didn’t even notice the books strewn across his bed. He moved them enough to curl up comfortably and fell quickly asleep, the only cure Thorn knew for the rage that was building inside of him. Sleep was the water he needed to extinguish the fire of his rage.

Thorn sat up with a start. Something was wrong, several of his books had been moved and a couple were missing. The shock of missing books was quickly replaced by the realization that there was smoke in the air, not the smoke of a pipe or a spell gone slightly awry, the smoke of destruction. Making a mental note to find the missing books Thorn grabbed his cloak and entered the hallways of the monastic quarter.

Fire presented very little danger in the monastic quarter. Everything here was stone. All of the decorations were stone so as to require a minimum of effort to maintain. To Thorn’s horror bodies littered the hallways. Many of his friends and most respected teachers were among them. It greatly disturbed the young wizard that the center of the corridor’s was clear, as if someone had come through with a broom and swept the fallen bodies aside.

The only living people he passed were huddled in the corners. Thorn tried to speak to the people he saw to find out what was happening. No one so much as glanced his way to acknowledge his passing. He tried reaching out with his magically aided senses to make contact directly with a couple of the victims minds. That was a disaster, demons and other horrific creatures danced through the twisted streets of their memories.

Dread crept into Thorn’s heart. He rushed out of the palace expecting to see armies ravishing his beautiful city. The city was a flaming ruin, but no armies were present. Many people were panicking, fleeing randomly. Thorn tried to call order to those he saw but they ignored him. Even more disturbing were the looters. Hooligans and roughens roamed the streets taking whatever they desired with reckless abandon. Despite his small stature Thorn was an amazingly powerful man.

As a youngster he’d learned a trick of catching people and trapping them with his eyes, the clearest brown eyes in the known world. He could hold people with his eyes until he looked away. His trick wasn’t working today. Some who made eye contact quickly looked away and continued his flight, others laughed and went about their looting. Rage flared and Thorn seized the looters in wraps of air to stop the wonton destruction. Rather than struggling to get free the looters just looked at him and laughed. Confusion, something Thorn hadn’t experienced since he was a young child set in. He stumbled through the streets in a daze. No one was fleeing or looting anymore, for that Thorn was grateful, but the people he passed either looked at him with sadness in his eyes or pointed and laughed.

Stumbling along thorn lost track of his surroundings. How long he wandered he wasn’t sure but when he arrived at the steps of the palace something in him snapped and he was back to his normal self. He knew instinctively that his enemy had taken up residence in the palace and was waiting for him. Names flashed through his mind but he couldn’t place a face to the enemy, but he knew surely enough that he waited inside.