Our Accursed Arsenal

~ a short story (Dark Fantasy | 4,879 words | 15-20 min. read)

Note: “Our Accursed Arsenal” will be in my horror collection ANTHOLOGEE. Planned to release in Q1 2026. Please enjoy!

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“Max, we are going to take a trip today.”

Master Dramasz spoke with an authorial tone, spry yet stolid. He was in a good mood. Maximillion, The Windwaever dutifully followed him through the dungeon. Master’s feet and Apprentice’s sandals slapped against the damp, blood-stained stone. The latter wore pristine white robes, inlaid with resplendent aquamarines and blood-marbles, while the former garbed in shapeshifting shrouds the color of space, his pajama attire. Max always appreciated the old man’s everpresent sense of whimsy.

“I have watched you grow up, lil Maximillion,” Dramasz said. 

“And yet you persist in speaking such obscenities,” Max said. “I am taller than you!”

“Heh, still haven’t managed to cultivate that temper.”

“Is this labyrinth we slink through the quiz? Or is it this conversation?”

“No quiz, Maxy. Not today. Not really…I was just reflecting on our journey together.”

Max followed his Master around another long-winding corner. “Why’s that?” he asked.

Dramasz sighed. “Well, just as I have watched your life wax, you have witnessed mine wane.” 

Max stopped. His Master’s words echoed down the corridor. He shook his head. “You are fine. Look at you! Your aura still basks. Walk farther than me every day. Hell, I’ve still never even beaten you in a duel!”

Dramasz chuckled and continued a quaint gait forward, toward the end of the hall, where the lights shown and the runes sizzled continuously. 

The elder sorcerer leaned a hand against the wall. “I must upkeep my body with countless enchantments,” Dramasz said. 

It was a reality that Max had guessed but never heard an admission for. 

“Mana runs low, my boy,” Dramasz said.

Max said nothing. He felt his lower lip start to quiver. He clenched his face. There was still so much that he wanted to learn from Dramasz the Dragon-Throated. They’d only been together for four measly years. He needed at least a graduate degree with the old man to access Fire-Breathing and Draconic Mind.

“I don’t have that many moons left in me,” Dramasz said. He stepped through the threshold of the teleportation room. Max looked upon his sensei bathed in magenta glows borne of the ancient runes. 

“Where are we going?” Max finally managed to ask. 

Dramasz stepped into the light, reached back with his hand. 

“To our home,” Dramasz said.

Max took his Master’s hand and they wisped through Reality. 

***

Instantly, Maximillion was pissed that Master had never invited him to “their” home before.

A gothic super mansion of crenelated perfection, with towering spires and glorious stained glass, loomed before the duo of Master and Apprentice. A massive helix staircase led to two giant stone doors. The roof was shingled with thousands of solar seals and the lawns were colossal gardens of Gaea’s greatest make; bees and butterflies spiraled in vivacious flows and the long droning music of billions of cicadas shrouded in from the surrounding forestry at the edges of the estate. 

It was dusky and Max noted the starlings singing over the canopy.

Dramasz walked up the steps. His hands were clasped around his forearms behind his back, shaded within his infinite cloak. He hid a dawning smile as he watched Maximillion take in the Temple of Tyrmec for the first time. 

“What the hell! This place is incredible!!” Max said. He gasped and started to jog around the yard.

“Get back here, Max,” Dramasz called over. “You are still my student. And I am your tour guide.”

“What is this palace?”

“This is the Temple of Tyrmec,” the old sorcerer answered. “The western chapter.”

Max looked back at the runes in the center of the front lawn, where they’d stepped off from. Then he glanced at the bloody sky and the far horizons. He took a deep breath and exhaled heartily with eyes shut. “We are in California,” Max stated. 

Dramasz smiled and nodded slowly. “Well done, Maxy. Now come! Don’t you want to see inside?”

Maximillion strode past, the strands of his robe brushing against the steps two at a time.

“I know better than to tell you to wait up,” Dramasz drolled. 

Max reached the top step and halted his sandals promptly. He stared at the stone doors. 

“And I know better than to try a sorcerer’s door unprepared,” Max said.

“Then I have taught you well.” Dramasz waved his hand and spoke an unintelligible wyrd.

The two doors breached inward. “What was that wyrd?” Max asked. 

“You will know soon enough.” The Master walked in and the Apprentice followed.

***

As was tradition with any sorcererly dealing, the interiors of the place were even more magnificent than the exterior. 

The Temple of Tyrmec was structured like an old Greek temple in one wing, with that space dominated by ever-standing pillars overgrown with vines and streams of sunlight bathing strange glass. The other wing was not unlike a labyrinth, only instead of walls of grass or stone there were endless shelves of books. 

“A librayrinth!” Maximillion exclaimed. 

The Apprentice started to run toward the books but breached the central showroom on the way. 

“Not so fast, Maxy, or you shall miss the Western Hemisphere’s most revered museum,” the Master said. “Secreted away from every prying eye, save for our own.” Dramasz grinned as Max saw the titanic coliseum of bones. 

The pair now stood before a veritable army of fully intact dinosaur skeletons, some herded and others towering meters toward an arched ceiling. The displays were held together with steel bars inlaid within the old blackened bones, arranged to face the viewer to the south. They strode together in herds on the outskirts while predators hunted in the interior. Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus chased Triceratops and Stegosaurus; packs of Deinonychus latched onto Ankylosaurus while Pachycephalosaurus charged in from the underbrush, dueling against hordes of Velociraptor. Pterosaurs glided across the ceiling from invisible everwires. Altogether, the displays depicted an impossible coalescence of Triassic x Jurassic x Cretaceous coexistence, with artful actioneering of the bodies to depict grandiose dramas. 

Maximillion, a classically trained “dinosaur kid” of epic proportions, was nearly in tears. He fell to his knees before the Allosaurus, his absolute favorite. 

Dramasz had recently moved Al near the start of the exhibit for this express purpose. 

“Why Allosaurus?” Dramasz asked. The old Master himself favored the true virtuoso of the dinosaur kingdom, the Quetzalcoatlus. She was the largest flying creature planet Earth had ever harbored. The Master asked his Apprentice, “Why not champion Gigantosaurus or Ultrasaurus?” He turned his cheek to the fearsome countenance of the king in the center of the grand showroom. “Or even the humble Tyrannosaurus Rex.”  

Max formed his fingers into the mudra Vam, right palm resting on top of left. He bowed to the Allosaurus and turned back to his Master. He had no need to cook up any linguistic missive for his answer beyond the stone cold truth of his soul. 

“Allosaurus was a trooper,” Max said, “a carnosaur that feasted atop the food chain, but without the size advantage of his closest competitors. Allosaurus was a master of situations, a super predator that could hunt solo or in a pack. The Allosaurus knew every exit, he understood the tides and the weather, for he had to overcome the booming earth of Ultrasaurus and outfox Gigantosaurus for his every meal. Al rivaled Rex in competence and fearsomeness. Allosaurus is not unlike the sorcerer in these ways; he must be an unrelenting jack-of-all-trades.” 

Dramasz chuckled. “Your commitment to the Allosaurus is as charming as your paleontology is appalling. You don’t know shit about Allosaurus.” 

Maximillion stifled his chuckle and strained an inquisitive eye. “Can we bring one back?”

Dramasz instantly shook his head and kept moving. “Dino necromancy was long ago proved impossible. Unfortunately, their anima has fled the planet. Harvesting hydrocarbons is the extent of the necromancy we can command over the dinosaur soul.” 

Max made a sickly face and kept on with his exploration of the Tyrmec dinosaur museum.

The older sorcerer walked through the gargantuan bonescapes, snaking his steps around the displays to the back of the room. There, a vast wall of windows awaited, revealing the setting sun cast over the Pacific. A variety of transparent doors rowed from end to end, open against the wind. Beyond the glass lay the cliffside courtyard, manned by lush caryatids and laserlike cypress trees. Max eventually followed, ogling the dino lords and ladies as he did. 

***

Outside, in the backyard, the drone of the ocean murmured over the cliff. The crashing of waves provided a drumbeat to the wandering strider. Statues of half-naked women continuously poured out crystalline water into basins; a miniature irrigation system flowed the water to the cypress trees lining the stonelawns and their intertangling gardens of violets and roses and grapevines and olive branches. 

Dramasz stared out over the horizon, where the sun set. Evening had come so soon. 

Maximillion walked up to stand next to him, though he glanced leftward to another structure. 

“What is in there?” the Apprentice asked, brow raised. His eyes studied a concrete pantheon, cordoned off by rose bushes at the back of the lawn. Seven pillars shaded the entrance and the ceiling was domed while the walls were squared and overgrown with ever-winding wisterias.

“You have the eye,” the Master muttered. “You always have.” 

Dramasz turned to face Maximillion; his face was still that of a baby’s. The man was only twenty-one years old, his youngest Apprentice by a decade. Though his talent was as supermassive as that of even Theo’s. His commitment to the Art was as thorough as that of Bella’s, and his recall rivaled Astrid. Max had the body of a stallion too, which meant that his martial capacity was superior to practically every one of his predecessors. Truth be told, the young man was perfect. Dramasz winced and clutched his chest. He took a deep breath. 

Maximillion studied his teacher’s maw. The old man had a grey-white beard and some missing teeth, but still leered with the eyes of a hawk. His roil of wrinkles was lessened by his ever-stretching grin, only summoned when earned. That’s something that Max loved about the old man. He always treated you just as you deserved. From moment to moment, or day to day, he operated on good instinct. He was a great teacher, but he was an even better reactor to the expressions his lessons produced. Max could always count on Dramasz to reward him when he unleashed a perfect spell, with wyrds and deeds. Max had used that mystic feedback loop to its utmost, and his knowledge and power had grown uproariously as a result. And yet, even when you lagged underneath your station, Dramasz knew and he extended his own spirit to lift you back up to where you belonged. Dramasz the Dragon-Throated was a True Master. And he was Maximillion’s truer father, his own old man little more than a forgotten drunkard. Max was over the moon at his Master showing off the temple to him. But more than a little concern bloomed at the glint in the old man’s eye; Max had never seen anything like that before. 

Max turned back to the window wall with eyes laced for wanderlust. “What about the books?”

Dramasz smirked and stared at the red sun now breaching the ocean. 

“There will be time enough for the books, my boy.” 

The Apprentice took a deep breath. “Why did you bring me here today?”

Master spoke, “There is still something you have yet to understand about being a sorcerer.”

Maximillion knew better than to respond immediately. Dramasz walked towards the pantheon. Max followed him but watched the ocean. He listened to his Master’s word with a sublime mix of trepidation and ecstasy, his blood up like in the other times before, when he was soon to learn a new Sacrament. 

“You have been baptized in blood,” Dramasz said, “received the Eucharist, confirmed by our Counsel of Seven, paid your penance, thrice over.” The old man winced. “You have anointed shadows and…truth be told, I have seen you eyeing Kagney at the Masquerade.” Dramasz turned back a cheek to sight Max’s subtle blush. “If you want her so bad, you should take her.”

“Matrimony can wait a bit,” Max said. “I am still quite young…and free, old man.”

“Who said Matrimony?” Master smiled. He turned back and approached the steps of the pantheon. 

“What is this dirty ole shed for anyway?” Max jested, looking the ominous pillars up and down.

The Master stepped into the shade, picking a nearby rose from the greenery as he did. 

“This is where you are to receive your Holy Orders, my bashful Apprentice.” 

Maximillion’s next breath stalled and he followed after eagerly. 

***

Inside of the pantheon there were rows of statues in dim light. They stretched the length of the cathedral as a quiet congregation. Each was unique, Max could see already. Some were carrying items. Staves, swords, spears. Others were missing limbs or had holes right through the middle of them. Dramasz walked in and immediately fell to his knees to bow. So Max did the same. 

“Remove your shoes and doff your robes,” Dramasz commanded in a whisper. 

Maximillion did so, hanging them onto the bench at the entrance. He consciously breathed quieter. Dramasz lit the candles along the walls to dispel the creeping darkness. Outside, the sun had officially set. The scent of lavender wafted through, dust couched in between his toes. Max let his eyes fall to the far walls, past the thousand silhouettes. There were golden geometries etched into the edges of the structure, with silverine wyrds spanning them.

“You are amongst a congregation of spirit ancestors now,” Master explained. 

Apprentice honed into the sights of the “statues” more closely now. Max started to recognize symbologies and countenances, referenced inside his photographic mind from grimoires and busts he’d seen in the past. These were statues of past sorcerers. Very well made. No, not statues…

Each of the figures was part metallic and part flesh. Dried, petrified, spellcast into some kind of ever-decaying stasis, these gold and silver and stone statues were once men. Human bodies melted into place. Half-broken men restored by statuette materials and crafted well. Some were decapitated and so busted by bronze or marble into their best face; others carried holes shot through the middle of them, with missing bones and organs. Their limbs were typically alternating, with one made of naked flesh and the other frozen into the shape of prostheses made of everything from steel to stone. The one on the end had no head, while the man to his right wielded a shiny gut made of complex glassware. 

“Maximillion The Windwaever,” Dramasz spoke, “meet the Lineage.”

The Master walked up to the last in line, the headless one at the far right end. There was one more empty block before the regiment started a new row at the other end. The Apprentice stepped up behind him.

“Greetings, Ito The Mnemobite,” Max said, with a bow. He eyed Dramasz for his reaction.

“You recognize my master, even faceless, with a single look,” Dramasz said. “Impressive.”

Apprentice smirked and Master walked behind them to a small alcove, its assemblage candles already lit aflame. 

“Master, your arsenal!” Maximillion exclaimed, sighting his Master’s most prized sorcerer weapons. “You should never leave your…livelihood…so unprotected.” The Apprentice lowered his voice back to a whisper, then silence, when he noticed the care and the presentation that the artifacts had within the alcove. Each of the seven items was placed delicately in the center of a folded quilt of sacred geometrical make and composed of each color of the rainbow. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. 

“What are you doing?” Max asked, breathless. His mind raced while his soul stayed there watching his sensei’s hands tremble over his greatest possessions. 

Dramasz approached his artifacts with grace and silence. He reached for the skull first. 

“The Skull of Saint Icarus,” Dramasz said. “This was Ito’s pride and joy. My Master enjoyed telepathic supremacy against every wizard he ever dueled because of this pale helm.” 

“Icarus will send your thoughts flying,” Max mouthed, the tagline from one of sensei’s Classicks.

Dramasz walked over to place the skull atop the statue of Ito, The Mnemobite. 

Max’s breathing drew away in ponderance.

As Dramasz went back to the alcove, he wagged his finger. “Little known fact is that the skull also sometimes lets you see into…other places, further zones.” 

The Master grasped a small chipped coin next, it had the smiling face of a lich wearing an English wig on one surface and a sphere of Many-Worlds on the other. Dramasz eyed the coin with a smirk and flagging breath. 

“The Bronzing Coin,” Dramasz said. He placed it into an indention in the forehead of Ito’s skull.

“Master, what are you doing?” Max asked, knowing it was foolish. 

Dramasz spoke in his scholarly tone, “The Coin uses Laplace’s Codes to lock in the everpresent tertiary prize: third place. The bronze medal. In any given competition or contest. Best for reverse-pocketing into the belongings of tourney foes.” Dramasz flipped the coin. “Such luck is not all-encompassing, but still one more curse to exorcise.”

“Master…why are you showing me this?”

“You should know,” Dramasz went on, “I rigged the Olympics with that Coin. Twice.”

Max glared at him. 

“How do you think we can afford the mortgage on this place!” Dramasz said. 

The Master cackled.

Apprentice took a deep breath and started to study the other statues further down the line. He could recall at least twenty back. Maybe further if he could still so easily access his Seventh Grade memorizations of the whole bloody lot of them, two thousand and twenty-four in total.

Next to Ito, “The Mnemobite,” Psycho-Librarian and telepathic predator, there was Namo The Spellhearted, Isaac The Tsunamian, Elare The Blood Countess, Morpheus The Dreamweaver…

“My trusty Rosary to Helios,” Dramasz said, draping the prayer necklace around the neck of Ito.

Max took a deep breath and spoke suddenly in the tone of the student again. 

“The Helios Rosary enhances every spell cast under the sun,” he said.

“Makes you more persuasive too,” Dramasz added. He smiled, eyed his apprentice for a moment, then walked back to the alcove and the next artifact. A small crimson cube sat upon an emerald quilt. “Ah, the Heartbeatbox,” the Master sighed. “A most useful device.”

Dramasz the Dragon-Throated dropped the red box onto the stone at Max’s feet. The Master dropped into a dance to the music that spilled out of it. The Apprentice started to dance too, slow then faster. Dramasz sang along like a demigod, deep and then long, into notes that mesmerized and lyrics that empowered.

The song was original every time. The music that the Heartbeatbox produced was born of the Void, and was so inviolate in terms of creative juice. This was an artifact for the young at heart, for the jolly and the one liable to use sorcery for recreation as much as combat. Maximillion could tell that this was Master’s favorite artifact. Max danced like he did at Dramasz’ seventh and final wedding, as hard as he ever had before. After the song was concluded, Dramasz reached down to pick up the Heartbeatbox with tears in his eyes. He walked over to place it in the hole inside Ito’s chest. 

“Any secret powers to that thing?” Max asked, out of breath from his kicking and jumping. 

Dramasz smiled and stared hard at the heart of his master. “That box gifted me rhythm. And probably a few years’ worth of joy.” 

He walked back over to the alcove. Off the yellow quilt, the Master picked up a shriveled arm cut at the center crest of the fore, with a milky white eye laying in the dead center of its palm. 

“The Hand of Heaven,” Dramasz said. The old sorcerer put the hand “on,” merging its decayed skin and stifled spirit with his own arm’s pulsing flesh. He flexed his right palm and grit his teeth. “Such a device allows you to grasp flesh like water and armor like paper. The soul becomes mercury, able to be doled and evacuated quickly.”

Dramasz leveled a cold glare upon Max. It was the face of his Shadow, the Apprentice understood.

“The Hand of Heaven delivers swiftly to its namesake,” Dramasz said. “Instantly and irrevocably.”

The Master removed and reattached the arm to the right of Ito. “The eye inside the palm could see souls like grass. Or weeds, just awaiting the picking.” 

Dramasz grabbed a pendant next. Maximillion noted for the first time how the necklace’s structure resembled the human sacrum bone, the bridge to the coccyx, or tailbone. Atop the pendant was a large emerald green beetle.

“The Sacral Coleoptera,” Dramasz said, “a pendant that gifts good health.”

Max chuckled and shook his head with arms crossed. “You are being modest. That thing holds one of the strongest defensive boons ever beheld in the history of sorcery. The beetle is king! That thing’s auto-shielding effect is the reason I could never score enough on you in our duels.”

Dramasz laughed aloud. “You lost because you could never understood the single most important rule of dueling.” 

“Fly to your peaks, but always seek another,” Max stated.

“No, that is the mantra of sorcery. Western sorcery.” 

“Knowledge is power but wisdom is grace?”

“I do not speak of the Eastern mantra either!” 

“I don’t know the mantra for dueling,” Max yelled. “Because there isn’t one!”

“False!” Dramasz returned, with left finger up. “I just never told you.”

He flourished his arm dramatically, to display the beetle pendant.

“Duels are only about one thing,” the Master said.

“Yeah and what’s that?” the Apprentice returned. 

“Getting buckets.”

“Buckets?”

Dramasz sighed. “It is a basketball term.”

“Basketball? I don’t watch sports!”

Dramasz pointed at him. “That’s why you lose. Never enough of a bucket-getting instinct. You need to score, my boy. Always. No matter what.” The Master turned to face the green beetle pendant. “This device does its best to prevent that. And every sorc worth his salt knows that defense wins championships.”

The Apprentice rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well you never knocked me out either,” Max said, arms crossed again. He turned to the silent silhouettes and stewed about it. He’d never won once; Dramasz had TKO’ed him thirty-three times in as many matches.

Dramasz wrapped the pendant around his left forearm once more and put his dukes up. 

“Maybe we go for one more round.”

“Really?” Maximillion jolted forward, fingers tensed for coming signs and mudras. 

Dramasz turned and gracefully removed the pendant and waved his hand nonchalantly. “No way, I am too old for that.” 

“You deceive, Master. I see your strength clear as day.” Max stood back and nevertheless flexed his body into a power stance, left leg forward and right fist couched by his side. He lowered himself into Lion Stance. 

Dramasz placed the beetle chain onto Ito’s left arm. He cocked his head at the sight of Max’s fists up and walked over to grab the last artifact. It rested on a blood-red quilt and housed what Maximillion believed to be his Master’s greatest weapon of all. The golden Vajra, a five-pronged ritual “dagger,” double-faced and hollow-orbed at its ends with curving spirals inlaid with diamonds that hummed when it struck. Max was practically salivating at the coming revelation of its secret power. Dramasz spun it expertly over his fingers, eyeing the esoteric ‘thunderbolt’ of a weapon. A small smile summoned on his lips but the old man said nothing. 

“So what about it?” Max asked, impatient. “What does your dagger do?”

“It’s not a dagger,” Dramasz said. “It’s a-”

“A Vajra,” Max said. “Yeah, I know. But what power does it hold?”

Dramasz was taken aback. “Oh, this thing? It’s just a Vajra. A sacred object, used in Buddhist and Hindu rituals. Nothing but bronze and gold and diamonds, shaped beautifully.”

“Huh…really?”

“Yeah, I used it throughout my career, in rituals and in combat too. But ultimately, it was for style. I just needed something to stab or clobber with, once I peeled past a foe’s defenses.”

“So it is a dagger-hammer,” Max drolled. “Just a dagger-hammer. Fascinating.” He glanced at the alcove, emptied of the artifacts. He squinted and stared through the stone rows of sorcerers long past. Max’s mind still reeled at the prospect that his Vajra was entirely unenchanted. Dramasz never ceased to amaze him. He wondered vigorously: 

What is Master doing here, with me, today?

Dramasz went nonverbal, studying the Vajra, then juggling it between his palms.

“Let me see…” Maximillion said. “I think I put it together.”

Dramasz stood silent, twirling his weapon.

“All these sorcerers had their corpses turned into magic artifacts.”

The Master chuckled. 

Try again.

Maximillion glanced at Ito’s skeletal face and the ruptures of his flesh. 

“All magic artifacts…are made of sorcerer,” Maximillion said.

Master cocked his head.

“Borne of sorcerer, rather,” the Apprentice clarified. “Living sorcerer…and it is the Apprentice who chooses their final craft,” Max finished, his words barely more than a whisper.

“Alakazam!” Dramasz said. The old man twirled and caught the Vajra again with force and shadow-stepped to face him. 

The Master and Apprentice stood close there in the shade of the alcove. Dramasz spoke.

“I am the last artifact. Me. This body, my soul. My mind, my brain. Alongside some of Ito’s knowledge and bones and organs, I am the final piece of the puzzle that was Dramasz the Dragon-Throated. Sorcerer, Magi, Master. I cannot choose the fate of my own form’s conveyance into the next generation. And now…you are going to remake me in your chosen image, wielding a vision for how to maximize your sorcery with deathly curses borne of my body and soul.”

The Apprentice shook his head. He fell back a step. “No. You still have…”

“So much time?” The Master questioned. “Still so much to teach you.”

“Why do this…now?” Max said. “Just wait.”

“For what? For some assassin to slit my throat, or one of you young pups to get the jump on me.”

“You are safe in the Dreadfort!”

“Precisely my problem. Retirement has become boring.”

“You are my teacher!”

“Remember that I used to be one of the Magi.” 

“I want you to show me that path,” Max pleaded.

“Much more interesting times a few decades ago…everything is stale now. Time to go, I say.”

“Master, please…”

“Oh please you! You are my Apprentice and you are prodigiously talented enough to become one of the youngest Masters our order has ever seen. It is my privilege to levy this sublime responsibility upon you. Take it.”

“I refuse!” Max nearly had tears in his eyes now.

Dramasz the Dragon-Throated frowned. “Oh, but you have no choice in the matter, Maxy.”

Max squinted as Dramasz raised the Vajra up with his right hand. The Master spoke in lofty tone,

“You will carry me into my afterscape and unto your Mastery, or I shall kill you.” 

Dramasz threw the ritual “dagger” high into the air between them. Max peered at the arching roof of the pantheon, now aglow with interwoven moonlight. He saw constellations of murals depicting such past duels. Masters and Apprentices, one gilded Vajra betwixt them. Rivers of blood ran along the marble; bodies were shredded by summoned daemons or expertly crafted crush and sever magicks. This place was an arena as much as a tomb.

“There are as many Masters as Apprentices,” Dramasz spoke, in a tone of ritual, reviewing the rows and rows of sorcerer bodies and the artifacts of their flesh. 

“Every given graduation is a coin flip.” 

Max watched the Vajra rotate to its peak, bracing his bare feet to leap for its descent. 

“Sometimes the aging Master is put to rest, a final flash before Valhull.” 

Dramasz launched himself from the stone first; he clutched his Vajra and descended in a tumble wearing a madcap grin.

“And other times the younger Apprentice is simply harvested unto Hades.”

Maximillion steadied his form and put his palms together in a heart offering. The Apprentice bowed and rolled underneath the Master’s next leaping strike. The Vajra thundered the stone behind them. They turned to face one another. 

“I am thankful, Master,” Max said, at last.

“You are welcome, Apprentice,” Dramasz returned.

Max stood up against the alcove, eyed the quilts and the tooling bodies of Ito, Namo, Isaac. His mind raced cold, crystallizing sudden and shocking strategies. 

Dramasz licked his lips and rotated the dagger around aged yet lithely fingers, staring at his student and foe. His body flowed hot, aged bones eager to rattle and heart go nine rounds.

“Finally a fair fight, each of us naked, with only our bodies and our spells,” Max said, with a small chuckle. 

Dramasz put out his arms and started to walk forward.

“Defeat me today, or never be victorious again,” the Master said. 

The Apprentice sighed. “You were always a dramatist.”

“This is simple math.”

Maximillion set his Dragon Stance. “There is nothing simple about this.”

Dramasz cackled, his voice rising as his body rushed forth, 

“Welcome to the true way of sorcery, my boy.” ~