The Journey of Magic

Chapter One
The Students of Sun and Death

The midnight moonlight shone through the windows of the Golden Oaks library, casting its milky brilliance throughout the building. In the foyer sat a lone occupant reading through an old history book. He sat on a comfortable couch, as he played with the settings on his high-tech sunglasses. He pressed one of the little silver buttons on the left earpiece and instantly the dark room light up as his lenses went from black in color to a bright green.

"Night vision, how awesome." D said to himself as he picked up one of the hundreds of history books that piled up into a mountain of texts near him. “Now, let’s see where we’re starting at shall we?” he whispered happily as he began his research, ecstatic that he can finally start his journey in becoming human and stopping his former friend from destroying the world.

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Seven Hours And Half a History Section Later
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Little D’s eyes hurt from reading hundreds of books in all small print consecutively for seven straight hours, the night vision wasn’t exactly helping either. “Why books?” he asked angrily. “Why do you hurt me so? I know about all of this crap, just tell me what I need to know!” he tossed the book he had just finished over his shoulder into the growing mountain of read books behind him. He snapped his fingers and a cup of hot tea appeared in front of him instantly. He grabbed the cup and took a long sip from it, letting the hot beverage calm his nerves. “Look at that.” he said with a smile. “It hasn’t even not been eight hours since I could drink again and I already love tea.” his smile quickly faded however as he glared at the pile of books he still had to go through. “Asshole books.” he grumbled as he picked up another text and opened it up. “Why can’t I find a book titled: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About What You Forgot When You Got Turned Into An Immortal, a reference guide or something? Instead I have to read through all this opinionated and boring crap. There’s no way half this stuff is one-hundred percent accurate.” he flipped through a few more pages and his frown deepened. “Like this right here: ‘The great hawk-men warriors....’ bull crap! There’s nothing great about them, I can list five groups of warriors that were ten times better than these chumps.” he stopped and tilted his head like he was listening for something. “Now wait a minute, I think I might be onto something here.” he got up from his seat and began pacing. “What did I just say?” he asked himself seriously. “Better fighters? Is that what I need to research? Superior warriors?” he thought for a second. “I think I ran across some war specific books a while ago, so.....” he waved his hand at the pile of books he already read through, as well as the stack he hadn’t reached yet and spell searched for anything relevant to what he needed. “, that leaves us with about twenty books, that’s a whole lot better than a whole pile.” he sorted through the books and smiled. "Alright time to get star-” just then everything went a blinding and painful bright white. Little D yelled out in pain and shock as he threw his glasses off and his hands immediately went to his eyes and started rubbing them.

“Little D, are you alright?” Twilight asked confusedly from the stairs. She watch him roll around on the floor as he clutched his eyes.

“Yeah I’m fine.” he grumbled. “I almost got blinded by the night vision is all.” he stood up and blinked several times and groaned. He made his way over to where his glasses fell and made sure not to look directly at Twilight, for common courtesy reasons, for she was still in her night robe, but he also didn’t want to look at her with his cursed eyes. “Did you sleep well last night?” he asked politely as he picked his glasses up off the floor and put them back on. “Would you like some, what did you call it, coffee?”

“I slept well, thank you for asking, and I would love some coffee, I can’t believe I slept in so late.” Little D chuckled and smiled.

"Its seven in the morning, I'm sure the others will still be asleep for a few more hours, Rainbow especially.” he snapped his fingers and a cup of fresh hot black coffee hovered in front of Twilight. “Would you like cream and sugar?” he asked politely as he sorted through the books he just pulled out of the pile. “And if you wouldn’t mind, here’s a group of books that I need help going through.”

“Some cream and a little bit of sugar would be nice, and I would be more than happy to help you with those books.” she smiled thankfully, then made a face as she looked at all the bare shelves. “How long have you been up?” she asked in wonderment.

“All night.” he said simply. “Walkers don’t need to do a lot of things that you people need to.” he floated a stack of ten books in his white aura over to Twilight, who took it in her own purple aura. “For example, we don’t need to sleep or eat because we are supported by magic, it’s kinda’ like our life support. We can’t get sick or be poisoned because magic amplifies our immune systems tenfold.” he stopped for a second and smiled. “Now that I think about it, magic really enhances everything about us, except our intelligence. We have to work on that ourselves. How is your coffee?” D asked as he summoned his own cup of tea.

“It’s very nice, thank you for asking, and before we get started on this research, do you mind if I ask some questions about yourself and Walkers in general?” Twilight asked as she finished her cup.

“Yeah, no problem.” D nodded. “So, what do you want to know first?” he asked as he flopped down onto the couch.

“Well, let’s start with how you ended up like this, how did you get Death as a teacher?” Twilight asked as she picked up a blank scroll and a quill.

“Ok, lemme think a sec.” he put his hands behind his head and let out a breath. “The very first thing I remember is waking up in this form, not knowing if it was my actual body or not, and I was in the middle of this battlefield full of corpses.
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The boy took in deep, haggard, breaths as he struggled to steady his racing heart beat. “That’s it, just relax and take deep breaths.” came a kind and slow voice to his side. “You’re doing well, just focus on my voice, and don’t worry, your vision will return shortly.”

“Why can I not see?! What happened to everyone, where am I?” the boy shouted out, frantically looking around blindly.

“Don’t fret child, you will be fine in a few seconds, just keep breathing.” the owner of the voice gently rubbed the boy’s back comfortingly. “Your heart beat is already returning to normal.”

The boy blinked several times and a wave of calmness swept over him as the darkness around him began to lighten to a gray haze full of blobs that he assumed were people. Slowly everything returned to normal, his heart rate slowed to a regular pace, as did his breathing. Finally, his eyesight returned completely and saw six people standing in front of him, all with smiles on their faces.

“Woah dude, you finally did it!” a boy in a brown jacket and jeans said from his squatting position on a rock. “Hey, Tear Drop, looks like you won’t be getting someone else to call sister.” the boy teased to a girl with frizzy two toned green and brown hair.

“Johnny, be nice.” scolded a muscular man in a brown t-shirt, blue jeans, and worn work boots. His shaggy sandy-blonde hair was ruffled when a strong gust of wind blew through. “Honestly, I thought I taught you better not to pick on your cousin like that.” a deep gruff laugh could be heard as a man with tanned skin, a bushy black goatee, iron chestplate, blue jeans, and scuffed up combat boots was examining a length of red cloth.

“You’re not exactly the best teacher for that, Brother Famine. You and Sister Pestilence fight almost nonstop.” he folded his cloth up and put in his pocket. “You two should really learn to get along.”

“Well tell her to stop making viruses that mess with my plants, I can take care of crop production myself. All she’s doing is making my job harder than it needs to be. Seriously,” he said as he turned to a woman in black leather armor and frizzy red hair.” ,my job is the influence of plants, your job is making people sick, not the plants that I’ve worked so hard on.”

“Well mom certainly seems to think I’m doing a good job.” she said simply. “Making you scramble to make tougher plants is pretty funny though. I still can’t believe how badly you flopped at making trees with tougher bark. You made some sort of mutant animal thats a cross between a wolf and a tree.” she laughed at the memory.

“Hey shut up! Timber wolves are badass!” Famine yelled at his sister.

“Pay them no mind child.” a calm voice said to the boy’s side. “Can you stand?”

“Yeah, I think so. But I might need some help.” he felt strong hands grab him under his arms.

“Just tell me when you’re ready, I’ve got you.” the voice said softly. The boy nodded his thanks and struggled to get up. He let out a groan as he forced his way to his feet, everything hurt. It felt to him like he had been drowned, electrocuted, set aflame, stretched, then ripped apart and stapled back together.

“What happened to me?” he asked weakly as he stood uneasily on his wobbly legs.

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know in a minute, but first, take my cane, you need it more than I do.” the voice said as he handed the boy his platinum cane. “And now I introduce you to your new family.”
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“Uncle introduced me to everyone simply and told me that I’d have plenty of time to get to know them later. He then told me that I was in the middle of a battlefield and that it was the last place of fighting of a war.” Little D said casually as Twilight wrote down everything he said. “He told me that my body was changed by magic, that he was Death, and that I was now a near immortal, in a much slower and formal way of course.”

“Fascinating." Twilight commented as she wrote down everything that D said. "Now you said that Death told you this is your new family, would you mind if I ask you what happened to your old family?"

“I don’t remember anything except three weak smiles and a lot of crying.” D shrugged as he shifted his position on the couch so that his legs were propped up on the back and his head touched the floor. “But I guess I’ll figure all that stuff out later. Any other questions?”

“Yes, you mentioned the other day that you can’t die, how is that possible?” Twilight asked excitedly, eager to learn all she could about her near immortal guest.

“It’s really simple really. Think of it this way,” he righted his position and pulled a small chalkboard out from behind his back. He then grabbed onto the sides and stretched it out until it was roughly the size of a schoolhouse’s chalkboard. D stood up and shook the board and two legs on wheels shot down from the sides. “, this is your soul,” he grabbed a piece of white chalk from his pocket and started drawing, the amazing part was that the chalk changed color on the board and drew out a purple smiley face. He drew a white circle around the smiley and resumed his lesson. “This bubble is your body and, when you die, the bubble pops and your soul goes to heaven.” he erased the circle with his hand and put a little halo over Twilight’s picture. “This is my soul.” he drew a white circle with black glasses. “And this is my body.” he drew a rectangle around his picture. “Now, my soul is tethered to, or locked into, my body, preventing my soul from leaving.” he erase a bit of the rectangle then drew it back. “Coupled with my healing factor, it makes it very hard for me to die.” next, D drew a red frowny face surrounded by a red rectangle. “This is Steel’s soul and body.” he quickly drew Steel and himself a stick body, arms, and legs with a yellow padlock around each of their necks. “If a near immortal lands a fatal wound on another near immortal, this lock right here,” he drew a sword going through his padlock. “The tether keeping my soul in this body goes away and I die.” he erased his glasses and filled the spaces in with two little x’s and put a halo over his head. “It’s a real bummer, that.” he shrugged and tipped the board over. “But what can you do, aside from killing your former friend and bond brother of course.” the chalkboard hit the floor and exploded into a swarm of red and blue butterflies that gracefully flew out of the library. “Huh,” D stared at the butterflies that just left. “I was going for disappearing in a cloud of smoke, but whatever.” he shrugged and turned back to Twilight. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

"Yes actually. I'm quite interested in learning about those glasses you're always wearing." she asked formally. "You said something about night vision earlier, can they do other things?"

"Yeah actually, aside from shielding my eyes from the sun’s vengeful rays and making me look really cool, these glasses are capable of a ton of technological marvels. Put these on and press the first button on the left earpiece.” D took off his glasses and tossed them to Twilight. Twilight complied curiously and instantly everything went blue with yellow, green, and red blobs floating around.

“What is-”

“That’s thermal vision. It helps you see heat signatures, like if your tracking something at night. Now some of the other stuff is pretty advanced, like I have a molecular scanner and tracer in there, lets you find out more about stuff like it’s chemical makeup and all that good stuff, I also have a blueprint setting in there that helps me visualize plans for all manner of things, night vision but you already know about that, and it can project images from the lenses themselves, really handy at times.” D kept his eyes closed and slowly shuffled over to Twilight and put his hand out. Twilight got the meaning and gave the glasses back to Little D. “Anything else, or can we get started on this research?” he asked with a minor undertone of annoyance that Twilight didn’t notice.

“Just one more thing, really quick, you mentioned that your eyes are cursed and that they ‘look kinda weird.’ Could you explain this for me quickly?”

“No problem.” D said with a nod, he then cupped his hands over his mouth and called out: “Oh butterflies! Come back here please, I need to make another chalkboard.” suddenly the same swarm of blue and red butterflies flew in through an open window and gathered around D. The swarm began to glow a bright white and when the light faded the chalkboard was standing in place again.

“On the outside, the eye is made up of the pupil, iris and, the sclera, and it looks like this,” Little D drew out a light-blue eye on the board. “My eye, however, looks like this.” he drew a dot on the board then drew four lines running straight through making an eight point star looking thing. Next, he drew a circle around the star and colored one half in blue and the other half in red. “The other eye matches up, so it’s like blue then red on me left, than red and blue on my right. They’re heavily ladened with magic and if you look directly into them, you start seeing crazy horrifying stuff.” D snapped his fingers and the chalkboard exploded into a cloud of smoke. “Now, anything else?” D asked hesitantly.

“Actually yes.” Twilight smiled shyly. “I was wondering if I could run a few tests on you.”

“Tests?” D asked apprehensively. “What kind of tests?”