BL: THE KING'S GUARDIAN

CHAPTER 2

He woke up.

╭( ๐_๐)╮!!!

Al suddenly sprang awake to hit his forehead into something above him. Only then he realized that he was inside an enclosed space. He gropes around the dark and felt the wooden narrow shaped box he was in. He seems to be inside a coffin...?

Frowning, he pushed the lid off of the coffin and blinding white light engulfed his eyes, causing a dark spot on his sight. Sitting, he squints to look around the area.

Where...?

He blinks in confusion. He was greeted by the whiteness of his surroundings. The whole area was covered in the white snow and stillness of the silence.

The surrounding houses were half-buried and their roofs are heavy with snow. Most doors were either completely gone or mere remnants of rotten wood and rusty metal. The open doorways looked eerie as only darkness showed within. In just one look he already saw the whole village.

It was an empty village. Its pathways are already buried underneath and seem lost to where it leads.

"Hello?"

He asks but it only echoed back to him, no sounds were made, and had a strange feeling.

Wanting to look for anybody to asks, he let himself out of the coffin.

Half an hour later...

"That's... haa..." He wipes the snow on his mouth that he ate.

He slips his way out. At first, he didn't know, so he moved his limbs but failed to uphold themselves, causing him to slip and ate some snow on the ground.

He turned on his back and stared dizzily at the sky. His pounding heart seems deafening and sweat clung to his skin as his breathing was rough and jagged. He tried to regulate his breathing and calm his nerves.

It's harder than he thought! He could only move his upper body! He didn't realize that until he fell face-first on the ground! He spread his arms on the side, legs are practically still inside the coffin. He drags his legs out but it only hurt. Any pressure he put on it feels like thousand needles pickling his legs.

However, comparing it to the pain he felt as he struggles to get out, and now he was out of the coffin, he was faced by the biting coldness of the snow!

He was shivering as he gritted his teeth, freezing because he doesn't wear anything except for his inner clothes!

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻┻

Obviously, he was robbed. The robbers only left him with his inner clothes and nothing else! His staff is gone, rings and his wealth was nowhere to be seen. He can't lose it. A mage without their staff is like, a swordsman without their sword. A warrior without any weapon. A beast without its fangs. A bow without its arrow. A dull knife.

Mage's staff or wand is used as a medium to gather magical power, making it stronger than only spoken incantations. But the main purpose of it is to aim. Most mages' spells are attacks that can affect multiple targets within a specified area, an area of effect. Although mages could use magic without wands and cast a spell without a spellbook, the problem was that the mage has a weak hold of the target causing them to do more harm than help.

To minimize the area of effect, mages use wands or staff to aim and direct an attack to a single target. Or if they are combat mageㅡa type of mage where they focus on combat than solely on magicㅡthey could directly attack the target using magic within close combat.

Al could use magic without any medium but he prefers using his staff. Now he needed to find his missing staff and make those robbers pay for what they took. ╭∩╮(⋋‿⋌ )

"Ugh!" He throws his hands giving up on moving. His muscle ached. His bone ached. His organ ached. He felt like he's having a headache!

He can't even move properly as every breath was so painful and moving his dead weight limbs required so much energy. The fck is wrong with his body!?

He lied on his back and noticed the cloudy sky looking down on him and the sun's light prickling on his dried cracking skin. He wasn't sure if its hallucination or the side effect of being trapped in an illusion vortex but he felt like he heard them laughed at his mishap, causing him to curse at them in seven languages.

Blamed them for his series of unfortunate events. For his misfortunes and bad luck. For everything!

What a shitty time to wake up! He doesn't know where in hell he was at or what time or era he is in right now! But most importantly, why has he only had a speck of magic within his body!?

He tried to circulate his energy with ins body for the nth time but oddly enough he can't. It greatly shocks Al as he looked at his trembling hands and his unmoving legs.

╥ o ╥

Why didn't I woke up way before it becomes like this!? He wasn't sure if he could go back to the way he was before. The strength he accumulated under the years of training and the halo of the great magician he once bathed in, is now gone to drain!

How long did he spend inside that shitty place!? How long is he trapped in that illusion vortex? His magic depleted to the point he can turn to ashes if a strong wind blown on him.

But then again, if he didn't wake up, his body might have died. That's why he blamed everything on the sky. It was their fault they didn't wake him up sooner.

However, Al knew that blaming it on them wouldn't make his lost magic return, though it makes him feel a little better, if he lies idle nothing will happen.

He then drags his limbs and leaned his back onto the coffin in a crossed leg sitting position and starts to gather energy surrounding him.

Magic exists in everything. It varied, with the user's skill, power, imagination or knowledge, and morality. Given the flexibility of magic, it could create the greatest human could possibly do but also vile things.

A polar opposite but in the same pole.

Al closes his eyes in concentration and calms himself, then starts to gather the energy around him. Slowly he utilizes the natural energy into his, causing his stature to gain a little bit of weight as his appearance more of a thin and lean figure rather than tight skin and bones that looked like a necromancer's skeleton army.

Meanwhile, a small figure with a pair of blue eyes silently looks at Al. Maru is hiding in an abandoned house. He was caught in the middle of the snowstorm last night and needed to take shelter from the small village. When he woke up he saw this coffin appeared out of thin air.

He just blink and the coffin appeared there as if it has been there from the very beginning. When in fact, as he remembered it wasn't really ther

The coffin, he doesn't remember it there when he came or where it came from. It suddenly appears out of nowhere. 

 The man only wore his inner clothes and not ideal for the winter season. He had red, flowing long hair that reveals a bony, gloomy face. Bloodshot golden eyes set dreadfully within his sockets. His pale and cracking skin clung onto his cheekbone and his lips were so dry that it chapped and bleeding. Overall he looked like a living skeleton.

The child's beautiful eyes rounded as he saw tiny glowing particles started to gather around the man, then disappeared as if it was absorbed by him.

A mage!

Maru's eye gave different emotions in seconds, from shocks to astonished then curiosity and fascination. His attention was on those magical particles started to eagerly float towards him and surround him.

He saw how those tiny glowing particles eagerly floats towards the mage and surround him like moths to flame.

The different colored magic particles glow and create a layer of golden when it touches the mage. When glowing particles become more solid it reaches towards the air forming moving swirls all around as if looking for the same particles. But really if you look closely it was originally different colors but when it was touched by his magic it becomes his and golden.

He raised his head to see the golden sunshine spill through the holed roof of the abandoned house he was in, blinding his eyes. The eyes of the mage remind him of the sun and the redness of his hair was the blood.