AXIUM

CHAPTER 10

He beamed at her then started on a wall. "Go on."

"Merlin desired to fix this problem. But magic proved to be inadequate for the task so he turned to science but he needed resources to fund his research and that's where the amazing story of a boy and a sword stuck in a rock came into play. But I won't bore you with the details. Suffices to say late in his life he developed a retrovirus that would have helped the next generation's magic open properly."

"Ow!" Verin shouted.

XRenia looked over to see him flat on his back. She finished charging the shield and ran over to him. "You okay?"

"Ya," he answered crawling to his feet.

"What happened?"

"O I just hit myself with a rock." He pointed at a craggy looking half formed wall.

"Want me to help?"

"If you're done with the shield."

"I am. There's no way anything should be able to break through it." She walked over to the craggy wall and sent her magic into it trying to force the rock that formed it to bend to her will. She knew that this wasn't the best way and that there was spell's design for this type of thing. But she had never bothered to learn them, because frankly construction spells were far beneath her.

Verin added his will to hers and slowly the wall started to take shape. "So this Maryland guy obviously didn't succeed if the magna teneber thingy happened."

"Merlin. And it's magna tenebris. Not teneber."

"Oops. Sorry."

"That's okay. And he actually kind of did succeed. But Morgan also known as Nineve; Damsel of the Lake, his wife or girlfriend, history is not sure which, had a vision that magic would be the end of all life. She told him this and bagged him not to use the virus. But he wouldn't listen to her and dumped the virus into the sea where it would spread into all life in time. In response she sealed him away in a cave and blasted the sea with lightning until she had spent all her energy. And still she continued pouring all of her life's vitality into the lightning until she died."

"Wow that sucks."

XRenia nodded.

Verin stopped working on the wall and looked at her in confusion. "But how did that cause all the magic to vanish?"

"She caused the virus to mutate in turn making it do the exact opposite of what Merlin intended."

"Ah, I see."

She nodded "With animals and humans having their magic sealed it seemed to have completely disappeared from the world. Even though the planet itself was still abundant with it."

Verin started another wall as she finished the last bit of the one they had been working on. "So how did that get fixed. I mean we obviously have magic today."

"Well without magic humankind went through a dark age but eventually they pulled through and learn to rely on science instead. Almost a thousand years later the TV TPD 'The View The Past Device' was developed. This device enabled them to read and view light and sound frequencies etched onto an object. With it they started to watch things that had happened in the past and you can imagine their surprise when they saw their ancient forebears using magic. Especially when up until that point magic was considered nothing but a myth."

"I can definitely see that being quite the shock." Verin leaned against his wall and used his magic to pull water out of the air into his cupped hands and took a drink. "So I guess the people of the time went on a mad quest to figure out what had happened to magic?"