Battle of the Ages

The Battle of the Ages


Under the obsidian sky a White Warrior walked the Camboyan jungle path, his eye on the ancient stone temple. It was covered with ivy and looked like it might soon collapse. He approached the entrance and peered inside. It was dark and incredibly filthy. Loathsome creatures scurried aside as the White Warrior strode through the hodgepodge of plants and rubble to a stone altar where a dark-robed Sorcerer stood waiting for him with some books of magic and a Bible.

"At last you have arrived," said the Sorcerer. "It is time for you to undertake your final battle."
"Are you sure the Evil is here?" inquired the Warrior.
"Indeed, yes" replied the Sorcerer.
"I think I'm ready but I still don't know exactly why Heaven chose me," said the Warrior.
"Ah, for the common things. Clean heart, good personality, your abilities...they always choose things like that," the Sorcerer snickered.
"I don't have those requirements, do I?"
"Heaven knows everything, Warrior, and so it must know that you do."
"And how am I to defeat...him? her?"
"It."
"It?"
"You know that Evil hates holy things, such as the Bible I have here. You will use it in your battle."
"Well, then, I guess I'm ready."

They walked in solemn silence through another room and entered an expansive yard at the bottom of the temple. Plants proliferated on the grimy walls and a little stream gamboled along the edge of the stairs on the other side. The Sorcerer grimly closed the book and they proceeded up the winding stairs to the top of the temple. Progress was slow and perilous because the stone joins were weak and the White Warrior's armor prodigiously heavy. The stairs led to the temple's peak where they opened onto a large terrace encircled by banks of black and red candles arrayed as if for a battle. The terrace was broken and pockmarked with holes but from this vantage point the White Warrior had a panoramic view of the Camboyan jungle. An immense carpet of green trees stretched to the horizon, disappearing in the jungle mist, and the the full moon hovered near the sky's zenith.

"Are you ready?" said the Sorcerer.
"I am," the Warrior replied.
"The Evil will arrive when the moon reaches the highest point of the sky. You must be prepared."
"You haven't told me, how will it look?"
"The Evil doesn't have a definite form. Sometimes it manifests as animals, other times as ordinary humans and sometimes like mythical creatures. Rarely it shows its true form.
"Do you have any last words for me?"
"Try to hurt it with the sword. The pain won't affect the Evil but it will distract and hinder it, allowing us to ensnare it with a spell."

The moon arrived at its highest reach in the sky.

Nothing happened.

"The Evil...," The White Warrior whispered, but he left the phrase unfinished. A monstrous quake rocked the Camboyan jungle, opening even more holes in the temple roof. Suddenly, a giant fissure split the floor and through it oozed a noxious red glow.

And the Evil.

The Evil was a bizarre creature with the torso and head of a woman but from the waist down was a slime covered mass of veined tentacles. It appeared in the middle of the common symbol of summoning, the Pentagram.

Speaking in a booming, gravelly voice tinged with sarcasm, the Evil declared, "You came...it is your hour."

The Evil laughed, and the laugh sounded like a chorus of New Jersey hounds laced with the howls of a multitude of wretched people in excruciating pain. Its breath was rotten, fetid; causing the surrounding plants to shrivel and die.

The candles flared explosively, the flames caressing the Sorcerer as he, too, entered the circle.

The Evil laughed again, and a blood-colored beam shot from its hands. The White Warrior dodged it but the beam left a gaping hole in stones where the White Warrior had been just seconds before. The White Warrior raised his defensive shield in grim determination.

"Stop that. Fight, if you dare; or how else bear you the name of Warrior?" growled the Evil.

The White Warrior gripped his sword and flew at the Evil but it parried his thrust. As they struggled, the Sorcerer muttered spells from his grimoire. He invoked a spell to ensorcel the White Warrior's sword. Instantly the sword glowed bright blue and the White Warrior felt it hot in his hand. He swung the sword which spewed a fearsome beam of blue light. The Evil yelled and again parried the thrust. The Evil growled a dark curse and a red beam of light pursued the hero. The White Warrior caparisoned about the holes in the floor while the Sorcerer sought another spell. The red beam flared again and the White Warrior's wings withered. The red beam struck him and he heard a cold, chilling laugh echo through his head. Fearing his final moment had come, the White Warrior huddled on the ground. The red beam exploded into shards of bloody light as the Sorcerer fell. The White Warrior rolled to dodge another attack but his sword lost its glow as he tried to smite the Evil with it.

"You and your friend will die," howled the Evil.

With a furious shout, the White Warrior hurled his sword at the Evil, severing the Evil's arm, and the Evil fell. The White Warrior grabbed the fallen Sorcerer's book. Seeing it opened to a spell that would defeat Evil forever, he used his sword as a wand and chanted the spell. A luminous beam of silvered white light gushed from his sword, striking the Evil. The Evil laughed as the light had no effect but, too late, realized an impenetrable cage of white light ensnared it. The White Warrior soared from the temple with the Sorcerer's body in his arms as the Evil madly flailed against the bars of its eternal prison, knowing it had irrevocably lost the Battle of the Ages.