Two Page Shorts by Nick Venom (top reads .txt) 📕

He entered the dimly lit room, his eyes doing their best to adjust to the semi-darkness. He only had one spell under his belt. He didn’t learn Torch or other lighting skills. 

He stumbled in the semi-darkness, reaching a pedestal. His hand felt the glass top that encased the artifact inside, enhanced with magic. The artifact and glass stood on an enhanced marble pedestal.  

He did his best to squint at the object, recognizing it as the pen-like object that teleported Aviana and Maverick to her base. The artifact’s real name was Portal Pen, a sheet of paper attached to the pedestal giving him a description. An artifact that can teleport the user via a simple click of the thrust device on the pen. This artifact needs a certain threshold of mana to use. This is one of the simpler artifacts, but one of the most important ones. 

He glanced around, his eyes adjusting to the semi-darkness. He noticed a gun-like artifact on a pedestal next to the Portal Pen. The description under the pen revealed the name and its purpose. Shock Gun. A dangerous gun that emits electricity in the form of small clumps. These clumps discharge into smaller balls and affect all that it makes contact with. Avoid contact with it, Maverick Maverick read, smiling. She had made these descriptions for him. 

He focused his attention on the left artifact, the iron cage, and read the description. Infinite Cage. Do not touch. Maverick scratched his head, unsure of what the artifact did. He stupidly touched the glass that covered the cube foggy cage, using Devour to get rid of the magic binding it in place; he took the glass off. 

He lowered the glass to the ground and went back to the iron cage. He took the cage off the pedestal and examined it, finding small dents scattered all over the cage. He looked around, hearing Aviana’s voice. He scattered to put the cage back, but his hand slipped, allowing the cage to fall and hit the ground with a loud “thunk”. The cage started moving erratically and soon it began spinning with a singular light piercing the cage with more lights following after it. The cage started thrashing around and Maverick heard Aviana’s footsteps running towards him. The cage exploded, throwing out a melting pot of color into the air and knocking Maverick away. He landed on his back, hitting another artifact on his way down. The artifact was thrown off the pedestal and landed on the other side of the pedestal from him. Aviana appeared in the empty door frame and looked flabbergasted as she watched a man appear from the cloud of smoke that emitted. 

“My, my, my. So nice to see your beauty again.” The man said. He wore a tophat with a magician’s outfit. He looked over at the artifacts and let out a big grin. “Why was I in one of your artifacts Aviana?” He asked. Aviana froze in place, unable to move a muscle. Maverick stood up and started chanting. The guy looked at Maverick and gave a piercing laugh. He began his chanting that took fewer seconds to activate. He ignited a fireball at his fingertip and, within five seconds, it grew to enormous size. He twirled the fireball around, hitting the other artifacts and grazing Maverick. 

Aviana regained her strength and activated her chant, hitting him with water slashes. The water slashes dried upon contact. 

The guy smiled before launching the fireball at Maverick. Maverick activated his chant and summoned Devour. Devour began consuming the fireball, but it couldn’t fit the entire spell. Devour failed and the parts of the fireball it couldn’t consume continued towards Maverick. He closed his ears, raising his hands to his face. He waited for the heat to smack into him. He heard the fireball hit something, but he felt no pain. The heat dissipated as well.

The man let out another piercing laugh, Maverick opening his eyes to see what he was laughing at. A few feet in front of him Aviana laid on the ground, her clothes smoldering and her skin bright red. She had third-degree burns.

“Aviana!” Maverick shouted, dropping to the ground and holding his master. He checked her pulse to see that she was still alive.

The man glanced away from them, ripping the Portal Pen off its pedestal and summoning a portal. “Well, I have many things to do, so I must go. However, expect to see me again; as an Elder-killer.” He grinned menacingly. “Humanity will be destroyed, be sure of that.” He activated a chant that snatched almost all of the artifacts in the room before disappearing through the portal, leaving Maverick behind to tend to his master.

“Leave m-me, f-find the k-kings. A-Alert them,” she muttered, her eyes closing. He nodded, grabbing her and darting to the capsule, which was named the Capsule of Life. He laid her inside, searching for the remote. He found it, pressing the Recovery button on the shortlist of buttons, watching as the capsule’s door shut closed and the swirling cyclone began. 

However, the recovery period would take longer than he expected. The burns were worse to treat as most of her organs burnt upon contact. She was a fleshly bag of burnt organs and very little blood.

Maverick looked away and stared at a newspaper sitting on the nearby table. The newspaper’s main page read “Four King Missing, Artifacts Missing” in bold print. Maverick shook his head softly. 

More artifacts make you stronger! He sprinted to the Artifact Room in hopes of finding artifacts left behind. They were nearly all gone, except for one. The artifact was a hatchet with a red outline head and a black wooden base. The head seems to be made out of metal with a leather sheath. The hatchet looked thin and fragile. 

Maverick looked down at the piece of paper displaying the description of the artifact, skimming through it. Titanium Hatchet. A lightweight one-handed hatchet that is as strong as the user’s will and can discharge pellets of magic that the user pours in. Maverick broke through the fading enhancements and ripped the hatchet out. He sprinted to the main room where Aviana laid in recovery.

Holding the hatchet tightly, he glanced at the Capsule of Life before glancing at the newspaper’s headline - specifically the“Four Kings Missing” part. A tear escaped his eye as he kneeled in front of the capsule. 

“I will alert them, Master. I made this mistake and I will repent for it. I will save humanity and the Magic Realm, please trust me.” he whispered to her. He stood up, looking around. He needed to find a way to alert the upper ranks of the magic society about the upending doom he brought back into existence. 

“Wait… I think I know what to do.”

***

“What do you mean you want to leave? You can’t!” An overweight man declared. He had a five o’clock stubble and flat features. He looked more like a potato than a human. “You owe me more than seventy fights left.”

“That’s not possible, our contract was for fifty. I’m done with boxing.” A teen with dark blue hair that was styled into a ponytail said. He had a muscular build, importing for his job of being a boxer. His fists were wrapped in bandages and his face was scarred from his fights. “I can’t do this anymore.”

The overweight man stood up. “Damn you, Dimitri! I need one hundred and twenty fights from you, not fifty. Unless you want me to tell the government about your immigrant status.” The man hovered Dimitri’s status over his head as a threat.

Dimitri bit his lip. “What if I tell the police what you’re doing? I’ll be deported, but you’ll face larger crimes and go to jail.”

This shocked the overweight man as he began sweating. “U-Uh… How about this? Twenty more fights and we’re done here.”

Dimitri thought it over, coming to a decision. “Let’s change the contract for seventy.”

The overweight man gritted his teeth. “Fine!” He spat. He took out the contract from the bag at his side, which he wanted to use as evidence for himself, and ripped it in front of Dimitri. He called one of his men nearby to draw up a new contract. Several minutes later, the contract arrived in Dimitri’s palm, with the same conditions as the previous one but the total fights being at seventy and not one hundred and twenty. 

Dimitri looked up at the overweight man. “We have a deal.”

The overweight man grumbled. “I guess we do.”

***

“Get out of here terrorist!” A boy on a bike shouted from afar. Azaan ignored the boy, walking down the sidewalk. He passed by a few other racist kids before reaching his house - a two-story beauty.

He entered the house, his mother waiting for him. “Azaan? You can’t let them say stuff like that!” She heard the racist remarks of the neighborhood kids.

Azaan rolled his eyes. “I can’t do anything. To them, I’m a terrorist, and nothing I say will stop them.” He threw his schoolbag at the couch, hitting the edge and bouncing off. It landed on the hardwood with a loud ‘thud’ sound. 

“Why did we move here? To America? We are treated like criminals here? Or why couldn’t we move to a mostly Muslim neighborhood?” Azaan asked.

His mother, whose name is Inaya, shook her head. “We’ll be fine here. We’re fighters, don’t tell me you forgot that.”

“We’re not in Afghanistan! We’re in racist land. Everybody here is against us!” Azaan shouted, throwing his fist down at their wooden dining room table.

Inaya shook her head. “Your family isn’t against you. And that thought that everybody hates you or that America is full of racists is the same thought those kids are having. They see the entirety of the Middle East as terrorists waiting to enter America and commit horrific crimes.” She walked up to Azaan, laying her hand on his head. “Remember this, we are not the same as the people who committed 9/11 or any of those crimes. We are people of different descent that want to live normal lives. What’s wrong with that?”

“Society sees us as wrong!” He fought back.

“Then become a public official and change how society sees us.” She embraced him, stroking his head. “Promise me this.”

Azaan gave in, nodding. “I promise you.”

***

“Stop slacking!” A lean man in his late forties shouted. “Focus on the register Elizabeth or I’m docking your pay!”

Elizabeth, a green-eyed blonde woman, nodded. “I’m sorry sir.”

The man nodded his head. “Better be. Get to work.” He turned around and strolled into his office.

Elizabeth’s coworker, Nora, popped her head into her spot at the cash register. “You okay Elize?”

She nodded her head. “Yup just got scolded again.”

Nora shook her head. “You realize that you could quit and look for another job.”

“Ha!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “What job would accept a dropout? It’s better to stay here where I have a steady source of income while being berated than living on the streets. I do have siblings to take care of.” 

Nora nodded, apologizing. “Another option would be to report his behavior to HR? Maybe they can do an investigation or something.”

“Conduct an investigation on him.” Elizabeth corrected him.

Nora chuckled. “Man, I would hate you as a classmate.”

“They all did.” Elizabeth masked her words with a short nervous laugh, rolling up her long-sleeve shirt. “Anyway, how has your boyfriend been? He hasn’t cheated on you again.”

Nora shook her head. “I’ve been keeping him on a leash, so I doubt he’ll try anything again.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “You need to pick better boys in the future. Choose less of the bad boys and more of the nerds.”

Nora shook her head. “Nope, not dating those socially awkward nerds. I need a man who could take care of me. And Issac’s been doing a good job at that… at times.”

Elizabeth glanced at her boss’s office. He was inside, his door closing off Nora and her conversation. “Well, let’s get back to work before he scolds us again.” She told Nora.

Nora nodded. “See you at lunch