Runaway Hero and the Wizard Tower

As I’m walking on the road, I see a tower appear in the plains out of nowhere. The tower is giant, towering over any building I’ve seen before. The stone walls are dull and gray, but a bright assortment of lights pulses throughout the cracks and openings, as though the tower were built just to hold the light. At the top of the tower, the light is a consistent light green, the light shooting out of the large window. I can only feel a single pulse of life in the tower, at the very top.

I can only presume this to be a wizard’s tower. For it to have arrived like this, it must have either teleported or been invisible. If I had stretched out my sense far enough, I’d know for sure, but alas. Only the wizards would be doing something as grandiose as teleporting an entire tower or cloaking it for so long. And only the wizards even have the techniques to do so. My own teleportation is limited to a small range, and only affects myself and my belongings, and even that was seen as a sign of the Hero’s blessing.

The wizards have a penchant for tricks like these. They enjoy their secret reclusion as they watch the rest of humanity from their towers. Almost no wizard towers have a known location, and those that do happily reject any outsiders. As far as I know, I was the last normal human to set foot in a wizard tower, and the first in decades, and I’m hardly normal in the first place. And within the past century, I am on a short list of people who have had extended interactions with a wizard because of that.

This tower in particular is almost surely unknown. I’ve never seen it on any map, even on maps as old as the kingdom itself. If it really were cloaked this whole time, then it must’ve been under that spell for centuries. And yet that spell has now failed. Beyond that, wizards pride themselves on their cloistered covens where they spend their lives in study. And yet this tower is empty save for one person.

Perhaps that is why the tower has now appeared. The spells most favored by wizards are, from what I’ve seen, so enormously powerful and complex that they could never be maintained by a single person. My barrier was of a similar level, and needed an artifact as powerful as the Holy Sword just to keep it in place. If the wizards have indeed vanished, then it makes perfect sense that the spell would have worn off.

However, that only raises the larger question of why they would have disappeared. The wizards enjoy their secrecy. They would rather not let their presence be known. But we know little more about them than that. In the worst case, one went rogue and murdered the rest, and inside this tower is a tremendously powerful mage who has already killed another, which I can’t abide.

I circle the bottom of the tower, but as I expected, there is no entrance. The insides of the tower are an unknown too, so there’s nothing to gain by teleporting in from here. I orient myself in regards to the window and jump. The air beneath me solidifies just as I begin to fall and I jump again. I jump again and again until I reach the window. The green lights are blindingly bright, and I can hardly make out anything inside the tower. All I can do is trust that there’s nothing dangerous where I’ll appear. I teleport inside the tower and immediately draw my blade.

However, nothing happens right then. It seems like the light is dampened by some spell inside the tower, letting me make out my surroundings in the dull green pulses. The room I stand in is bigger than it appears from the outside, a common spell among wizards, or so I’ve been told. There are several desks placed between the stuffed bookshelves, though almost all of them are empty. At the only one still in use, a young man is bent over papers, furiously writing. He’s so engrossed in his work he hasn’t even noticed me. I watch him for a while, then begin to approach. Even as I draw closer, he doesn’t notice me. I bend down next to him, but he still doesn’t react.

I glance at the paper he’s so enthralled by. Although I don’t know how to read it, I can tell he’s trying to create a spell. I glance around at the other papers. They all contain spells in progress. As I scan them, I can see repeated elements, even though I don’t know what they mean. Each paper is another iteration of this same spell. And there are hundreds of papers. What spell has this man been trying to create so desperately and all on his own?

He seems to notice me at last. He sees me in the corner of his eye, then shoots backwards in his chair as he turns to face me.

“I told you that I’m staying here. There’s nothing you can do to make me leave. I need to work.”

“Pardon?”

“Huh? Are you not a wizard? Then how did you get here?”

“The tower appeared.”

“So it’s already been that long…” He looks down at his work, then slams his fists against the desk. “And I still haven’t made any progress!”

“What’s happened? Why are the rest of the wizards gone?”

“Two weeks ago, after two weeks of deliberation, a summons for every wizard to return to the Council was issued.”

“Are you certain that you should be telling me about this?” He stops to consider it.

“I really shouldn’t be. But what does it matter now! The rest of the tower answered the Council’s summons, but I refused. They said they would get me excommunicated for it, but what does that matter! Either I succeed or we all die anyway!”

“What spell is so important that you needed to stay?”

“A spell to kill the Demon King.”

“The Demon King!? Is that sort of thing really possible!?” I had never considered that someone else could kill the Demon King. But if anyone could, I suppose it would be the wizards.

“As far as we know, not at all. But we were given a year to do as we please. A year of study will certainly serve us better than a year of wallowing somewhere hoping disaster passes us by!”

“Will you really be able to do something like that on your own?”

“I have to. I can’t just give up. Not when there’s still so much for me to study. Not when there’s still so many spells to unveil. I’m only seventy, you know! I’m sure I’ll be able to do it. All I need is to solve that barrier, and I’ll be able to test out an extermination spell using it as a conduit here in the tower. I’m sure it will work. It has to.”

“Good luck, then.”

I bid him farewell and leave the tower. I’ve been upstaged as the Hero once more. I truly never did deserve that title. Even the wizards are fighting so desperately. The wizards who have so much contempt for us are still fighting for us. The wizards who would rather never involve themselves are doing so now. And yet I cannot involve myself. I cannot spur myself to action for humanity.

Like the coward I am, I leave him to his work, even knowing he cannot succeed. My barrier is not something that can be solved. Not by normal means. And yet I left him with that hope. Or perhaps he’s already realized that there is no hope, and he just needs something to latch on to. Yet even as disaster approaches, he has not given up on his fight. All the while, the Hero turns his back on humanity to find something like the edge of the world.