Behind his breaths and other displays of fear, his mind was actually clear. In fact, had never experienced such clarity.
Death and Mortality. It was a subject discussed with great detail in his most prized book. He read it one-hundred times, and was never once unattentive while reading it. He thought he understood it, and that it too was below him. But he learned a new meaning to it.
It had the same definition, word for word, as the one in the book.
"Death is the point where being itself unravels–where all thought, breath, and warmth collapse into stillness, and what was once someone becomes only what remains. It is the irreversible end of presence, the silence that nothing can wake."
Cedric is dead. Death is permanent. He will never come back to life.
Cedric is dead. Death is permanent. He will never come back to life.
Cedric is dead. Cedric is dead. Cedric is dead…
Again and again, he repeated it; he desperately clung to it as if it was to retain his own sanity–as if he knew it would be forgotten, and that this would be his last conscious wake.
He was slouched over his curled legs, his arms buckling his upper and lower body together. He tried hiding his face in this position, but his eyes were never low enough for his vision of Cedric to be obstructed. He could never look away, even if he wanted to, but in this moment, there was nothing he wanted. There was nothing he thought. He could hardly be classified as sapient.
Lightning struck the Earth somewhere far away, and rain began to fall.
"You have seen my face," the spearman sighed. "Please forgive me for what I must do."
He made a slow movement, and then an audible "clink" rang out as the spear made contact with the shield, followed by a continuous cracking noise with the continued transfer of force.
Arthur noticed nothing change. To him, the world was just a dark, empty void, made up only of him and Cedric.
Just before the cracks met on the opposite side and fully enveloped the dome, a green current blasted through the room, ripping a hole through the walls from one end of the building to the other, from floor to ceiling.
The wind pushed outwards in all directions, shattering the windows, forcing the two, now-hardly cloaked men to pull on their hoods to keep them from being blown away.
A man emerged from the direction the Wind Spell was cast. He wore dark-red robes and a white cotte underneath. But his feature that stood out the most was the sigil of something that resembled a winged sword in the center of his shoulder pauldrons.
He immediately created two green Magic circles that pointed in the directions of the intruders and discharged them, sending out similar but smaller vortexes of wind whirling at them, pulling the less massive objects around it with it when it passed.
Both spells struck exactly where their target was, to the nearest millimeter, but ripped through only the wall and nothing else.
With a light foot, the spearman retreated back to his companion, holding his hood down with a thumb and an index, just low enough for nothing above his raised lips to be visible.
The Wind Mage held both his arms out, and they shook like they were being strained. A green magic circle appeared on the ground beneath the two men, fully surrounding them.
The spearman opened his mouth and moved it as if he was speaking, but nothing could be heard from the cycling prison of wind. He then tossed his spear a foot up into the air and caught it in a backhand grip as it came down.
Not a moment passed after he caught the pole before he hurled it in the direction of the boy in the glowing yellow sphere.
"NO!"
The Wind Mage released the Wind Prison spell and shot another spiral of wind to where he thought the two projectiles would intersect, but they never met.
The head of the spear drove into the shield, as did the rest of the weapon, from end to end, crumbling to ash all the same.
The Mage breathed a sigh of relief, but his whole body tensed when he looked back at where the Wind Prison was cast and saw that there was no one there.
He tried to swallow down his regret, but it would not go down.
A white energy surged into his hand and repulsed it after it made contact with the shield. His plan to pick him up the normal way was thwarted, so instead, he created a pillar of wind sprouting from the ground. It blew with enough force to keep the ball and its contents from falling, but not so strong that it would be pushed upwards.
He made his way through the rooms he shot a hole through and picked up all the unconscious children with him as he went along, but that feeling never went away.
He tried his best, but the gray clouds would still draw from the north, and the Heavens would weep. The sun would not be able to bear witness, and the continent would be cast into shadow.
The suffering has only just begun.