The Wizard – The Light Falls
Splashing water and fresh moving air. His heart jumped inside his chest and started thumping in his ears.
“Oh, is that enough to get you excited? So basic.” He ignored the feminine voice in his ear and had to contain himself not to jump and risk losing his faithful wooden stick. With renewed vigor, he kept going, repeating the same motion. Sliding the stick over the ground, walking forward with a hand over the stick at all times, get to the end. Rinse and repeat.
“You know, I fail to understand how you can do this repetitive thing over and over again with no tiredness nor fail. It is… impressive… but… Yeah, I know that you feel that it is the only way for getting out of here, but after a while, I would have looked for another solution… like using the torch thing that you did back at the tower? Conservation of resources? But… you need light to see. I need light to see. It seems dumb that you just… stop doing that dumb thing!” The voice shouted, deafening in his ears. Yet he powered through, refusing to pay attention to it, no matter how hard the headache it caused made him suffer.
Suddenly, his stick hit a wall. That stunned him for a moment. For so long, he had been doing the same movement, the same repetition over and over that when the stick hit… something that he assumed was a wall, it froze him in place.
“Well, that is new… So it works and is not so dumb after all,” said the mocking voice with derision and mock in its tone.
“You know we are both of us here; least you can do is start to be nice to me,” the voice said, demanding, but he chose to ignore it. With trembling hands, he crept forward, feeling the rough stone floor, the sharp grains of dust that had been resting there for millennia, undisturbed until he arrived. With care, he followed the stick, and with panic, he touched the wall. Bare stone too.
“Oh, surprised by it being bare stone? Did you expect something else?”
Carefully, he picked the stick up and touched the wall, pressing his palms against it, he felt it. It was just a wall, no more, no less. He looked around, around the blackness. To his left, it was pitch dark, but to his right, there. In the middle of the wall, there was a crack, and through it, light.
With a breath of relief, he stumbled towards the crack and peered through.
It was underground still, but the crack gave into a large cave with an opening in the middle of the ceiling and through it, light. He could feel the air, the clean and fresh air and notes of things he had almost forgotten the smell of, grass, dirt and pine.
Marveled and stunned by how pretty it looked, he rested there. For a long and peaceful moment, he got lost in the moment.
“That place can’t possibly be better than me! You created me to be your companion; you made me to be the prettiness in your world! Do not ignore me!” With a jolt, he felt as if a force grabbed him by the nape of his neck and threw him backward, away from the light.
Stunned, he lay there, breathless.
“You confused by what happened? Oh, darling, please, don’t be daft. I happen. I have been trying to make you see sense for… oh, I don’t know how long. Did you really think that me being inside your head would give me power over you… Oh, you pretty fool. Anyway, let me tell you what is going to happen. You will find a way of opening the crack that is on the wall; then you will go there and drink water and find something to eat. After all, neither of us wants to die, and then we will see what is going to happen next. But, and this is very important, don’t give things attention they do not deserve, okay?”
The Wizard swallowed hard. “Still with that moniker? You aren’t a wizard.”
“Okay… good, you are learning,” the voice had a great mix of emotions, sweet, bitter, dreadful.
He got up and went up to the crack. Feeling its borders, he saw it was pure rock, and all he had was his stick and his hands.
“What is the matter? Can’t you solve this one?”
