Chapter 93: [Bonus Chapter] Mage - Book One - Reality: Prologue. The End of Magic
Year 2073
Deepest layer of the Technocracy’s Great Wall
"What are you doing here, Horus?" The net-raider asked upon seeing his best friend at the place he just arrived.
"I should be the one asking, Seth... Or did you think I wasn’t going to figure out that you were working with the rebels?"
Seth’s jackal mask didn’t give anything of his expression, but underneath it, he was fuming with anger.
His eyes glowed golden, and the code lines around him became unstable.
"Rebels?!? Do you even hear yourself right now? These ’rebels’ as you call them, are trying to liberate the humankind from the Technocracy tyrants that you chose to serve!"
Seth extended his hand and began forming symbols with it.
The code lines around him acted as if listening to him, condensing around the mage to form a single shape.
"So it has come to this..." Horus sighed underneath his falcon mask. "You even did your homework and figured out what the only weapon capable of killing me in here is... You’ll soon understand what mistake you’re making for fighting alongside those rebels in the surface."
Horus’ eyes glowed in red as he just stared at Seth, and around him, the code lines began forming a barrier, shielding him from his enemy.
"You see, Seth..." Horus took off his mask, and the face underneath it was smiling such a genuine and heartwarming smile, that it made Seth hesitate for a second. "We’ve always been best friends. Why don’t you join me, join us? The Technocracy will put an end to the magic in the surface, and we will rule supreme over all, like we were always meant to."
The sword formed by the code lines gleamed in Seth’s hands, echoing a sharp, melodic tune. Almost as if it was made of real, living metal.
Seth conjured his Flames of Apocrypha, making fire rain over Horus, and he charged against his once best friend.
"I WILL NOT LET YOU TAKE THE MOTHER-CODE TO THE TECHNOCRACY! IT WILL BE THE END FOR US!"
Horus, however, kept smiling, and when Seth approached the barrier, slashing against it with his sword, the barrier simply vanished, leaving Seth to slash nothing but thin air in front of him.
The Flames of Apocrypha fell, scorching everything, right when Horus made his move, approaching Seth from behind.
When Seth realized what happened, it was too late.
Horus hugged him, and the blade in Horus’ hand pierced Seth’s back, taking a silent grunt from his lips.
"I will always love you, my best friend. But now, the time of mages has come to an end." A single tear fell from one of Horus’ eyes as he kept speaking. "The mother-code is already in the hands of the Technocracy, and I was here just as a diversion for them, because they knew that the rebels were going to send their most powerful asset to destroy it. But we can’t afford the Paradigm of Magic to go on any longer..."
As the flames fell over them, burning everything that once was Horus and Seth, they exchanged their last words...
"The Lullaby will be played and the mages will all sleep, and it will mark the beginning of the Technocracy Era. So, goodbye, my best friend."
"Osiris won’t let it." Seth laughed as he felt the pain of death spreading through him.
"You hid his code? Smart move, but when he wakes up, everything will already be lost. Goodbye."
... Before the ultimate weapon of the Technocracy, the Lullaby, exploded in the surface world, where no code could reach outside the world wide web.
***
Surface
New World Order’s Hall of Justice.
Mages fought against Technocracy agents while non-mages protested against the usage of the new Technocracy’s weapon.
Blood painted the streets in red, and death was all around to be seen.
Inside the Hall of Justice, another traitor, codename Yeshua, handed over the mother-code to the leader of the Technocracy.
"Very well done, mister..." The woman with an owl mask greeted him. She reached for her ear and spoke. "Your Excellence, I’m sending you the mother-code. The Lullaby can be played as soon as you enter the code lines." After she ended the call, she turned to Yeshua once more and asked. "Now, how do we die? Defending the Hall of Justice, or just killing some mages?"
But right after she said it, the night sky was covered in blinding white light.
One by one, all mages fell to the ground, seemingly dead.
Yeshua was one of them, falling before the owl-masked woman.
"And so it begins..." She said, sitting on the marble floor.
"Do you think they’re going to be able to dream, Marisha?" Horus’ voice sounded behind her.
"Only after the great plan is finished. But until then, it’ll be just like death to them, nothing but darkness. At least until we plug them to the Real World."
"Many will die before then, right?"
"I don’t care." She said, taking off her mask and revealing dark seductive eyes and the soft pale skin that covered her face, framed by a curly jet-black mane. "We won. That’s all that matters, as long as we get to harness their energy in the right way."
"And we will. But we might have a problem." Seth’s voice sounded slightly worried.
"What?"
"Seth told me that Osiris is still out there. He hid his Quintessence out there, somewhere."
Marisha scoffed.
"And you’re worried about that? All we have to do is to make sure that no one finds Osiris’ Quintessence, and that whenever it wakes up, it stays asleep in the simulation."
"Let’s hope the Lullaby truly cut their connection with the Mana, so that no Mage should ever rise again. Osiris won’t last long without Mana, so we might be just fine."
"Yeah. We might be just fine." She said, getting up and looking through the Hall’s window.
All mages were sprawled on the ground, and the non-mages were all silent.
Despair filled their expression.
"That’s how your world ends, with a lullaby."
