Today's #flashfiction #SolvingMagic

“This. Is. SPARTA!”

An Idiot Abroad*

       Went to a meeting/Christmas party gift exchange thing for my mother's writers group. It was very fun and I enjoyed myself. Huzzah for parties!

       Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Solving Magic

       One time, long ago, a world that mastered science traveled to a world that had mastered magic and took it over with its magnificent machines. That isn't this tale. There's a tale after that, where Merlin, enraged at the conquering of a world of magic, attacked those people as revenge. He more cared for the honor of magic than the victims in the world of magic. This isn't that tale. This is a tale in the next step where a scientist decided to fight again for his world in this struggle for proving superiority.

       Doctor James was his name. He had more than one degree and they may have well made up a few just for him. The first stage in his revenge came through a letter. A massive letter. Hundreds of pages long. It actually came in a huge box and not a simple envelope.

The letter began:

“Dear Merlin,

       My name is Dr. James. My colleagues and I have worked it all out. The rest of this letter will contain documents that explain all the rational behind magic and derive theorems for all its workings. Though not perfectly we have made magic a science just as much as everything else we know.

      You're playing by our rules now.”

      Merlin went through all the documents. He saw pages and pages of complex math and textbooks worth of explanations in the documents. It disgusted Merlin. It enraged Merlin. He had reincarnated thousands upon thousands of times in near uncountable worlds to acquire the magical knowledge to understand magic and the scientists and deduced it and put it to equations.

      That part of Dr. James plan was meant first as psychological warfare against Merlin, but also as something to recover his ego from the domination of the wizards. The second part of the plan involved his army. With the help of oppressed non-magical people his colleagues had made am army of robots to fight wizards. They were prepared with technology that could counter magic with methods unknown to wizards.  Some countermeasures had the robots using electromagnetic pulses to disrupt summoning. Some used radio waves to prevent curses from taking form. Wizards didn't know why x-rays stopped curses. The scientists knew why though. Why, when in the perfectly proper order radio waves could stop curses.

       Merlin had seen wizards die in wars in other worlds. Sometimes easily. Usually at the hands of other wizards or gods. Technology had done it before. Atomic bombs was one of the few cases he could ever think of. Wizards were really supposed to be the final evolution of human enlightenment. Embracing a new kind of knowledge. He wasn't used to these kind of losses. How these robots just massacred the wizards. Last time he saw wizards with these power levels fall was in worlds filled with superheroes. The kind who could lift buildings with their bare hands.

       The old wizard started casting his strongest magic. No matter how powerful their counters were he could conquer them with brute force. He rained the heavens upon them. Lighting, ice and fire. He invented new spells with his vast knowledge to fight the machines. He had to. So many of spells proved worthless to them. After destroying enough of the army he could use tracking spells to find Dr. James and corner him in his hideout. Him and his colleagues had been careful to separate themselves. Merlin just hunted James first. He put his wand to James's head, ready to kill the scientist.

“Once you're gone, you're knowledge will go with you. Magic will no longer be solved.”

       Dr. James laughed. “It's pointless. The documents have been posted on the Internet. Emailed to everyone on this planet. And soon a ship will launch to travel to another Earth to spread the knowledge even more. We know how to now. It has instructions to spread the knowledge even further. We will spread the knowledge everywhere. You've lost Merlin. You're magic has been defeated.”

Merlin thought of many of the universes he had been to. All the magic he had seen. All the magic he had loved. He imagined them all dominating it. Taking it away. Taking away the dominance of wizards. Taking away all it meant to be a wizard and himself. If magic meant nothing he meant nothing and neither did every other wizard.

     “No, I can stop you.” The wizard held his wand up high. “I'll just wipe this whole world from existence and there won't be any of you or your ship left!”

      Merlin used up nearly all the magic in his body to destroy that world. There wasn't a “destroy world” spell that he knew. Only forbidden knowledge he had learned to destroy universes. He wiped out the entire universe that Earth inhabited. He had just enough magic left in his body to reincarnate himself in another world as he always does, memories intact, which meant he carried all his regrets.

    He felt happy as he entered another world of wizards.