The King's Deadly Plan
By Destini Beckham
As the night waxes on, a magician retreats to his tower after a tiring day of collecting herbs and ingredients for his next batch of potions, requested by the king himself. With quite a peculiar selection of potions, some that would make even the newest magician raise an eyebrow.
Who in their right mind would request a hundred potions of the deadliest poison? With one being strong enough to topple ten grown men and an elephant. The magician ponders as he makes his way into his chambers, storing the herbs and ingredients on the shelves right above his trusty cauldron.
Morally the magician is well aware that he can’t in good conscience just hand over the deadly potions, even though it would be as simple as stealing sugar cubes from a baby. For an aged magician such as he, any sort of potion making is mere child's play, though with a constant threat of being swallowed by the fires of hell if he were to make one misstep.
There is only one sure fire way that the magician knows, which could open his eyes to the reality of what his actions will bring to the kingdom that he calls his home. He turns his gaze to the scry orb propped up on a small pillar in the center of the room.
He takes a deep breath before approaching the orb, and steadies himself before placing his hands on the orb. Upon contact the orb swirls with purple mist before revealing what he feared the most, the king, who, before the magician regarded with high esteem, is shown pouring the deadly potions into the enemies’ streams. Dooming the enemies’ towns upwards to ten miles out to a slow painful death.
This sight chills the magician to the bone, and without even a second thought he casts his scry to the ground with a quick swing of a hand. Though that’s not even enough to calm his rage, his hands shake with barely contained fury. “That spineless fool of a king has a fake heart of gold and a soul as black as coal!”
He then takes the ingredients and herbs he’s gathered and casts them to the floor, before leaving his chambers and heading back into the woods surrounding his home.
A plan beginning to unfurl in his mind that would make a younger version of him shudder in disgust.
Author Bio
Destini is a recent graduate from the University of Evansville, with a bachelor's degree in creative writing. She has a passion for writing poetry and short stories from diverse genres and had a short nature poem “Time of Colors” published in the book Together by The America Library of Poetry when she was a senior in high school. Through her work, she wishes to inspire others to not only create artwork of their very own, but also to become better individuals to themselves and to others. Her goal is to one day publish a book of her very own.
This piece was written during the author's senior year of college, during her senior capstone seminar.