Looking for a guiding light. May 2024 round is open, looking for short stories. |
I hope I did this alright. Story Idea: In a world ravaged by a global ice age, one land survives as a lush tropic paradise -- through the secret use of magics that have long been publicly forbidden. The society of mages who maintain this delicate web of magics have insinuated themselves within each of the disparate city-states of this land, subtly guiding each in whatever way they deem necessary to maintain the balance of all. One such mage, acting as advisor to his city-state's ruler, ensured the young heir's protection after an assassination attempt and sent the child to live in secret in the near-frigid outskirts of the land with only the mage, whenever he stopped by, and a local nobody as the child's companions. Years later, a messenger arrives with disturbing news: the heir's father has died and his uncle now summons him back to the city-state for an official summit. With the mage currently absent and unable to advise him, the heir makes his own decision and returns with the messenger -- but when he arrives to meet with his uncle privately, he witnesses the mage kill the man. The mage claims he just saved the heir from the one who had tried to eliminate him so many years ago; accustomed to trusting the man, the heir believes him. But as he, now the sole and rightful leader of his city-state, prepares for the official summit with the mage's guidance, he begins to realize the mage might have secrets of his own. Secrets which, perhaps, his uncle died for. Can this young heir will discover those secrets and, for good or ill, unite the other city-states against the secret mage society and their forbidden magics? ~Dream Justly~ and Write Away! |