You really need some background for this. After all, you can't have things explode for no apparent reason.
Well you can, but it lacks sense and perspective.
So, we need to visit the mage who cursed Akane. Maudlin.
...wait a minute, you say. Maudlin? What kind of name is Maudlin?
He's been asking himself that for years. After all, what kind of mage would have a name like Maudlin? Even Harry Potter would be a better name. Still not proper for a magic user, but maybe not quite enough to want revenge... no, a name so ordinary would still require... action.
Maudlin believed the Harry Potter series of books were a conspiracy to keep honest, evil mages from rebelling against poor names and slaying their namers. After all, Voldemort had about the only decent name in the series, and he'd been killed by an undertrained brat.
Naturally, Maudlin had followed the path of the True Evil Mage by killing his parents and then attempting to change his name to something suitably awe-inspiring. All of those attempts had been rejected, crushed by the wheels of bureaucracy.
The Evil Mage had come to the only possible conclusion, that there was some... being... keeping him from changing his name. The fact that he was underage had nothing to do with it.
Did I mention that he lives in Nerima? Sorry. He does.
He had been attempting to summon that being when some crazy bit... er, girl... had disrupted his ritual. Being an Evil Mage, he probably should have disintegrated her outright, but it had been such a nice day and he didn't really believe the spell would work properly anyway, at least not this time. Higher, near-omnipotent powers like Gods and Authors were not likely to be brought to him by such magics at his current level, after all.
Authors? Oh dear. He's either flipped, or he's on to me. :)
Instead, Maudlin the Evil Mage of Nerima had merely tried a recently learned spell, a 'Be what you are' spell. It had turned out to be a two state spell, it seemed that when she was calm she could be a sweet girl, but when upset, this Akane Tendo could be... Well, he really shouldn't say such things. His late parents did raise him properly.
Perhaps a tree would have been better, it was such a nice day. She could have been a cute tree, and most useful as firewood.
Still, it was heartwarming to see his latest victim being attacked with cattleprods and branding irons. Especially as he'd recently added a sound transmission spell to his scrying crystal.
The mage suddenly frowned as the crystal darkened and started to smoke, both phenomena usually reserved for old television sets. He rolled his chair (can't beat modern office furniture) to one of his bookcases, removed a single, slim grimore titled 'Experimental Spells', and rolled back before flipping through it.
At least, he started to leaf through it. A large warning in red on the third page, one he hadn't taken much notice of before, suddenly stood out.
Maudlin peered closely at the scrying crystal, and paled. One of the cattle prods was being swung repeatedly through the sound rception point... and the sound spell was from this book!
The crystal exploded.
See other episodes by DataSlave
(Posted Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:34)
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