The Great Escape [Eclipse Soul]

'Tonight is the night' Zach said to himself with his eyes looking down into his palms which he held upwards towards his face. Zach sat against his bed in the prison cell he had been wrongfully condemned too for three years now. It was cold and rather damp, the walls of the jail were solid rock though there was no magical protection seeing as it was a jail for normal humans. A flash of light gently light up the room for a split second as lightning flash and thunder crackled through the air of the wet and rainy night. It was around two am so there was only one guard on duty and he was a rather lazy one, Zach had been watching him for a while as he tried to figure out the best time to escape, he had been planning this for quite a long time. As the lightning gently light up the room Zach was shadowed by it as his back was to the wall of the only bared window in his cell.

The lightning had been just bright enough to light up the eyes of the prisoner in the cell just across from him. The prisoner had been sitting facing directly towards Zach, a wide smirk could be read on his face. Zach gave a nod to his mentor, the one who had taught him magic and kept him safe while he was doing his time. Like Zach, this man had been wrongfully placed in that hell hole though he was very old, he had accepted that he was going to die in prison but he had hoped to pass on his greatest asset in his life to a pupil, this asset was a very unknown magic that the man had stumbled upon. Zach slowly got up off of his bed and walked over to the front of his cell, placing two hands on the bars and leaning his face into them in order to get closer to the man and whispered a grateful 'Thank you' to the old man. Zach then turned around and walked over to the back wall of his cell which had the window high above his head. Raising his left hand, Zach's fingers started to glow with a faint white light. Zach then drew a vertical line on the wall which marked it with a white line of his magic, Zach then took a step back and snapped his fingers.

Upon snapping his fingers his magic invoked its self, the walls of the cell seemed to move apart for him as if he had his own special door to the outside world. Zach looked at the view ahead of him in amazement, he could see the wet grass and the rain along with the storm that was currently going on. The field ahead of him was now mostly a mud pit but he had no other choice and he wasn't going to let mud stop him. Zach took a deep breath and sprinted as fast as he could off into the distance, looking back only for a second to see the door which he had just walked through slowly close behind him as he made his way into the stormy night.

Sprinting outside of the property of the prison Zach now found himself in the woods, he was decently familiar with the area since he had lived there for quite some time now but it was all confusing in the dark storm. Zach frantically looked around in every direction trying to remember where the guild had been that he had heard about from the old man, it was close but not too close. Zach entered the woods to see that the woods were on a mountain side which overlooked the city, 'THERE!' Zach said to himself as he darted off down the mountain, slipping on mid every couple hundred feet and almost losing his footing on the way down, a bad fall could prove to be fatal but he was basically running for his life already so none of that mattered to him.

Finally reaching the bottom of the mountainside and into the beginning of the town, Zach's boots were covered in mud and he had plenty on his jeans and jacket too which annoyed im, it was his favorite jacket. Zach sat down for a moment on a bench as he caught his breath, the prison must have already sent out people to look for him by now, the storm gave him the temporary cover he needed but it wasn't going to be enough. Zach got to his feet and started his way into the town, there weren't too many people out and about at that hour so he had little time to get to where he needed to be, he could only hope that the mages of the guild would be able to understand his situation and help him clear his name, Zach also hoped to pick up some pointers as he was basically a bran new mage.

Sneaking his way through the town, Zach had to hide in several alley ways and building corners so he wouldnt get caught, the guards had been sent out to find him. Zach waited in an alleyway as some guardsmen went running past, thinking they had seen him but it was someone else. Wiping his brow and exhaling he ran out of the alley in the opposite direction and turning the corner, he could see the guild now. Zach ran up to the doors of the guild and started to pound on the doors, looking back every few seconds to see if anyone was coming after him. "Hey OPEN UP! IM A MAGE! SOMEONE HELP!" he yelled at the doors with each succeeding pounding with his fists against the door, his life depended on him getting inside of that door.

Zach froze for a moment from pounding on the door as he heard a female voice from behind him on the steps as she approached. Zach turned around to look at the girl, she seemed to not be much younger than him with long white hair which was matted down by the rain like his was. Zach wiped the water off of his face and a little bit of mud too as he took a deep breath and looked at the girl as she passed by him and gently pushed the doors to the guild in. This was it, he finally made it inside of the guild after his long journey which started the day he met Ivan and began learning magic, it was a plan that the two had made. The girl have him some space and let him enter first, he stepped inside and out of the rain, not straying to far from the door so as to not track water or mud into the place. The girl gently closed the door behind the two. She brought a candle out and light it at a table, Zach took off his jacket and left it by the door and did the same with his boots.

Zach continued to stay silent as he took in the surroundings of the dimly light guild, it was similar to what Ivan had described to him. Finally putting on a cocky and powerful smirk that every young man should have, Zach wrung out his hair gently and made his way to the table that the girl had now placed a candle at. Zach took a seat at the table and folded his hands together, leaning in towards the flame and looking at the girl. "Beef please~!" he said with great exclamation, he had been eating shitty prison food for far to long that ramen sounded completely amazing for the situation. After responding, Zach sat their quietly as he started to catch his breath and get warm by placing his hands near the candle fire, he wasn't to terribly cold because he didn't mind the cold, the real problem was him being wet because it annoyed him.

Zach nodded as the girl questioned if he had actually said what he did say, 'Yes of course! it's my favorite" Zach said with a quick smirk. "Wonderful" Zach exclaimed, he hadn't had a real meal in a very long time so he was actually very excited about it. Zach wathced her for a moment as she seemed to have dozed off into her own mind, letting out a small laugh Zach nodded to let her know what had happened was fine. As the girl walked away towards the bar and then into the back fridge Zach took a moment to look around again and take in his surroundings. It seemed pretty empty for the moment but it was also the middle of the night, he was sure it would be more lively in the morning. A seemingly short ten minutes had passed as Zach took in his surroundings before he could smell the ramen coming from the kitchen, he was excited that it was almost time to eat.

The girl came out from the kitchen carrying two steaming bowls of ramen, Zach watched as one of the bowls was placed before him and then watched the girl as she sat down at the table in the seat across from him. After making a remark about how ramen was always good when you aren't feeling great she asked him what his name was and if he had planned on joining the guild. Zach started to eat as soon as she asked him. This was a question at the time that he would rather not talk about though he knew that eventually it would be impossible not to answer. Zach kept eating rather fast, stomaching as much as he could before he was about to enter a rather serious conversation.

After taking a deep breath Zach looked at the girl in front of him, "Well if you must know.. my name is Zach Tempest. You've probably heard of me considering very recent circumstances. I actually just escaped out of jail, that damned hell hole" Zach said with rather deep frustration. "I wasn't the one who killed my parents, a dark mage did it and framed me for it by making it look like a normal murder. I could have proven to them that it was done by magic but they wouldn't listen to me...they simply locked me up and threw away the key when I was sixteen." This was a rather emotional and touchy topic for him to talk about so his voice flared a bit as he spoke. "While I was in jail I met a man claiming to be one of the most known mages, Ivan Reznov. He taught me a dangerous magic that he once used to become very powerful, that was 400 years ago however. He taught me the basics of a magic called 'Negative' magic which allows me to take away from anything, it can get rather complex. Ivan has been using this magic to negate the effect of age on his body thus allowing him to live this long, he's started to get old and give up however because he realizes that he's washed up and been in this life too long." Zach spoke very highly of his master, he was turley a great mage despite his shortcomings in morality after some time, history books didn't do his masters story justice.

"I wish to practice my magic here and clear my name. Im sure someone here is capable of helping me harness this magical power and help me to make the right decisions with it, Ivan warned me that it can be very dangerous and the power can get to your head once you are a master of it."

Zach sat across from the girl still rather calm even with her outbursts, he could tell it was hard for her to take in everything he had said, he would even admit it was a bit much. Ivan had honestly saved the boy, knowing the pain he had gone through first hand. As a finally old and dying man, Ivan decided to pass on his magic to one person, a person who had nothing left but despair and enough hope to put his teachings to work. Zach sat quietly and stared at the girl pink eyes for a long couple of moments, giving her time to catch her breath and mull over the situation. "Well for starters we could use the facts. Before I was 16 I was just a normal boy living a normal life, sure my family wasn't rich so we had to work hard for what we had but my father and I did well when it came to money with his lumber business." Zach said completely clam, he still couldn't wrap his head around how someone could think he was capable of killing his own family if they knew him.

"Sure, im strong but my father was much stronger. We lifted heavy logs of wood all day and needless to say my father was a very big and powerful man. At the crime there is obvious signs of struggle and no murder weapon, I couldn't simply overpower my father back then even if I wanted too, he could have stopped me if I had attempted it." Zach said while letting out a soft sigh, he looked down at the table for a moment at his hands and at his bowl then back up at the girl. "And then there's this," Zach said softly as he reached into his shirt and produced a small and rather worn picture. Throwing it onto the table in front of the girl, it depicted a large man holding a log of wood over his head with both arms, in front of him was a young boy nearly sixteen years of age doing the same and a small black haired woman standing beside the large man with a laughing expression on her face. "That's me and my parents, what kind of killer carries around a photo of his victims after his deed is done?" Zach questioned, the only was he could think that she would still not believe him was to think that he was mentally unstable though Zach would argue that he seemed and acted rather mentally stable.

"Believe me or not it's up to you, If I am captured again I will again stop at nothing to escape and find my parent's killer. Ivan also instructed me specifically to come to this guild, his reasons however I do not know but he said it would be a good place for me to grow with this magic, hopefully keeping me in the right mindset to not misuse its great power for bad things."