The old man leaned over his desk, writing in an aged tome by candlelight. His unsteady hand shook lightly as he wrote strange symbols onto paper. The dark red ink he wrote with carried the scent of metal as it stained the page. Quickly, the small bit of ink in the well quickly ran out, his quill running dry. Without taking his eyes from the page he opened a drawer on his aged desk with an exasperated moan and pulled out a small vial of dark powder. gently tapping the vial over his well, a small bit of the dust sprinkled in. Once that was done, he pricked a finger and dripped some blood into the well. Small green energy enveloped his finger and healed the cut. As soon as that was done, he proceeded to mix the blood and dust together. Only once it had reached the same color and consistency as his previous ink did he put down and mixing rod and begin writing once more.
The old man mumbled as his grey beard shifted from the movement. Finally, after hours of continuing this process, he sat from his hunched position.
"I'm close; I can feel it. Just a little more, and the spell will be perfect. I need something else, though… what is it. What is the final component?" the old man asked as he slowly got up from his chair. Grabbing a candle, the man lifted his aged legs, unseating himself from his chair as he turned around. Carefully, he walked across the room, stopping before a painting, the candlelight giving the paint a soft glow. He put his palm against its frame and smiled. "I'll miss you, you young fool." His smile slowly disappeared as he peered at the painting, old memories swirling. It displayed a beautiful meadow and two people. One shared a resemblance to the old man but was several years younger, while the other was a young-looking man who had yet to breach his 20th year. The old man sighed as he looked at his wrinkled hands. "But if this works, our goodbyes will be short".
The old man walked across the room to a bed, the wooden floor creaking like his joints. Carefully, so as not to drip the wax, he set his candle on a table close to the bed and put a metal lid over the flame, extinguishing it. He lay carefully into his bed, the frame creaking as he lay down. He breathed out a deep breath and quickly dozed off.
The silence of the room was interrupted by the soft sound of cracking glass that softly echoed through the room. From a broken terrarium crawled a snail, covered in small bits of vegetation growing from its shell. Slowly it slithered along the table, leaving only a slightly green trail of slime behind. The snail slowly crawled forward, incidentally crawling onto the tome. When the muscular foot lightly grazed the ink, a dark spark of energy burst forth, rendering the snail and every other creature in the room to ash. Then, just as suddenly as the spark, a bright green light shone in the air above the tome, the glass of the broken jar and snail slime illuminating in its verdant glow.
The old man reached for his chest as pain surged from within. His eyes shot to the light flouting above his tome before he looked back to himself. His heart jumped as he saw himself turning to ash. Green and blue energies swirled from his core and entered the green beacon illuminating his room. Before his mind faded, a thought echoed through his mind. So this is how I die?
