I originally began to write this in an effort to regain my freedom from Furry Hell, but was released on account of good behavior. I decided to finish it anyway.
Prompt: A talkative wizard who is selfishly protesting against a farmer on the International Space Station.
"Hey! Go do your mucking around with your plants somewhere else!" This was shouted from the mouth of no other than Lyle, the spellcaster. As Lyle protested, a few burly men set down a few hydroponic stations in the room around him. "This place is cramped enough as it is!" As the young man complained, the men were knocking over his bookshelves and replacing them with hydroponic setups.
A moment later, a middle-aged man walked into the room, and frowned upon Lyle. He was wearing the ordinary white and gray jumpsuit that most people wore on the planetary space station of Kipman-9X. The young wizard however, was wrapped in a mishmash of cloth snatched from old clothes, rags, and who knows what else that were stitched together into a makeshift robe. "Lyle," the man began, "Why must you always resist our efforts to further the success of this station? Do you realize that we all cannot waste our time gawking at ancient babble and pseudo-scientific gobbledygook?"
"I do not waste my time, Harold! I am a true wizard, and I am doing my best to perfect this seal!" Lyle held up a piece of paper, presumably ripped from a dusty book. The parchment had a number of strange intersecting markings inked on it. It looked almost like Lyle had taken some rotting paper and had smeared and dabbled some unspeakable excrement upon it.
Harold did his best to not laugh. He maintained a straight face and asked, "What in the dickens is that supposed to be?"
Lyle stepped closer to Harold, and his eyes widened in seriousness. "This seal is going to protect this station."
"Bollocks."
Lyle frowned, and stared into the eyes of Harold. The older man placed his hands on Lyle's shoulders, and shook his head.
"When will you give up this nonsense, kid?"
"You'll never understand, will you? This is bigger than anything we’ve ever seen!” Lyle flailed his arms about, then rested them on his hips for a moment. He kneeled down to collect his books and various handmade charms.
Harold scoffed at the young wizard, “I doubt it.”
A few days later, Harold had begun to settle into his new working space. All of that “magic” junk was cleared and in its place were instruments and supplies to grow food.
The station had seen a large influx of new people in the last few months, which had its ups and downs. More people translates to more construction workers and miners. That’s what most of the people were here, anyways. The Global Confederacy Of Earth had sent off a colonization team about fifty years ago to Kipman-9X, but the team soon found that this planet was prone to extreme volcanic activity. This would make efforts to populate the surface a wash, ultimately unprofitable. However, much to the delight of the confederacy, Kipman-9X and its surrounding planetoids was found to have an abundance of rare metals and minerals. Thusly, the colonization effort was made into a that of constant mining, mostly kept to the rings and rocky moons of the planet.
A fleet of confederate ships was scheduled to bring supplies every few months, but recently the rations of food had been insufficient, and Harold had family with a background in agriculture, so he was chosen to one of the dozens of people who became the seeds of the new “locally grown” produce initiative.
Things were quiet for a few days. Harold enjoyed it while he could. Harold had known of Lyle since the day he was born on the station. He and his wife had given birth to a child of their own, and after his hours of mining were finished, he would come to the nursery to watch his little baby girl. Coincidentally, baby Lyle was positioned adjacent to his own child. Who knew that bugger would grow up to be such a nuisance. Harold thought for a moment, that perhaps Lyle’s loss of his parents in that mining accident had impacted him; but only for a moment.
A loud rapping was heard from outside of the door. Someone was knocking from the outside. Harold took a step forward, about to enter the code to release the magnetic lock, but heard Lyle’s voice screeching obscenities.
“Go away, Lyle. Leave me alone.” Harold rolled his eyes and went back to inspect a seemingly diseased specimen.
“No! You have to let me in! The Axarions are coming!” Lyle hand begun to pound on the door non-stop.
“Lyle please, can you just let up with this voodoo garbage? You had a good thing going on, kid. I was here, with my plants,” Harold raises up the specimen and smiles, setting it down. He the motions to the locked door, “And you were quiet. To think that-”
“This isn’t a joke! Gracie was ripped apart by those things!”
Harold’s stomach dropped. Tears flooded to his eyes. “My daughter is,” A lump had formed in the old man’s throat, and there was a pain in his chest. “Dead?” He began to sob and dropped to his knees, masking his face with his hands.
Lyle cursed and began to mutter unintelligible words, his hair stood on end, and the door became unlocked. The young wizard stepped through the open doorway, as his magic began to tuck itself away. “Get up, fool. Go join the others.”
Harold wiped his tears away, “What?”
The wizard took the man’s hand, and lead him to a nearby vent. Lyle meshed his hands together and mumbled some gibberish. Harold eyed the spellcaster’s mouth, as he was clearly speaking but no words were heard. Lyles hair and robe rose, and his eyes began to glow. “Good, the seal is working.” Lyle’s voice was no longer that of an awkward adolescent, but now more akin to a shining angel.
Harold began to stammer, “T-the seal?” In response, Lyle ripped open his robe, revealing his bare chest pulsing with energy and that same seemingly useless seal was now burned into the wizard’s skin. “How?”
“You never should have doubted me, old man.” With a flick of his wrist, the mage dislodged the screws of the vent, having them float into his hand. “Go, Harold!” The man stood and gawked for a moment, then removed the cover of the vent and crawled inside. “You’ll want to stay to the left at all times. There’s quite large pocket of space with a few other people I managed to direct. I’ll come for you all when this all blows over.”
Harold looked over his shoulder to get one more peek at the golden wizard. Lyle took the screws and crushed them into what looked like stardust. “Thanks kid,” Harold gulped.
Lyle began to zoom down the corridors of the station, his ragged robe becoming enveloped in light and folding into a pair of wings. A smile grew across his face as he glided past the many doors of the space station. Reaching the airlock, the spellcaster only needed to glare at it to open. “I’m getting stronger by the second!”
After the security process was complete, Lyle was only a few yards away from the open void of space. Looking out with his new glowing wizard eyes the shining mage could spot the incoming Axarion fleet.
“The cosmic wizard has finally awakened.” A voice rang in Lyle’s mind like a swarm of angry wasps. “We shall see if you are of worthy mettle!” One of the larger enemy starships began to glow with a red light, emitting glowing orbs that spiraled around it.
“I am stronger than you could ever fathom, scum.” Lyle flew towards the plasma spheres careening towards the station, and ripped through them. The spheres exploded with a beautiful mix of golden and reddish light, and the cosmic wizard was a bit sad that no one alive was out in the main bays of the station to see it. Lyle retaliated with an attack of his own. His hands began to glow, and a beam of energy came blasting out of his palms, tearing through the man ships like a knife through butter. The spellcaster bolted towards the Axarion mothership, smashing through the tinted bio-glass and grabbing the Axarion Matriarch. Lyle scoffed as he watched the disgusting insectoid alien squirm in his grip.
“Please, spare us,” the Matriarch struggled against the young man’s iron grip. “We were foolish to oppose a-,” The alien leader searched for an appropriate word, “We were foolish to oppose a god!”
A smirk sprouted on the cosmic wizard’s face. “You’re right.” In a snap of Lyle’s fingers, the Axarion fleet was reduced to stardust.
When Lyle got back people had already begun to venture back out into the open areas of the space station. The remaining humans ran to meet their savior, lifted him up and sang a joyful and thankful song of praise. Harold presented himself, and apologized for all the times he had doubted Lyle, and took him in as his son. The Axarions were dead and defeated, and the cosmic wizard reigned supreme.
“The end!” Lyle looked up into Harold’s crusty eyes.
The older man shook his head and tore the journal apart. “This is what you’ve been wasting your time and resources with?” Harold shouted and spat upon the pile of shredded papers. Tears had welled up in the foolish boy’s eyes. “You’re a waste of space, and that story was rubbish.” Harold shoved Lyle to the ground, and shut the door. “No wonder your parents left you here.”
Lyle sat alone in the dark, and sobbed.
