Atoc the Mighty.
Once again Atoc felt the woosh of energy course from his soul, down through his arms, into his hands and out of his extended finger tips. At times like these, when he was enraptured by battle-lust, he felt like the magic pouring out of him could pull his arms off! So much power! He loved every bit of that power, he reveled in the feelings of joy he got from humbling the enemies of the Inca Empire!
He did not actually think that such a calamity would be his fate. No, not really. He is much too powerful and experienced to lose his focus in such a hilariously catastrophic way. He is, after all, a mighty Oracle, serving the most powerful military organization to ever set foot on Mother Earth’s sacred surface! Yes, yes. He is powerful, and his power makes the Inca Warband he is part of, an unstoppable avalanche of destruction! Yes!!! oh the joy!
His powers to control magic are now at their height. He is in his prime. But it had been a long road to get here. A road filled with non-believers. From his first years as an apprentice Atoc was constantly being warned by one master or another that he was rash, and inconsiderate when it came to his use of magic. Many even called him arrogant, The Nerve! Confusing his confidence for arrogance. But he had shown those skeptics. He had indeed. Rising, as he had done, to become one of the holy city of Machu Picchu’s top Oracles, if he was honest with himself, probably the most powerful ever … but he typically kept that opinion to himself. Better to be modest, since of course, he is sure everyone of his colleagues recognizes they are but mere apprentices next to his might, so why rub it in by telling them what they can see with their own eyes!
“Now, now young Atoc” They would all inevitably say, “magic is a gift from the gods. It is their essence made manifest here on Sacred Mother Earth. You must be respectful of their generosity, or someday these same gifts may consume your soul as punishment for being overly careless … for your hubris.”
To this day, he was very sure that all of their worries and warnings were nonsense; the prattle of silly old men! Nothing bad ever happened from his exuberant use of magics. Well, nothing too serious aside from a few accidentally burnt down villages, and a hundred or so apprentices he probably should not have so insensitively pushed in his endeavors to achieve victory in battle for his Sapa Warlord. Some of those apprentices had suffered horrible and agonizing deaths, some had been vanished to the darkest regions of the Crux, others still lived … sort of. But hey, he thought, no better way to teach his other apprentices how to avoid problems than by showing them. Experience is after all the best way to learn.
Besides he’d only ever known of one case of a High Priest or Oracle perishing from using magic in an overly exuberant manner, and that horrendous incident had involved a lowly High Priest. An apprentice when compared to him. A fool, really, a jack ass who had bitten more than he could chew as they say.
And … speaking of ‘chewing’ … thought Atoc. Where were those coca leaves, he had “discovered” on that nice Chachapoya prisoner he’d run into at his war camp? The Chachapoya captive had happily offered them to Atoc because he probably thought (wrongly as it turned out, very wrongly, as the prisoner was now lying dead along with the rest of his mates) that Atoc would somehow set him free. Atoc was sure the prisoner had recognized his greatness, and had gifted him the coca leaves as an offering to his mighty self.
The Chachapoya were famous for their herbal aides, but not so much for their intelligence. Everyone knew that only the Inca Empire produced a population with such powerful and mentally amazing individuals such as himself. But somehow the Chachapoya people had discovered coca leaves and their benefits. But then again … Atoc had discovered them on the prisoner. Which meant that, if one thought about it logically, that HE, Atoc, had actually been the who had discovered the amazing powers of the coca leaves. By the gods he was such a clever man! He had discovered coca’s magic capabilities! Once again, the Inca were proven superior to all, and his own fame would grow to even greater heights.
Coca leaves always helped Atoc keep a very sharp focus when casting magic, but more so when casting magic during times of war. His powers had been formidable, but now with his recent discovery of the benefits of constantly chewing on coca leaves, he was nigh unstoppable!
His reverie was cut short by a scream coming from one of the Antisuyu Archers which had formed a protective cordon around him. When Atoc looked over he saw that the archer had been consumed by a dark magic spell. Likely something uncouth cast by some lowly Aztec Priest. Oh well. There were many other archers, so no need to fret over one poor unfortunate warrior.
The archer’s death refocused his concentration onto his efforts to summon a herd of Magic-infused Alpacas from the spirit realm. He loved summoning the ghostly creatures. Especially when the beasts were blessed by magics from Inti himself! At the thought of Inti he instinctively bowed his head in respect.
Now he could actually hear the Alpacas coming. He could hear them as they rushed out from the gates into the spirit world, which had been opened by his soul-self. He felt them rushing out from him, down through his extremities.
There were so many. He had never summoned this many before. He laughed maniacally as more and more of the magical alpacas joined the now massive herd of alpaca-destruction which he was about to unleash upon those silly, silly Aztecs.
More alpacas kept coming … too many now. Wait, he had to slow them down. Too many at one time could be a problem. Even for one as mighty as he.
Try as he might their numbers kept growing. Now his soul, his heart, his mind felt like they were expanding and flowing not only through his out-stretched arms but throughout and out of his entire body.
Before he knew it, magic began to pour from his eyes, and mouth, then his ears. To the archers around him the magic would be manifesting itself as an incredibly bright blue light. So bright, thought Atoc, so beautiful. Even his eyes were closing now in defense against the intensifying brightness!
He forced himself to open his eyes, and then he saw the first of Inti’s spirit alpacas as it rushed towards the enemy. He even caught a glimpse of the Aztec High priest begin to turn as if to try and scape the wave of magical power about to engulf him and his idiotic dead warriors!
More and more spirit alpacas rushed out of him, and strangely, he saw an out-stretched and bloody arm joining those alpacas, soon followed by another arm. He laughed … “What an odd thing, did I sacrifice another apprentice by accident?”, he tried to raise his hands up to his face, in an attempt to bring them together into a place where he could try and stop the flow of magic, which now was surging uncontrollably out of him. But as he looked down to where his hands should have been he realized he had no hands. He had no arms actually.
Even at this moment he did not panic. Fear did not mar his confidence until he heard and felt a peal of thunder, and looked up to see where this sudden storm could have come from. He soon realized that what he had heard was no storm at all, certainly no natural storm ever seen by man or beast. The explosion of sound and light was but the final act in a great man’s life, an incandescent burst of magic as it exploded out of him, and knocked everyone around him prone and away from the blast.
This he saw in his final moments as his head rose up into the air. Faster and faster it spun away from his now exploded body. As he looked down with still-living eyes, which had but second to see anything in the physical world, he also saw that his mighty act had decimated the Aztecs, they were nowhere to be seen, but in all fairness, neither was his own warband. The battlefield, which moments before had been filled with thousands of warriors, monsters and monstrosities was now nothing but a charred wasteland.
He broke out into uncontrollable laughter, and thanked the gods for letting him feel so much pure power! He was indeed the greatest ever.
It was a testament to Atoc’s might, that for many years “the avoidance of death by Atoc’s Alpaca Death Wave (as it eventually became known)” became a standard teaching protocol at all Inca schools of magic.
