Storytelling for Week 3: The Soul Eater

With the Ring of Purity in his hand, Mazus sets off to find Lucia the Seer in Sette Diavoli Kingdom to find out what power the ring holds. Sette Diavoli kingdom is on lockdown when he gets there. The guards tell him that there is a higher power threatening the kingdom. They continue on to say that the god Peshmerga inhabits an island close to the kingdom and is planning to destroy it because the people started to worship less and less, thus weakening him.

The guards allow Mazus to enter the kingdom to find Lucia and to figure out how to help the kingdom. The maid in the palace says that Lucia is at the Valley of the Dolls and the King is at a neighboring kingdom asking for reinforcements. Mazus learns that the Valley of the Dolls is a place where the Soul Eater Rune lies. The Soul Eater, with the combined power of the Purity Ring, can kill Peshmerga by turning him into stone.

Mazus sets off to the Valley of the Dolls to find Lucia. He finds her at the entrance because the only way in was to possess the Ring of Purity. This was so that only a person who was worthy enough to obtain the ring could enter the valley. Mazus then gains entrance and grabs the Soul Eater Rune from its platform to use against the threat of Peshmerga. They start feeling the Earth shake as Mazus removes the rune from the pedestal. Both Mazus and Lucia run outside to see the sky turn grey. They can also see the mountain from the island where the god lives start to move and stand up. Mazus and Lucia realize that the mountain itself is the god. Peshmerga knows that the rune has been removed and knows that it will be used against him.

When Mazus and Lucia return to Sette Diavoli, they see that whole kingdom is in chaos with people running everywhere. When the crowd sees Lucia, they rush over, grab her and run toward the palace. Mazus doesn’t know why the crowd grabs her until the maid at the palace says that Peshmerga would stop his attack if the kingdom sacrifices her. Mazus follows the crowd to the top of the palace where they tie her to be sacrificed. From his island, the god approaches the palace getting ready to strike. The Earth quakes with every footstep Peshmerga makes, as he gets closer to Sette Diavoli. As he is mere feet away from Lucia, Mazus inserts the Ring of Purity in the Soul Eater Rune and throws it at the raging god, combining their powers and stopping him in his tracks. Peshmerga realizes how powerful the immense power of the ring and rune hold when combined together and retreats back. However, at that moment, his body starts to feel heavy as he turns to stone. He then starts to break apart with the weight and crumbles to the ground.

The people know at that moment that the kingdom is safe again and cheer through the streets. Mazus hikes through the rubble to examine the now-dead god and notices that the ring and rune are still connected. He picks up the connected pieces of the ring and rune and stashes it away in his pocket and turns toward the palace. Once he gets there he is greeted by the king. The king thanks him for saving the kingdom and asks Mazus to stay. Mazus responds with a thank you but he still wants to continue his journey. Lucia is very grateful that he saved her and decides to accompany him on his journey. Both Mazus and Lucia depart from Sette Diavoli Kingdom to journey to another land.


Author’s Note:

This plot was taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis and the settings, characters, and artifacts were taken from my previous Storytelling post. My goal was to expand on Mazus’ journey and add to it so hopefully by the end I can have a whole list of stories about one universe.

From Ovid's Metamorphosis, I chose the story of Perseus and Andromeda. The original story is about Perseus, a demigod. He tells the story about how he took the enchanted head of Medusa to defeat the Titan Atlas. I focused on the part where Perseus takes the head of Medusa and turns Atlas into stone to save Andromeda. A fun fact is that there really are mountain ranges in Africa called the Atlas Mountains inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphosis. The original story has Perseus telling a story about how he defeated Atlas, but I changed it so that he was doing it.

In my story, I took an artifact from my previous story and gave it more of a purpose in this one. The Soul Eater Rune came from a video game I played a long time ago and felt like it fit since it was used to kill. The Sette Diavoli Kingdom is translated as Seven Devils Kingdom in Italian but has no real history. I just took it from a song of the same name by Florence and the Machine. The name Peshmerga came from the Kurdish soldiers fighting against ISIS. Even though they are not the enemy, I liked the name as it means "he who faces death" in Kurdish. This might foreshadow something about Mazus in future chapters.



Atlas in the Mythology, Peshmerga in my story. Source: Wikimedia






Book: Ovid's Metamorphosis


Author: Ovid (translated by Tony Kline)


Published: 2000

Story Telling for Week 2: Journey Through the World of Solitude

In the center of the Land of the Blue Moon lies the Crystal Palace. There the king of the land requests an audience with the Black Knight Mazus. The king summons Mazus to send him to the World of Solitude to retrieve Ring of Purity. This ring grants the wearer awesome power that the king wants for himself. Mazus assembles the best men to assist him on a journey filled with danger and the unexpected. In order to find the gate to the World of Solitude, Mazus seeks the help of the seer Lucia, who is the only person alive to know its location. Before he departs from Lucia and enters the gate, she warns him saying that he will be the only one to return but doesn’t specify why.

Upon entering the gate, he finds a man dressed in a brown cloak introducing himself as Oliver the Proctor. Mazus and his crew approach Oliver and ask where to find the Ring of Purity. Oliver responds by saying that the only way to find the ring is to find a stone called the Rune of Elements. After obtaining the stone, Mazus must bring it to a group called the Untitled. From there, they will lead him to a castle guarded by a Cerberus, which Mazus and his group will have to slay to get in. Inside the castle, the ring will be on the empty throne located in the throne room.

Mazus and his group learn that the Rune of Elements is located at the end of a maze, which they would have to solve. As his group followed by Oliver reaches the entrance to the maze, Oliver reaches out to them and says, “There is a witch that will use her power to turn your men against each other.” After hearing Oliver’s warning, Mazus and his group enter the stone maze. As soon as the last knight enters the maze, a slab of stone from the entrance starts rising, trapping Mazus and the knights inside so that the only way to go is ahead. They continue walking around in silence until they hear a scream coming from behind only to find that the witch had used her magic to turn one of the knights from Mazus’s group against them killing half the group. While the other knights try to subdue him without killing him, Mazus goes on ahead to find the witch to take the rune.

Mazus runs until he approaches the end where the witch is sitting with the Rune of Elements in her hands. As he approaches her, he starts to hallucinate doppelgängers forming around him. They start to attack him and he notices that the only way to stop them is to kill the witch. He creeps behind the witch and plunges his sword into her heart. He picks up the rune and watches her lifeless body liquefy and mold together to form several more bodies. From behind Mazus can hear the footsteps of his knights. When Mazus and his men prepare to fight the new bodies, they speak to Mazus and his men saying, “You have passed the test. Proceed with us to the next task.”

Mazus and his men cautiously follow the Untitled out of the maze when they see the castle containing the Ring of Purity signifying the end of their journey. At that moment, the Untitled begin to mold together to transform into the Cerberus for the final task. Immediately after forming, the three-headed dog starts grabbing at the knights and eating them. The remaining knights tell Mazus to jump from the cliff to stab it from above. When he gets to the top of the cliff, he notices that he is the last man standing. With one leap, Mazus drives his sword into the back of the Cerberus’ neck and kills the beast. This opens the doors to the castle where the Ring of Purity lays. Mazus stands and stares out to see his knights killed in action. He breathes heavily and heads towards the castle.

As he picks up the ring and stares at it, he begins to think if it was worth the journey to lose all the men he brought. As he gazes at the ring, a voice inside him tells him that he has the power to unite people together to stand against a powerful enemy. He then decides to keep the ring and to not return to the Crystal Palace, but to journey off to another continent to understand what the ring means and what power it holds.

My idea of how Mazus the Black Knight looks.

Author's Note:

I chose to tell the story in third person and in present tense. I like the medieval period and I enjoy writing about magic and other supernatural elements. The main goal from this story parallel to Homer's Odyssey was the journey in which the hero has to overcome certain obstacles and has to deal with the loss of those around him, leaving him alone. Homer's Odyssey is about Odysseus going on a journey and landing up on the Cyclops’ Island. After defeating the Cyclops, Odysseus and his men end up on Circe's Island where she transforms them into pigs. After Odysseus frees his men from Circe’s magic, he and his men go to the afterworld and he encounters the ghosts of people he knew. After they leave the Afterworld, he and his men go up against the Sirens, a multi-headed monster named Scylla, and a giant whirlpool called Charybdis. The story ends with Odysseus returning home. I changed the plot of the original by making the main character obtaining an artifact for someone else. The ending was changed with Mazus not returning home and instead setting off on another journey to another continent. I like the idea of having Circe bewitching Odysseus’ men, so I decided to keep that element in my story with the witch in the maze. Scylla is also present in my story as the Cerberus.

Odysseus is a very smart person and that helps him get out of dangerous spots but his arrogance leads him to losing comrades. This is a characteristic I keep with Mazus.

Information:
Book: Homer's Odyssey
Author: Homer (Translated by Tony Kline)
Year: Published in 2004