All the Time in the World

Writing prompt: The king is determined to live forever. Therefore, as his court mage, he has tasked you with pursuing this endeavour. You know very well how eternal life could be achieved, but you do not believe that the king deserves it.

In all your long life, you have known that someone would demand you to do this for them. You have spent so long refining the spell and making sure it was effective and safe and as much as you wanted the news of it to stay hidden, living for 437 years so far sort of blew that secret out of the water.

So here you are, in front of the King of Haphent and he has just announced that you will cast the spell of immortality on him like you have done on yourself. Hey, if you create immortality, why not cast it on yourself first?

So you have no choice but to do this. The king is not someone you can just ignore and since there are all these people with large pointy and blunt object all around the room, you are sort of being encouraged to do it.

As you finish looking around at all the guards and the courtiers and nobles in the throne room, you look back at the king and make your decision.

“Very well. I will make you immortal King Stroud. You leave me no choice as you hold the lives of so many over my head. It will not take long and then you will be immortal.”

The king smiles at this announcement and his nobles all stir as they realise that they will soon have an immortal king to rule over them. Soon they will see just what the king will be as an immortal.

The magic isn’t really all that hard to do which is why so many never created it before you did. They thought that such magic should have convoluted and complicated magic circles and chants that went on for minutes and you had to have multitudes of rare and expensive components. Most practitioners who were looking for it spent all their lives just trying to collect the components they thought they needed instead of realising it was all so simple and uncomplicated.

But casting it on a king like this, you knew you were still in trouble even if you cast the spell, so you were making sure you were protected and the people of the villages being held hostage were as well.

It was so simple that mixing in the other spells was simple and then they started to go off one by one, with flashy sparks and lights to disguise what you were doing to protect the innocent.

Outside the throne room, the hostages were vanishing and reappearing in their villages with flashes of light. Transporting so many was going to leave you exhausted but it was needed.

As the king, his nobles and guards all looked on, they didn’t notice the cold creeping in from the doors and windows until it was too late. The ice had formed and blocked them all from escaping or from help getting in.

The king stood up and started to call for his guards but it was already too late. He was encased in crystal in an instant and the guards were also frozen with him as they started to react. Dozens of guards all frozen in crystal harder than diamond along with their king.

As you looked around to check your work, you noticed that the nobles and courtiers were all frozen as well and you knew it had worked.

You walked towards the king and you could see that he had started to realise what was happening and it showed on his face frozen in the crystal of time.

They were not dead. That was the miraculous part of this spell. They were just frozen in time. They would never die or wither or decay. They would stay frozen in this instant of time for ever. Well maybe not that long but you calculations got sort of fuzzy after about 5 billion years and you were just not sure.

So you gave the king his immortality but not quite the one he wanted.

And maybe other kinds would think twice upon hearing about what happened to this tyrant who tried to force you to make him immortal.

Oh well, time to go back home and rest and then spend some time making sure the villagers were okay and especially the kids. They needed to keep up with their lessons if they were to keep learning and have better lives.

You had time to teach them and their parents. All the time in the world.