】〓〓〓〓【

Wight

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Waking up today hurts. I’m in a giant hole instead of a bed, too. The spooky black flames from way before when I drew are all over me, burning away something sparkly.

I hear a kid yell at me from the top of the hole. “What the hell? There’s a different kid now?” I look up at the kid. He looks weird, like a puzzle with wrong parts.

Child, the abomination wants you dead. I’m protecting you, but I can’t stop him unless you make a deal with me.

The bad voice is back! Go away, Dad told me to not talk to you! The world wiggles a bunch and the black fire appears around me again.

Listen, boy, I am not some bad voice. I am the archdemon, mother of demons. I am not some swindling devil trying to get your soul. I am investing in you long term. So make a deal with me! The voice gets loud and angry. I ignore her because dad said to. She’s also using lots of words I don’t know.

Gods damn it child! Fine, let's try another way then. Child, that child above you is too strong for you to beat!

“What? You’re lying!” More wiggles touch me and more fire bursts off my skin.

I’m not, little one! You can’t beat him! Go try.

Fine stupid lady. I’ll show you. My wings open up with lots of pretty lights and I fly straight up. I crash into some glass tubes hanging above the tunnel and goo pours all over me.

“Ey kid! Those were a lot of work to get!” The kid points at me. Why is he calling me kid? He doesn’t look older than me!

“Shut up!” I roar. All the glass shakes in the room. My tail whips out around my leg with gold lights. “You’re not stronger than me!”

The sick looking kid looks scared. Good! “Kid, I killed my quota of children for this life already. How bout we go our own ways, yeah?” He grins at me, his teeth don’t fit right. Some are different colors!

“Did you steal your teeth?” I ask him.

He laughs funny. “Steal is a strong word kid, they didn’t need all their teeth.” He smiles at me again. I don’t want him to smile at me with stolen teeth!

I fly at him as fast as I can, going to punch his stupid stolen teeth. Then everything wiggles and I’m inside a wall. I pull myself out of the rock. More black fire is on me, why does this keep happening?

“What the hell? What did they feed you kid? Also how are those flames burning my blessing?” The annoying kid sighs. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

I push with my legs against the wall I was just in and shoot towards the floating kid. His face isn’t scared this time, he just looks sleepy. Bored? Just before the claws on my hand get his face everything wiggles again. I’m in another wall.

I rip through the rock again, on fire again. I roar in anger. Why can’t I hit him?

“Hey, kid. I don’t think this is gonna end if you keep swinging like that. We can’t touch each other. How bout you let me leave with this guy and we call it good.” The kid points to a blurry man in the floor. Why does he want that guy? I don’t want this kid to get anything.

He’s right child, you can’t hit him. If you make a deal with me you could get all the punches you want. I could hit him?

Tell me more.

The lady laughs in my head. That’s more like it boy! From now on I’ll help you when you need it, and in return you help me get home. That seems fair?

I just have to help you get home?

Yes, that’s all child.

Okay, I’ll do it!

【〓〓〓〓】

Fire covers my view, the black fire I’ve seen many times now. My head feels fuzzy, different. The brat is still talking, taunting me. Let’s turn him inside out. I fly at him, my claw raised. The world twangs in place again, but this time it doesn’t touch me. The kid’s eyes go wide as my claw pierces his chest.

He coughs violently, hitting my face with black blood. “Dammit, how’d you do that?” He chokes on more blood. “Whatever… Vips!” He yells the last word and something crashes in the distance. I lift up my free hand and swing at his head.

The world warps again, much harder this time. My hand erupts in black flame but is stopped in place by the rippling air. This brat dares? I push harder against the warping and the flames around my hand roar higher, brighter. Sweat starts to drip down his childish face. Pain suddenly erupts in my arm, and I’m pushed back.

I fly across the room and slam into the wall of glass. The blue liquid cascades down over me and into the room below. I push myself out of the glass and feel a sharp pain in the palms of my hands. I look and see the glass biting into my skin. What?

I feel another pain in my arm, this time it flashes across my whole body. Both the black flames and golden scales that cover me dim significantly. I hold my arm up and see a silver snake biting into my arm. Its eyes look at me, a mocking light glowing inside the red gemstones. Crush it! I reach for it but it opens its mouth and drops to the ground, where it coils up.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I move to jump down, but the kid interrupts. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Vips’ bite shuts off your system for a bit. It’s the thing I got for my troubles in that ruin.” The silver snake uncoils, launching itself up to the child. The horrible warping sensation happens again, and a burning hole opens in the air behind the living annoyance.

“Although I don’t think it’ll work on you that well.” He starts moving through the shimmering portal as my flames return to full blast. The brat smirks at me. “Adios amigo!” I lunge at him, aiming for his throat, but the hole closes and I pass harmlessly through the air.

I crash into the ground, making a large crater. I pull my face from the crushed rocks, and look for the stupid brat. That’s enough for now. The voice says.

I nod, this stone floor is pretty comfy.

I guess I’ll take a nap then.

】〓〓〓〓【

Jet

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It’s been about twenty minutes since they went in. I wonder if they’ve at least found something by now. I check to make sure that the appropriate knights are here. Medical Mages, Shieldbearers, archers. All here, excellent. Things should go smoothly, they just have to tell us what they saw, and then we can— My thoughts are interrupted by the loudest cracking sound I’ve ever heard.

The deafening snap shatters windows nearby and causes all the knights to cover their ears. The ground around the target building, an abandoned tailor’s, starts to heave and crack. A door leading from the basement bursts open, and a blurry mess comes running out carrying an unconscious child. A familiar unconscious child. A very dragon-like… gods dammit.

The blurry mess shouts something at us, but the sound never reaches us. Every noise stops, the world goes silent. The ground cracks open, cobble and stone flying into the tailors. Everything is eerily silent as the entire building pulls out of the ground and starts to collapse inwards. The store crumples as if the hands of a god are balling and crushing it up. The orb of crushed building materials gets smaller and smaller until it just vanishes.

Then all the sound comes back.

【〓〓〓〓】

One of the nearest medical mages chugs her thirteenth mana potion before tending to the next patient. When the sound came back, sound didn’t just turn back on. No, all the sounds that were created during the silence happened all at once, shattering every window in sight and bursting the ears of everyone nearby. The medical mages have treated at least a hundred patients each in the past hour, mostly nearby residents, and the relief squad still hasn’t shown up.

With a grunt I stand up and walk over to the knight with a bandana. His right arm is bandaged, only going a few inches down from the shoulder now. Sword hand too, tough luck. I sit down on a nearby crate.

“So, what happened?” I look at the grayed knight, seeing emotions flash behind his eyes.

He lets out a long sigh. “Where do I start? The kidnapped? The Count’s kids? The crimes I saw? There’s just so much.” He looks at his boots. “I’ve been doing this shit for a long time, but what I saw in there was something else.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “He was chopping kids up to build himself a new body. And it worked Jet! We couldn’t do anything, he could see through mine and Luna’s abilities. I understand mine, but I have no idea how he saw Luna.”

The man goes silent, his expression intense. “Jet, he was keeping the kids alive. The ones he took parts from? They needed to be alive for it to work. There were dozens of live people down there, if not more.” I look over to the huge crater in the ground, the now very empty crater.

“I don’t think they’re suffering anymore, at least.” I say darkly. But Lenkin shakes his head.

“I let em out, the room had a huge rune by his lab. I took a chance and hit it. They all teleported out, every single one. A lot of them will die from what he did to them, but I got some out alive.” Lenkin eyes me strangely. “Do you know? About them, Jet?” The assassin thumbs at the sleeping dragon child, who's rolled up in a knight’s coat, otherwise naked.

I give Lenkin a stern stare. “Yes, and you won’t speak of it to anyone, Captain.” Lenkin nods slowly, unbothered by my aggressive tone.

“Makes sense.” He pauses, looking at the deactivated day-lights overhead. “You think the count will let me teach Luna?” He looks at me with an eyebrow raised.

“Lady Luna.” I correct.

“Right, Lady Luna.” His eyes scrunch in a smile. “Except for when I’m teaching her.” I shake my head at the man’s guts. His eyes turn serious. “So, which of us are going to tell the Count about that?” He points over my shoulder at the massive hole.

I sigh into my hands.

】〓〓〓〓【

Coil

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After the ‘Night of the silent bang’ as the people of Wornsbirth are calling it, things returned to a more reasonable pace. With the two people from the other world gone the disappearances and other strange happenings around town dropped to normal levels again. On top of that, no more once a century dungeons appeared.

The next few months were still busy, as the town focused on reconstruction. The two sections of town destroyed by the incidents needed extensive repairs. Father took the opportunity to redo the streets of the entire second tier, since commerce was so heavily affected already. Many of the kidnapped children were found and returned to their families. Many also lost their lives moments after being taken from the underground lab, lacking the equipment that had been keeping them alive. Most of the taken kids, though, were orphans or street kids, so no one missed them. And that’s why he was able to get away with it.

During the reconstruction, the Church of the Eight allowed shopkeepers of the affected areas to set up stalls in their main hall and courtyard, for a modest fee of course. The sect of Leng used the opportunity to try and bring people into the fold, while the followers of Makk and Cece used it to show off their inventions and art respectively. The Knights of Rend kept the peace in the rowdy impromptu marketplace. The followers of so many gods in one place was quite the unusual event.

Father forced the seven of us back into classes. Scarlet and I were put into more training to be Heirs while the others got more specialized schooling. Luna was put under Lenkin as an apprentice and Iota was put through basic knight training. Pim was allowed free access of the library and was only required to give Father reports on what she had been studying. Father found a master for Zenith’s mage body and threw her punchy half to Captain Jet.

Wight was once again the odd duck. Father took care of him personally at first, teaching him lessons typical for his age. After a month or so Father started taking Wight into the training room in the manor, and Wight did something to block my vision. I’m not sure what happened with that, but Wight has been much more emotionally stable lately.

Scarlet repeatedly came to me for help with our classwork. She’s getting increasingly distracted by her ‘daughter’ Tara. She spends most of her time out of class with the kid. I don’t really understand her attachment to it.

My experiments with shadow agents have progressed swimmingly. The newest version is almost indistinguishable from the average human, as long as you don’t cut them. They don’t have false blood, I couldn’t manage that, so they bleed ink. Or at least what looks like ink. I’ve also learned that if one is somehow destroyed, I can’t reform them. I’m considering making another model specifically made to be disposable, so that I don’t have to risk my high skill agents. Between that and the shaderats and shadowcrows for communication I have everything in Wornsbirth under my gaze.

I’m not the only one, which worries me. An entity called Vone has started contacting residents in town, building a reputation of goodwill with them. She seems to have near omnipresent knowledge of the going ons in town. Which is worrying since I’ve seen no trace of any agent or magic leading back to her. How she’s learning all this is baffling.

The most interesting thing is happening today, the official announcement of the Unraks to the townsfolk, and by extension the world. And after around a year of being Coil Holdings, Father has decided I will make my first appearance.