A horrid, toothy grin shaded in a scarlet hue amongst the endless darkness. A pair of beady scarlet eyes incessantly shaking beyond the veil, shattered ears brought close. The decadent smell of the night attracts all manner of horrid atrocities. From the seed of humanity sprouts an endless weed of corruption and taint.
Those eyes and many more leer in the shadows of a once pure world, their hunger palpable beyond words.
Humanities darkness is impure, a rapacious mix of noxious fumes corroding the world itself. But within that darkness a cleansing Is nigh, the one who holds the key to darkness. What they will do in this world is yet to be seen, but one thing is for certain, many will die.
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The sky lit up with the occasional lightning strike as hail pounded on eery roof. Despite the horrid day Ciaran still had a smile wide across his face, he seemed fascinated by what lay in the clouds. Dancing waves of neon blue circulated in the heavens, every lightning strike adding more to the ever-brightening pool.
If Ciaran could, he would stare at such a beautiful sight endlessly, but he couldn’t. dragging his head back down he continued his way, the academy drawing ever nearer. Seeing lightning in the Coredim was rare, and even rarer from within the town. Ciaran heard his father say that the region had been drained of Aether and that reduced the chances, but he refused to elaborate.
As Ciaran came up to the big wooden doors his eyes drifted off to the side of the building. There he found three boys gathered around another who was cowering on the floor. Luckily Solas was afraid of the thunder so didn’t bear witness to it, but it upset Ciaran. Why should there be something his little brother shouldn’t see, this town was their territory.
The sound of their pounding mixed with that of the rain, obscuring Ciaran’s footsteps as he approached. Looking down on the boy, Ciaran saw the boy huddled on the floor, completely soaked with red marks adorning his face. Another thought graced Ciaran’s mind, what if, what if this could happen to Solas?
A smile graced Ciaran’s lips for a second as he thought of the joy on Solas’ face when he first entered the academy with his big bro a few weeks ago. With a sudden action Ciaran threw a punch at one of the boys, and before they could react brought down a second.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
When the boy that was on the floor slowly opened his eyes, he saw Ciaran sitting atop the three bullies. Ciaran’s chair groaned and complained but he seemed not to care, and instead asked the boy
“What year are you in?”
“I-I’m a second year”
“don’t lie I haven’t… oh, time really does fly, would you look at that im a third year already!”
“What?”
“I ask the questions, now why were you getting beaten up”
“I don’t know!”
“Do you want to be able to defend yourself?”
The boy was confused by Ciaran’s act of kindness, unendingly so, but he still answered
“y-yes?”
“Good, good, you just have to do one thing for me in return, okay?”
As the sat up, leaning against the wall he queried
“What do you want me to do?”
There was absolutely no determination in the boy’s voice, but Ciaran didn’t care
“Just make sure that they stop doing things like that, inside of school or out, no beatings. Okay?”
“Oh, okay, how do I fight them?”
“Patience, come over to my place… tomorrow, and I will teach you”
Before the boy could respond or say his thanks Ciaran had disappeared into the academy.
today’s lesson was on one of the basics of Aether, conductivity. Before conductivity they had a lesson on creation, but since it was such a “complex and convoluted” topic, they were only taught one sentence. “Aether is created through physical phenomenon transforming Aether type 0-000 into other forms of Aether” coupled with a refusal to elaborate it made an adequate explanation to most. However, Ciaran was not most, and he had managed to nag the fact that Aether 0-000 was the Aether of nothingness from Mr. Luper.
The Aether of nothingness sounded interesting so of curse Ciaran asked more. Aether 0-000 had no substance, feel, appearance or even affect. However, the Aether seemed to be everywhere in an infinite quantity, and through the right circumstances become other forms of Aether. A Physical phenomenon was not the only way to create other forms of Aether, but this was not Mr. Luper’s field of expertise.
As Ciaran sat in his seat next to the window, he looked at the rain and pondered. Each year they had changed classes, and unlike the old one this room was rather… stale. Everything managed to look dusty without being so and there wasn’t a hint of colour, not even a spec woody brown poked through the grey paint.
So many other things had changed too, there was only one break time, instead there was extra activities one could pursue. Ciaran didn’t know the other options well as he had picked calligraphy, but he knew basic carpentry was in there.
Just thinking in such a stale classroom made Ciaran feel bored, but luckily, he had a way to kill time.
with a dip of his pen Ciaran got to work, lines of neat notes with a few birds mixed in slowly filled his pages. It didn’t take long for breaktime to be upon them, but still Ciaran found it hard when Mr. Luper had to explain something he had already learnt from Mr. Burton.
Break was filled with lamentations, not only because everyone was stuck inside but because one child mentioned how wizards could change weather. Despite Mr. Luper’s reasoning that a wizard strong enough to do so didn’t live even near the region, nor would they have a reason to clear the rain. However, his words only spurred on the children’s delusional aspirations to reach such a height just to stop bad weather.
That night Ciaran got to work on a box alongside Caitiff, the two spent hours trying to get the joins pretty but ended up failing several times. The two laughed in the face of failure and kept on trying, right up until Caitiff had to head home at dinner time.