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Dystopia SHIFT

Today was a normal day I stepped out of my high school building, feeling the sun beat down upon my bear arms. Today was your average Friday, getting out of school and heading to work. I was lucky enough that my job was but three blocks down the road. Little did I know that today would change my life forever. Walking past an alleyway I heard a muffled squeal come from around the corner at the far end of it. The walls of the alley were bricked and red, and the roves overhang just enough to make it so you couldn't see clearly through the heat haze into the alley. Deciding that I could take a small detour from my route I walked down the alley as I felt a chill spread across my body from the shade. You have to remember that I was wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. As I stepped into the shade of the alley I heard another squeal but this one sounded more distinct and human. Right after that, there was a crunch and a gurgle as I picked up my pace. As I reached the corner I could hear tearing and growls from whatever I was about to walk up behind. Looking around me for anything I could use for self-defense I found a long broken pipe. It was rusted and about two-thirds of the way up it turned to look like an upside-down L. Gripping it, I gave a muffled cuss as my hand slid over a sharp rusted spot on the metal, cutting deep into my palm and making me bleed. As the first drop of blood formed everything around me went still and deadly quiet. Deciding that something was wrong and feeling that if I didn't act now that I might not get another chance I walked around the corner, turning nose to nose with a giant hairy thing. It was vaguely humanoid, but instead of a mouth it had an insect-like mouth and from its back came four chitin-coated tentacles. Instead of standing on hind legs like a human, it stood in a bipedal fashion. Everything else was human, all the details down to its nude male form. Before it, I saw the carcass of a woman with her rib cage torn open. Blood was oozing from her body. I fell backward in shock and disgust, feeling my stomach turn and try and escape through my mouth at the sight. Remembering something that I once read online I realized that this must be a Windigo, but why it was here and had tentacles was something that I had no idea about. Wendigos are humans that have committed acts of cannibalism and have become possessed by evil spirits. As I was staring at this horrifying beast I could see its skin rippling, as if something was trying to get free but couldn't. The face for a second took on the face of not the hungry horrifying mutated human head but that of a fairy appearance. At once I knew what happened. Since a child I had been fascinated with fantasy stories, not of heroes slaying dragons and heroic adventures, but what caught my fascination was mythical beasts and the lore behind them. This creature was a Puca, a fairy that has a darker side than most and that delighted in the terror of humans. I guess that it tried to terrorize that poor woman as a human, but in the process ended up cannibalizing her and its form was forcefully transformed into that of a wendigo. Retaining some of the shapeshifter powers it tried to shapeshift to anything but what it had become and ended up becoming a horror in itself. As its baleful glare tried to burn holes in me I stood up and grasped my now shoddy feeling weapon. This beast was supposed to be nothing but a fantasy, but here it was standing in front of me, about to try and kill me. Running at it I decided that my only shot at surviving was to attack it first. Swinging the pipe at its face I seemed to get lucky because as it rose on its hind legs to roar the pipe sailed true and struck it directly in the eye, bursting it and causing blood everywhere. It howled in pain and pawed at my eye to realize what I had done and lunged at me, clamping its horrific teeth down on my shoulder, and knocking me down to the ground. I could feel its teeth sink into my body as it brought its claws to action, stabbing them into my stomach and scratching back and forth trying to tear my body apart.

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Screaming in pain, I used what energy I still had to try and push it away, pressing my bloody palm against its face to try and get the creature off of me. All of a sudden my palm started to burn, and it slowly started to spread down my arm. As this happened the monster screeched and jumped off of me, backing off and watching what appeared to be terror, all its fur standing on end. That was the last thing I saw before I blacked out, the fire that was spreading from my palm and reaching my brain.

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As the gods fought on the infinite plains of the In-between, something changed. Earth's innate magic power had been dormant ever since the war of the gods had started because the gods pulled their presence from the planet to be able to fight each other. However, a change was taking place and Earth was once again awakening from its long dormant slumber. Each of the gods stopped fighting for the first time in an eon, as they all looked at each other questioningly.

“Who has interfered with the mortal realm!!!” A deep bellow sounded out across the infinite plain. The Dragon god of smoke slowly descended from the sky in a bloom of constantly shifting and writhing smoke. As he landed each god bowed before this god, for he was the strongest of all the gods.

“We have not done such a thing as do break the pact and descend back to the mortal realm, o mighty sire” all the gods sounded out at once. There was no way to lie before this being, for his very presence made them speak only truth.

“Could it be?” the king of gods whispered to himself as he realized what must have happened. They had been battling for too long, and now it seemed that the SHIFT had arrived on earth, a race of beings that got their name from being able to move through realities as they wish. They traveled from plain to plain-looking for pleasure in the form of turning a world on its head. Their one goal was that of pleasure through bloodshed. They were more beasts than beings, and there has yet to be a place that has survived the plain, mainly because the powers of the SHIFT made it so that the gods could not directly interfere with them.

Being left with no other choice the Dragon god descended to Earth, heading directly towards the epicenter of disturbance that awoke the dormant planet. He could only watch as a tear in a back alley was torn asunder, and a glasslike figure that reflected everything, seemed to be but a silver figure stepped through the rift with a cage in its hand. It opened the cage and let the first Fae be seen on earth millennia free. He watched as it took shape of a human, and he watched as it caught and tortured a lady, eventually accidentally getting some of the lady's flesh into its mouth. It transformed into a Wendigo. After that, the god was infuriated; How dare they do this to HIS planet? His Earth? The SHIFT stepped back through the portal as a young man walked down the alleyway. The human stopped and picked up a pipe, and seemed to cut himself on it, then continued to walk. As the god watched and waited for what could only be the death of another human, he became so enraged that his power slipped for a second, flooding the alleyway with the powerful magic of creation. The human reached the creature and it lunged at him after he stabbed its eye. Then, something weird happened. The god watched as the boy placed his hand against the bloodied eye of the monster, as the creature and the boy's blood mixed and became one, then flowed back into his body. As this happened all the magic that was released converged on the body of the boy, entering his body through the slit in his palm. While the boy's body's appearance stayed the same, his flesh on a molecular level changed and mutated, becoming a substance like that of the god. He, the god, watched as a young man's destiny was unraveled and dispersed into nothing, and he was transformed from a human to a demigod.