Two years had ticked by, and the town Samu had grown up in had exploded exponentially in size. This forgotten town no longer laid on the foothills of the end of the world, but of a cornucopia of bounty. Farmers found new grain that survived the cold. There was high-quality wood for stronger houses. Alchemists had enough herbs to not only support the adventuring population, but had enough abundance to experiment. So much had changed, but so little of it mattered.
Every house in the city was either brand new or updated to match- save for one. The only house that stood at a single story, with walls that leaned and lacked paint, was what Samu called home. Thalman had offered to do the work to update their house himself, but Samu had always hated the idea. The thought of changing any more made him uneasy in ways he didn’t have the energy to put into words.
Samu laid in bed, his bed, drenched in sweat after a horrific nightmare. The memory of it faded, but not the unease. There was a dark aura that rolled off those mountains and splashed through the town, and he knew he was the only one to see it. No one else had the magic to see emotions the same way he could. A gift his eyes spontaneously mutated one day.
With no desire to move, he laid in his bed for over an hour before there was a knock at his door.
“Hey Sam,” Thalman called, “Can I get your help with something?”
With a sigh, he moved to get out of bed. With arms thicker than they should be, he drag himself between the crevice he wedged himself into. It was actually Thalman’s help that had allowed him to raise his bed till it was nearly touching the ceiling. There was comfort in the tight space, and the scales that had grown to cover his body made slipping out effortlessly with the low friction.
Once he was dressed and situated in his wheelchair, he called back Thalman. With permission, he pushed the chair out the front door and navigated the crowded streets. The chair was something that made Samu self conscious most days, to have his legs deteriorate past the point of needing a cane, but the way Thalman never complained when he picked it up to better navigate the crowd gave him some peace of mind.
They came to a house Samu hadn’t expected to see. A single story structure, which stood out not because of its size, but its condition. Cracked walls, broken windows, and a roof full of holes made it clear this place was left to decay. Thalman’s insistence on knocking on a door no longer attached to its frame was the only reason Samu didn’t think it abandoned.
As he struggled to make it up the porch’s single step to follow Thalman, he realized why. The house was dead.
Dark magic polluted its interior and warped the perception of most in the village to ignore it. He reached out to Thalman to grab his sleeve and quietly tell him to leave, but before he could, Thalman had shrugged and gone inside. With no choice, Samu followed.
Inside was no better, but the corpse on the couch only confirmed his suspicions. This house was dead. Broken table, rotten food, and dust on every surface. Pale skin, a spine showing from where its legs used to be, a dark aura of tainted magic that clung to it as it failed to take in breath.
“Thalman,” Samu hesitated, unsure how to break the news. “I am unsure what exactly you need help with, but I think this place might be haunted.”
“Nope!” He exclaimed as he rushed over and excitedly shook the corpse. “Wanna wake up? I brought him like you asked.”
Its milky eyes opened as it took a single breath. The face of Baros looked up at Thalman before it turned and stared through Samu. “Oh good, the mage. I need your help with something. After a recent accident, I need your enchanting skills to put me back together. Not just whole, but stronger.”
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Baros continued to make demands, but Samu’s eyes wandered. He looked around the house and took note of the more subtle energies that clung to its walls. This was a house of misery and abuse, never to be a home. As he wheeled himself through the halls to take stock of what he had to work with if he were to set up shop, he heard Baros as he struggled to be heard. Through ragged breaths, his last sentence stuck out.
“Anything you find here is yours, so long as you can make me some legs. I need to go kick someone’s ass.”
That made Samu pause in the doorway to the kitchen. At first, he thought the boy was delusional as the house had been picked clean of anything of value, then he noticed that the walls held a silent enchantment to their misery. This was the most magical house in town, but had long since been drained until it was a graveyard of those memories. Yet, on closer inspection, there were still items of value he could repurpose.
Calling to get Thalman to come over to him, Samu spoke to him in a hushed tone. “What are we even doing here? Every cursed object to ever pass through the town originally had its home right here. The things it kept locked destroyed this place. Isn’t being here making you sick?”
Thalman stared off for a second as he pondered. “Yes, it is. I take in the passive mana enough to know it when I drug him here. His skin was like acid against mine.” He raised a hand to show the wounds that were only partly healed. “But it’s twofold. He said he would get better regardless, and I was hoping you could work your magic and purify the remnants of these bones.”
“Thalman, weren’t you supposed to be the muscle? Since when did you become the caring one of the group?” While that got a laugh from him, it wasn’t entirely wrong. With a sigh, Samu asked for some holy water as he navigated the broken floorboards to see a dozen things hidden below. There would be a lot of stuff to work with, and he just wanted to have some legs fused together out of these items? That seemed doable.
At least Samu would probably be fine, as his scaled skin provided enough magic resistance that he could work without being harmed. He would just need to make sure Ink’el never wandered down this road, less she be overwhelmed by the darkness that lurked in its shadow.
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“Sticks and stones, broken bones, needle and thread, all sacrificed to see you make it to the end,” Avice sang under her breath as she worked. Her long blue hair pulled back to stay out of her way as she focused on the thread in her hand.
“Can you not?” Dekrin asked from his severed head as it lay nearby, clearly not amused.
“I mean, I could, but you’re the one that got dismembered by a slime, of all things.”
“A slime that had practice eating demons. It was a bad match up for me, same with the others you sent.”
“Tears of the flame, and a chemical berserker, not bad creations, but they were definitely prototypes that could never be refined to grow stronger. I would never worry over something so insignificant, as I can simply make more.”
And she could. Others called her the Queen in Blue as she took the reins and led this group in all matters, and she used her inherited gift in combination with her grandfather’s book of the dead to distribute power to those who were worthy. The first may have died, but there would always be more, and if there weren’t? She would just create them.
Everyone had a title for their powers, and hers was Queen, for she could make an empire. Perhaps her ‘friends’ weren’t entirely wrong. Far better for leadership than the hemogen puppet that laid before her, who was designed since birth to dance for whoever pulled his strings.
“Well, I think I’m ready to get going as soon as you stitch me up. It was kinda fun to watch the panic set in as the dungeon burned. How soon can we do a follow up?” Dekrin asked, as his hand wrapped in its white bandages tried to give a thumbs up.
“Oh, I already sent the primary invasion force. The preparations were complete after your little excursion, so don’t worry too much about not joining. You can follow as soon as you can walk.”
She couldn’t help but laugh as the pair of legs she mended tried to stand up and prove they could, but without a heart, the connected strands weren’t strong enough to support them. Dekrin was just too weak. He may have been her cousin, but she set the rules around here, and he wasn’t allowed to move just yet.
“I’m not sure why you are so ready to go back. You already destroyed the dungeon’s defenses and had your fun, so let the army I raised clean up. It’s not a small force, so there is nothing to worry about.”
“After all,” she smiled that sickly sweet smile full of venom, “I am done waiting in the shadows. It’s about time we wrap this up.”
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> Esoteric nature of Core is reacting to increasing corruption levels.
> Corruption at 7%