Quaraun stood up and turned around.

"Is someone there?"

There was no reply.

No one was here, at least not yet. But he knew from experience, they would come eventually. He walked around, looking for the stairs down. If someone could have entered here without his knowledge, he didn't know if he would be able to stop them before finding out who or what was behind the door on the other side.

Quaraun finally found them and descended into the darkness below him. Once he felt that he was far enough away that no one else could possibly hear him, he spoke again.

“Hello?”

Quaraun sighed when nothing happened.

He walked further into the cellar until he came across a door. He tried the doorknob, finding it to be locked. He pressed his ear against the wood of the door. He heard some whispering coming from inside the room.

Curious, Quaraun knocked on the door three times, waited, then did so twice more.

“I'm sorry, but I don't think anyone is home."

He frowned when he got no response.

After knocking a third time and receiving no reply, Quaraun tried the knob once more. This time, it opened easily. He stepped inside.

The small living area was dimly lit with a few candles set upon various surfaces. The smell of incense filled the air. There wasn't a single thing in sight

He heard no further sounds, so he sat back down and contemplated if he should use his wand to create a flame-less fire or put on a fur coat from his bag.

Quaraun yawned and stretched his limbs.

Finally, Quaraun stood up, picked up his pack, and walked towards the window. His eyes were very tired. This strange, intense cold was making him very sleepy. Quaraun stared out the window, the ground above was eye level to the bottom of the cellar window, so he could clearly see the ground and part of the sky and not much else. There was no light source, just the moon and stars.

The only sound that could be heard was that of the crickets and cicadas outside.

Quaraun turned around, looked at the fireplace, then back out the window, then at the stove.

There's not a matchbox here either.

Quaraun shrugged, and walked towards the fireplace.

As soon as he came near the fireplace, he felt an intense heat coming from it. He shuddered and stopped walking.

Looking back at the fireplace, Quaraun saw a small flame had appeared on the logs. Quaraun slowly started to approach the fireplace again. When he touched one of the logs, he felt it burning hot.

Feeling slightly uncomfortable, Quaraun quickly backed away from the flames.

Quaraun walked towards the window instead, then went back towards the fireplace. As he got closer, he noticed more and more flames appeared around the fireplace. It felt like there was an inferno going on.

As fast as he could manage, Quaraun ran from the room and closed and locked the front door and window. Then he collapsed against the wall and started catching his breath.

That was too close! Quaraun thought.

As Quaraun continued catching his breath, he looked at the windowsill. On top of the sill, next to a large glass jar, was some kind of plant.

Just then, something crashed into the windowsill, causes Quaraun to jump back startled. When he looked to see what it was, he saw a large black bird, and eagle of some sort, laying on the ground by the window. It stood up and stared at him. It had gleaming black-blue feathers, brilliant crystal blue eyes, and huge sharp black talons. It cocked it's head sideways, staring back at him for a moment and than flew away.

"What a strange looking bird," Quaraun said to himself. "I wonder what it was. I've never seen one like it."

Quaraun turned back to look around the room once again.

His gaze fell on a stack of books sitting on the desk. He reached for one. It was old. The leather binding cracked, and its yellowed pages flapped gently. He set it aside and picked up another. This one had a chocolate brown velvet cover, the exact type of brown velvet as the cassock BoomFuzzy always wore.

"BoomFuzzy," Quaraun whispered as he ran his gold armoured fingers over the soft velvet binding. He turned the book over to look at it's cover. The covered was embossed with gold leafing, exactly like the ones on the covers of BoomFuzzy's boxes of chocolates. "Oh my!" Quaraun gasped when he read the title of the book.

The gold words said:"Quaraun".

Quaraun opened the book, turning it's delicate vellum pages carefully. He recognized the calligraphic handwriting on the pages.

It was BoomFuzzy.

BoomFuzzy had written this.

"Quaraun is an ancient Moon Elf wizard. A powerful mage, whom has lived for centuries beyond his natural life expectancy. He is known as the most dangerous and knowledgeable wizard in all of the Realm of Fae."

"BoomFuzzy wrote this," Quaraun said as he closed the book and tucked it away inside his pack."But when? I was not yet a wizard when BoomFuzzy died. I was just a child. I became a mage after his death. Because of his death. BoomFuzzy could not have written this."

Quaraun pulled a box of BoomFuzzy's BoomFudgy ButterCream Filled Chocolate Covered Apricots from out of his tiny heart-shaped bag of holding.

He stared at the velvet covered brown box with the friendly gold letters on the top.

Such wonderful dark chocolates.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Such horrible dark secrets they held inside each bloody bite.

BoomFuzzy had died centuries ago. One bite was deadly. BoomFuzzy's last box of BoomFudgy ButterCream Filled Chocolate Covered Apricots.

The last thing BoomFuzzy ever made.

The last thing BoomFuzzy ever ate.

BoomFuzzy had poisoned the candy.

A horrible, terrible poison.

One that dissolved organs, and caused the eater to die coughing up a pool of their own blood, mixed with their dissolved entrails. And the victim would die a gruesome, bloody death.

But that's not all.

BoomFuzzy also used this poison when he made the chocolate.

BoomFuzzy's last box of BoomFudgy ButterCream Filled Chocolate Covered Apricots. The box of chocolates BoomFuzzy had made to kill himself with.

BoomFuzzy had committed suicide.

This horrible box of chocolates killed BoomFuzzy.

Quaraun had found the remains of the dead man, in the old gingerbread house.

Quaraun had found him in some kind of secret room.

BoomFuzzy's secret room was not secret anymore, now that Quaraun knew about it.

Now was haunted.

Haunted by BoomFuzzy's ghost.

And no amount of running around would make it go away, because every time he stopped, something bad happened.

Quaraun was sure of it, if only to try to understand what had been done so deeply wrong, but all he could do was shake his head sadly, and take his sweet time eating every single one of the boxes in his small hands.

He'd eat the whole box of the last one.

He'd make sure of it.

There were more important things to worry about though.

No.

This was not a pleasant thought.

This was a horrible thought.

A memory.

That's what this box was now.

A memory of the day BoomFuzzy died.

Quaraun opened the box. The deceptively heavenly aroma of bitter sweet dark chocolate, soft, fluffy buttercream, and gooey fruity apricot jam wafted out of the box.

Five chocolates were gone.

The rest still remained.

"I loved my children," Quaraun said out loud. "But I loved BoomFuzzy more. I murdered my four children. This candy is poisoned. I gave them each a chocolate from this box. This horrible box of poisoned chocolates."

Quaraun stared at the horrible boxes of chocolates that had taken so many lives.

"I knew what they were, I knew they were full of poison, and I did it, anyway. I knew how BoomFuzzy had died. I knew what BoomFuzzy had done to the food. And I gave these to my children anyways. Five are gone. One for BoomFuzzy. Four for my children. The rest remain."

Tears streamed down Quaraun's cheeks.

"Why? They were sweet and innocent. Innocent and sweet. Pure and kind. Kindness is a rare thing. So few are kind. No one has ever been kind to me. I am too different to be accepted or welcomed in any society. Unloved and unwanted, outcast and abandoned. Yet they were innocent. They were not cruel and hateful like everyone else."

Quaraun put the box of poisoned chocolates back in his bag and fell silent once again.

Quaraun picked up the next book from the stack.

A beautiful tome on the subject of necromancy, written by the Great Lich Lord himself.

How interesting. Quaraun pocketed the book.

Quaraun looked at the stacks of tomes. Quaraun picked up the next book from the stack.

This time, Quaraun didn't read it. He simply sat and looked at it in his hands as if he could see the words printed there as if they were alive. But they weren't alive. They were only plastic and paper and glue. But they weren't plastic or paper. Not anymore. Not when Quaraun had given them life, brought them into this world with all its horrors and suffering.

Not when Quaraun had made these beings who he now knew would forever haunt his nightmares.

His thoughts. His fears. And his memories.

They were Quaraun's nightmares, no more, and no less.

As Quaraun flipped through the pages of the book until he came to the part where Quaraun found out about his past.

There, on an old copy of some book that had sold for over five hundred gold coins back then, was a small paragraph written in red ink on a blank page.

"'The world does not want people to be good.' That's what he said. This same man that I'm supposed to kill because he killed my best friend," Quaraun thought with a heavy sigh.

He turned to the next page.

A picture filled the book, and for a moment, Quaraun's heart skipped a beat.

It was the image of the first person he'd ever killed: Gibedon the Great. Quaraun quickly shoved the book in his bag and grabbed the next one.

Quaraun read over the title."The History of the World." Quaraun placed that book back down and opened another. This book was newer and less damaged, but it's pages were blank. There were no words written in it.

He set it aside and pulled another book closer.

The cover read: "A Treatise On the History, Theory, and Practice of Witchcraft, by King Gwallmaiic."

Quaraun gasped at the name. King Gwallmaiic. BoomFuzzy. BoomFuzzy was just a nickname, a name Quaraun had called him, his real name had been Gwallmaiic, King of the Faeries. Could he have written this book? that was now two books in this stack, written by BoomFuzzy. This was a most odd and curious discovery.

This time, he removed a thick red book from the stack and opened it. He scanned the page, reading. Then he placed it back on the stack and picked up another.

He read it.

Replaced it. Then he picked up the next one.

Quaraun moved onto the next book in line. The cover read: "Treatise on the Art and Science of Magic."

Quaraun held it up and read the words engraved along the top right hand corner: "King Gwallmaiic."

These books belonged to BoomFuzzy. Quaraun was certain of it. He pocketed this one as well in his pink bag of holding.

Again he read. Again he put the book where he found it.

Once more, he reached for another book. He read the title and chuckled lightly. “The Dark Side of Camelot,” he read out loud.

He flipped open the cover. The book read: “I have always liked stories about knights who fight the evil sorcerer, Merlin.”

Quaraun sighed deeply. He shut the book, put it back, got up, and went to the desk. Unlike the table, there was nothing on it. He contemplated opening one of its drawers, however; he decided against it.

Quaraun went back to the table and sat in its chair once again. He laid his elbows on the arms of the chair and rested his chin on his fist. He picked up “The Dark Side of Camelot” once again, opened it, laid it on the table, and stared blankly at the open page muttering the line: “I have always liked stories about knights who fight the evil sorcerer, Merlin.” to himself a few times.

“Merlin wasn’t evil,” Quaraun stated to no one. “Nor was he a sorcerer. Why writes this crap?”

A sound on the stone stairs interrupted his thoughts. He heard footsteps. The sound echoed throughout the empty hallways. Soon after, a woman came running down the hall. She gripped a torch in her hand. She stopped short when she saw Quaraun.