Tales of Kaleido: Journal #1 - En, The Blood Artist.

The man was revered as a devil. He wore the blood and dirt on his shirt for the world and forged and quenched his blood into the cogs that would help power the world. In The City of Grain, a once medieval city that's tasted modern development; having large skyscrapers, electricity, and the internet. The City of Grain, at the center of the region, was founded by the 3rd divine in the western part of the region of Oh. Few adventurers call Grain home but those who do find that there is no better place to be one than here. Rather than adventurers being a part of guilds, they are managed and assigned to offices, working for the government as government adventurers. Other than the government adventurers, there is a group of private adventurers who resisted the change brought to them. 

At the outskirts of Grain, in the Northern Plains of Sash, a horde of over a thousand skeletons marches towards the city, leveling forests and hills, leaving disaster and destruction in their wake. Opposing them, standing on a rock formation, is a single man, wearing a gray button up shirt tight against his lean body, worn leather shoes, and black office pants; worn on his shoulders over it, is a pristine black cloth adventurer’s coat that has golden embroideries and runic letters sewn into it, and a teardrop emblem on the right pec. His hair is parted to each side, white as snow with scarlet red at the tips as the red melanin was burned off from the roots by unnatural means. Strung on his back is a gourd the size of a small luggage that points out to the side. As he approaches with dreary eyes, he checks his watch before closing a journal.

[2:15 pm. God I’m so tired. I wish I smoked cigarettes like Holbert and Langris.]

I look up from my watch, facing down the army of skeletons. The sound of clattering and creaking bones is disgusting.

[Last train was at 2:00. It took me 15 minutes to get out here. 15 minutes from the city.]

I let out a tired exhale.

[Let's see if I can’t make double time pay.]

I then close my eyes, taking a calm and deep breath. I pull the cork off my gourd, red vapors leak out of it, falling and lingering over the ground like a heavy sheet of fog. 

[En, focus up. Don't think about the happenings of the office, the city, the people; simply focus on the unholy monstrosity before me. En, be fluid. Be like water.]

The mana swelling within my body and my gourd pulsates and I feel like I'm an inflated water balloon with my mana pushing to escape flowing and rippling throughout my body. I allow it to explode and expand  around my body, holding it within a few meters from my body like an aura. My body is a basin and I feel like I’m submerged in a great lake of my mana. I then open my eyes, breaking open the dam that holds my mana around me and letting it explode and fill the field. The wave of mana, tearing branches from the nearby trees and moving the dark clouds that hang overhead away from me. The skeletons in the front of the hoard are immediately disassembled from the force and collapse like a house of cards while those in the front that don’t collapse are blown back into the skeletons behind, the front line of skeletons crumbling; still, the hoard moving steadily and unrelentingly towards me. 

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I then clench my grasp, recollecting my mana and condense it around my gourd. Then, with a quick and lightning swift movement of my hand, I guide a large mass of a red liquid from it. It has the viscosity and appearance of a deep crimson blood and it rages outwards towards the hoard like an angry river, crumbling the structures of the skeletons and washing it along. Having cleared a path among the weeds, I then condense it in the center of the hoard and expand it out in a linear and methodical way, like a spiderweb being formed from its center. The ends then begin to connect in arcs to form a magical circle with runic letters within it and at the center, a rain drop rune.

“Crimson ripple”

My voice echoes and bellows as I cast my spell and from the center of the rune, a blood red raindrop shoots into the air and for a few seconds as it’s falling, I close my eyes. My mind is calm, my mana is calm, the waters are clear. As I exhale, I hear the gentle sound to a ripple, and open my eyes to a large wave of crimson liquid that explodes from the center of the circle, thrashing and collecting bones in its path, flowing for several kilometers until it washes a pile of bones up at my feet like the ocean washing up sediments and leaving it before me. There is a large emptiness in the center of the hoard where my spell went off as the rest keeps forwards. 

[hmm. Still three-fourths of them left.] 

I check my watch again.

[hm… 2:17. Let's get this finished up. Train runs again at 2:40.]

I then loosen my tie and raise my hand again, sending out more streams from my gourd in three separate directions in front of me. It hangs in the air for a few seconds before my hand falls like a thunderbolt. 

“Crimson ripple! Crimson ripple! Crimson ripple!”

My voice is bellowing and grainy as three more waves explode and ripple from three parts of the hoard, raging angrier than the first one with the screeching sound of clattering and grinding bones filling the field. The waves crash against each other where they overlap, a thunderous boom  like lightning striking and the unsettling symphony of bones crashing against each other afterwards. The bones then dissolve in the still liquid, bubbling and dissipating.

I turn away and begin to walk back, the red liquid flowing smoothly back into my gourd as my hand guides it back and I put my hands back in my pocket, my clothes untouched and unscathed. The thousand skeletons that you couldn’t see a blade of grass through and that would cover the edges of one’s view, reduced to nothing, leaving only unsettled and revenged soil to regrow from this unholy scene, the sound of a cork plugging back my gourd. 

[2:23.]

I get a small warm smile tug slightly at the corners of my lips.

[Delightful, I have time to visit Mary today.]

Author’s Note: Hey this is my first time sharing a story/novel/whatever you call it and this takes place in a part of a world I made for DND because I wanted to tell a story of a character without the confines of how DND works. Regardless, I hope this is somewhat entertaining and would love if you let me know what I should add, any criticism or anything you like, or even suggestions for funny or wacky side characters to add and I'll try to include it.