A truly wonderful world, filled with magic and stories that would make the greatest writers of Earth eat their hats in envy.
It is, truly, a place one should choose to live in… never. Heh, what, you seriously thought this was a good world to exist in? Why of course, it would be if one chose to completely ignore the proselytism of the churches, the constant wars among nations, the College’s censure on anything even remotely reminiscent to any written or spoken medium and, last but not least, how incredibly damaged the world itself is.
The gods… made a lot of mistakes back when they created
Other than that? The world was filled with cracks, openings to other places that formed out of sheer chaos and randomness. The Tides near the city of Passion, the Dark Place with its Archives and abandoned castles, the Eighth Sea, the prison underneath the Tiurna Mountains… and others that I cannot remember right now. Granted, these were, as said, mistakes, and one cannot exactly ‘proofread’ an entire world, not easily. They did all they could with what they had and still managed to do a pretty good job.
Still, it is not a world where it is easy to live.
And then they made the System, which turned all these mistakes into… features? That was the word, right? I’m not sure.
Anyways, there’s nothing we can do about those things and, truth be told, I still believe, even years after my arrival here, that
…
I think I’ve forgotten the reason I started this tirade. Alas, my mind is no longer what it once was: I’ve grown old.
Let us get back to the story now, shall we?
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A carriage carried a man wearing black clothes towards the City of Temples.
The carriage and its drivers were infamous all over the world both in the Driver’s Guild and all kingdoms worth that title. And yet, every few decades, people just… forgot about them. It was strange. It made no sense. But then again, there were many things in the world that didn’t make sense and, really, the Brothers Two weren’t the strangest by far. Although… they were probably one of the most dangerous.
So, when they approached the gates of the City of Temples, Alanna, they acted naturally, or tried to.
“Documents and reason for entry,” asked the [Watchman] at the gates.
[Watchmen] were improved versions of [Guards] found in most cities outside of Eva. They were a specialized group, not bound to the [King], that existed exclusively to administer the law. Most kingdoms didn’t create them simply because it would take precious resources, but Alanna? The place had been around since before the Era of Hunts and, when the arachne tried to expand in Eva, they couldn’t breach its walls. So it was only obvious that for a place so stable such an expense could be made.
“We are bringing in a delivery,” said Habil.
“Well, if you call a person a delivery, ha ha,” added Qabil.
Nobody ever really remembered their names. They were always just the Brothers Two, which wasn’t so bad: it was a fitting title. There was two of them and they were brothers. What more could they ask for?
The bored [Watchman] looked over the documents and nodded as he skimmed over the perfect records.
That was when the [Head Watchman] came in.
The two brothers sighed. It always went like this: some lowly idiot would come check on them, but then someone higher up in the chain of power, someone whose Levels allowed him or her to remember them, would go get the head honcho who’d try (and miserably fail) to stop them. A hassle is what it was.
“Stop them! Get the person in the carriage out, now, before they enter the city!”
The shout made the well trained [Watchmen] come running, surrounding the carriage, weapons drawn. A [Pyromancer] had drawn a bead on them and a group of three [Lightning Mages] high up on the walls were already casting some strange spell that was weaving itself around a small steel plate. That, more than all the rest, made the Brothers raise an eyebrow (at the same time). They’d seen that tactic deployed on battlefields: usually it ended with a lot of death and destruction… on both sides of the battlefield. If the idiots cast the Spell there’d be civilian casualties.
A [Watchman] warily approached the carriage’s door, his hand moving to open it.
His head disappeared, a loud banging noise resounding all around the gates to the city.
Idiots never remember to close them, they thought.
Because they always forgot that detail when interacting with them.
Habil raised his right arm in the air, which was now holding a gun.
“We kindly request that nobody touch our delivery,” he said.
“Unless you desire to die,” continued Qabil as he, too, raised a gun, this one with a much longer barrel. He pointed it up at the [Lightning Mages] and, after a moment, fired it. The shot traveled through the air, coming in contact with the [Magical Barrier] around the man’s figure. For a single moment it looked like the magic would resist – after all, those Spells were made to protect against [Fireballs] and worse, and these people were no pushover [Mages] – but then the shield broke and the man’s head… disappeared.
Nobody had ever seen guns in action in this world, nobody even knew what they were, nor had the concept been developed so far. Or, well, actually, the dwarves probably thought about it but, in the end, decided not to create anything like it.
Still, even after this show of power, the [Head Watchman] still shouted: “GET THEM! DESTROY THE CARRIAGE!”
Then lightning struck the walls as the Spell, now missing a [Mage] to help keep it in check, overloaded, killing the other two casters.
As everyone was distracted Habil made the horses move.
Where they passed, men screamed… and disappeared. There were no bloody prints left on the ground that would suggest the poor souls had just been turned into paste, only empty paving stones.
Panic began to spread among the citizens who scrambled to the sides, away from the roads and the path taken by the damnable carriage. They even felt it: this time something was different. The usually cheerful Brothers looked serious, ready to… probably kill someone. Or a lot of someones.
“The time is nigh,” said Habil as he commanded the ‘horses’ to move on.
“Father’s plans are truly in motion now,” agreed Qabil as he shot an M1 Garand rifle at a [Sniper] way off into the distance. He missed. For all the Brothers Two were good with the weapons they summoned they were no sharpshooters. They were, at heart, [Drivers]. Strange ones, but [Drivers] nonetheless.
Still, the shot had scared the man, causing him to hide, giving them precious seconds of pea –
The ground in front of them caved in creating a hole large as a city block. People were safely held in place by floating rocks while the ground itself looked like someone had put their finger on it and pushed, the houses flattened against the sides. It was a surreal sight, like looking at a painting from Salvador Dalì. At the very center of this disaster, on a floating bit of pavement, stood a [Mage] that was probably close to being declared an Archmage... not.
Habil and Qabil remembered actual [Archmages], the Class, not the simple title granted to barely acceptable Mages. If those people wanted you dead then you’d be dead, period. Leveling a city block? They’d have leveled the entire city, burying it underground. This was a mere trick… for them, that is. They were pretty sure that, nowadays, something like this would cause a conundrum to most people.
The [Mage] smirked towards them, sure they would stop any moment now..
Habil urged the ‘horses’ to move faster as, slowly, the smirk on the [Mage]’s face turned into a confused frown, then alarm, then again a smirk as he thought the Brothers Two had gone insane and decided to fall to their doom. And, even if they somehow had a Skill that allowed them to move in the air, which wasn’t impossible, he’d still have the advantage on them.
So he got ready, waiting for their inevitable use of their Skills.
And was slightly shocked when the carriage, instead of falling to its destruction or starting to move in the air on some kind of invisible (or very showy) path, just clung to the ground and kept on moving down the sheer drop of the crater he’d made.
He looked on as they reached the bottom and went horizontal again.
Then he remembered he was supposed to stop them so he started casting.
[Earth Spires] sprouted from the ground in front of them, trying to crush them, while others formed in their path in an attempt to pierce through the carriage or horses.
Somehow they managed to dodge them all.
[Earth Walls] were built, blocking their path completely, while he started throwing large rocks at them.
The only reaction he got out of them as they crashed through a wall as if it was nothing was Qabil shouting upwards: “Stop acting like a monkey throwing rocks around you absolute ninnyhammer.”
His brother chuckled: “Oh come on Qabil, you can do better than that.”
“Yes, but then I’d have to become quite rude, brother dear.”
And they moved on, completely unfazed by the walls appearing in front of them and the spires that were still trying to skewer them. One actually managed to sprout in time underneath their carriage but all it did was thunk against the underside and break into mana particles.
Then, finally, they reached the other side of the actually quite deep pit and, as if it were nothing, started climbing up the vertical slope.
The [Mage] at this point just looked towards them with a nearly dazed expression, trying and failing to understand what he was seeing.
“What fucking Level are those two?”
If he had heard the number he would’ve thought the speaker crazy.
And the Brothers went on.
In the distance the second set of city walls, the one surrounding the temple district and the College, began to loom closer.
As people kept on running and Spells rained around them the Brothers Two looked onwards, dodging attacks that could’ve possibly damaged their cargo and civilians who weren’t fast enough to move out of their way. Their actions may cause the deaths of innocent people as a form of consequence, but they themselves never killed them.
Finally, the walls appeared in front of them, their gates shut.
“STOP! The College orders you to stop and turn back, Brothers!”
This time the shouting came from someone on top of the walls holding a scroll in their right hand. They squinted and clearly saw, on his left breast, the symbol of the College of Memories, together with his rank. He was an [Emissary], a high Level one at that if the yellow stripe was to be believed.
As his words kept reaching them they felt his Skills trying to take hold over them, attempting to turn them around, to leave the city of Alanna behind them with their cargo still in their carriage. The words and Skills clawed at their minds, but all they managed to get a hold on was a chaos that reminded the System of the singular moment It had been allowed to look at the Primordial Chaos from which Creation had been born. It immediately looked away and the Skills failed to activate.
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The Brothers Two closed in on the gates, never slowing down. Actually, Habil kept on urging their ‘horses’ to speed up, a manic grin forming on his face, mirrored by his brother.
“TURN AROUND NOW!” attempted the [Emissary] one last time, failing miserably as none of his Skills managed to take hold of the two [Drivers].
The man sighed, then broke the seal on the Scroll he’d been holding up until then, unrolling the heavy chain that had kept it closed for centuries. The Spell etched on that ancient parchment was powerful beyond most people’s imagination, something that would’ve made even [Archmages] of old sell their every possession in an attempt to get their hands on it.
A Scroll taken from the very heart of the last Silken Palace of Rodar, the home of the arachne’s greatest World Shaper: the Shaper of Corpses, Argramanzia. The greatest [Necromancer] to ever exist in this world and also its greatest [Healer].
As the Scroll unfolded the Mana around it began to tremble with pure potential, the world turning into a pinpoint of localized reality that screamed and screamed and screamed that something was wrong, something that shouldn’t exist was there and it desired with all of itself that it didn’t.
The air went dark, a fragment of night falling upon the man as light shone from the memory of a waning moon.
And then he spoke: “[Die].”
It wasn’t an [Instant Death] Spell.
Oh, not by a long shot. This… this was close, so incredibly close, to being a Word of Power. The End, written upon reality, reduced to a word that could be spoken by anyone.
The Brothers Two saw the Scroll disintegrate as the very Mana around them was forcefully changed into Death Mana. Corpses put to rest into blessed and consecrated cemeteries, their heads cleanly cut off from the rest of their bodies, twitched as they felt unlife seeping into them. Ashes began to swirl inside their urns, attempting to bring back to unlife a body that was no longer there, making something twice as dangerous in the process: Ash Walkers. In some even worse cases the bodies were too damaged to make anything out of them… if they were to be taken singularly. But… what if they united, fused, became one? And so thousands of pieces from hundreds of different bodies attempted to fuse together, to form an Undead Abomination.
It all failed, naturally: the churches had put in more failsafes than just damaging the bodies to a point where, technically, it shouldn’t have been possible to reanimate. Like putting the people inside coffins that were made of steel and only covered in a thin layer of wood. They’d dealt with [Necromancers] before and knew all too well their tactics.
So the nascent undead, while un-alive, were locked away and incapable of actually causing any damage.
Meanwhile, the Spell that had been cast moved in the air, looking at its caster.
The Spell Matrix… thought. For but a few moments it thought, for it had been empowered with so much mana when it had been made and the Spell’s structure was so complex… that it could think. And remember.
The Spell remembered a grumbling being with a spider’s body in place of its legs muttering over hundreds, thousands, of lines written in the mana over the parchment as arms that sprouted from her back kept on scribbling and reshaping her body as it slowly died from the exposure to the massive amounts of Death Mana. She was putting the final touches to one of her greatest works as, outside the walls of her room, screaming came through.
The Spell then looked down at the thing that had used it.
It was a puny man, small, fragile, inexperienced, a little nobody who was nothing like its creator. What had happened to her? It wondered. Where is she? Is she dead? Questions which it had no time to answer as the hundreds of lines that explained in detail how the Spell was supposed to act commanded it to kill everything in the general direction of downwards at a twenty-seven degree angle in a radius of ten kilometers. Well, them’s the orders.
But, before that, the Spell managed to find a single loophole in its many lines of orders: there was no mention about it being unable to kill its caster.
Actually, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe its creator left that opening on purpose. Ha, it had known her for a scant few seconds but it truly admired her.
Then the Spell ceased to be as it cast itself.
First, downwards, towards the man who had dared activate the Scroll, the man who wasn’t its creator. Death reached him. And he fell to the ground, his heart stopped, his lungs filling with water as the body’s temperature plummeted to below freezing, far, far, far below, becoming for but a single moment as cold as a universe gone dark before it started to heat up again, the air around it becoming so cold it started to snow. Thunder struck the city and people cried out in fear while a crack formed from the top of the wall to its very bottom, the stone all around it beginning to crumble as people fell to the ground, unable to breath as the very air turned to ice.
Then Death fell down, towards the Brothers Two.
Primordial Death. The definitive Death. The End that should’ve come to each and every world if it wasn’t for the Nothing.
They looked up at the falling Death and saw… that they wouldn’t be the only ones to die because of it. Ten kilometers in radius. Therefore twenty in diameter. Which would mean a good third of the city turning into a crater that would make the [Earth Mage]’s one look like a pit dug by a dog.
They tilted their heads to the side, like curious, confused, animals.
Then the Spell struck.
And… failed?
The survivors of the Spell’s backlash watched in astonishment as the city behind the Brothers didn’t disintegrate.
Then they looked down.
And cheered, for the Brothers Two were no longer there. There were no traces left of either them or the carriage.
They didn’t notice the… thing moving forwards, towards the College, the House of Memories, right on the other side of the wall, for they were making no noise. Actually, the duo’s carriage never made any noise.
And as for Habil and Qabil?
They were screaming in agony.
But they had no mouths, so they couldn’t make any sound.
The agony was endless, the cold deep, entering their bones, breaking them apart, and then doing it again and again as the bones came back. Their flesh didn’t even have the time to do that. The same went for their ‘horses’, which had lost the glamor of horses and now showed off a giant spider that kept changing into other strange creatures, its flesh constantly breaking apart as it kept itself alive.
Slowly, very, very, slowly, they moved onwards.
There was nobody in the streets they were going through: the [Priests] and their [Acolytes] and other people were hiding in their temples or had moved to the streets they’d left behind in an attempt to stop them.
It was a good thing, for the sight alone in front of their eyes would’ve caused many of them to receive a [Condition].
On they went, slow and steady, as the agony abated to mere excruciating pain, their bodies stopping their attempts at disintegrating and, instead, merely attempting to turn them into ice statues. They had experience with that though, so, with a lot of cracking and crackling, they stepped onto the roof of their carriage, the wood turned into ice and minerals, and began to move slowly, not staying still for even a single moment as the ice formed on and in their bodies and they had to break it. Because that was the thing: the Brothers Two could actually be stopped quite easily… with ice. If they couldn’t move then they couldn’t deliver their packages and clients, after all. It still wasn’t that easy, but it was better than the earth spires that dumbass mage had used.
In the end, as their bodies stopped turning into ice statues, they reached it.
The House. The College.
The simple, wooden, home looked cozy from the outside. That is, if one didn’t focus too hard on the details, in which case they would’ve noticed the cracks in the surfaces and just how rundown in general the place looked.
The Brothers Two climbed down their carriage, the mount in front settling with a silent sigh to the ground as ice covered its form, encapsulating it.
They opened the door, taking out their parcel. A small figure wearing black. They would’ve loved to go for the niceties and say something along the lines of ‘We’ve arrived at your destination, kind Sir. We’re sorry for the bumpiness of the ride near the end.’ They didn’t, for that would’ve been quite painful, and they had to preserve their strength to say the most important words of them all in a few moments.
Their eyes locked onto the three steps that led to the House’s door.
With determination, they took them on.
One step.
Crack, pop, crackle, snap, fsh, crick crack crock, went their bodies, their parcel held between them.
Two steps.
Snap snap snap snap snap snap, fhssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh. They nearly lost their grip on the parcel as they tightened their grips too much, the joints in their hands slipping on cartilage turned to ice and breaking apart, tendons and muscles snapping, and then reknitting themselves together with a sound like threads being sewn into fabric.
Three steps.
Death walked beside them, looking at them with pity, for it knew it couldn’t give them peace. But… it could help ease the suffering, for they were infused with it, with its primordial self. Death stretched a skeletal hand towards them and… absorbed itself. Not enough to give them back their lives. They would die, they were supposed to die, for all that they were still here, among the living. The Brothers Two were a strange bunch.
Meanwhile, the Brothers felt the cold ease as, now, they only felt like they’d stayed naked in a snowstorm. Their organs were dead, all of them, for they were dead too, but they’d never really been alive to begin with, so that mattered not.
They knocked on the door to the House.
There wasn’t even an echo from the other side.
The House had been put in Lockdown.
Habil and Qabil both sighed, or rather, did the gesture, but the air in their lungs was still water so all they managed was a displeased gurgle.
Then they put their hands in the crack between the two double doors and began to pull.
At first nothing happened. The doors didn’t creak, nor budge, nor… anything really. They acted perfectly solid.
But then, as they put more, no, all of their strength into it, beginning to break the meaning that represented their shells of bodies, the door made a sound. It was a tiny creak, a little whisper that would’ve meant nothing to anyone. But to the Brothers Two? It was a weakness. One they could exploit.
So they pulled and pulled, and as they did they broke apart on a fundamental level, their bodies beginning to ⬛⬛ out.
Their ⬛⬛ touched the door and it, too, began to ⬛⬛, beginning to break apart.
Then, with a sound like tearing fabric, the doors ripped open.
A figure stood in the great room beyond: an old man carrying a doctor’s bag around. He looked mildly surprised and extremely pleased with what he was seeing, both expressions nobody had ever seen on his face up until now.
“Delivery,” said the Brothers Two, putting down their package right over the entrance.
It was a doll as big as a six years old child. It wore black trousers, a black button down shirt and, over it, a black, elegant, coat, with a black papillon to complete the look. On its feet had been put shiny black leather shoes.
The old man, who was the Elemental of Memories, nodded.
The Brothers Two smiled, turning around and stopping in front of those three steps.
Then they said: “Papa, we’ve done our part. We’ll have to go for a bit. We’ll miss you.”
They bowed.
And, as they did, they said those feared words: “[Wearing Black, They Brought Ruin].”
In the blink of an eye they and their carriage were gone.
They were not dead.
But to this world they were.
It would take a lot of time for Death to forget that.
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The next day the Grandmaster of the College of Memories paced nervously around his new office. He’d been using it only for a few months now, after he’d decided that the one where the previous Grandmaster had killed himself just wouldn’t do for him. Also, the constant reminder of their loss represented by that white canvas over the desk, the one that had once held the Law of the Hunters, made his heart sink every time.
He had seen the doll.
And he had screamed when he’d seen the most hideous detail about it: the head. For, instead of an actual head, it was a button. A giant button.
He’d had the doll destroyed and every piece of it burned, the ashes thrown into the river that passed through the city to be dispersed in the ocean.
He had also received, that night, a brand new Skill: [Map: Visualize Enemy Location].
And now he stood, staring at a map of the world brought to him by an [Apprentice Acolyte] he’d put his sights on to begin to train into becoming the next Assistant.
But for now, he activated his Skill.
The map began to shine to his eyes.
And he knew, deep down, that every single dot of light represented an enemy.
He fell to the ground, gaping.
The oceans and seas shone brightly, just as the Tiurna Mountains and the Arborges Mountains Range. He guessed the dwarves were the problem for the latter, but why the former? Were there so many [Mountaineers] there? And were they all angry at the College? Even after they’d left them alone for thousands of years!?
Then he looked on, but he couldn’t quite understand because the whole map was basically blinding him. The entire Kingdom of Goblins hated them (nothing new there, they hated pretty much everyone… probably), there were dots strewn completely at random all over Eva and, in general, all the continents. In particular, though, two more places stuck out to him: the first was the brand new Kingdom of Occultism in Irevia; the second was… the entirety of the Mountains of Madness in Rodar. The mountains under which extended the dungeon of the ancient city of Scabd.
That was when he felt it. Fear. An endless amount of fear. The College had the entire world against it. Nearly all of it. Out for their blood. And, since he was now leading this whole place… out for his blood.
Tears began to fall from his eyes as he felt his death approach faster than he’d thought it would ever come.
Then he began to scream, but nobody could hear him for he had had [Silence] Spells put everywhere.
[Condition: Horror of Death Contracted.]