Callum and his mom were walking home on an unnaturally pleasant night, the leaves lightly rustling, the pleasant breeze, the cloudless starry sky, and the bright full moon illuminating the cobbled path. His mom was walking slightly ahead of him as he started to fall behind, Callum eventually stopped walking all together to just take the moment in. After a couple seconds He realized he had stopped and started to catch up with his mom. As he approached her he realized someone had stopped her and something was happening. As he continued walking towards his mom, he was able to distinguish more about the person; the figure looked slightly feminine, wearing a cuirass, a black trench coat, and a face that was covered in magical darkness. As Callum watched his mother stare at the person, unable to hear a word that is said even though he was mere feet away from them, she started to sob. The sobbing started to turn hysterical and his mother slumped to the ground.
As Callum watched he heard a whisper that sounded like it originated right next to his left ear. “This is to save you, forgive us for what we are about to do,” the voice was genderless and when Callum turned to look no one was there.
His mother slowly started to compose herself, when she was eventually composed enough she walked up to Callum. She embraced him in a tight, unforgettable, hug and kissed him on the forehead. She then tried to speak, but before she could say a word she started sobbing again. Eventually she got out “Remember, I love you and I always will. I am sorry I won’t be there to help you, but don’t ever come back here nor visit your father. He is supposed to come back next week, for your 12th birthday, and if he sees you… h-he… w-w-will kill you,” after that she started to break down again. As she was sobbing, the figure approached his mother, took off her necklace, which was under her shirt, and gave it to Callum. The necklace was a beautiful piece of jewelry, it had a gold chain that was inlaid with small mana crystals, and the pendant on it was a locklet. The outside of the locket was made of silver and had two, wingless, dragons on each side-front and back- looking towards the middle, each dragon had a magical gem that had a pulsing light. The inside of the locklet had two sides, one side of the locklet had a photograph of Callum and his mom, while the other side had a dial, clock, and 3 rotating numbers- which currently read 0 0 0. With that done she took a couple steps back and layed down, tears still streaming down her face.
“Before you direct your hatred make sure you find the right person to direct it towards,” said the same bodiless voice from before. Callum tried to run and hug his mom but found himself unable to move towards her.
As Callum watched the cloaked figure step forward, as she stepped forward a point of pure darkness appeared, then it went from a point to a line, then a line to a square, and finally from a square to a cube, at which point it expanded forward and flattened into a dome. His mother was instantaneously covered by a black dome, which disappeared as fast as it formed. Callum was stunned, he had seen basic magic before but never anything like this.
Then his mother’s head burst open, splattering blood, brains, and skull everywhere. Callum wasn’t spared from the splattering of gore. All he could do was stand there unable to look away or move. He then saw the black figure approach his mother’s headless corpse, and say in a feminine voice, “Rest easy now. As you pass on to your final rest, let us cleanse your soul and purify your being. Let this be your final rest so that none may disturb your eternal sleep with promises of lies, cities made with deceit, or hollow life.” After the speech his mother's body started to contort and elongate, blood, organs, and bones started to find their way out of the skin creating gashes that were much bigger than they needed to be. The blood didn’t initially pool round the body, instead it created splatters and droops that resembled blood splatters from a projectile. Then the bones formed a circle around the fleshy blob of the remnants. Finally the organs hovered above the body until the end when they finally fell down and laid across the body, with the heart on top.
Callum fell to the ground, as if he was a puppet cut from his strings, and just stared blankly at the gruesome sight before him. He didn’t want to accept it, he couldn’t accept it, yet the proof was undeniable. As a tear started to form he fell backwards, unconscious.
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Cynthia Palamia came to with a start, she was in her pod. Her pod contained a viscus blue substance. The viscus blue substance was leaking out of the door. As she noticed this Kythia said, “this is unusual,” and pushed open her door, which was usually locked, and fell forward, out of her pod. The room she fell into was once she was all too familiar with, as it was where she would be transported through when the person who captured her wanted to conduct research on her unnatural lineage. The room was sealed from sunlight, as Kynthia had never seen a single ray of sunshine during her extensive, but unknown, time here. The walls are made of cobblestone, the ceiling is made of wood plates, and the floor a magical substance created to be eternally clean. There was one wooden door on the left, from Kynthia’s perspective, wall.
As she started gasping for air, as the blue substance no longer was giving her air, she saw her imprisoner. Her imprisoner is… was an elderly person, as he now lies dead on the ground in front of her. In the center of his torso there is a black circle of decayed and rotting flesh. The skin that would be touching the decayed part looks to have been cut and then cauterized. The only man’s face is in a state of surprise. His eyes, chromatic robotic, stare towards the ceiling, unfocused.
“What the absolute fuck is this?” muttered Kythia, as she tapped the rotted circle in the center of the old man’s chest. Then she kicked him, hard, then again, harder, and again. She continued kicking the old man until she could no longer feel the top of her foot. Then she searched his body and found a golden pocket watch. This pocketwatch was decorated with daggers, each with a magical stone in the pummel of the carving and one at the top of the tang. Inside the pocket watch there was a compass that didn’t point north, on one side, and on the other there were two different sets of 3 spinning numbers, the top one read 000, while the bottom one read 001. As Kynthia watched the dial that read 001 ticked down to 000, she then flinched and looked around, to find nothing out of place or abnormal. She then exited the room to find a room that had a door on the opposite side and a single operation table in the middle of the room. The edges of the room was filled with all sorts of magical equipment, tools, and torture equipment. Kynthia proached the wall and grabbed a serrated dagger, and another extremely fine and sharp dagger, which was used to skin her at certain times. She also grabbed the portable and valuable looking magical items. “You crazy bastard, what did you even do this for? I wish you didn’t die like that so I could do what you did to me, except worse. I’d put you in a bronze statue and heat it up, then boil and cut off your skin, I’d rip out your finger nails… Why am I saying this? I don’t want to be like him. I hate you for making me like that!”
After she finished ranting Kynthia left the room and found a more normal room with a door on the right wall. This room was a dining room, kitchen, and bedroom in one. Most importantly, to Kynthia, it had a change of clothes. After Kynthia changed she grabbed a bag, full of books, from the table and left the room behind her. As she left through the door, into the sunlit world she started to mutter, “Out of sight, out of mind. Out of sight out of mind…”
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Attronious Crafter has a weird biology as his father is a dwarf and his mother is a gnome. He has a curious mind, and even though he is young he wanted to know how and why everything happened. He lived in a small home which he could care less for. His parents left him to go and explore the world 2 years ago, when he was 25 years old. To fulfill his desire for knowledge he became an artificer. He did so without a master to apprentice under, despite his claims to be a proficient artificer he had only ever created one item that was imbued with unnatural properties, given all he did was make a pot smell like skunk spray. He is a crafter and so needed materials.
In order to get materials he decided to head down to the scrap yard. The path is through a sparsely pact forest, and while he was walking he practiced his spell construction speed. He practiced constructing a simple speed spell. “I’m gonna try and put this onto my next gadget.” Coupon arriving at the scrap yard he glances around and then walks down into it. During his search for scraps he found a monocle, the rim is made of gold with extremely small magical crystals embedded into it, resembling mana particles. “Odd” and as he picked it up the junk yard started to shake and sink down, down, down, into the ground. Once it stopped he was a solid 100 meters underground, while he was still able to see the sunlight he was now unable to reach it. With nothing left to really do he put on the monocle and immediately a couple items around the scrap yard started glowing.
In a burst of excitement Attronious blurted “If I pair-” but as he finished the word pair 3 magical, semi-transparent, lines extended from the monocle, up and out of the whole where he lost sight of where they lead. “WOW,” said Attronious in a tone of pure fascination. Reaching up and taking off the monocle made the lines disappear.
“Hmmm, I guess I’ll explore this after I get out of this hole, first let me see what the glowing items means,” and as he approached one of the glowing objects, a cylinder with a lens on one end and a button on the side. While looking through the monocle, he pressed the button the eye with the monocle could see a burst of mana particles, and then light. The lens side of the tube released a bright light, illuminating the scrap yard all the way to the wall. “I guess it’s time to stop looking around and find a way out” he muttered to himself.