Chapter 1 The Pendant
~Trying my hand out at making my own story :3
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Naerick laid sprawling on the ground, staring at the ants that crawled on the tree root pillow that he had the fortune to plant his face on. Feeling heat gradually flowing out of his body from the big gash across his stomach, Naerick thought about just the suddenness of it all.
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He was a very smart kid back then, and because of his intelligence, he managed to outlive the rest of his peers. Naerick was an orphan, and he didn’t even know who his parents were. The orphanage that took him in had him in its clutches before he was even able to walk properly.
He grew up in the suburbs of a very violent city, and it didn’t help that he lived in a place where he, along with the other orphans, were forced to haul massive vats of chemicals twice their weight to the huge machinery that fabricated profit for the ‘orphanage’ owners. Oftentimes, Naerick would be ordered to dispose of ‘broken tools’ into the garbage grinder because he was the most obedient one.
Naerick didn’t feel anything back then, for he understood what he was ordered to do, and unlike the other kids, he also knew what would happen if he showed any signs of being smart or being rebellious.
The factory and its chemical fumes were his home for a very long time, and his life there consisted of nothing but waking up, eating slop, working, and sleeping. It was an endless cycle that continued unabated until the orphanage sold him to a sadistic creature unfit to be called a human.
All he remembered of that time period was pain and rage, lots and lots of torment. Different from his time at the ‘orphanage’, the sadistic fat pig of a man took to torturing him and the rest of the kids that he bought as a pastime.
He and the other kids were kept alive and sprayed down everyday with a hose to make sure they were clean and ready for more torment the next day. The only sounds they made were ones of pain and anguish, cause by either physical pain or mental breakdown. Naerick could clearly remember the looks of pleasure on that fat pig’s face when he was cutting off fingers or watching them eat the slop was mixed with his bodily waste.
That, was Naerick’s life for about 2 years before he managed to escape that hell hole.
He escaped that place and started a life on the streets, using his smarts to quickly learn the ways of the streets and managed to scrounge up enough food from the dumpsters to keep himself alive.
While he had to fight wild rats and stray dogs for food, he was more than happy with his current freedom, because this was heaven compared everything he’s experienced so far. Despite the lack of words and friendship, he got along just fine, that is, until he found a pendant in a dumpster.
When he saw something shiny, he would usually go and sell it to a random pawnshop for some quick money. But, this pendant felt different to him. Naerick never owned anything in his life, and never wanted to either, because it did nothing but invite trouble. No matter if it was in the ‘orphanage’ or on the streets, if anyone saw anything valuable, it automatically changed ownership to the one with the most power. Because of this unspoken rule, Naerick usually sold or spent his finds quickly and bought long lasting food with the money. By doing this and stashing his food in dirty places, almost nobody would give him trouble because he just wasn’t worth their time.
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However, wearing the pendant, Naerick gradually changed. Gone was his calm and indifferent attitude, and in its place was a soul that burned with rage at the society around him. Naerick didn’t know when or why he changed, but his behavior quickly escalated to something beyond his control. He would beat up people weaker than him and take over their possessions, or corner and rob rich looking people when he got the chance, something that he’s never done before having the pendant. It felt good. Like he was truly living at that moment, able to unleash that beast inside of him.
Things didn’t last long, however.
One night, Naerick saw a woman getting surrounded by a bunch of weak goons, and that woman looked very rich too. Judging from the looks of things, he estimated that it will take at least 1 minute to drive off those goons and another 30 seconds to rob that woman of her riches before making his getaway. With confidence in his plan, Naerick acted, and he succeeded.
30 minutes later, he was running for his life, because people dressed in black were chasing him and they were holding guns and knifes. Normally, Naerick can throw off the police and the type easily by vaulting obstacles and taking extreme paths, like diving into a dumpster that he’s put a hole in the back side for example. However, the guys wearing suits weren’t that easy to throw off. Despite having tried every trick in the book, those men cornered him outside the city in a heavily overgrown woods. Leaving him bleeding out with his stomach cut open.
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Naerick watched as the ants touched his nose and then ran off to signal more ants to his existence. He wasn’t angry anymore, and his impulses seemed to have vanished with his rage. Thinking it over, Naerick calmly pieced things together and decided that it was the woman that he robbed had something in her possessions that allowed those men to track him down.
He wasn’t afraid of dying, because without the anger and the impulses, he was back to the indifferent person who’s used to seeing people die in front of him everyday and ignoring pain. In fact, he didn’t even care about the fact he’s dying so much as the fact of how he was tracked down.
Feeling his thoughts fade with his life, the last thoughts that Naerick had was
*I hope these ants will make a better use of my body. . . .*
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*Where am I. . .* *Ahh pain, am I still alive?*
Naerick struggled to open his eyes. His eyelids felt as if they were glued shut, but he forced them open anyways. Cracking open an eye, the first thing that entered his sight was a horrendous maw chomping on his body, but that didn’t make sense, because he should be in halves by now by the looks those powerful chomps.
*Arrhhg! You DARE chomp on ME?!* For some unknown reason, Naerick felt boundless rage even greater than he had experienced before swell up and burst inside.
Filled with unknown seething anger, he forced his other eye open and slammed a bone fist into the upper roof of the maw, lacerating the soft flesh of the maw and causing a silver wispy substence to trickle out.
The silvery wisps rapidly gushed out of the small tear in the mouth and then the small gushing turned into a raging torrent, ripping the small cuts into huge gaping holes in the roof of the thing’s mouth. The torrent of silvery stuff didn’t just fade for some reason, but Naerick couldn’t see where they went either, because a huge tooth was buried right in between his eyes, making him unable to turn his head or see anything besides a disguisting view of the rotting base of the tooth.
Pain filled his head quickly but Naerick ignored it, letting the familiar pain wash over him as he focused his strength in his right arm still inside of the mouth, pounding it into the roof of the mouth repeatedly, causing the silvery stuff to flow out even faster from the new openings.
*How does that taste! Arrghh take this! Here have some more!* He yelled out, completely oblivious to the fact that no sounds were coming out of his mouth. With each punch, his anger subsided a little bit, and by the time he’s fully calmed down, Naerick was able to take in the situation fully.
Looking at the sharp row of teeth buried down his body in a straight line and then watching a huge torrent of silvery stuff pouring into the pendant hanging on his skeletal body, wait, was he a skeleton?!