Another story by me

[Therin]

First off, If you are offended by violence, DON'T READ THIS. I can't give you an exact MPAA rating because 1) This isn't a movie and 2) I don't know how they judge it. But I think it would be rated R, so if you don't want someone you know(including yourself) seeing R-rated material, Stop here.


For those of you who don't mind the violence that much, I hope you like my latest work. Be mindful of the fact that this is different from ealier works(not including black forest) because This part is just the first part. I will be posting subsequent parts later on, when I write them.




A man walks into a pub on the east side of the small village of Malda. He is tall and solidly built. His hair is silvery white except for a single streak of jet black, beginning just left of the center of his temple. His face is worn and tired. One of his eyes Is green, the other completely solid, black as night. He wears armor, but thin armor, leather over chain mail. At his right hip rests a Rapier. The left third of his body is concealed by a sort of half-cloak, hanging down his left side, nearly to the floor. He takes a seat at a table in the corner, near the fire. He has only just ordered meat rolls and soup when a small boy appears around the side of his table. The boy regards him in the way of all small children everywhere for a while, then passes judgment.
"Your eye looks funny."
The man laughs softly, "I know. Would you like to hear how it got that way?"
The boy stares at him some more, then quickly jumps up into the man's lap. The man laughs some more.
"Now where shall I start? Hmmm…I think I'll start with the mistake."

Like many, this story begins with a mistake. I am what they call a fulcrum wizard. Instead of creating and manipulating energy in the way of most mages, I must instead work my will by taking energy from one place and moving it to another. It has both advantages and disadvantages. I was heady with the advantages and forgot to take the disadvantages into account. I was twenty, and overconfident, as most twenty-year olds are. It was late in the year and the autumn leaves were falling thickly in the forest of Sanshett. The day was mild and beautiful, full of reds and yellows and browns. It was the kind of day when you just want to find a tree to relax under. I, however, was not doing so. I was out in the fields with my brother, moving stacks of hay into the barn. I was impatient, I wanted to go and find Carol and together go and relax under a tree. So I decided to try some magic to speed the process up. I took energy from the hay until it got cold enough to freeze, but that was only enough to move it three feet towards the barn. I, being confident in my abilities, saw that taking energy from hay wasn't going to be enough, and decided to try something new. I decided to take energy from my brother, on the basis that if humans must keep going day in and day out, and then get up and do it the next day and the next, they must have nearly limitless energy. I had only been enrolled at the academy for about a year and didn't remember the most strictly kept rule for fulcrums. Don't ever take energy from another living thing. So I started slowly leeching energy from my brother. It worked fabulously. In a matter of minutes the chore was finished and I was on my way out to find Carol. We lay under our favorite oak tree out in the forest for hours on end, just being together.
Then I heard the screams. They were quiet enough to go unnoticed for a little while, but slowly they rose in pitch and volume until the fields around the village rang the pulsed with the wails of men, women and children dying the most horrible deaths imaginable. By this time I was up and running top speed back to the village to see what was wrong. The screams had died away by the time I reached the village.
Not one person remained alive. Everywhere I looked I saw black, bloated bodies, steaming in the evening air. Then I noticed something else and my heart turned to ice. Every single body had had its eyes mashed into red pulp in their sockets. Now it was dripping slowly to the ground from bodies hung over patio rails, bodies slumped against walls, bodies laying sprawled on the ground. I bent over and vomited heavily onto the ground beside one of them. When I was finished I tottered towards my family's house, slowly speeding up until I broke into a frantic run, tripping over blackened bodies, thicker the closer I got to my home. The bodies exploded in black nastiness when I tripped on them and by the time I reached my house I was covered in it and could barely pick my way forward for the bodies sprawled on the ground. On my patio I had to step on one or two, sinking my feet into the black mush that was left of their insides. My house, however, was totally empty, silent as a tomb. I walked slowly up the stairs toward my brother's room and opened his door, dreading what I would find.
Keith was fine, laying face-down on his bed and breathing heavily.
"Keith?" I said, "Keith, what happened? Everyone's dead, Keith! They're dead!"
Then Keith rolled over. His eyes were completely solid black and roiling with torment. They locked on me and bulged as Keith screamed a terrible, mutilated scream of wordless agony. Then the black seeped outwards from his eyes, coloring the skin around them, creeping and oozing until Keith's entire body was completely black and glistening. His eyes were now pure milky white. Suddenly a noise caught my attention. I whipped around. My mother's dead and bloated corpse was walking towards me, dripping red eye pulp down its legs and onto the floor. I turned back to Keith again, but any and all semblance of Keith was gone. His body was grotesquely stretched and distended, black and glistening in the light from the window. Suddenly, black pseudopods exploded out of Keith, hundreds of them, whipping towards me and slamming into a shield I didn't know I had created. I turned around again. Mother's corpse was frozen and shattered on the floor. I ran, tripping and stumbling, out the door, out of the village, out to find Carol and take her out of this hell. She was dead. I ran, not caring where, the unearthly cries of my former brother pulsing in time with the pounding of my feet.

A serving girl sidled up to the table and put down a tray carrying meat rolls and delicious-smelling beef soup. The man helped the boy up to a seat on the edge of the table, facing him, and began to eat with his right hand. His other hand had remained motionless under his half-cloak the entire time.




Post your thoughts. I like to get feedback, though I can't promise to listen to suggestions.

[Azurel]

mwuahahaha...evil, I like it. I wanna know how Carol looked!
Do more ~claps~

[D-Trix]

fulcrum mages...i like it. is that your idea, or borrowed from somewhere?

as for the writing: well, it's a little graphic - especially since he's telling this story to a little kid :P - but i like it. you have mad writing skillz!

~Ted

[Therin]

I originally borrowed the idea from something Terry Pratchett wrote about being able to handle vast amounts of power by making yourself the balancing point, but as I wrote, I wasn't sure how to work that in with a 20-year old so it metamorphosed into what it is now and the "fulcrum" part isn't quite so apt now, but oh well...Thanks!

[Akira]

well just in case this dude cecks out this website...put a copyright on the dudes work...but anyways,keep writin...i love violence

(if you cant solve a problem with violence,it can only be solved with the bishouen mode)

[Therin]

Which dude? the one on an elephant or the one that represents about 3 billion guys in the world?

If you say "That one!" to part two, which dude, out of those 3 billion, is it?

[Therin]

The man eats slowly, savoring the delicious food and mulled wine. The soup is especially good, with tasty bits of mutton and potatoes floating around in it. He sees the boy growing impatient, however, and continues his story between mouthfuls.
"I didn't sleep that night. I lay wakeful and paranoid under a large bush, shivering and wishing for my cloak, wishing for sunrise, wishing I could go back in time and rectify what I had done.
By the time dawn rolled around, I had finally decided upon a course of action, and at the first rays I was pelting off east, back to the academy at Boran to tell the Headmagus what had happened."
"The academy at Boran?" another man has taken a seat across from the storyteller, "I went there! …Hey, now I know why you look familiar! You must be that kid who caused all that ruckus in the magical studies wing all those years ago! Mornan Ralta, right?"
The storyteller, Mornan, nods slowly.
"Jacob Halian, at your service. What happened to you?"

When they heard what I had done, the Magi at the academy were astonished. No one had ever managed to take energy from another human before, we apparently had some sort of built in defense against it. The problem remained, however, of how they were going to deal with Keith. After many hours of useless arguing and deliberating, the Magi received a messenger from Kromar asking for help with a problem. Kromar was less than a day's walking distance from my hometown of Jimarr. When they got there, of course, everyone was dead and Keith had moved on, so they returned to continue their debate until another messenger arrived, also requesting help. Same story all over again. Eventually, all the borderland towns were annihilated and the Magi finally realized it was time to actually get something done. So they sent a party to track Keith down and contain him. They finally managed it not three leagues outside of Bornan itself. All the Magi breathed a collective sigh of relief and turned to the problem of what to do with me. This didn't take as long. After twenty minutes I was sentenced to finish my basic training before being banished from the magical world for the rest of my life. This I did and not too long after, I was wandering the wilds searching for a job. I finally found one helping a miller and his daughter to bring in enough money to survive. It was good work, not too hard, and the girl was beautiful, and about three years later, with the miller's blessings, I married Jenna.
The day after the wedding, I walked slowly and contentedly into town to buy some wool for winter clothes. The town was afire with rumor. Bornan had been demolished and erased from the face of the land. No it hadn't. It had simply gone into hiding. Or maybe not. Maybe Bornan had gone into protective mode, hiding behind a massive shield, powered by every magically gifted person there. No one could agree on why either, except that it involved something black, something thoroughly evil. My spine turned cold. Had Keith escaped? Had he found a way past his high security shield-prison? Was he coming for me?
I ran top speed back to our cottage outside town and sagged with relief to find Jenna and her father thankfully safe. Then I noticed something through the window. I dashed outside and there was the dark, glistening thing that had been Keith, speeding across the meadow towards the house in a kind of flowing, bounding four-legged run.
"Keith!" I cried, dashing to get between him and the house, "Keith, no! No, Keith, you can't have them! These are people I love Keith!" he reached me and leapt impossibly high into the air, "KEITH!! NOOOO!!!" Keith froze. In mid air. He looked directly at me at I saw a flash, the smallest glimpse of the old Keith in those snow white eyes before he resumed his flight. He landed, switched direction without seeming to slow down, and bounded back off across the meadow, leaving angry, blackened tracks in the tall grass. I sagged with relief.

Halian and the small boy start breathing again, as do the two or three other men who gathered around Ralta as he told his story.

[Sperrit]

Good stories man! You've got a real great style there! Keep 'em coming and we'll keep reading!

Join the Fun

[Therin]

"And this, unfortunately, is where I leave you temporarily. I will be back...eventually." The speaker rises and steps away from the table, half-cloak slipping silently across the roughly hewn wood. Then the man walks with slow, silent steps across the room and out the door of the inn. Conversations resume themselves haltingly and soon the inn is back to its usual, boistrous self. But for Halian and the boy, who wait in silence at the table the man has vacated.

The night air is humid, hot, and sticky as Ralta makes his way through the blackness. The lustrous jet of his right eye snaps back and forth ceaselessly in the night, moving with a kind of frenetic, feverish energy. The arm that yet remains hidden by the cloak clenches tightly, the elbow jutting sharply beneath the fabric, and then relaxes.
"Yes...I know."
A figure dashes by, audible but invisible through the thick, heavy blackness. Ralta steps carefully over an object. The night seems...strangely silent, devoid of life entirely, where usually it still carries echoes of the day.
The clashing of blades filters through the night, driving the illusion of lifelessness from Ralta's mind. A scream is heard.
"You are ready?" A pause. "Good. We go." With that, Ralta shoots forward, blitzing through the darkness in the direction of the ringing blades.

Three men dance the blades in a circle, a ring of steel around their quarry for the night. She is young, barely seventeen, but her body has filled out astonishingly well in the last year, and she is undeniably beautiful. That, of course, is why they have chosen her. She holds a blade of her own, every child in Malda learns the sword as a part of their training for adulthood, but she is hopelessly outmatched, and she knows it. It shows in her eyes. She darts forward, hoping to break a path through the smallest of the three and by that route make good her escape, but with a deft parry and a sharp slap on the wrist from the flat of his blade, she is rebuffed. One of the two behind her takes this opportunity to step forward and lightly divide one shoulder of her unfortunately sleeveless dress. The other has already been cut, and the dress rustles to the ground around the young woman leaving her red-faced and wearing only a silk summer shift. Sleeveless, of course. The man who rebuffed her laughs uproariously at this, and then darts forward to cut the two remaining shoulder straps. His sword clashes heavily with steel, and she staggers back with a ringing pain in her arm, yet having successfully prevented this predator from taking her honor. Then, the shift slides down to her ankles with a whisper, the straps cut from behind. She drops the sword and moves her hands frantically to cover herself, bringing more laughter from the three around her. The small one moves forward, backing her between the two hulks. One of them grabs her rear as she goes past, bringing a squeak of terror. Tears begin coursing down her cheeks when her bare back touches wood that has been warmed from the inside.

Suddenly
Thump!
And another
Wham!

The two hulks are now facing away from her, staring at...their leader, who is pinned to the wall by a man...
whose arm is black, sinewy, stretched impossibly high, fist closed tightly around the neck of the leader, and claws protruding from behind!
She screams, drawing the attention of the two hulks, who begin to advance again.

Ralta turns to look at a boy, cowering and weeping silently to himself in the corner between two buildings. His voice roars out into the night, "Why are you not helping her!"
"I-I'm afraid..." stutters the small voice.
Ralta's eye softens slightly. "You love her, do you not?"
A not is percieved from within the quivering ball. Ralta tosses his blade at the feet of the frightened boy. "Use it. Those two are nothing. I'll
(Snap.)
take care of this one."
A head jerks out of the ball and stares up at Ralta in horror. But the massive clawed hand has simply opened, putting the leader's head through the wall of the building. No death has occurred yet this night. The boy staggers to his feet, and grabs the sword under Ralta's watchful eye, and dashes forward to challenge the hulking men who have pinned the girl to the far wall.

He would never be sure how he managed to win that fight, through sheer dumb luck, he would guess. But, as Ralta has already learned, the determination that a person can find when unable to turn back is often more than enough to move mountains and raise oceans. He would, however, remember asking himself where his fear had gone. It was something about his eyes, he would think to himself, much later on. Some quality about that black orb that was in his right eye that just...made him not afraid anymore.

Snap.
Ralta removes the leader's lifeless head from the wall of the building after the hulks have run away and the boy has taken his girl home to get cleaned up. He draws back the impossibly strong, onyx black arm, and hurls the body far out into the fields outside the town. Then the arm recedes under the cover of the half-cloak once more. He leans against the wall of the building for a time, thinking to himself about those many years ago...

Keith always had that sort of quality, a kind of shining charisma that made people better than they were when he was around. Maybe that was his gift, where I got my magic. He would smile, and everyone around him would suddenly be happy. He would launch into a diatribe about issues emotional, and for the rest of the day, people would be more sensitive than usual.
But...he would have been best as a leader of men. He showed fear, but at the same time, seemed fearless to those around him, even myself. We were attacked, taken by surprise when a Dendrith went berzerk and charged for the town. I don't know how he did it, but somehow, Keith rallied the men who were working on evacuating, and gathered them all at the eastern edge of town, each with a bow and a single arrow. The Dendrith was moving so fast they wouldn't get more than one chance. It was a fools errand, as anyone would have told you, they should have evacuated the town and come back later to rebuild it, let the Dendrith have its way, because it's damn near impossible to kill a Dendrith. Dendrith are about as big as a house, six legs, and their entire body is covered with plated armor that is inches thick. They feed by smashing into cliffsides at top speed and sparking avalanches. Then, buried under tons of rock, they open the armor and eat. They've got a single weak point under all those plates, and that's their eyes. Little, tiny, beady eyes that blend in with the plated armor and present a mighty hard target when he's barrelling down on you so fast you'll only get one shot. But Keith...inspired them. I'll never understand, I still don't to this day, how he does it just by looking at people, but he did. Twenty three men, twenty three arrows. Keith was out there right alongside the rest of us, yelling to hold the line, to wait for the opportune moment. When he let loose, that was like a signal, every single man there loosed his shaft, turned, and ran to get out of the way of the massive Dendrith. It wasn't until we noticed the lack of crashings and tearings that we turned and looked back. There was the Dendrith, dead as a doornail, with a single shaft jutting from its left eye. And there was Keith. There was a little puddle around his feet by then, but I was the only one who ever remembered it. He had stood there the entire time.