The changes are kind of severe, I suppose, but the main fixtures are still the same. Wake up in cemetery, resolve issue of who woke her up, wander for a bit, find corrupted being that infects her, get chased, nearly die fending off the monsters, get saved by beautiful shining woman, speak to dream-spirit-of-town, and then we can get on to the rest of the story.
Although in keeping with my inability to abstract a story's details, this is part one of the memory-sequence as I found a very poignant ending and wanted to post my progress on this so far. I'm quite enjoying the dual narrative I can use in this story of both the character's mind thinking and then the memories she experiences and comments upon.
Hopefully I'll stay happy with the changes I'm making, but I feel like they add some depth and color to the whole story and help the eventual pacing once the main body of the story is reached.
Anyways, hope you enjoy, have yourself a lovely day, and see you when I see you.
Warlock Reboot I by Mac Clevinger, January 28, 2018
My mind fell to darkness, strands of memory laying in tangles and erupting as short flashes of light tried to spread among them to create meaning from the scattered mess. The brief flickers brought a random assortment of memories and thoughts to my attention, the disorganized scenes meaningless yet enticing as the tangled strands strangled the light and danced before me.
There were words I kept hearing repeated – “I’ll do it.” – but… do what? Who was I speaking to? Who was I? I could feel that this was a place of order that had fallen to ruin, some horrible event bringing it to the brink of destruction only to be held back and save me from death or… or something worse.
I reached out for the strands, not with hands or even a body but grasping them with my will. The tangles were a mess, only made worse by the twitching that each burst of light caused when the knots halted their progress. A single strand tapered off into the distance, meeting the tangles and bringing the stream of shining consciousness with it, each pulse repeating the words “I’ll do it.”
I grasped where that strand met the tangle, prying at the knots to see what remained steadfast and what surrendered itself to my efforts. A tangle steeped in an unsettling aura gave way almost immediately, the twisting mess turning itself into a taut line in a flash of light that blinded me as I felt myself be sucked into the now freed strand of memory.
I’m screaming, a soul long dead remembering what it is to feel and bear the mortal coil as a new form is constructed from the ashes of another. In a flash of eldritch flame, the ritual is complete, and I am alive. I’m… I’m not just alive. I’m different. I don’t remember feeling like this. Feeling… feeling right. Different but right.
I’m shot out of the memory, the pervasive darkness relenting as a soft light seeps in from below. Light now pulses along the cord I untangled, with each burst the memory softening as the words “I’ll do it.” remain prominent in my mind.
I follow the strand towards the next clump of interwoven memories needing untangling, remembering what had happened. Someone had brought me back to life, sacrificing an innocent girl in a ritual I had designed centuries ago before… before they killed me. The Heroes that had risen to stop the atrocities I had caused. To stop The Warlock.
Casting my gaze back, I could see that night in the distance, faded by time but distinct. Behind that night had been hundreds of nights spent corrupting the frontier settlements I’d been born into. Behind those nights lay a chance meeting between something much older than I and a desperate kid in pain willing to believe anything.
I turn away from the nights that lie behind that, letting the strands of memory become dull. I could face my sins, but not the events that gave birth to them. Not the home that had cast me out to find my only solace in a force beyond my knowing, unleashed upon the world in exchange for a sliver of its power.
Power that ruined me, destroyed my family, and ravaged the world until I was stopped. Power that didn’t stop with me. I made… things from that power. Puppets of the dead, shades of the deceased, mockeries of the lives that I ended, a new family from what remained of the old. The power that should have died with me didn’t, that much was clear from my revival. But how?
I pull on the next tangle, the explosion of light drawing me back into the past.
Blinking in confusion, I rise from the stone basin to my knees, nude and overwhelmed by life. A figure stands before me, garbed in armor decorated with occult symbols and wearing a helmet that obscures their face. I know before they begin walking towards me that I am in danger, and begin reaching out for a familiar power as their freshly bloodied knife is dropped and their gloved hand takes ahold of my jaw.
“Found you.” The figure croons in a whispered voice as I feel a force spread out through my jaw from their hand. I know this force, I know what they’re trying to do to me.
I also know the risks you take when you try to do it.
I pause, again looking at the strand of memory and turning towards the next tangle in sequence.
Focusing my mind, I flush the force spreading through my jaw back into the figure’s hand, the fingers of their glove sagging as the hand underneath withers and rots. I feel a little rush run through me, restoring some sense of orientation as the life I just drained from the figure finds its way into me.
Getting a wobbling foot underneath me, I rise and stagger towards the figure shaking its drained hand in… disbelief? I can’t tell what they think beneath the helmet. They see me rise, though, and lumber forward to strike me with their other hand.
I can feel the metal on the glove gouge into my bared ribs, cracking the newly formed bone in a devastating blow that I can’t avoid. The pain is excruciating, but it doesn’t stop me from wrapping myself around their arm and making contact with their body.
Even as their other arm rears back to strike me, contact is all I need to show them how little they know of the powers they wield. I want them to know how the trick is supposed to work.
My sense of horror at these events fades as the memory is worked into my consciousness, my sense of self readjusting as each memory is added to the rest. The next tangle unwraps itself, my gaze plodding forward and falling into the flash of light that seems less extreme against the growing brightness of my mind.
“No.” The word slips through the helmet as their arm freezes mid-swing, hand dangling limply from its end. As if it were a cord, I can feel a part of me extend out of myself and dig into their hand, winding its way along their arm and stab itself into their mind. I can feel them resisting, their attempts weak but my own assault hard to maintain through the pain in my ribs.
Repeating what I did to their hand, I drain their arm and leave it a useless husk as my ribs fix themselves, the rush of power more than enough to quash their rejection of my control. I let them scream after stifling it for a moment, letting them know that they have no control, but leave the rest of their body frozen.
Why had they come here? Why did they bring me back?
Forcing them to their knees, still gripping their arm, I pull off their helmet and toss it aside, revealing an unkempt mess of vaguely blond hair descending just past their jaw, and a young face made haggard by pain. Their eyes dart between hand and arm, a desperate panic evident in them as another scream rises in their throat.
I slap them, hunkering down in a crouch in front of them as their eyes come to rest on me. Holding my free hand before their eyes, I stifle the grunt of pain as I drain my hand into a withered husk and, after a moment, restore it to life.
“If you tell me what I want to know, I will tell you how to fix your damned arm and hand. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will rip the answers from your mind and consume the rest of you. Got it?”
My voice surprises me, not sounding how I had expected but pleasant all the same. I feel different, too, not the way I remember through the haze of a mind freshly reborn, yet still… comfortable. Perhaps even more comfortable than I could recall feeling. Looking down at myself, I’m startled and nearly lose my control over their mind.
“Why am I a woman?”
Looking back along the strands of memory, I understood the confusion she – he? – I? felt in that moment; the me that had rendered destruction on the world so long ago had not been the woman brought back to life, and yet both were real memories I could step into if I wished. There was a link here, some buried pain in the murky distance that I could uncover but… it was buried for good reason. I didn’t need to bring it to the surface.
“I don’t know – were you not one before?” Letting out a short laugh, they shake their head, muttering to themselves. “Who the hell did I bring back? Why is this… Why is this happening – “
“You don’t know who I am? You sacrificed an innocent to bring back some random… woman?”
They shake their head as far as I permit them to.
“It’s an initiation. This cemetery is old, it has spirits that saw firsthand how the Warlock’s power worked. Some may have even been killed by him! Each spirit has the potential to teach us more about him and how to recreate his powers, so our master sent me to retrieve one to prove myself.
“But, it hasn’t…”
I look them in the eyes, shaking my head in disappointment.
“Do you still tell stories of the horrors that the Warlock wrought?”
“I was raised on them in the Court.”
“And what do those stories mean to you?”
“They’re tales of power, and the foible of its indiscriminate use. It must be confined by a set of laws for its use, or others will seek to take it from you. The Warlock rose from nothing and became a legend, a figure not forgotten in hundreds of years that left his mark on the world forever; who wouldn’t want that?”
”No one should. They should have been stories of pain. Of lashing out. Look deeper and you’ll see tantrums and regret, revenge and despair. Those stories are not born of a rise to greatness, they are born of a scared kid who didn’t know what to do, and are everything you should avoid.
“I… saw firsthand what he did, saw everything. He would not want to be remembered for what he did. Given the time, I have… he – they would have regretted every moment.”
I look down for a moment, the shame rising to overtake me.
“You’re wrong. You have to be wrong.”
“I don’t know what this Court has told you, but there is nothing that the Warlock did that they did not come to regret. Every death, every act of malice, everything that created your ‘legend’… is something that I regret – that they regret. Do not follow their path.
“It will only take you to one of two places. Either you will be standing here – “
I rise, dragging their emaciated arm up with me, and start to pull the life from their body. Their muscles grow tense as they try to react, to contort in pain and agony, but are held still by my will.
“Or you will be there, on the ground, wishing for death.
“And given enough time, even the Warlock died. Kneeling just as you are now, bound in place as those you likely now call heroes put her through unimaginable pain before she passed. If you think what you feel now is even a tenth of what they did…”
I stop, letting the life I’d drained pass back into their body and releasing my control over them, feeling tears come to my eyes unbidden as I relived my final moments.
“Then feel lucky that you have not felt what the Warlock did.