W
Wrath
Guest
Original poster
I didn't realize entries were until the 16th, I joined on the 18th. Rather than just let the story I (hastily) wrote sit and gather dust, I want at least someone to read it and offer criticism. Don't pull your punches ;)
I've basically had this story stuck in my head for a while and writing it like this is more of a proof of concept that it'll grab your attention. The ending I want for the actual story is not this one, well it kinda is but there is more of an 'epilogue' so to speak, there would also be a significant buildup towards the MC as what is his character rather than try-to-cram-everything-into-one kinda thing.
The end goal is to have something like this and turn it into a novel, so not 1000 words but like 100,000
The Mad One
"Legends aren't born, they are created!"
The words of my Master, like everything I'm sure he heard them from some other old coot when he too was young and impressionable. Not that I was much different when he told me those words a few years ago, but how times have changed.
I certainly did not expect myself to be where I am now if people were to know of the Magic I have studied and researched then it wouldn't be far to say I could have Kingdoms and Empires kneeling to me. I had played around with an idea in my head; sure I could be all-powerful and be Godlike but that is not my goal.
No, my goal was to save her.
I had harnessed powers vile and dark, kind and illuminating. Violently coerced and had gotten on my knees and begged. All to serve the end result of saving her, all in vain. Always in vain. There was always something overlooked, a new variable added because I did something different. You can never try the exact same thing again because of subtle changes in your demeanor flaw the result and how people act and react to you. Over fifty thousand lives each spanning a few weeks or so each and no one on this planet has aged more than five weeks at all before I reset it.
At the age of twenty-five, I had discovered a way to reverse time.
The trick is, everyone needed to die on the planet. To send one person back five weeks is the maximum, I had tried to go further but it can only go as far back as when the device is finished marking it at that point 'operational'.
The first time I had used it was out of spite. My love, she was raped and murdered, the constabulary had no idea who as magic burned her so badly she was left nearly unidentifiable. In a rage I had activated it, not knowing what cost the magic would exact from me. Naive thinking that was, to think a single mere human could bear the cost of reversing time. No everyone in the world died. In my drunken stupor of activating it, I remember the first thing I thought when seeing how it reverses time.
"This must be hell." As I watched a black vortex open up in the sky above me, the 'teleportation' runes inscribed on the floor turning into a barrier against it. Effectively teleporting me in the same spot over and over again, I watched from my window as earth, houses, people and the sea was swallowed by the Leviathan above me. Never stopping until I pass out.
Then I wake and everything is back to normal.
I thought it was all a bad dream like I was living in a nightmare. I was inconsolable for days even with her there to comfort me. The screams never faded from me, every few weeks I would relive them anyway.
This time however she wasn't killed by him, I was there. I made sure to be there to prevent it, even my believing the world ending to just be a mere nightmare it made me paranoid enough to think.
"What if?"
Then he died by my hands and I felt nothing, weeks go by like normal. The constabulary marked is as self-defense, but my mind reeled at the implications of the device I had made. The nightmare had been real. I went straight to my laboratory to destroy it but I couldn't bring myself to, it was the discovery of the millennia the ability to traverse through time itself. I had plans to make myself a 'noble' coupled with that I would be invulnerable as long as I never outright died.
Then she fell. I shouldn't have rushed her, we were running late. It was the night of my inauguration assembly and we were running late, she was at the top of the stairs and I was at the bottom reminding at her to hurry up for what seemed the hundredth time.
She slipped down the stairs, knocking her head against one of the candlesticks used to keep the staircase lit. She fell limp immediately and tumbled all the way down the fourteen steps, a sickening crunch could be heard before she reached the bottom.
I held her in my arms and cried.
Then it came to me, the device is still there, in my laboratory. Everything was simple, just push a bit of my own magic into it and everything would be perfect again. She would be alive again. The screaming still doesn't leave me, it was like the world the collectively caught its breath and released it all at once.
I have spent god knows how long in this timeless land, time and time again no matter what I do she just keeps dying. She is destined to die, fated to, the reapers beckon for her and she heeds their call. Long ago I stopped protecting her from death and became it, in a cycle of madness I grew so angry I raised my hands and strangled the life out of her. I was so angry at myself I couldn't keep her alive.
Then the idea came to me if she was in a constant state of peril where her life is in danger wouldn't that keep the fates at bay? One foot on the other foot out so to speak? I discarded that train of thought as soon as I had finished it, no these were the thoughts of a madman. They gnawed of me, from the back of my mind, telling me it was the right way as I continued to fail time and time again.
I had delved into madness, the reason soon became lost as I began to find pleasure in the act of killing. Her eyes so alarmed that the one she trusted with her life is taking it from her, I soon began to capture her in iterations and go back every time she died.
Until now.
She had killed me.
"Legends aren't born, they are created!"
The words of my Master, like everything I'm sure he heard them from some other old coot when he too was young and impressionable. Not that I was much different when he told me those words a few years ago, but how times have changed.
I certainly did not expect myself to be where I am now if people were to know of the Magic I have studied and researched then it wouldn't be far to say I could have Kingdoms and Empires kneeling to me. I had played around with an idea in my head; sure I could be all-powerful and be Godlike but that is not my goal.
No, my goal was to save her.
I had harnessed powers vile and dark, kind and illuminating. Violently coerced and had gotten on my knees and begged. All to serve the end result of saving her, all in vain. Always in vain. There was always something overlooked, a new variable added because I did something different. You can never try the exact same thing again because of subtle changes in your demeanor flaw the result and how people act and react to you. Over fifty thousand lives each spanning a few weeks or so each and no one on this planet has aged more than five weeks at all before I reset it.
At the age of twenty-five, I had discovered a way to reverse time.
The trick is, everyone needed to die on the planet. To send one person back five weeks is the maximum, I had tried to go further but it can only go as far back as when the device is finished marking it at that point 'operational'.
The first time I had used it was out of spite. My love, she was raped and murdered, the constabulary had no idea who as magic burned her so badly she was left nearly unidentifiable. In a rage I had activated it, not knowing what cost the magic would exact from me. Naive thinking that was, to think a single mere human could bear the cost of reversing time. No everyone in the world died. In my drunken stupor of activating it, I remember the first thing I thought when seeing how it reverses time.
"This must be hell." As I watched a black vortex open up in the sky above me, the 'teleportation' runes inscribed on the floor turning into a barrier against it. Effectively teleporting me in the same spot over and over again, I watched from my window as earth, houses, people and the sea was swallowed by the Leviathan above me. Never stopping until I pass out.
Then I wake and everything is back to normal.
I thought it was all a bad dream like I was living in a nightmare. I was inconsolable for days even with her there to comfort me. The screams never faded from me, every few weeks I would relive them anyway.
This time however she wasn't killed by him, I was there. I made sure to be there to prevent it, even my believing the world ending to just be a mere nightmare it made me paranoid enough to think.
"What if?"
Then he died by my hands and I felt nothing, weeks go by like normal. The constabulary marked is as self-defense, but my mind reeled at the implications of the device I had made. The nightmare had been real. I went straight to my laboratory to destroy it but I couldn't bring myself to, it was the discovery of the millennia the ability to traverse through time itself. I had plans to make myself a 'noble' coupled with that I would be invulnerable as long as I never outright died.
Then she fell. I shouldn't have rushed her, we were running late. It was the night of my inauguration assembly and we were running late, she was at the top of the stairs and I was at the bottom reminding at her to hurry up for what seemed the hundredth time.
She slipped down the stairs, knocking her head against one of the candlesticks used to keep the staircase lit. She fell limp immediately and tumbled all the way down the fourteen steps, a sickening crunch could be heard before she reached the bottom.
I held her in my arms and cried.
Then it came to me, the device is still there, in my laboratory. Everything was simple, just push a bit of my own magic into it and everything would be perfect again. She would be alive again. The screaming still doesn't leave me, it was like the world the collectively caught its breath and released it all at once.
I have spent god knows how long in this timeless land, time and time again no matter what I do she just keeps dying. She is destined to die, fated to, the reapers beckon for her and she heeds their call. Long ago I stopped protecting her from death and became it, in a cycle of madness I grew so angry I raised my hands and strangled the life out of her. I was so angry at myself I couldn't keep her alive.
Then the idea came to me if she was in a constant state of peril where her life is in danger wouldn't that keep the fates at bay? One foot on the other foot out so to speak? I discarded that train of thought as soon as I had finished it, no these were the thoughts of a madman. They gnawed of me, from the back of my mind, telling me it was the right way as I continued to fail time and time again.
I had delved into madness, the reason soon became lost as I began to find pleasure in the act of killing. Her eyes so alarmed that the one she trusted with her life is taking it from her, I soon began to capture her in iterations and go back every time she died.
Until now.
She had killed me.
I've basically had this story stuck in my head for a while and writing it like this is more of a proof of concept that it'll grab your attention. The ending I want for the actual story is not this one, well it kinda is but there is more of an 'epilogue' so to speak, there would also be a significant buildup towards the MC as what is his character rather than try-to-cram-everything-into-one kinda thing.
The end goal is to have something like this and turn it into a novel, so not 1000 words but like 100,000
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