Algernon Black

(Chapter 68) Once Upon Humans

"I won't ever accept you as my teacher!" Beal squealed as Loy covered his ears.

"I'm not offering any more, but I will teach you how to shut your mouth if you don't stop shrieking." Loy threatened back as a vein strained against his neck. "You annoying bratty teenager."

"I'm not a brat!"

Selice sighed as neither one's childishness could outdo the other. Loy and Beal had been having the same argument for days now. It reminded her of a cub testing the limits of a grown lion, but as annoyed as Loy grew, he never forced the young try-hard assassin away.

A shrill screech broke through the air and Loy's anger skyrocketed far past his boiling point.

"What did I just say!" Loy screamed at Beal but turned around to see the boy searching for the source of the howl himself. 

The hairs on the back of Selice's neck started to tingle and she suddenly felt like they were being watched by unseen eyes.

"Shit." Loy cursed as he sent Beal flying backward with a hard shove of his shoulders.

"What was that for!" Beal yelled, clutching his side that had taken the blunt force of the landing. "I didn't scream!"

"Obviously not you moron,"  Loy said but faced straight ahead. "They did."

Beal peered past Loy's broad frame to see humanoid figures forming from the spot he just stood. His eyes gaped open and he could barely get air into his lungs. "Those are..." Beal trailed off, not even able to comprehend the horrors of what he was seeing

"Devoids," Loy finished, as he called his ball and chain to hand.

The hoard of mangled humans approached them. The front runner was what was once a man but now more than anything resembled a walking corpse with dark magic seeping from burned-out eye sockets. Two dark lines ran down his body where the dripping magic landed and formed deep bruises that turned his pale skin black.

Past him were the other variations of living nightmares. Men and women, or what had been men or women, were now incomplete bodies as parts of them had burned away or had barely attached limbs rotting off their bones. Those that still had eyes all shared the same vacant mindless expression.

Beal stayed on the floor, too paralyzed by fear to move.

Selice was the furthest back from the creatures and moved further back still as the group expanded to its full size and at least thirty of these once upon humans faced them. But more than anything, Selice was horrified to see their ages, with some not even tall enough to have reached puberty.

"How-" Beal stuttered, "How does this happen?"

Beal's voice alerted the eyeless man to their location as he ran at them in a blind frenzy. Some of the others behind him started to charge as the first wave of the hoard attacked.

Loy faced the first devoid with a swift blow of his weapon breaking its neck. It flailed around as dark magic blitzed from its eyes and sparked off everywhere like a firework.

"This is what happens when people are rushed to learn magic," Loy explained as he killed the next two devoids to reach him. "When it isn't introduced carefully over time the body can't adapt and it ends up destroying you from the inside out," He carefully moved around a blast of light magic to kill one of the devoids by slicing his chain through its neck. "Like a sealed faucet that was being pumped full of water, they summoned energy but weren't trained well enough on how to let it pass through their bodies, so it bursts out in ways like this." Loy spotted one girl who looked no more than eleven and had no jaw from where the light magic had burned it away.  "It eats away at their insides," Loy said and knew that she had probably been very close to mastering magic, but had ultimately lost her mind while trying too. "Slowly burning away their brains until they're devoid of control, devoid of their body, devoid of their mind," He gave her a swift death and the only mercy she had probably seen in her short life.