Inktobertale 2022 : Compilation of novels

14th of October : Boom

Another explosion filled the air as an umpteenth canon shot its charge, which immediately disappeared out of thin air, a few inches away from its target. No one knew what that thing was, or what it wanted. Something had just arrived and started... ravaging the whole town. But not by destroying it, no. What it did was... much more terrifying. It was like an infection, sucking out colors of everything it touched, and spreading as far as it could. Some civilians had even been touched, seemingly turned into emotionless envelopes which would just wander aimlessly. Thankfully, the city had managed to evacuate most of its inhabitants to let the guards take care of things... or so it should have been. One by one, the entity used its long white and sticky ribbons to grab faraway warriors and weapons, and destroy them in the blink of an eye. And may god have mercy on those who were actually at its arms' length.

The fat mouse-like dyer was running as fast as he could, having only been able to take a bag of his merchandise before his shop was crushed by a falling building. As he followed the crowd of people running from the city, he watched as the once tall and colorful metropolis slowly fell apart, to ruin and whiteness. First this skeleton with strange abilities stole his product and ran away, and now this... this monstrosity ? These two events were definitely linked, but he couldn't figure out how. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice that the detonations coming from the city had stopped since a few minutes, and much less the extremely fast shadow which had jumped from the walls of the town, and was heading... right towards the fleeing inhabitants.

The first scream resonated. People looked at the human woman who had screamed, and followed her gaze towards the white mass right above them. But it was already too late. Two guards rushed to take their weapons out, but by the time it landed, they were already no more. The commerçant thought he had seen two dragon-like skulls appear in the air before the two guards had vanished, but he was too scared to think about it any further. A third knight launched himself in a heroic attempt to wrestle the assailant and win time for the civilians to run away, but despite being smaller than him, the creature immediately grabbed the guard by the junction of his neck and lower jaw, and effortlessly lifted him off the ground as the people watched in horror white cracks appear on the guard and spread on its skin as his gaze became glassy, and his muscles completely unstretched, dropping his equipment on the ground. Not even waiting for the corruption to be complete, it threw the body aside, and turned to the crowd.

Immediately, screams from everywhere rose as people started running as fast as they could in every possible direction, as long as it could put distance between them and this demon. The fat mouse followed them, but felt something pull him back. He looked at his chest and his eyes widened in terror as the white ribbon around it dragged him towards the killer. The monster was going to scream, plead, propose a compromise, but all of this remained stuck in his throat as he took a good look at the creature for the first time. Its body. Its expression. Its weapon, and the ominous multicolored vials hanging from it (the only touches of color the being was wearing). Instead of whatever he planned to say, the dyer could only say one thing, which had just formed in his mind.

"First you steal my dye, then this ?"