Dark Shadows

In the beginning there was dark.

My life is dark, my life is evil, my life is unfair. My life. Life. The worlds greatest illusion. Everything meets its demise. I guess i was put here to prove that. But lets not get so philosophical just yet. Like any story. There is a beginning, a middle, and a twist.

My name is Baal. I have been a warlock in training for about thirteen years now. I have started at a very young age, my parents found this interesting and sent me to a school at the age of ten. Now this was very exciting to me. Being a child who can cast sparks from his hand or make a room go dark just by thinking it was awesome in my mind, and evidently was to my teachers as well.

My first day within the school was quite confusing. I come from a small village where a continent away. This school was its own castle! The feeling of being here was overwhelming. A strange feeling swept over me when i first arrived, this feeling i will later come to know as After-Afflictions. After-Afflictions is the effect in a large area after a number of spells have been cast. Anybody with the ability to use their own mana can sense the rush of energy that the spells have left behind.

A few years passed and I have consistently kept up my studies.I chose to grow isolated from the others.I did this because while observing within my first few weeks I saw that the other children were very distracted by one another and didn't get much done. So therefore I made myself alone from all the others. In my studies I became fondly interested in the affliction portion of spells. Making life slowly drain to study it was very intriguing to me. After practicing it for so long, I was placed in a class with other affliction warlocks. This made me feel quite uncomfortable for the majority of these kids were obsessed with using the spells to decay life itself. Just for the killing. I found this very odd and confronted my teacher about it. He crossed his arms and stroked his black beard that hung from his face."Well, why did you learn these spells?" I explained to him why and he just chuckled. Not to laugh at me but, it was unexpected. He patted my back and told me that people are always different. I thanked him and left, but as I was it seemed that someone was waiting for me.

This was a boy a bit older than me. He asked me if what I said to the teacher was my true intentions and I of course repeated that it was true. After hearing this the boy sighed happily and put his hand on my shoulder. He said that he does the same thing and was uncomfortable with what the other children were using it for. We soon walked and talked, later coming up with the idea of alchemy. Alchemy is the art of observing and mixing specific chemicals to create something unimaginable. At least that is what we thought it was. What I thought it was.

The boy and I became the best of friends. Belial being his name, he was tall and a bit muscular. He had hair as black as the night that he let fall to his shoulders, putting it in a few braids to match his style. We would go out to the courtyard away from the other kids and gather plants. Not pick them but put them in pots, still alive as we didn't want them to die. We needed them alive.

We would take them to the chemistry lab and begin casting a number of spells on the plants to see how they would react. A lot of them would decay slowly and others would somehow mutate, growing a spud within itself or making a duplicate. We found this very interesting and it surprised our teachers. We joined a science fair that took place within the school and won by showing off our capabilities. In doing this, we gained the attention of the Archmage. Zoul. Zoul was a middle aged man, a bit short and skinny, he had jet black hair that curled a bit, he had a goatee that formed around his lips. We were excited to meet him. I mean, it was the Archmage! But what came next. What I found out. Will haunt me forever.