A Strange World, and an Unlikely Friendship.

Prologue

The apartment is rank and dirty, a dirty lego encrusted with filth stacked on top of cleaner, nicer ones. A swampy pit of testosterone, alcohol, pain, and a swayed view of love. It's a changed place, small seedlings of former happiness buried deep in sorrow and anger.

To Lucien, it is both heaven and hell.

Its almost heavenly in the darkness of night, during the hours when most of the world is fast asleep, when his father snores in the light of the television, the alcohol in his brain forcing him into a slumbering stupor, finally leaving him alone. It is then he is free to move around without the threat of insult or a rare smack, when he can carefully dig up the happier memories of his mother that are buried deep in his father's closet. The shadows covering how dirty and depressing the apartment is. The moon's light shining down on him, cooling the flames that lie restless beneath his scars, almost fooling him into believing that he is once again whole. A whole, normal  boy with two eyes and two arms.

But when the sun rises heaven turns into the flaming cesspit he calls hell. When the sun shines its burning rays he's forced to confront the dark scars on his skin, the way they'd itch and burn as if the flames stayed burning underneath his skin. His father playing the part of the drunken devil that blames him for every inconvenience in life, it makes him wish he was nocturnal, or better yet, normal looking. That way if he left, he would be safe, unrecognizable enough that he could slip through the questioning eyes of caring adults. But with one eye permanently burned shut and his left arm beginning at the elbow, he was too ugly and pitiful to ignore.

The suns infant waves started to meld with the moon's darkened sky, lightening it and brightening up the sky. Lucien grimaced at the sun's intrusive brightness, already feeling the doormat flames under his skin starting up once again. He tried not to wince but found tears springing to his eye, they started to leak when he heard his father's snorting, signifying that the booze was wearing off. His father would wake soon. The torture would continue.

For now, that was okay, because he had a plan.

A plan to get out of this hell.

--

Deep within the earth, underneath the Mushroom Kingdom and the Darklands Kingdom, ancient magic was stirring after years of dormancy. Something was going to happen, it would happen soon. It must have been very important to wake ancient magic.  This event would unite to worlds that had been separated for some time, it would cause many things.

Good things.

Bad things.

The ancient magic could feel the land changing, bracing for this new presence that would bring about so many changes. The magic decided to contribute, and sent a little bit of power to this force, along with an entryway.

Then the magic folded back into the darkness of the earth, not to sleep as it once did, but instead choosing to doze. Wanting to welcome this change just as the land was.

--

Lucien carefully stepped out onto the fire escape platform, with slight body trembling with nervousness. This was his only chance to escape, if he didn't leave now, the only other way he could leave was in a body bag.

Even though he knew all of this, a part of him still didn't want to go.

It wasn't that he would miss his father, quite the opposite in fact. But it was the outside world that frightened him. He learned about the outside world by watching television and observing it through the windows in the apartment; although his observations taught him things many nine year olds didn't know, it didn't calm his fears. What if he was caught by a policeman and was brought back to the apartment? Or he couldn't find a kind Samaritan who could help him? What if he was kidnapped? It wasn't like anyone cared for him, the only family he had left hadn't seem him since he was three years old, and probably thought that he had been dead the whole time. How would his grandmother react when he appeared on her doorstep? The grandchild she hadn't seen in years?

Lucien leaned his head on the window, the cool glass cooling down his warming skin. He took deep breaths that fogged up the glass, and kept breathing until his body stopped trembling. He took one last look at what he'd be leaving.

He wouldn't miss it, not one bit.

He turned back to the fire escape, and the alleyway it occupied.

It was time to go.

--

The ancient magic sensed a presence near the entryway for the change, suddenly curious, the magic traveled to the newly made entry point, and observed the presence. A sensation akin to happiness blooming across it once it saw that presence and the change were destined.

The magic settled under the entryway, waiting patiently for the two destinies to intertwine, and become one.

--

Lucien grunted as he climbed down the ladder, his body unused to such physical exertion. Having one arm didn't really help his situation either.

Lucien took a glance down at the ground, 'Just a few more feet,' he thought to himself as he went down another rung. At least the climb down wasn't worsened by the weight of his backpack, which he already lowered to the street via rope, the added weight would've sent him straight to the ground.

After ten more minutes of huffing and puffing, Lucien finally reached the ground. He was exhausted and sweating profusely, but he felt proud of himself for finally leaving.

He reached for his backpack and prepared to take the first steps of his new life.