The night was dull and ominous, making Prudence think she
was in a cave. But she was tied up in a paddy field in the far east of Kansas.
Her eyes were still wrinkly from all the crying and struggling.
Just a few minutes ago she had awaken from the deepest sleep
she had had in years. She could barely remember what had happened. A few
familiar senior class bullies, a sharp pain on her wrists, and something sour
pushed into her mouth. With the result being a lonely orphan tied up in an
unfamiliar field.
Prudence was twelve, orphaned at six. She was put in
boarding school using the money in her parents insurance just a year after the
accident. Highway car crash they said, but she clearly saw the truck switch
lanes.
A sudden movement in the bushes nearby alerted her. It was
definitely not her imagination, for soon enough, she felt the creature’s breath
on her bare feet, but when she looked, she saw nothing.
A few tense seconds
later the creature was on her chest but she still couldn’t see it. Now she was
sure it was real, but invisible. She then started feeling nauseated, her
surrounding slowly blending and forming different shapes and colours. She was
now in her room. The creature was gone but she felt another much lighter weight
on her chest. It was a pen and on it was engraved ‘Prudence Poltergeist’
--/--/--/--/--/--/--/--
The portal didn’t apply a pull on her any more, she was too
powerful to be affected by locomotomancy. The portal was green today and it was
white yesterday and blue the day before that.
As she walked toward it, she was reminded of her past
experiences with the portal, from her first day in the library when she first
got the Poltergeist pen, to her first time in messing with someone’s life.
She had first rewritten the book of her bully Stacey McGraw
and made her eat a frog in front of the whole school on the day of her
graduation. Good times which changed the history of all the 23 dimensions. Then
she took on responsibility and accepted the duty as the 107th Poltergeist.
The library was as dark as always, leaving just enough light
to read and write. As soon as she entered, the cosmic librarian Miss. Croward
Pyralil called in from the announcer…
“Miss Prudence Poltergeist, please report to the head office
immediately. I repeat, Miss Prudence Poltergeist, please report to the head
office immediately”
So Prudence then visualized the neck of the library and then
started to blend in with the surroundings of the left toe of the library,
slowly teleporting, and all the while trying to decide which books she wanted
to pick up.
--/--/--/--/--/--/--/--
She heard the water splash behind her as she sprinted
towards the drylands. The heavy mud beneath her feet weighed her down. She
could no longer feel the giant blue cut on her elbow, but she could tell it was
spreading. The venom numbed the pain, it seemed, but at the same time decreased
he performance.
Prudence had only a few minutes till the venom spread to her
fingers and she could no longer use magic. And so as to use the magic she had
left within, she looked behind the great beast, which was coloured the same
colour as the venom in her arm, trying to blend and teleport, and at the same
time materializing a blue obsidian dagger in the palm of her hand.
As soon as she saw the spiny back of scaly blue beast, she
pushed the dagger off of her hand, using the locomotive spell for ‘force’’, and
towards the beast’s weak point, but it was no use: the dagger bounced right
off. The last thing she felt before she blacked out was a stabbing pain in her
thigh.
--/--/--/--/--/--/--/--
She awoke with slight thud on her chest. She tried to move,
but she was tied up, in the middle of a field.
Oh no…..
Now Prudence was in her old dorm room, and the pen was on
her chest. Now Prudence knew exactly what happened. She had been stabbed with
the blue obsidian dagger!
These daggers are very dangerous. If you get stabbed or even
cut by them, you go into time loop. Your life is replayed again, starting from
the most significant point of it, but your physical
presence is also absorbed into it. So when your life reaches the true present, you yet again get stabbed
or cut by the dagger, thus restarting the cycle.
One thing to note is that however you change your new life,
fate throws something at you, and in the end you always end up getting stabbed.
The only reason Prudence even thought to
use this weapon was because its effects don’t apply on beasts.
--/--/--/--/--/--/--/--
Her poise was that of a tiger, ready to pounce when she
needed. She still could barely control her new body. This was the 68th
time she was trying to jump the portal to the real world. The portal was lit
with an eerie green-black shade, which tossed her and Miss Croward Pyralil’s
shadows across the room. Although Miss Croward would go to another dimension,
in this case, the fire realm Kotwalar, a new Prudence would replicate to
continue the branch of continuum.
Prudence steadied her legs, getting ready to jump. Somehow,
on all the other tries, she was never able to jump into the correct portal. She
always knew which portal to go through, but still, she hoped this one was the
right one.
A sudden movement drove her attention away from the portal’s
light. She saw something black dart towards Miss Croward. Her attention was
still away from the portal when she got sucked in. Her confused mind was darting
from exit to exit. What colour was the
portal? She asked herself. Blue? No,
red? Yes, red should do it. But even when she entered the dark red exit,
she knew something was off.
--/--/--/--/--/--/--/--
Her surroundings slowly wrinkled into the present, but
Prudence still felt that nagging sensation in her gut. Once her eyes adjusted,
she found out what it was. Where the Library once stood, was now naught but a
few ashen beams and gray backgrounds. The once haughty sky was now black with
smoke. The embers were still strong near the centre of the holy mess.
What even happened
here? And more importantly, how? Prudence
trudged through the rubble, searching for any clue at all. This place…. was the
only place she ever remembered as home. And where was Miss Croward? Even as
awkward as she was, she was the only person who protected Prudence from her own
stupidity.
At last she laid one last step. The ground seemed different.
It was even and placed. Prudence looked down to find something coloured a light
green beneath her foot. She slowly wiped the tears from her eyes. It was a
book. It had a crimson lined border. It looked beautiful. Slowly, Prudence’s
eyes moved towards the center of the book.
She felt like she was about to scream. But she didn’t know
whether it was in fright, surprise, awe or a sense of completion, for in the
center of the book, in elegant and gold leafed letters was written…..
“Prudence Poltergeist”
To be continued....
-Anutthaman
This is awesome!!!!
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