This came to me as a thunderbolt from the blue, and begged to be put to page, so here it is. I can't realistically give an estimate on length, or estimated time of completion, or even guarantee that it won't be abandoned at some point, but, it'll be fun while it lasts…. At least I hope. At current, I don't have any plans for a pairing or anything too smutty, but there will be violence, and there will be blood. The M rating is definitely there for a reason folks.
Disclaimer: Blah blah, I don't own anything blah
Prologue: Incipere!
A mad, derisive cackle echoes through the room, contrasting harshly with the moans of the dying. In a vast, subterranean cavern, magically smoothed and expanded, hundreds of the dead and dying are suspended, upside-down, their life-blood flowing onto the rock below. The blood is channeled into massive runic engravings, not that any wizard or historian would recognize the carvings as such. Save one.
That man, insanely cackling as he skips, gleefully, about the chamber, would be unrecognizable to any who might have once known him. Even he has forgotten his own name, calling himself by whatever his fancy desires at the time. His hair, once a shaggy, untamable black, now juts wildly out of his skull, like he had been hit with lightening. The oddly pale, silvery lavender strands extend wildly down to his shoulders, frazzled and curly.
His monochromatic eyes, a bloody red and glinting, verdant emerald, glow softly as the spin wildly in their sockets, darting about madly, taking in everything nearly at once. His short stature is belied by the way he bounces around almost constantly, even when standing still. As his instrument, a long, thin stick, ending in an arrowhead, tears savagely a crossed the final neck, the massive runic array at his feet finals activates, glowing a shimmering non-color, exactly as he had determined it should.
Quickly, the man dashes a crossed the chamber, incredibly nimble, his white lab coat whipping about him. With a final leap, followed of course by an arbitrary front-flip, he lands in the center of the vast array. His arrow-wand, a disturbing bone-white, flashes over his palm in a blur, then returns to its place behind his ear. He cups his palm to hold his blood, and withdraws a small, golden pocket watch. The watch doesn't hold a face or dial, but a miniature hourglass containing a single grain of sand.
With another manic cackle, he crushes it in his hand and drops the wreckage of the small device, somehow managing to hold onto only the tiny grain of sand. He holds the grain up to his eye, and his voice emanates once more, though this time it's so startlingly soft as to be another person entirely. "To see the world in a grain of sand, hold infinity in the palm of your hand," He drops the tiny grain into his pooled blood, eyes devouring it as it sinks into the viscous fluid and begins to absorb it.
"Cast into time, to live eternity in a moment, suffering a single moment endlessly," He jerks violently, a shocked gasp escaping his lips as he feels the infinitesimal grain of time latch to his magic and spread into him. "Casting a world into darkness, to bare upon it new golden light," He casts his hand to the side and pinwheels it, creating a bloody circle that suspends itself in the air before him. "Sacrifices given, to receive nothing, and everything taken with no recompense,"
He whips his hand about the bloody circle, carving a circle of runes into the air with his blood. "I see the world in this grain of sand, I hold infinity in the palm of my hand," His hand whips a final time through the air, the bloody, glowing grain of time sand lodging directly in the center of the runic circle he had drawn. "I cast myself into time, to suffer eternity in a moment, to cast a world into darkness, TO DESTROY EVERYTHING AND GIVE BACK NOTHING!" he screams into the chamber, his magic pulsing wildly about him.
The runic array seems to lock into place and begin spinning, ticking like a clock. The front of his shirt and coat are suddenly soaked through with blood as the runic array is instantaneously carved onto his chest. He howls for a moment before breaking off into demented cackling. He cackles, seemingly without needing to take a breath as the runes both in the air and on his chest continue slowly turning, the rivers of blood around him gradually spinning in time with the array, slowly picking up speed.
As the array makes a final rotation, having done so fifty times previous, he abruptly stops cackling. The wall of blo9od that had been spinning around him completely freezes, not a drop so much as quivering. He drops softly to his knees and lets his arms fall to his sides, a singular tear rolling down his right cheek, having somehow escaped its viridian prison. His voice is a mellifluous whisper, near inaudible, even in the deathly silence of the chamber.
"To see the world in a grain of sand, and hold infinity in the palm of my hand, Incipere." It happens in and instant. The grain of time sand shoots off like a bullet, piercing him the chest, dead center of the array on it, embedding itself in his heart. The frozen wall of blood reverses the track it had been on and in a rush, spins back fifty-one times before exploding outward for a brief moment, then rushing back in and coalescing into a sphere around the madman.
In a blink, it is over, there is a soft 'pop,' and the cave is a dry and empty as it had been before the insane sorcerer had come and turned it into a sacrificial ritual site.