SECRETS
Soro felt something strange within him. At first he thought he heard a high-pitched voice, and suddenly felt a sharp pain within his head, not enough to weaken him, but still enough to cause him to flinch. But they were gone as soon as he got over his senses. It started this morning and kept happening once in a while, and although brief, Soro felt as if each pain would mercilessly take his life if he wasn't careful enough.
His father's knee injury was more serious than he expected, to the extent that he had difficulties to even stand up, so Soro decided to strike his own problem off and put his father before him.
As Soro nursed him and did the chores for the day, he couldn't help but notice something a little...different about his father.
For one, his father no longer adhered to his usual routines for yesterday and today, ever since he got injured. It might have been the injury hindering his routine, but knowing his father, he would definitely not spend a whole afternoon and evening in his room, except for now, where he summoned his son to move him to outside the house for some fresh air.
Still, Soro shrugged it off, deciding that he would return back to normal after this day.
'Ughh, I'm getting sick and tired of this place! And I can't think of any ideas! Oh why does this have to happen to me...' Aranelle complained loudly.
'Calm down will you, Aranelle. Geez, making a fuzz isn't gonna help AT ALL,' said Aran aside.
'I don't care I don't care I don't care! I wanna go back to Rien and chill!'
'We need to think about this thoroughly, I'm sure there's a way to do it,' said Cygnus, leaving Aran and Aranelle to settle their dispute.
Mercedes decided to avoid the commotion and headed out of the house to get a breather. It was much more peaceful without Aranelle around.
Suddenly, Mercedes felt a pain in her head, at the same time hearing a high-pitched voice that seemed to have come out of nowhere, but both faded as soon as they came. However, it was at this brief moment she felt something different about her.
Feeling confident, she took out her bowguns and decided to try and fire a normal magic shot. Her bowguns roared to life as magic arrows appeared on them, albeit glowing a black colour. The bowguns responded as quickly as they armed themselves, firing the arrows toward the direction Mercedes pointed at.
"Unbelievable!" thought Mercedes. She tried to cast a greater spell and focused outwards. A few seconds later, a dark ethereal unicorn with black eyes dashed past Mercedes and towards the direction she focused at, violently shaking the trees as the unicorn phased through them. Her powers are back. They don't quite seem right, but still, her powers are back.
Mercedes rushed back into the house, excited and eager to tell the others the good news. She got back to see the others still trying to break Aran and Aranelle.
'Hey guys, look at this!' She focused her mind and something dark glowed on top of her, in the form of growing thorny vines. 'I think our powers are back.'
The others were struck in awe. Aranelle was the first to react. She enraged herself, attempting to fire up as if wanting to bring blizzard down to the room next. She felt something drained out of her, but still the buffing spell succeeded as she felt her inner fire of passion and bloodlust simmering within her. 'Oh. My. Goodness,' she huffed.
One by one tried to buff themselves up, and each of them worked. Excitement quickly filled the room as they started to fire their skills to test if all their powers were really back.
'Guys, something doesn't seem right. Don't you feel that our powers seem… dark for some reason?' Mercedes asked. However, no one seemed to take notice. Instead, they began testing out their more powerful skills. "H-Hey, don't you think Soro's gonna be mad if he thinks we're gonna tear down his house?" Mercedes quickly called out.
"Heck I don't care, look how awesome it is to get our powers back!" Aranelle squealed in delight as she leaped upwards while swinging her pole arm in the same direction. A pile of black crystals shot through the floor upwards and fade back in as quick as they formed.
"This is great! We can get back to Maple World after all!" said Kyrin excitedly, as she raised her guns and summoned a spiky black ship hovering above outside the house, which rained down artillery and laser shots that damaged the trees outside.
"Now we just need to find out how to go back," said Aranelle after sending a few dark wolves crashing through the room, "You can do that right, Cygnus?"
The others turned toward Cygnus, waiting for an answer. But Cygnus was facing away from the others, and did not react to Aranelle's question.
"Uh, right Cygnus?" Aranelle asked again.
A brief silence passed, and just when Aranelle was about to ask a third time, she turned her head. Her face bore gloominess. Dark pits with glowing purple colour were there instead of her eyes. A dark aura started reeking from her.
"Submit" was the only thing she said.
At that instance, all of them felt the same sharp pain and the high-pitched voice in the head.
Strange... This cannot be...
The influence doesn't seem to work. The effects of the ritual are becoming noticeable on my adversaries, but not this innocent being. He somehow shrugs it off every time it gets to him.
Still, resistance is futile. He will still crumble if the power is strong enough. And if he ever finds out, it will only make it easier for me.
Meanwhile, the others have not noticed what's becoming of them. I must be careful of the influence and make sure they are unable to feel it. They will know if they do.
Soro tried to call out the newcomers he accommodated, but received no response. Thinking that they have perhaps gone out to explore, he decided to carry on with his cleaning duty.
Soro looked at the old wooden shelf as he swept through his father's bedroom, smiling as he admired his achievements throughout his youth, proud of being his son. His father bought the shelf right after the wooden house was built. The shelf, itself being rather large, held numerous plaques, trophies, old photos of his father in formal wear, and old wine bottles and car models that his father used to collect. At present, they were but memories of his former glory, complemented by the dust that started to collect outside the shelf. Soro set aside his broom and dustpan and came back with a feather duster, and started dusting the shelf.
As he dusted, something did not smell right. It smelled of rotten eggs, or even likely a dead corpse of an animal. Thinking it was from somewhere outside, Soro decided to check if there was something that needed to be disposed of. However, the smell got weaker instead as he went towards the front door and out of the house, and he could not even smell it after heading outside. Feeling strange, Soro headed back inside.
Soro tried to trace the smell and it led him back to the bedroom where he was dusting. And it came from behind the bookshelf. Deciding to investigate, Soro put down his duster and started moving the bookshelf. Moving it proved to be quite a challenge, but he still managed to shift it a notch just enough to let him peer behind the shelf. The pain came back again as he finished moving the shelf, but for only a short while.
However, as he peered to the back of the shelf, he was completely taken by surprise.
For behind the shelf was something he never knew had existed. An entrance to a tunnel. The stairway leading downwards was dimly lit only by the lights from the study, and it seemed to lead to nowhere. Oddly enough, the stairway seemed to be built out of stone instead of wood, which made up the whole of the house. It looked like an entrance to an ancient catacombs and Soro felt a shiver through his spine.
"Hmm, since when is there a basement in this house?" he thought.
Curiosity outweighing his fear, he searched for his torchlight and decided to venture downward into the abysmal passageway. Halfway through, he felt the pain in his head and the supersonic voice buzzing his ears, which, for some reason felt much more painful and the voice much louder.
Soro stepped lightly into the tunnel as he switched on the torchlight. It stretched rather far in that light from the outside no longer shone into the stairway. The passageway went on even after the stairs had ended. The stench got stronger the deeper he went, and as he walked on to the end of the passage, he found himself in a large chamber. The occasional pain worsened and it started to constantly pulsate within his head, but Soro found himself more curious about the secret place than to care about it.
He investigated the chamber and immediately felt a chill down his spine. At the centre to the chamber from the passage were four pillars standing in the position of a circle, each with a golden statue of a cobra entwined around it. At the top of each pillar held a faint glowing dark orb that seemed to be emanating black smoke out of it.
Within the circumference of the circle stood a very large cobra statue. It looked real even as a statue with its eyes and open mouth, with wings at the back which spanned widely across. Soro noticed a strange symbol carved at each side of its hood. In front of the large statue was a book stand, again with a cobra statue entwined around the pillar. An open book with a black cover rested on top of the book stand, and the pages looked very old from its colour. Like the dark orbs, the pages displayed glowed faintly and black smoke was reeking from them.
Just then, Soro found the source of the rotting stench. As he came closer to the book, he found someone lying just in front of the book stand. He tried to feel his pulse but none could be felt. The body felt abnormally cold too. From the faint light of the glow, Soro took a closer look at him. He was completely shaken as he recognised who that was. "F-Father..." he tried to call out.
"Hello," the sound of an old man came from behind Soro. He turned his head around. It was his father. Or was it?
"F-Father? H-Have you gotten better?" Soro asked. At that instance he finished his question, he felt the sharp pain again. Something was definitely wrong. He looked towards his 'father's' knees and to his surprise, it looked as if nothing had happened.
"I am more than fine, thank you very much," the old man replied, surprising Soro completely. "So I see that you have found out the secret even though I managed to hide it pretty well."
"Father…..no, you are not my father! What the heck is this? W-Why do I not know of this?" Soro asked. Fear and suspicion rose within him.
"This, as you can see, is my lab, created purely out of magic without being found out, thanks to the convenient disguise. The ritual you see here would be the foundation to spread darkness and corruption to the whole world, and with this corruption my master would be able to extend his reign to your world," the man replied in a cold voice.
Feeling even more absurd, Soro raised his voice, "Just who are you, anyway?"
"I see you are smart enough to question my identity. Very well then." As he finished his speech, a dark glowing aura slowly revolved around him as his figure and face started to deform. As the aura slowly faded and another figure started to form, it was no longer his father standing in front of Soro.
"You... Arkarium!" Soro gasped in realisation, for he had seen him before in MapleStory.
"So you recognised me as well. I have killed your father in order to take his form, which is why you saw me as your father. Do you understand my motives more now that you know who I am?" Arkarium asked as his black staff started materialising in one of his hand, and a flaming skull in the other. Behind him, a large black and menacing cobra appeared out of nowhere, staring at Soro with yellow glowing eyes and fangs wide open. Soro turned his head round and noticed that the large cobra statue was gone from the pedestal.
"W-Why? Why are you letting me know all about this?" Fear had completely overcome Soro and his voice came out shaky.
"I am letting you know all of this because you will soon become one of us," Arkarium promptly said. "And as you are a rather persistent fellow I will have assistance in completing my task, and I shall conduct this myself. Cygnus, Mercedes, Aran, Aranelle, Kyrin,"
As Arkarium said, the five of the appeared from the passage. They were no different from when Soro first saw them, but each of them bore a ghastly aura and had darkness reeking from their eyes in a glow.
"Hold him down for me. I shall personally finish this," Arkarium finished his orders.
"Yes, master," came five emotionless voices. Before long, Mercedes raised one of her bowguns and fired something darkly luminous toward Soro. It expanded itself into what looked like dark, glowing chains, and Soro found himself overcome by a strong force of submission, forcing him to kneel. He struggled as he tried to break free of the chains.
It worked for a moment, to their surprises. Soro managed to somehow loosen the chains and stood up a little bit, but it was not for long. Several ethereal felhounds rushed out of Aran's pole arm toward Soro as he waved his weapon with both hands, crashing into Soro and making him wince in kneeling position again as he felt an excruciating pain as if struck by sharp claws. Still, he grunted and yelled trying to gather some strength to break free. The others continuously attacked him, each skill severely lethal. And although he managed to resist the attacks, Soro could feel his sanity slowly slipping away from his mind. Eventually, one look into Cygnus's eyes was what it needed to silence him and break his will. Soro gasped in fear and rage as Arkarium slowly walked toward him.
"I'm impressed. You have just managed to prove yourself worthy and well for the Dark Lord. For that, I shall personally promote you to the ranks of us, the commanders," Arkarium said as he slowly walked over toward Soro. He reached both hands and cupped Soro's skull. As the orbs and the book glowed even more bright, Soro felt the pain and heard the voice again, except this time the excruciating pain and the high-pitched voice went on without fading. Soro jerked about in pain, but Arkarium's grip only became stronger. He could not end the suffering. It felt as if he could fall to submission the moment he was unaware of the torment.
Then it became bright. So bright that it was blinding. At that very moment, Soro felt the world becoming black and fell into unconsciousness.