Birdsie
The God-Emperor of Mankind
Chapter 1
That Thursday
That Thursday
Blasticus the Wizard was sane no more than a particularly dull pumpkin with its pulp removed. Despite still being in his late teens and with access to good education, he seldom attended academy lessons, due to a misguided belief that he already learned everything that was worth learning.
His experiments, even by wizard standards, were strange and dangerous. The villagers who lived in a hamlet merely a short walk away from his tower called him a crazy maniac among crazy maniacs.
A prodigy in youth, he wasted his formative years being corrupted by para-modern social constructs from another reality.
He became, what he called 'a dank memer,' and called the commoners, nobles, and even other wizards alike with the moniker of 'normies.' No one could decipher the strange terminology he used.
Blasticus' eyes opened groggily, and he groaned in pain, holding his head as he sat on the bed.
"Note to self. Alcohol, weed, and ritual ingredients: not a good combination." He rubbed his forehead, then opened his eyes and sighed as he saw the state of his study.
Blasticus reached into his pants for his spare wand and made a circle motion to stir his brain, but the hangover was bad enough the spell didn't work at first.
He felt the mana levels in the area spike up, though, so he tried again. He made a circular motion with his wrist, the wand-tip outlining it.
His brain seemed to get the idea this time, and sent an impulse to the soul.
In three seconds, a stack of fallen books lifted into the air and arranged themselves alphabetically on the shelf above. A pile of glass shards from broken flasks was swept up by a telekinetically-controlled broom. The window behind Blasticus' bed unlatched its locks while the curtains slid to the sides - the window opened, letting in a pleasant breeze and some fresh sunlight.
Blasticus stood up and began to stretch. Cracks resounded throughout his body, as he yawned, then scratched the top of his oily hair and turned around.
"Ah! Close it, close it!"
The sunlight from the window burned into his eyes like someone was stabbing knives into them. Telekinetically, the window closed, its latches came done, and the curtains slid to protect him from the outside world.
He sighed out in relief, then turned to his study.
Since the air was kind of dense, he put a small wand down into a specifically-designed holder and charged it with enough mana to last a day. There! The wand generated cool air currents and lowered the temperature. It'd make the pigsty of a room slightly more tolerable to dwell in. Blasticus also had a second wand, that generated heat, but he never found a good use for it.
"Yesterday was a fucking mess," he stated evenly, sitting down in his chair.
On his desk laid a single translucent quartz, connected to a hand-sized metal box with antennas and tesla-coil shaped protrusions. He tapped a button on it, and the quartz emitted a rectangular hologram with icons on it.
The cursor moved according to his thought. Convenient and elegant.
He began to browse various websites, including 4chan, Reddit, and others. Like a shut-in NEET of a wizard, not even taking a bath or dressing up for school - or going to school for that matter - he played games and browsed the internet of an alternate world. All morning.
Somewhere nearing noon, Blasticus felt a void in his stomach, and not a minute later, a quiet rumble sang through his belly.
"Be right back, guys, I gotta go grab a bite," he said to his fellow teammates in Emerald Quest Online. Various responses came, such as, 'kay,' 'aight,' or 'hurry up then.'
Blasticus stood up from his chair, feeling the hangover fatigue still in his muscles. With no other choice, he went downstairs to his laboratory, then one more floor down to his conjoined trifecta of living room, dining room, and kitchen, meant mostly for guests, but also for his own culinary needs.
Truth be told, his wealthy parents built this tower for him and they were handling the tax until he grew older. Once he had, his plan was simply to unveil some patent for a rudimentary computer (which he had already built, and it was where he left it in his room,) for college credit. The magic association paid grants for access to such patents, and one as inventive as a computer could easily set him up for a few decades of leisurely living conditions.
Blasticus peered into the refrigerator, but all he found was a cobweb. He confusedly scratched his chin, then remembered he gave his last sandwich to a spirit that he summoned for the lulz when he was drunk last night.
The spirit was confused at first, with him not demanding service in return, but it accepted the sandwich anyway and converted it into mana to live off of.
"Huh. Guess I gotta hit the grocer's." He held his left hand out.
The sound of wood clattering resounded through the tower in an echo, until a wooden staff flew from upstairs and stopped in his hand, where he clenched it.
He raised it up high, and it glowed for a moment, then teleported him to his bathroom. A quick refreshing shower, followed by a visit to the wardrobe. He picked a fashionable, if not flashy, black robe with white and silver trim.
After that, he left his tower at the base floor and made sure to close the door and check the warding spell. Everything was in working order, so Blasticus set out.
The walk to town took less than five minutes.
The village of Sabatrad was relatively small in size and population, with less than two-hundred citizens. It had a grocery store near the main street that Blasticus regularly visited to purchase bread and meat.
However, despite his regularity, the normies here never seemed to get used to the sight of him.
Blasticus sighed, looking ahead and trying not to pay them any heed.
As he walked down the street, people and children stared at him in a strange mixture of fear, awe, and disgust. Some hushed whispers went through the street, and he couldn't quite make them out, but he knew they definitely weren't flattering. Most gossip wasn't, and gossip tends to be gravely misinformed, as he discovered on accident last month when he overheard the peasants theorizing he was - out of all possible things on this earth - a living golem made from human flesh and devilish witchcraft.
A small boy called out to his mom, "Mommy, look, it's that weirdo from the tower!" before she hushed him and took him away down a side-street. Blasticus ignored this bitterly, trying not to click his tongue as any indication he was cursing them would most likely push the villagers to grab the torches and pitchforks.
The doorbell rang out, as Blasticus walked into the grocery store.
"Ah, hello to John's G--" the clerk, a young girl around Blasticus' age, froze when she saw him. She was the owner's daughter - he was pretty sure - but didn't know her name.
Despite herself, she finished the sentence, if a bit lamely, "Welcome to John's Groceries..."
Blasticus picked up a loaf of bread, a slab of pork, and a small wooden box containing butter. This was all he'd need for now.
He took his items to the counter, and the girl instantly said, "One gold coin."
She was ripping him off just a bit. He knew this, but paying in gold was more convenient. He placed a coin on his thumb and flicked it in such a way that it arced up and then down onto the counter, where it started to spin before falling over. By the time it did, Blasticus was already outside and the girl breathed out in relief and looked down at the counter with a weary gaze.
Blasticus made his way down the street at a brisk pace, eager to get back to his gaming escapades, but he was halted by a familiar voice saying, "Um, excuse me..."
He stopped, and turned, trying to track the voice. As he looked behind himself, he saw the store clerk girl standing with her hand outstretched. She looked at him a tad fearfully and said, "You... uhm... gave me the wrong coin, s-sir..."
People around the street stopped, like their bones became ice and their flesh froze. Some very, very slowly and deliberately rotated their heads in the direction of the event, trying to keep themselves from screaming at her to run. They simply breathed in, slowly, shell-shocked.
Blasticus stared at the girl, a bit too long, it seems, as she looked down and to the left in embarrassment. Blasticus looked at her hand, where she held a silver coin.
"Crap, my mistake," he said, feeling his chest clench with a feeling of shame. "The mistake was unintentional, I apologize. Here, take this."
He reached into his pocket and - confirming the denomination - put a platinum coin in her palm. Ten times as valuable as a gold coin.
The girl stared at it incredulously, then at Blasticus. "Is it really okay?"
"Oh, if that's not enough, well, I guess I don't need this," he said, then reached into his robe and handed her a thin stick.
The girl froze, wanting to refuse, but when she looked at Blasticus' face, her features simply stood still and her mouth couldn't say the words it wanted. It took her a moment to gather her jumbled thoughts, and finally, she meekly asked, "What's this?"
"I'm glad you asked!" Blasticus stated proudly. "It's a wand that generates heat. You're untrained, so you'll need some time before you can use it properly, but I guess it might be useful in winter or something. It can serve as an infinite torch, too, so that's something. At full power, it pretty much shoots out flame."
"T-Truly?"
"Yeah, take care now. I'm going back to my tower."
"Wait!" She laid a hand on his shoulder as he began to turn around. The villagers stared, their shock doubling as they saw her voluntarily prolong the conversation with the notorious maniac.
"Hm? What?"
"What's... what's your name, sir?"
"Blasticus. Blasticus the Wizard. You?"
"Mar-Maria."
Several people gasped.
One of them whispered, "Maria, stop talking to this maniac!"
He saw in the corner of his eye people staring at him, disgust and revulsion welling in their eyes.
Some couldn't even do it directly, keeping their gazes averted but following the edges of his silhouette with the boundaries of their eyesight.
Some simply stared through the draperies with suspicious gazes.
Deciding this was enough, he walked away in the direction of his tower.
'Why are the people here so weird...' he thought.
And speaking of weirdness, he had a little pet project of his to finish at home...
Blasticus cursed himself for his stupidity, as he pulled the emergency lever. An alarm sound bellowed out, while red lights began to flare through the tower.
All the windows and doors closed, steel plates being summoned from a linked parallel dimension to prevent entry or exit. At the same time, the protective wards' effectiveness quintupled, at an equivalent cost in mana. Nothing - physical or immaterial - was going in or out.
Blasticus walked downstairs to the basement, then typed in the code on his special keypad and entered the dungeon. He made sure to close the door, as he walked through the hallway.
He heard a cutesy giggle behind himself but didn't dare turn around. He knew better. Once he looked, he would die. Once he looked, his life would be over.
Something in his chest gripped his heart. A primeval fear of death coded into all humans. Blasticus felt sweat go down his palms, and when he heard the giggle again, closer this time, he didn't hesitate.
Blasticus ran, using what little he knew of physical enhancement magecraft to cast Haste on himself. At double the speed of an average runner, he made through the dungeon hallways, into a very specific chamber. He closed the door, cast all the reinforcement and abjuration spells he knew on it, and then turned.
"Creepy Pasta," he said without fanfare, to his child of a project.
It sat there, bound to the wall with adamantium chains, grinning at him with an assembly of uneven teeth.
An amalgamation of several mythical beings from an alternate world - Slenderman, Jeff the Killer, The Rake, and so many more, combined into one gestalt being of pure terror.
"Father," It said with a friendly tone, in a shrill and yet equally grumbly voice, tens of voices layering on top of each other like the discordant words of a legion of demons. There was a low buzzing, like a subsonic hum, in the background of its speech. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Long ago, Blasticus had the idea of constructing a creature that embodied the idea of creepypastas. This was it. Creepy Pasta.
"I have a job for you," Blasticus offered resolutely. "In exchange, I will grant you freedom."
"How do I know you aren't lying to me?"
"Because I can't stop you once you go all-out, just like I can't stop what I just unleashed."
Creepy Pasta closed its eyes, though its grin remained. The monster then said, "Very well. I accept."
Blasticus nodded a bit grimly. He swung his staff, releasing the chains which clattered as they fell to the ground. The amalgam being began to shift forms between hundreds of creepypastas; serial killers, ghosts, monsters, cryptids, or others. Eventually, it settled on Slenderman.
Creepy Pasta rubbed its now-slender wrists, then stepped forward. "Then, who is my enemy?"
Blasticus opened the chamber door and pointed out. "That."
Across the hallway stood a giggling woman, completely nude. Creepy Pasta's pale-white horror cheeks flushed, as he asked, "W-What is that?"
"Rule Thirty-Four. I got horny, but this thing became too powerful. I suspect it is about as strong as an Archdevil Succubus."
Creepy Pasta gulped, staring at Blasticus momentarily.
"You're not that bad of a wizard when you're motivated by being horny, huh?" it asked, in an accusatory tone. "Well, no matter. I can slay it before it saps our life energi--"
The woman polymorphed and became a genderbent Slenderman.
"W-What is this?"
The Slederwoman walked into the chamber, a giggle sound echoing through. In that moment, Blasticus stepped off to the side and hid. He saw as Creepy Pasta threw a scything attack with his tentacles, and his opponent replied by dodging and flashing him with her, uh, things.
Rule Thirty-Four operated on two main elements. The first is that there are no exceptions - it can take any form as long as it is lewd or erotic. The second is mental domination through charm magic, gradually accumulating as it fights its opponents. Unless Creepy Pasta achieved a swift victory, it would fall to Rule Thirty-Four's temptations.
Blasticus didn't want to take that chance.
He snuck out of the chamber, closed the steel door, locked it shut and reinforced it once again, and used Mold Earth to encase it in several layers of concrete, about two inches thick.
A moment passed, in somber quiet.
He heard no sound from within, and assumed the problem was done with.
"Phew. What a Thursday," he said, elated.
Blasticus walked in the opposite direction of the sealed chamber.
Halfway across the corridor, a loud noise stopped him, and he looked back, as spiderweb cracks spread through the concrete wall. Once again, a loud noise rang out with even more force, and he felt tremors going through the dungeon, as the cracks spread.
"Shit."
He cast Invisibility and stepped to the side, as a half-nude Slederwoman broke through the concrete with her back and hit the opposite side of the hallway, propelled by some kind of impact almost like a cannonball shot at complete power.
A monster composed of spaghetti, meatballs, and horrific bodyparts - monster heads, knives, black tentacles, or screaming mouths - slithered out. This was Creepy Pasta's Ultimate Form, which was a combination of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all of its horrors.
Creepy Pasta said, "Seriously? What the fuck? Do you think turning into this form means you can seduce me? Pathetic!"
Creepy Pasta lunged, flowing through the corridor with its noodly appendages at the speed of a car. It grew kitchen knives on some of its noodle-tips and stabbed them into Rule Thirty-Four, pinning it against the wall by its abdomen and limbs.
Creepy Pasta released a crazed cackle similar to a mad scientist, then said, "Horror knows no such thing as temptation! Die!" Several more knives manifested at the noodly appendages, and they moved back in preparation for a killing blow.
The Slenderwoman hastily shapeshifted into Jane the Killer.
Creepy Pasta halted its stabbing to stare, releasing a sound of slight wonderment.
Blasticus turned off his Invisibility spell and cupped his hands into a megaphone. "Don't be tempted! This is a trick! Don't let the lewdness control you! You are horror itself!"
It was too late, as Creepy Pasta's meatball eyes shifted to look at Blasticus with rage. "You! I saw that concrete wall... You wanted to lock me in there, didn't you?!"
"Shit," Blasticus stated evenly, as a noodly appendage wrapped around him and tied his hands parallel to his torso.
Creepy Pasta's meaty eye looked at Rule Thirty-Four. "Hey, we didn't know each other for too long, but let's team up to kill this disagreeable man! Then we split the world equally and rule over it. Deal?"
Blasticus tried to reach for his staff. Casting was difficult without it, and furthermore without air, as a second noodle wrapped itself around his neck and began to strangle him. He desperately struggled, kicking his feet and grasping at his neck with one hand, while reaching out with the other.
Was this it? Would he die a virgin?
Upon thinking that, he saw Rule Thirty-Four shapeshift into a Shadman picture.
Nevermind. He would get a fate worse than death.
And then, out of nowhere, both of the monsters were hit with an intense cryogenic spray, which encased them in large, semi-translucent cubes of crystallic ice, covered in snow. Blasticus fell to the ground, the noodles he was held in snapping off along with him.
As he hit the ground, he looked at his savior and saw Maria standing there.
She showed him the wand she used to freeze the monsters, and said, "Wrong wand, I think."
'Oh... So, the one upstairs is the hot one, and I gave her the cold one on accident... Damn.'
"That's why you came here?" he asked, slowly ventilating after his near-death experience.
"N-Not exactly." She looked off to the side.
"Then why?"
"The rest of the villagers, uhm, kicked me out and told me I can't come back until I give you this wand back," she said, somewhat ashamed, as she handed the item over. Blasticus accepted the life-saving wand, and stuffed it in his pocket.
"What do you people have against magic?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing. Most of them have something against you. You're kind of, well... crazy, you know?"
"Why do they think that?" Blasticus questioned, forgetting about the two manifestations of internet sin standing behind him, encapsulated in magical ice.
"No reason." She looked around the dungeon, avoiding eye-contact, saying, "Me, personally? I think you're kind of cool."
"R-Really?" he queried, then paused, when he realized she was making a pun about ice. "Fuck this."
Maria giggled at him, and hearing the giggle, Blasticus thought he was about to burst out of his own skin in rage. 'This little...'
His anger stopped when he realized a crucial fact. "Hey, how did you get down here? There's a locked door with a keypad."
It broke her out of the humorous mood. "A key-what?" she asked, blinking in confusion. "There's nothing but a hole. Come to think of it, the hole looked kind of like a---"
"Spare me the details, please. I've had enough for today."
And on that Thursday, the wizard Blasticus befriended the local shopkeep's daughter, Maria.
When not playing videogames or browsing the web, he would covertly visit the village to introduce her to various spells, and even teach her little bits of his craft, or what he knew of it, anyway. She, in turn, would make visits to his tower to hang out and adventure with him.
His experiments, even by wizard standards, were strange and dangerous. The villagers who lived in a hamlet merely a short walk away from his tower called him a crazy maniac among crazy maniacs.
A prodigy in youth, he wasted his formative years being corrupted by para-modern social constructs from another reality.
He became, what he called 'a dank memer,' and called the commoners, nobles, and even other wizards alike with the moniker of 'normies.' No one could decipher the strange terminology he used.
Blasticus' eyes opened groggily, and he groaned in pain, holding his head as he sat on the bed.
"Note to self. Alcohol, weed, and ritual ingredients: not a good combination." He rubbed his forehead, then opened his eyes and sighed as he saw the state of his study.
Blasticus reached into his pants for his spare wand and made a circle motion to stir his brain, but the hangover was bad enough the spell didn't work at first.
He felt the mana levels in the area spike up, though, so he tried again. He made a circular motion with his wrist, the wand-tip outlining it.
His brain seemed to get the idea this time, and sent an impulse to the soul.
In three seconds, a stack of fallen books lifted into the air and arranged themselves alphabetically on the shelf above. A pile of glass shards from broken flasks was swept up by a telekinetically-controlled broom. The window behind Blasticus' bed unlatched its locks while the curtains slid to the sides - the window opened, letting in a pleasant breeze and some fresh sunlight.
Blasticus stood up and began to stretch. Cracks resounded throughout his body, as he yawned, then scratched the top of his oily hair and turned around.
"Ah! Close it, close it!"
The sunlight from the window burned into his eyes like someone was stabbing knives into them. Telekinetically, the window closed, its latches came done, and the curtains slid to protect him from the outside world.
He sighed out in relief, then turned to his study.
Since the air was kind of dense, he put a small wand down into a specifically-designed holder and charged it with enough mana to last a day. There! The wand generated cool air currents and lowered the temperature. It'd make the pigsty of a room slightly more tolerable to dwell in. Blasticus also had a second wand, that generated heat, but he never found a good use for it.
"Yesterday was a fucking mess," he stated evenly, sitting down in his chair.
On his desk laid a single translucent quartz, connected to a hand-sized metal box with antennas and tesla-coil shaped protrusions. He tapped a button on it, and the quartz emitted a rectangular hologram with icons on it.
The cursor moved according to his thought. Convenient and elegant.
He began to browse various websites, including 4chan, Reddit, and others. Like a shut-in NEET of a wizard, not even taking a bath or dressing up for school - or going to school for that matter - he played games and browsed the internet of an alternate world. All morning.
Somewhere nearing noon, Blasticus felt a void in his stomach, and not a minute later, a quiet rumble sang through his belly.
"Be right back, guys, I gotta go grab a bite," he said to his fellow teammates in Emerald Quest Online. Various responses came, such as, 'kay,' 'aight,' or 'hurry up then.'
Blasticus stood up from his chair, feeling the hangover fatigue still in his muscles. With no other choice, he went downstairs to his laboratory, then one more floor down to his conjoined trifecta of living room, dining room, and kitchen, meant mostly for guests, but also for his own culinary needs.
Truth be told, his wealthy parents built this tower for him and they were handling the tax until he grew older. Once he had, his plan was simply to unveil some patent for a rudimentary computer (which he had already built, and it was where he left it in his room,) for college credit. The magic association paid grants for access to such patents, and one as inventive as a computer could easily set him up for a few decades of leisurely living conditions.
Blasticus peered into the refrigerator, but all he found was a cobweb. He confusedly scratched his chin, then remembered he gave his last sandwich to a spirit that he summoned for the lulz when he was drunk last night.
The spirit was confused at first, with him not demanding service in return, but it accepted the sandwich anyway and converted it into mana to live off of.
"Huh. Guess I gotta hit the grocer's." He held his left hand out.
The sound of wood clattering resounded through the tower in an echo, until a wooden staff flew from upstairs and stopped in his hand, where he clenched it.
He raised it up high, and it glowed for a moment, then teleported him to his bathroom. A quick refreshing shower, followed by a visit to the wardrobe. He picked a fashionable, if not flashy, black robe with white and silver trim.
*~*~*
After that, he left his tower at the base floor and made sure to close the door and check the warding spell. Everything was in working order, so Blasticus set out.
The walk to town took less than five minutes.
The village of Sabatrad was relatively small in size and population, with less than two-hundred citizens. It had a grocery store near the main street that Blasticus regularly visited to purchase bread and meat.
However, despite his regularity, the normies here never seemed to get used to the sight of him.
Blasticus sighed, looking ahead and trying not to pay them any heed.
As he walked down the street, people and children stared at him in a strange mixture of fear, awe, and disgust. Some hushed whispers went through the street, and he couldn't quite make them out, but he knew they definitely weren't flattering. Most gossip wasn't, and gossip tends to be gravely misinformed, as he discovered on accident last month when he overheard the peasants theorizing he was - out of all possible things on this earth - a living golem made from human flesh and devilish witchcraft.
A small boy called out to his mom, "Mommy, look, it's that weirdo from the tower!" before she hushed him and took him away down a side-street. Blasticus ignored this bitterly, trying not to click his tongue as any indication he was cursing them would most likely push the villagers to grab the torches and pitchforks.
The doorbell rang out, as Blasticus walked into the grocery store.
"Ah, hello to John's G--" the clerk, a young girl around Blasticus' age, froze when she saw him. She was the owner's daughter - he was pretty sure - but didn't know her name.
Despite herself, she finished the sentence, if a bit lamely, "Welcome to John's Groceries..."
Blasticus picked up a loaf of bread, a slab of pork, and a small wooden box containing butter. This was all he'd need for now.
He took his items to the counter, and the girl instantly said, "One gold coin."
She was ripping him off just a bit. He knew this, but paying in gold was more convenient. He placed a coin on his thumb and flicked it in such a way that it arced up and then down onto the counter, where it started to spin before falling over. By the time it did, Blasticus was already outside and the girl breathed out in relief and looked down at the counter with a weary gaze.
Blasticus made his way down the street at a brisk pace, eager to get back to his gaming escapades, but he was halted by a familiar voice saying, "Um, excuse me..."
He stopped, and turned, trying to track the voice. As he looked behind himself, he saw the store clerk girl standing with her hand outstretched. She looked at him a tad fearfully and said, "You... uhm... gave me the wrong coin, s-sir..."
People around the street stopped, like their bones became ice and their flesh froze. Some very, very slowly and deliberately rotated their heads in the direction of the event, trying to keep themselves from screaming at her to run. They simply breathed in, slowly, shell-shocked.
Blasticus stared at the girl, a bit too long, it seems, as she looked down and to the left in embarrassment. Blasticus looked at her hand, where she held a silver coin.
"Crap, my mistake," he said, feeling his chest clench with a feeling of shame. "The mistake was unintentional, I apologize. Here, take this."
He reached into his pocket and - confirming the denomination - put a platinum coin in her palm. Ten times as valuable as a gold coin.
The girl stared at it incredulously, then at Blasticus. "Is it really okay?"
"Oh, if that's not enough, well, I guess I don't need this," he said, then reached into his robe and handed her a thin stick.
The girl froze, wanting to refuse, but when she looked at Blasticus' face, her features simply stood still and her mouth couldn't say the words it wanted. It took her a moment to gather her jumbled thoughts, and finally, she meekly asked, "What's this?"
"I'm glad you asked!" Blasticus stated proudly. "It's a wand that generates heat. You're untrained, so you'll need some time before you can use it properly, but I guess it might be useful in winter or something. It can serve as an infinite torch, too, so that's something. At full power, it pretty much shoots out flame."
"T-Truly?"
"Yeah, take care now. I'm going back to my tower."
"Wait!" She laid a hand on his shoulder as he began to turn around. The villagers stared, their shock doubling as they saw her voluntarily prolong the conversation with the notorious maniac.
"Hm? What?"
"What's... what's your name, sir?"
"Blasticus. Blasticus the Wizard. You?"
"Mar-Maria."
Several people gasped.
One of them whispered, "Maria, stop talking to this maniac!"
He saw in the corner of his eye people staring at him, disgust and revulsion welling in their eyes.
Some couldn't even do it directly, keeping their gazes averted but following the edges of his silhouette with the boundaries of their eyesight.
Some simply stared through the draperies with suspicious gazes.
Deciding this was enough, he walked away in the direction of his tower.
'Why are the people here so weird...' he thought.
And speaking of weirdness, he had a little pet project of his to finish at home...
*~*~*
Blasticus cursed himself for his stupidity, as he pulled the emergency lever. An alarm sound bellowed out, while red lights began to flare through the tower.
All the windows and doors closed, steel plates being summoned from a linked parallel dimension to prevent entry or exit. At the same time, the protective wards' effectiveness quintupled, at an equivalent cost in mana. Nothing - physical or immaterial - was going in or out.
Blasticus walked downstairs to the basement, then typed in the code on his special keypad and entered the dungeon. He made sure to close the door, as he walked through the hallway.
He heard a cutesy giggle behind himself but didn't dare turn around. He knew better. Once he looked, he would die. Once he looked, his life would be over.
Something in his chest gripped his heart. A primeval fear of death coded into all humans. Blasticus felt sweat go down his palms, and when he heard the giggle again, closer this time, he didn't hesitate.
Blasticus ran, using what little he knew of physical enhancement magecraft to cast Haste on himself. At double the speed of an average runner, he made through the dungeon hallways, into a very specific chamber. He closed the door, cast all the reinforcement and abjuration spells he knew on it, and then turned.
"Creepy Pasta," he said without fanfare, to his child of a project.
It sat there, bound to the wall with adamantium chains, grinning at him with an assembly of uneven teeth.
An amalgamation of several mythical beings from an alternate world - Slenderman, Jeff the Killer, The Rake, and so many more, combined into one gestalt being of pure terror.
"Father," It said with a friendly tone, in a shrill and yet equally grumbly voice, tens of voices layering on top of each other like the discordant words of a legion of demons. There was a low buzzing, like a subsonic hum, in the background of its speech. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Long ago, Blasticus had the idea of constructing a creature that embodied the idea of creepypastas. This was it. Creepy Pasta.
"I have a job for you," Blasticus offered resolutely. "In exchange, I will grant you freedom."
"How do I know you aren't lying to me?"
"Because I can't stop you once you go all-out, just like I can't stop what I just unleashed."
Creepy Pasta closed its eyes, though its grin remained. The monster then said, "Very well. I accept."
Blasticus nodded a bit grimly. He swung his staff, releasing the chains which clattered as they fell to the ground. The amalgam being began to shift forms between hundreds of creepypastas; serial killers, ghosts, monsters, cryptids, or others. Eventually, it settled on Slenderman.
Creepy Pasta rubbed its now-slender wrists, then stepped forward. "Then, who is my enemy?"
Blasticus opened the chamber door and pointed out. "That."
Across the hallway stood a giggling woman, completely nude. Creepy Pasta's pale-white horror cheeks flushed, as he asked, "W-What is that?"
"Rule Thirty-Four. I got horny, but this thing became too powerful. I suspect it is about as strong as an Archdevil Succubus."
Creepy Pasta gulped, staring at Blasticus momentarily.
"You're not that bad of a wizard when you're motivated by being horny, huh?" it asked, in an accusatory tone. "Well, no matter. I can slay it before it saps our life energi--"
The woman polymorphed and became a genderbent Slenderman.
"W-What is this?"
The Slederwoman walked into the chamber, a giggle sound echoing through. In that moment, Blasticus stepped off to the side and hid. He saw as Creepy Pasta threw a scything attack with his tentacles, and his opponent replied by dodging and flashing him with her, uh, things.
Rule Thirty-Four operated on two main elements. The first is that there are no exceptions - it can take any form as long as it is lewd or erotic. The second is mental domination through charm magic, gradually accumulating as it fights its opponents. Unless Creepy Pasta achieved a swift victory, it would fall to Rule Thirty-Four's temptations.
Blasticus didn't want to take that chance.
He snuck out of the chamber, closed the steel door, locked it shut and reinforced it once again, and used Mold Earth to encase it in several layers of concrete, about two inches thick.
A moment passed, in somber quiet.
He heard no sound from within, and assumed the problem was done with.
"Phew. What a Thursday," he said, elated.
Blasticus walked in the opposite direction of the sealed chamber.
Halfway across the corridor, a loud noise stopped him, and he looked back, as spiderweb cracks spread through the concrete wall. Once again, a loud noise rang out with even more force, and he felt tremors going through the dungeon, as the cracks spread.
"Shit."
He cast Invisibility and stepped to the side, as a half-nude Slederwoman broke through the concrete with her back and hit the opposite side of the hallway, propelled by some kind of impact almost like a cannonball shot at complete power.
A monster composed of spaghetti, meatballs, and horrific bodyparts - monster heads, knives, black tentacles, or screaming mouths - slithered out. This was Creepy Pasta's Ultimate Form, which was a combination of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all of its horrors.
Creepy Pasta said, "Seriously? What the fuck? Do you think turning into this form means you can seduce me? Pathetic!"
Creepy Pasta lunged, flowing through the corridor with its noodly appendages at the speed of a car. It grew kitchen knives on some of its noodle-tips and stabbed them into Rule Thirty-Four, pinning it against the wall by its abdomen and limbs.
Creepy Pasta released a crazed cackle similar to a mad scientist, then said, "Horror knows no such thing as temptation! Die!" Several more knives manifested at the noodly appendages, and they moved back in preparation for a killing blow.
The Slenderwoman hastily shapeshifted into Jane the Killer.
Creepy Pasta halted its stabbing to stare, releasing a sound of slight wonderment.
Blasticus turned off his Invisibility spell and cupped his hands into a megaphone. "Don't be tempted! This is a trick! Don't let the lewdness control you! You are horror itself!"
It was too late, as Creepy Pasta's meatball eyes shifted to look at Blasticus with rage. "You! I saw that concrete wall... You wanted to lock me in there, didn't you?!"
"Shit," Blasticus stated evenly, as a noodly appendage wrapped around him and tied his hands parallel to his torso.
Creepy Pasta's meaty eye looked at Rule Thirty-Four. "Hey, we didn't know each other for too long, but let's team up to kill this disagreeable man! Then we split the world equally and rule over it. Deal?"
Blasticus tried to reach for his staff. Casting was difficult without it, and furthermore without air, as a second noodle wrapped itself around his neck and began to strangle him. He desperately struggled, kicking his feet and grasping at his neck with one hand, while reaching out with the other.
Was this it? Would he die a virgin?
Upon thinking that, he saw Rule Thirty-Four shapeshift into a Shadman picture.
Nevermind. He would get a fate worse than death.
And then, out of nowhere, both of the monsters were hit with an intense cryogenic spray, which encased them in large, semi-translucent cubes of crystallic ice, covered in snow. Blasticus fell to the ground, the noodles he was held in snapping off along with him.
As he hit the ground, he looked at his savior and saw Maria standing there.
She showed him the wand she used to freeze the monsters, and said, "Wrong wand, I think."
'Oh... So, the one upstairs is the hot one, and I gave her the cold one on accident... Damn.'
"That's why you came here?" he asked, slowly ventilating after his near-death experience.
"N-Not exactly." She looked off to the side.
"Then why?"
"The rest of the villagers, uhm, kicked me out and told me I can't come back until I give you this wand back," she said, somewhat ashamed, as she handed the item over. Blasticus accepted the life-saving wand, and stuffed it in his pocket.
"What do you people have against magic?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing. Most of them have something against you. You're kind of, well... crazy, you know?"
"Why do they think that?" Blasticus questioned, forgetting about the two manifestations of internet sin standing behind him, encapsulated in magical ice.
"No reason." She looked around the dungeon, avoiding eye-contact, saying, "Me, personally? I think you're kind of cool."
"R-Really?" he queried, then paused, when he realized she was making a pun about ice. "Fuck this."
Maria giggled at him, and hearing the giggle, Blasticus thought he was about to burst out of his own skin in rage. 'This little...'
His anger stopped when he realized a crucial fact. "Hey, how did you get down here? There's a locked door with a keypad."
It broke her out of the humorous mood. "A key-what?" she asked, blinking in confusion. "There's nothing but a hole. Come to think of it, the hole looked kind of like a---"
"Spare me the details, please. I've had enough for today."
And on that Thursday, the wizard Blasticus befriended the local shopkeep's daughter, Maria.
When not playing videogames or browsing the web, he would covertly visit the village to introduce her to various spells, and even teach her little bits of his craft, or what he knew of it, anyway. She, in turn, would make visits to his tower to hang out and adventure with him.
