THE CHAOS CHILD #1 - THE PROMISE

A former priest protects a very dark secret from the world..

In a farmhouse just outside Nuln, a middle-aged man has fallen asleep in front of the fire in the dark.

Two empty bottles of wine sit on a small table next to his chair.

The only sound in the quiet house is his drunken snoring.

The fire suddenly goes out as if a huge wind just blew into the room even though all windows and doors are shuttered.

The man awakes and looks around, confused in the darkness.

He stands up and stumbles, underestimating how hard the previous evenings drink would hit him, and knocks over the side table. The glass bottles roll off and shatter on the floor.

Trying to find his balance, he steps forward but steps barefoot onto the shards of glass.

Screaming in pain, he hops back against the wall behind him and collapses down it as he grips his foot tight trying to stop the gushing blood.

Cursing himself and his vices, he can see the mess he has made in the moonlight coming through the windows. A long trail of crimson leads towards him from the smashed bottles.

As he stares at it, the blood starts to move across the ground. Come together. Form shapes.

It starts to spell out words.

How.

Can.

You.

Live.

With.

Yourself.

The man doesn’t seem overly scared of the supernatural occurrence, he just seems tired of seeing things like this. He looks to the trap door on the other side of the room that leads into his cellar.

Looking back to the blood on the floor, he sees the writing has changed.

You are going to die soon.

He finally starts to look worried.

A bucket of water stands next to where he is sat, so he knocks it over and the wave of water washes away the writing of blood.

The man rips off the sleeve of his ragged shirt and wraps his foot.

As he does, he looks at the now-red water spread all over the floor, expecting another grim message.

However, no more words come.

He stands up and limps his way to bed. Staring at the trapdoor as he does, expecting danger.

Later, the man lies in bed in a deep sleep.

His eyes start to twitch and roll under eyelids. His breathing becomes heavier. Faster. Terrified from the visions in his dreams.

A figure in darkness. The back of a teenage boy sat on a stone floor. Chains lead from his wrists and ankles to the wall.

As the dream becomes more lucid, the man rolls onto his back, breathing heavy.

Reaching out with his arms, the strange boy starts to tug rhythmically on the chains on his wrists.

Sweat starts to bead on the sleeping man's forehead. Uncontrollably, he grips his bed covers tight in his fists.

As the boy pulls again and gain, the noise gets louder and louder.

The man twitches as he unconsciously fights against the nightmare. The candles hanging from the ceiling start to melt and drip onto the floor around his bed. The bottles of water next to his bed starts to heat up and bubble.

The boy in the dark room slowly turns and looks over his shoulder. Staring into Paul's soul. With the eyes of a daemon.

The bottles next to The man shatters and bursts, waking him up with a scream.

Sweating, he collapses back into the bed, trying to calm himself down.

The next day, the man is dressed for working the fields and walks towards the door. He grabs a jacket off a hook and puts it on over his scrubs. Before he leaves, he looks back to the blood on the floor from last night and then to the ominous trapdoor.

When man returns home at the end of the day, he flinches from a loud BANG noise when he steps into the house. Looking around, his chairs, tables, cupboards and all other furniture is wobbling slightly. Ss if they were floating a few inches off the ground moments before he opened the door.

He hangs up his coat. He looks around his house, checking candles, checking the locks on the trap door, putting anything not in its place back where it is supposed to be. Obviously a daily routine. He finds no clear problems. He lights the fireplace.

He sweeps up the glass from the night before and cleans the blood from the floor.

Eventually he collapses into his chair, exhausted before shoveling down a bowl of porridge he had just made. Finishing, he opens another bottle of wine and settles down to read a book. His eyes become heavy very quickly and he starts to drift off.

He starts to dream.

The strange boy, still hooked up to chains, is now stood in the dark room.

A voice in the darkness - but the boy's mouth doesn't move.

'Let….me…' The voice becomes distorted, terrifying and deafening as the boys eyes become more bloodshot. '...GOOOOOOO!' The world starts to shake like an earthquake.

The man wakes up in his chair with a jolt. He wipes his eyes and rubs his neck, he fell asleep at an uncomfortable angle. After a few moments, his breath starts to be seen – the room is becoming colder.

Hair on his neck stands up and goose bumps ripple across his skin. He notices his visible breath and starts to look alarmed. Looking up to the nearest window, he sees frost start to gather around the edges of the frame.

He starts to hear a high-pitched ringing in his ears, obviously painful.

He looks at the half empty wine bottle on the table next to him and the red liquid inside starts to tilt - As if the room was turning sideways. The wine steadily tilts to steeper angle. He looks over his shoulder to the trapdoor.

'Oh no.'

He quickly stands up as the ringing in his ears becomes louder, more painful. The noise affects his equilibrium and he stumbles, reaching out a hand to a wall for balance as the ringing becomes louder.

Reaching a cupboard, he moves some things out of the way to find what he is looking for.

He wraps his face with a rag, covering his nose and mouth. He picks out from the cupboard a small vial with a purple powder inside and a small bucket of sand.

The pain in his head becomes worse and he struggles to make it over to the trapdoor. Blood starts to trickle from his ears. He stumbles, landing on all fours.

The ringing is almost deafening now and Paul's eyes starts to become bloodshot. The veins in his neck strains as he crawls desperately towards the trapdoor.

Reaching it, he starts to unlock all the locks on the door in a frantic and painful effort and removes the bar from across it. The man lets out a painful scream, what is happening to him is becoming too much to take.

He opens the door just a couple of inches and throws inside the vial with purple powder. He hears it shatter on the floor below.

The man manages to lock just one of the padlocks before the cellar starts to fill with a thick purple smoke from the alchemists powder reacting with the air.

With some effort, he tightens the rag around his mouth and starts to pour the sand around the edge of the trapdoor, sealing any gaps he sees wisps of purple gas escaping from.

As he is doing so, he hears muffled screams from within the room and chains rattling as if someone is trying to break free.

The man collapses, unable to do more and starts to scream from the pain. More muffled, furious shouts come from within the trapdoor and the frantic pulling of chains.

Eventually someone inside stops struggling and, with a thud, whoever is in there hits the ground. Unconscious.

The man stops screaming as the ringing and pain starts to subside, leaving an eeire silence after the storm.

He is almost hyperventilating through his mask as he sits up, terrified, staring at the trapdoor. Scared of what is behind it.

He lmost jumps out of his skin when a multitude of things hit the ground in the house around him – falling back to their surfaces after being forced to levitate from the ground. The man collapses on his back in relief when he realises everything is now fine.

Once he catches his breath, he lights a rag on the end of a pole.

He picks up a small pot of paint and a brush.

Getting to the locked trapdoor, he places the paint down and ties his mask back on tight. He takes a breath to settle himself.

Tentatively, he slowly opens the trap door a few inches and puts his eye to the slit. He can see nothing in the darkness inside. Paul throws the burning torch onto the stone floor of the cellar below. Taking another huge breath to settle himself, he picks up the pain pot and brush and steps down the ladder.

Terrified, he slowly steps inside the dark room, lit an eerie orange by the torch on the ground. The stone room is totally covered in strange painted symbols - walls, ceiling, floor - all different but all essential.

Some gas still hovers in the air and the man waves the whisps away from his face to see. In the far end of the room, an unconscious teenage boy in filthy clothes can be seen through the purple fog.

Chains are attached to clamps around the boys throat, ankles and wrists. His mouth is covered with a leather strap.

The only other objects in the room are a pile of hay, a foul smelling bucket and a child's toy. An wooden effigy of the emperor Karl Franz. It appears to have been smashed and mangled.

The boy isn’t moving. The manquickly searches for the problem along the walls. He sees that a part of the wall has water dripping down it, a leak from above.

The water has leaked down the wall and ruined two of the painted symbols. They are now broken and faded.

'Damn it'.

The man quickly starts starts to paint over the ruined symbols. Adding the runes he had once been taught.

Before he can finish, he starts to hear chains moving behind him. He freezes.

The man hears breathing over his shoulder. Each breath sounds full of rage.

Scared beyond terror, he looks over his shoulder to see the silhouetted boy in the orange light, stood up, looking at the back of the man. Both don't move.

'Drake… I need you to stay calm.'

The man breathes heavy under his mask. Paul slowly starts to step towards the door. He stops and starts to hold his stomach. Pain.

'Drake… stop!'

The boy just stands there staring at him.

The man starts to moan. He drops the paint and it hits the ground spilling the white liquid across the ground

Holding onto his stomach with both hands now, he falls to one knee in excruciating pain.

'STOP!'

The boy just stares blankly at him, motionless.

'STOP!'

The man, fighting and screaming, gets to his feet and sprints up the ladder. As soon as he escapes through the trapdoor, he pulls off his mask and vomits blood onto the floor before collapsing unconscious.

Paul wakes up later in his chair. The sunlight of dawn creeps into the house.

A look of fear falls over his blood-covered face when he looks up.

The boy, covered in filth, stands in the doorway of the house looking out. Feeling the long-unseen sunlight on his skin.

He stands with his back to the man. The boy’s body language gives away only one emotion.

Rage.

They stay in an uncomfortable silent moment before the man speaks with a dry throat.

'You might think that you were a prisoner here... but you know, deep down, I’m keeping you safe. As well as the people out there.'

The boy, unimpressed with the little speech, picks up a bag of the mans things and steps out to leave.

The man becomes more desperate. He can't let this boy go. Tears start to swell in his eyes.

'Don’t go!'

The boy stops in the doorway. Listens. But doesn't look back.

'Those people out there looking for you…they will hunt you down and turn your gifts into a weapon they can wield. They will make you do unspeakable things. Every last spark of kindness, of humanity, that you have left inside of you will be…extracted. And eventually, they will have no further use of you. They will cut you open to see what the monster is made of. I saved you from that. I took you from that place. Here, I can keep you safe. Just like I promised your parents. Stay. Let's talk. Let's talk about how we can make this work...'

After thinking about it, the boy makes his decision. He turns back to the man with hate in his eyes.

Eyes with endless power.

The boy watches motionless as the man's bones contract and break at impossible angles. A disgusting crunch and squelch signals the man's rib cage collapsing. The man cant even scream as he chokes on his blood before his internal organs rupture.

The man's corpse is left sitting in the chair as blood starts to pool on the floor.

The boy picks up the bag and leaves the farmhouse to start a journey that would darken the lives of millions.

TO BE CONTINUED