//------------------------------// // Prologue: Blank Canvas // Story: Displaced into Nothing // by Rockstar_Raccoon //------------------------------// Let me tell you about my life... Or... That's not exactly right... Let me try this again. Let me tell you about a girl named Marilyn Susanna... Marilyn lived in a strange land, far, far away from our own.  A land where creatures like Unicorns and Dragons were neither seen nor heard.  A land where the stories of great sorcerers and wizards were just that, stories.  A land where there were no monsters or mystical wonders to be wondered at.  A land where most people believed magic to be nothing but fantasies and fairy tales... Marilyn Susanna was born in an ordinary hospital, on an ordinary day, the daughter of an ordinary working class family.  And at first, Marilyn seemed like an ordinary girl... But there was something extraordinary about her.  Marilyn loved reading from a young age, especially stories about the magic and adventure, even though it was all considered mere fantasy in her world.  Marilyn knew magic wasn’t real.  But she wanted to believe in it, she wanted it to be real so hard, but alas, it seemed the doomed fantasy of a child... Marilyn was smart though.  Incredibly smart.  She had a curious, contemplative mind, and excelled in math and the sciences from a young age.  She graduated high school a whole grade ahead, and was given a full scholarship to a prestigious University.  She minored in Mathematics, and majored in... It doesn’t have a name in your language yet, but it involves logic and math. It was in her second year of college that she became involved in the study of the Occult. The group was supposed to be secret, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you, seeing as you’ll likely never come across it.  They held late night meetings in libraries, coffee shops, and apartments, and called themselves the Midnight Society.  The Midnighters discussed cutting edge science, speculative history, philosophy, metaphysics, religion, the paranormal, cryptozoology, conspiracy theories, and most importantly, magic. Marilyn knew in her head that this wasn’t a rational decision.  Magic wasn’t real, there were no supernatural forces... The world was as it seemed, governed by a set of logical rules, which could be observed and modeled.  Magic was not part of that model.  Marilyn told herself it was all just fun and speculation, and was known as the everpresent skeptic of the group... ...until one night, the group found irrefutable evidence of the supernatural. During an experimental ritual, the Midnighters opened the barrier between their reality and what you may know of as the Dream Realm, granting passage to something truly terrifying.  The entity, known to the Waking realm as a “Deep One”, was a literally nightmarish creature, born from the deepest depths of the collective unconscious, and it had no interest in cooperation with the lesser beings who had opened the doorway.  Far from it... This being of incredible power hated them, blaming them for every crime their kind had ever committed. One of Marilyn’s fellow Midnighters died at the Deep One’s terrible claws that night, shortly before the others could push it back beneath the veil of nightmares.  Shaken by the reality of what had come to pass, the rest of her group abandoned the study of the paranormal altogether... ...But Marilyn became obsessed. The supernatural was real!  It had happened right in front of her!  And now, she knew that its power could be harnessed... Marilyn managed to complete her bachelors degree in only four years, impressing her professors with her sharp, analytical mind.  By night, however, she moonlighted as a sorceress, learning to influence people through their dreams, to incept ideas within their minds which would later play out in reality, to take works of pure concept and make them impossible realities.  Marilyn quickly gained favors she had never earned, was given jobs she would never have been considered for, had access to secrets whose owners had never told a soul... Marilyn had power.  Power that began to terrify even her... People wouldn’t just do her harmless favors, she realized: she had the power to cause men and women to leave their spouses for her, to empty their bank accounts and become destitute for her... to kill for her.  Worse, as time went on, she became increasingly aware of entities far more powerful than her, and Marilyn knew that it was only a matter of time before they caught wind of what she was doing. By this point, she had amassed quite a savings account, most of it gained by rigging the odds.  She decided it was time to get out while she still could: she quit her job, left the city, and moved to the countryside, nearly swearing off her Sorcery altogether, only using it from that point forward for knowledge and her own protection.  Secluded, she was safe to live out her life in peace, away from the temptations of society. The few friends she’d made in college noticed that she came around less and less, and tried to get her to come back out of her shell, unaware of the exploits which she’d been drawn into.  One day, they invited her to a comic book convention.  She had plenty of money, and it would be fun they said...  Lonely from her self-imposed isolation, she agreed: what would it hurt to relax for a few days? Soon, Marilyn found herself enjoying one of the biggest comic book conventions in her country, dressed in a costume she'd thrown together of one of her favourite cartoon characters from her childhood, looking bright-eyed at all the childish pleasures there. On the last day of the convention, she wandered into a very peculiar stall... The goods here were of remarkable quality, some looking almost as if they were the real thing.  It was here that she saw the most adorable plush toy, and decided that she should buy it.  She exchanged brief pleasantries with the vendor, a tall, thin man with a mustache.  He looked to be just past middle aged, but was still somewhat handsome, with an odd glint in his eye.  As Marilyn finished paying him, she noticed there was something... off about him... As if his spirit was... hollow... ...Was he...? No.  That was impossible.  She laughed it off as she walked out of the stall: of course there was no real magic here.  That would be silly, right?  She didn’t even see the hole before she was already careening through.  The spellwork had bared down on her before she had any time to throw up a ward.  In a last fit of desperation, she clawed out with her mind, working to unravel the spell before it literally tore her body apart... And that, at the far-too-young age of twenty seven, is where the story of Marilyn Susanna comes to an unfortunate end... ...And where MY story begins.