Prologue
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
– 1 Corinthians 13:11
Running.
That’s all he could do to escape from them. After escaping from their facilities he started to run from them. His legs grew very tried, but kept going.
“Stop him!” a guard yelled out.
“Don’t let him get away!” another one shouted.
Kal continued to run until he hid in the woods. He found some thick bushes and hid behind them. The guards stopped at the entrance of the darkness of the forest.
“Should we follow him?” The first guard asked.
“Nah, we’ll let him be food for the animals,” his partner replied.
Kal waited until the guards left. A few minutes had passed and he peeked out of the bushes and looked around.
However, as soon as he took a step, he fell into a hole. As he fall in, he starts reminiscing how he got into this mess. From his family being tortured and eventually killed to escaping the same fate his thoughts were interrupted once he hit the ground.
“Ow..” he groaned. As the young boy gets up, he looks around, scared and confused in the darkness.
“H-Hello..?” he called out, as his voice echoes in the darkness. No one answered, until suddenly, he sees a faint light appear in front of him.
He slowly walks towards the light, as it got brighter. As he got closer, he then find out that he is in a cave. As he looks around the cave, he sees a wall with hieroglyphs written on it. After countless tearful and heartfelt moments, here he was just as he had been for the past 5 years.
Alone.
Isolated.
Kal couldn’t help but laugh at himself; he was always alone. You would think he would be used to entertaining himself by now. To be able to sit quietly in a room somewhere with nothing but his imagination and be perfectly content to remain that way. To draw and write. But that would never happen.
As Kal kept walking, he had accidentally knocked over a strangely shaped, light brown box with a gray interwoven design. Reaching down to right the box, he noticed that the lid and front side held light green gems.
The box—chest he corrected himself—was of good size, being shoulder width apart. It was a gorgeous deep brown, probably in some part due to the age of the stone in which it had been crafted from. Snaked along the edges of the chest were light grey lines, each of which were thick enough to be raised from the chest’s sides and lid. The clasp was decoratively disguised as a large green gem. Far too dark to be an emerald, the boy noticed, but that too could have been a product of age. In comparison the book looked newer, but after opening, Kal noticed that the pages were stained the pasty yellow that all old books share. The actual contents of the chest, Kal noticed happily, were far more interesting. The stone container held what appeared to be a gem with a transparent surface along with art tools and small containers of each color.
Setting the chest and its contents to the side for now, Kal focused all his attention on the book that his parents had given them before they were murdered. Inside lay multiple small-scale drawing that almost looked painted. Many of the drawings Kal recognized immediately from the mansion’s own gallery. Was this where his father made the sketches? Kal remembered off-handily confessing to his mother once about how he enjoyed spending his days in an art gallery. And not long after, perhaps out of guilt, the mage had made it his mission to feel the gallery with as many exotic paintings as he could. Shaking his head to dispel the memory, Kal continued to flip through the books’ pages; treating them just a little more tenderly since his own mother had apparently handled this same book in the name of indulging his youngest child. Coming to a picture of some strange creature, a note tumbled out of the book’s folds. Picking up the note, Kal was startled to see that he recognized the handwriting – it was his late mother’s.
“Upon our return, remember to remind to make this drawing for Kal’s birthday.”
She mentioned Kal’s growing interest in abstract art and story writing.
Kal couldn’t help the sad smile that stretched across his face; his mother had planned to add to the gallery for his birthday. Placing the note gently to the side, he looked at the small rendition of the painting with renewed interest. In the center of a large mountain scene lay a proud lion-like creature with deep golden fur and a lighter cream muzzle and chest strip. A gold crest across the forehead that slowly descended into a deep silver just below the eyes, and to finish the look were deep grey fangs that began where the beast’s nose should have been and descended past the creature’s lower lip. Its body glows a bright yellow and as fearsome and majestic as this beast was, Kal found his eyes drawn to the small boy that was drawn on the creature’s back as it leapt across the light blue colored mountains. The boy was fairly pretty with bright blue eyes and black hair, he couldn’t have been more than 14 years old. The boy wore a suit that Kal thought distantly of what he had worn as a child. Below the artwork sat a caption in what Kal assumed to be the name for the drawing.
The Mighty Leo – Guardian of the Sun.
It truly was a beautiful painting and Kal absolutely loved it. The mere thought of his mother sitting in his place flipping through a book to find the perfect picture for his daughter, left a strange feeling bubbling in Kal’s chest. The boy was surprised as wet spots began to form on the page. Laughing at herself for getting so emotional, the young male immediately started wiping his face and set the book aside. Taking a deep breath, the boy decided to return his attention to the chest since the book was stirring up far too many feelings. He considered the chest for a few seconds before shrugging his shoulders and turning the whole thing to allow all the contents to fall out.
“They look… just like sketches.” Kal realized suddenly. Gathering a few in his hands, he didn’t notice when the papers at his feet began to glow a subtle turquoise blue. Suddenly an idea struck him; clearing a space in the immediate area at his feet, Kal began to draw and paint some sketches into some semblance of colors.
“Mama.. Papa.. Brother.. Sister.. they’re together… With me.”
Kal felt like a little kid again; sitting alone in the living room playing by himself with his drawings. He suddenly wished that things could go back to the ways things were before.
Before their parents’ death.
Before the.. experimentation...
Tears began streaming down Kal’s face in earnest as he sat hunched over the odd little letters. So caught up in his emotional breakdown that was years in the making, Kal didn’t notice when his tears fell onto the paper of his drawing. He didn’t notice when the assembled letters began to glow an ominous, cyan blue. He did however notice when a gigantic glowing hole appeared in the living room ceiling. Kal watched in stunned fascination as his assembled drawing floated upwards into the hole, quickly followed by the rest of his papers.
‘What was happening? Where were they going?’ Kal watched as the papers spiraled upwards into the glowing portal and in return a spirit orb of purple light spiraled down. It circled around him, giggling and squealing happily as Kal shot to his feet in fascinated fear.
“What are you? Where did you come from?”
The spirit continued to circle, none of them seeming inclined to answer his question anytime soon. Finally, the purple orb then transformed into a humanoid form (about 3 ft.), and a group of symbols stopped in front of his face. It took Kal a few minutes to translate the odd symbols into actual letters.
K-A-L.
F-A-M-I-L-Y.
F-R-I-E-N-D.
The conjugation of spirits squealed in Kal’s face.
”Friend!”
Kal blinked in shock, somewhat surprised that the things had actually spoken to her, even if he couldn’t hear the mouth that they had used to do so. “Wait. What?”
”Hi, friend!”
“Who are you?” Kal asked in wonder. The being then wrote his name on paper and showed it to him. It said “ELON” in purple paint strokes.
“Is that your name? Are you Elon?”
They nodded then cheerfully began to circle faster. “Why are you all here? Where did you come from?”
“We come from a realm that is different from your own,” Elon explained, via telepathy. “A realm we’re your creative thoughts are unleashed.” They then directed Kal to the multicolored orbs. “These are your Innovites. The essence that makes your inner thoughts come to life.” Elon then stopped in front of Kal’s face as a third eye appeared on their forehead.
“Huh?” Kal was confused as a purple flash of light from the third eye, and they were suddenly all connected. Kal could feel them in the back of his mind, blindly searching, grasping for… something. When the connection settled to a dull easily ignored buzz, Kal shook his head and titled it.
“So um.. d-do you.. want to play with me..?”
Elon then giggled happily in affirmation. They then called for assistance as more Innovites began to stream through the hole in space and time, until there were hundreds of them.
Kal beamed. ’Playmates!’ He thought eagerly, things to play with until he was bored. He could probably show his new friends to others... or at the very least. Make them suffer..
Powers. Elon latched onto Kal’s irate thoughts, delving deeper into the kid’s memories.
Magical Powers. They could do that. They could show him the same thing. No, something better. Much better.
Suddenly, waves of many colors began to slowly form under Kal’s feet. As more of the Innovites crossed into this dimension, the rate of the colors’s advancements grew. Quickly spreading across the floor and upwards onto the walls until it was covered in splotches of colors.