Madman’s Retirement

Fred cowered in the presence of the dragons, forced to merely watch on as they spoke in a language he couldn't understand.

A dragon was a creature of legend, S-rank at minimum, walking calamities in of themselves; great stories were told of these horrifying calamities as they fought land shaking fights, the kind of story that was meant to be a fairy tale dream, a nightmare in reality.

The dragons spoke with such leisure, such a lack of worry, a stark difference from the man trembling as far away as he could be from the dragons, pushing against the mist borders, sloshing through the unseen waste(dirt?), trying to distance himself from these horrifying monsters.

A dragon rushed by him frantically running over to the dragon in the center of the room, causing Fred to fall back in fear.

The dragon again spoke in that tongue, seemingly attempting to convey something to the lead dragon, before his head exploded, gore flying everywhere with some even landing on him and yet he dare not move.

Pathetic.

On the stump of the head was a mace, overwhelming in its nature, connected to a golden chain which snaked back to a spot next to Fred, leading into the bloodied hand of an all too familiar face.

The scarred man.

His clothing had changed, changed into something far too beautiful for a man like him, far more befitting a noble.

For the man held a noble posture, a pleasant smile...

But a wicked aura. It made the pleasant smile wicked and the noble posture the posture of a predator, having found their prey.

The dragons that had been happily chatting before scrambled to attack as they lunged at the man at speeds indescribable to Fred, desperately putting up a fight, only to be mercilessly mowed down in quick succession by the mace that moved like a whip, quick with no chance for recourse, as thundering sounds were made with each strike.

Soon the place was nothing short of vile, with the result of the slaughter present all over the wall, as the scarred man merely giggled in delight as licked the blood off of his hand so calmly and yet disturbingly so.

And once more, the scene changed.

Countless stories went by Fred's eyes.

People's lives flashed by, countless memories, an innumerable number and yet they all had the same constant.

The good,

The evil,

The king,

The commoner,

The beast,

The man,

all of them died at the hands of the scarred man.

So few of them departed their life peacefully, and Fred just wanted it to all go away! But he couldn't close his eyes, couldn't plug his ears. No matter how hard he tried, it felt like a greater force was forcing him to bear witness to the countless atrocities going on before his eyes.

It felt like an eternity had dredged on as Fred continued begging.

"Please..."

"Please..."

"Just Make It Stop!"

He wasn't sure how long it was, but eventually it all stopped, and the memories faded back into the mist.

"Well?" came the all too familiar voice, the dreadful voice that ended all the illusions all the same.

The scarred man walked out of the mist.

To Fred, the scarred man had become a demon, a monster who had slaughtered countless warriors.

Every step he took seemed like another on his grave.

Eventually he came to stand before Fred, his back before him, and yet Fred dared not move.

The man must have eyes on the back of his head the way he reacts.

"Tch"

"To think I only showed you 1,000 memories from a 1000 different lives and you're already begging for it to stop. And you wanted to use mental magic? Truly, a child who knows not the weapon they wield." he sneered at the man before him.

Fred just wanted to get away, to make it stop. "Why?" he croaked.

"Why what?" asked the scarred man, lips upturned. He knew why, he just wanted to hear it. To hear Fred say it.

The man was mocking him.

"Just kill me already. Why haven't you killed me already" begged Fred. Just watching the endless slaughter, the endless of pain and suffering, with the small moments of piece and happiness just accentuating the suffering.

It was too much.

He just wanted it to end.

"Because I believe in lessons." responded the man.

Confusion swept across Fred's face.

What lesson?

This was just torture, watching all the horrid ways people could die, all the while awaiting his own death.

"Y'see, I've heard once or twice that sometimes lessons get picked upon in your next life, so I'm just doing my best to drill a very important lesson into your mind before you go."

He turned to face Fred, and Fred gasped.

"Don't dabble in something like mental magic unless you're prepared to head into the deep end."

The scarred man's face was gone, replaced by the gaping abyss.

His body had changed as well, as faces began emerging from his flesh, all of them just hauntingly staring at him as they pushed out of his flesh, like maggots pushing forwards out of a body.

Fred wanted to look away more than ever, yet his head was held by the unknown force as he was forced to watch.

"You see boy, you've been dead for the last 20 minutes. Or 1 minute in the real world probably."

Dead?

What did the man mean? He was still here!

Even in his horrified state, the question still popped into his mind.

"The illusion of the mind" chuckled Grant answering the question he couldn't express. "Your mind has been disconnected from your soul, and your soul has been torn from your body. Your body's probably bleeding from every single orifice as we speak. And once we're done here..."

he clicked his fingers.

"... I'll send you on your way. But first"

He began waving his hand, and slowly the mist dissipated.

Fred wished it hadn't.

He had thought the damp and mushy ground had been a marshland of sorts, some memory that he hadn't seen.

Fred was discovering this was not the case.

No, it was all viscera.

The floor was plagued with faces, and blood and all kinds of viscera Fred could not describe.

He didn't want to describe it.

Heads, as far as the eye could see, being the most prominent thing amongst the viscera and gore.

The mountains were not mountains, but merely more piles of corpses.

corpses upon corpses upon corpses.

Humans, monsters, elves, beastfolk, dragons, gods, he even recognized some of the faces there, such as the dragons and the swordsman.

A noise he could not describe before came to the fore front as he came to realize that the bodies were not dead.

Not in the slightest.

They were all alive, muttering things he could not understand, wails of despair and regret flooded his mind.

The eyes,

they were all staring at him!

All the eyes, from the ones that littered the ground to the ones that remained in their skulls, even the ones under his hands, and squeeze all he could, they would not pop.

He didn't know what to do.

There was no ground.

Nothing to flee to.

It was all just flesh, as the faceless man chuckled at the sight.

"You know child, these aren't the corpses of the people I've killed, you know?" He informed Fred.

"No, these are the corpses of the people's whose minds I've absorbed, added to the collective."

And when Fred though he had seen the worse, more had arrived.

"Absorbed?" he whispered, as a terrible thought entered his mind, as he began running, frantically running.

It was a pathetic run, more like scrambling, and yet he did so anyway.

The man had said he'd severed his mind from his body.

Why else would he do such a thing but to absorb his mind?

No,

No,

No,

Not like them!

He ran, ran as hard as he could, but then tripped on something.

He dared not look, even as the damp and firm hand grabbed him.

Fred couldn't escape though, as he felt the grip tighten, and more hands soon began to join, as they began to cover more and more of his body, and the faceless man leisurely walked over.

"Run as much as you want boy! You can never hide! That's the thing about mind magic, it's always a dip into the deep end. There are no half measures here. You came into my mind, completely unprepared; and that's the thing,

Every trip into an enemy's mind is a gamble, a vain hope that they're not as informed as you, as determined as you.

Because you've entered my mind, my dominion, where everything favors me.

You walked into the trap yourself"

Fred kept struggling, staring at the countless eyes in despair as he sunk deeper and deeper into the viscera, his shirt damp and clinging to his chest, the small making him want to vomit.

But he couldn't. He couldn't do anything, as he felt something fill his chest, his lungs, everything.

He watched in terror as hands began to emerge out of his throat, as he sunk deeper into the endless mounds of flesh.

And soon Fred was gone, absorbed into the masses, as the faceless man stared down.

"The funniest thing about all this," he noted after a while.

""The artifact you used to jump into my mind is a one way trip. The artifact jumps you into the minds of others, but leaves you no way out but to kill that mind. If it hadn't been me, it would've been someone else eventually; to lose a way out is the stupidest thing to do in the field of mental magic."

He cracked his head, as the fog shrouded his mind once more, hiding the endless field of minds from himself once more.

He cracked his head, and his appearance shifted once more, into a familiar bird-faced mask form.

"Now, let us go see how Granite is faring. Oh I hope he left me something to kill. After this trip down memory lane I'm feeling very nostalgic."

"Fred, Fred? Speak to me man!" demanded Reginald, shaking his body frantically, but the blood kept pouring out of the man, not stopping, as the man remained unresponsive.

"It's no use" came the voice, and all the fighting paused, to look to where the voice came from, for something in the voice demanded attention.

The golden chain ball pealed itself back, like a beautiful glowing flower, contrasting itself with the vast darkness that was the D-class in the center of the ball.

"The man's dead; hoisted on his petard."

Reginald's eyes narrowed. "You're more than you let on, huh?"

"As are you!" Grant shot back. "To think one of the greatest churches would support the likes of you!"

Reginald's eyes widened. "Change of priority guys; kill him!" he shouted indicating at the man in the mask.

A pleasant chuckle came out of the D-rank. "Please, by all means. I'm feeling nostalgic today."