There was nothing wrong with a youth having an interest in fantasy, and the delusions of knights most brave battling dragons most foul were even encouraged to foster a budding imagination, but once the flower had bloomed it was expected they cast aside the delusions that once drove them.
Those that could not were destined for a life of destitution, as Miranda Sinclair did. A life that failed to launch beyond the idle fascinations, and barely managed to support herself. She could barely hold a job for any length of time, and what money didn't go towards feeding her hunger or slaking her thirst went towards that age old love of the marvelous and mysterious. An old thrift shop had crossed her eye one day, and with a severance check clutched firmly in hand she strode inside looking to spend herself of both grief and funds. A half hour later and she would emerge with a leather bound book and not a cent to her name, pouring over the cracked spine with the wonderment of a child.
It was escapism, plain and simple, and as much as she longed for it, she hadn't a clue that her wish would be granted that very day.
Reading as she went along desolate roads late into the evening, her weary feet taking her every which way but to the crushing loneliness of an apartment she could no longer afford the rent for, Miranda had stepped out onto the crosswalk without a care for the car speeding down the road. From the corner of her eye the light of it's high beams struck her, yet when she lifted her head to look the locale had changed and there was no car casting light upon her.
The only light came from the red sky above, and the eerie full moon which was absent not a minute before beneath overcast skies. Craning her neck to and fro, the destitute woman saw not a soul on the streets and soon wrapped her arms around herself as a drop in temperature washed over her and made Miranda regret the threadbare nature of her attire. With the tome clutched tightly to her chest she finished crossing the street, finding that the roads were still very much the same in lay out, yet were nothing alike beyond the superficial details. Her nose wrinkled and ears turned on a dime, finding that with every step she took was made into a seemingly alien world that had none of the sounds which punctuated human settlement. Dead silence was a frightening void to exist within, even when it was punctured by the sound of your own hurried steps, and the heated breaths released in ever increasing intensity.
There wasn't even the smell of sewage from a grate in the road, something she would never think to have missed.
"Huh?!" A strangled word of surprise slipped past parched lips, nearly cracking from the accumulated strain of the situation, but a harsh scrapping sound from around the coming corner was ample cause to break her silence. She had spoken so briefly, yet it caused the scraping to halt before resuming in a frantic manner in her direction. Miranda looked around, and found there was no nearby alley or convenient waste bin to hide herself, leaving her a petrified statue when she witnessed her dream come to fruition.
What ran around the corner was certainly a creature of fantasy, proof that her idle fascination was not so farfetched after all, but that was still a cold comfort when before her were familiar creatures that meant her nothing but ill will. Calling out jeers and maddened ravings with grating voices were tiny fae folk, seven in total, and with a range of crude blades dragging along the side walks behind her.
"Red Caps!" Miranda shouted, a shaky finger raised towards the namesake hats snugly resting on their heads, and a few of them wore caps that still dripped red over the pavement as they went. Rather then surprise, the Red Caps were delighted to be labeled correctly, and ran at her with weapons brandished high to cleave her open and use her to dye their clothes. A grisly fate that would have surely befallen her, had she not made a very important purchase.
Though she herself was shaking with all the terror of a deer in the head lights, it was impossible not to feel the violent shaking of the book she had clutched this entire time. Grasping at straws in her final hour, Miranda thought that if such blood thirsty monster could exist, then perhaps what she had purchased could be a genuine book of spells with a verse to save her from the jagged blades. She pried the book from her chest and opened it wide before her to a random page.
To her surprise, there was only a single word beneath a picture that dominated the whole of the page. Without thinking, she spoke it aloud as the first Red Cap leapt to close the final feet between them.
"Null."
The page turned blank, and what once was bound in ink was now made corporeal between her and torturous demise, an impossible figure bound in heavy plates of armor, yet only had whirling mealstrum of blue and black for a 'body'. It's figure towered over all of them by a good three feet despite its hunched nature, and rather then legs its body tapered off to a thin stalk sliding upon the ground with ease. The being had only four fingers, and they all were designed in the visage of wicked claws.
Claws which now wrapped themselves around the airborne Red Cap, and crushed the life from it with ease. The other Fae raised raucous calls of alarm, but seeing their kin slain drove them to a frenzy that had them all throwing themselves upon the creature named Null. Null trembled at the sight, shoulders shaking with the great upheaval of armor plates clanking against each other as it threw its head back. Miranda caught a good glimpse of it, a head almost human in shape jutting straight out from the hunched body with surprisingly clear features for the formless mass that was its body. There was a brow, nose, and eyes like pools of blinding light, all which was framed by the visage a thin, broad smile that parted in silent revelry.
The creature swept its arms out and caught the Red Caps close to its chest, pressing them together with its arms wrapped tight around its chest in a warped parody of Miranda's own terrified form minutes earlier. Streaks of rancid ichor gushed down Null's arms as the malignant Fae perished on mass, crushed between its arms and the chest plate until they had been wrung dry and dropped to the street with a final derisive chuckle, still as silent as it had began.
Miranda soon found herself before the Youkai's gaze, it's chest heaving as it breathed through the tear that mimicked a mouth, and it occurred to the woman that it may very well kill her next now that the actual threats were dealt with. She looked up into its luminous eyes, and felt as though a rabbit caught before the starved wolf. A palpable hunger radiated off the monster and as it raised its claws towards her she felt certain that it would devour her lock, stock, and barrel.
She was wrong, and when it tapped the paper of her open book, it returned to ink once more as though it were never real to begin with. Stunned at the mercy shown to her, Miranda looked down to find the corpses were still present, and that even the picture of Null was not without the blemishes of gore upon its chest plate. Seemingly self conscious, the picture moved upon the page to brush aside the rancid blood before looking off to the side and resume its stolid vigil on the page.
"... ....... ............" The Book was slammed close and the carcasses ignored, Miranda walking over them with her face rigid in the countenance of one about to have a stroke. She turned the corner and saw her apartment bathed in the crimson light, where Miranda wasted no time in entering the front door and climbing the fur flights of stairs two at a time. Her key opened the door, and when she stepped back into her home she found that sound and smell returned with a single step past the threshold. A shaky jerk of the head to the side revealed the artificial light of a poorly place street lamp glaring through her window and penetrating the black night.
There wasn't enough liquor in the fridge to make her forget what she saw, but damn if she didn't try.
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