Warlock Apprentice

The painting showed figures that looked like mermaids, but the figures were not the kind of mermaids that Angor saw at Twilight Auction.

These “mermaids” shown on the wall all had freakish looks. There were deformed scales all over their bodies, and other than their tails, they had different body parts that resembled fish.

One grew a fish head, while another looked like a fish but only on his left side. There was also an entire fish with human limbs. Angor didn’t know if such creatures existed in this world. For now, he would consider them a sub-species of the well-known mermaids.

The paintings described how the mermaids morphed into “Toad Skins”, who were then performing a series of strange rituals by kneeling, carrying strange payloads or wielding harpoons.

At the end of the “story”, the previous strange mermaids showed up again and took the Toad Skins to a bright place.

The Toad Skins praised and danced before the mermaids disappeared again.

Angor assumed that the art was used by Toad Skins to worship their god, the mermaid.

There were other elements shown here such as the daily lives, hunting tradition, and the beginning of the civilization of the Toad Skins. Each painting was accompanied by characters that consisted of dots, lines, and pictures as if a kid were drawing stick figures. Angor could not read them though.

People who were determined but not smart enough would tread in one place and welcome their doom, while those who could read the situation clearly were all attempting to figure out how to ascend to the sky unharmed. And most of them weren’t courageous enough to advance first.

A good number of apprentices chose to vent out their final dread by using violence on whatever they could catch.

The ground trembled, shattered, and gave way to lava, which hastened the destruction of what remained.

Flames, hurricane, storms, maddened apprentices, and monster fishes all took part in the final symphony of the massacre.

A single blue whale was floating in the sky, and a man with a scale-like tattoo on his forehead watched the terrible bout joyfully.

A woman in a large blue robe moved to him, and in a charming voice, she asked, “Not leaving yet, Jebra?”

“Heh. This is such a rare sight to behold. I can’t afford to miss the fun.”

The woman moved to the whale’s head and took off a red whelk-like object from the creature’s horn. “I’ve recorded everything. You can always watch it again later.”

“Nah. I love being INSIDE while watching them suffer. This is the best. But… you’re probably right. This isn’t worth any more of my time.” Jebra turned around and said, “Let’s go, it’s almost time. Soon, something bigger will come and bathe the entire southern region in terror.”

The robed woman raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“You know the calamity from ten thousand years ago, em?” Jebra chuckled and ordered his whale to fly away.

Occasionally, there would be apprentices or more flying fishes entering the dimension barrier.

When Jebra arrived, there was a giant ray trying to get inside. Jebra’s whale discouraged all monster fishes from bothering him, but that particular ray ignored such convention and casually floated into the barrier while completely ignoring Jebra.

“Did you see something?” the woman accompanying Jebra asked when she saw the man glancing at the disappearing ray.

“Huh… A dude was sitting on that thing… But he doesn’t have any arms or legs. Interesting.”