A Sophyan's Sagas

Prologue:

Greetings, dear readers with eccentric intentions,
Welcome to Dore's poetic inventions.
For I do not wish to retell publications,
But rather noncanonical, twisted narrations
Of darker, more comical fables that mention
Toram, if you were to pay your attentions
To ironic humor, how npc's function
With poverty, greed and accounts of corruption.
So though my stories may be far from perfection,
Sit back and relax, and enjoy my collection.

 

Episode 1

Monsters are waiting for you, my mother used to tell me. Be careful, or you'll be eaten and nobody will even know.
It was a sort of sophyan folk tale that was passed down through generations, one which parents would often share the legend to their children to dissuade the regular rabblerousers from reveling in their nocturnal mischiefs and follies. Indeed, such an image of disappearing in both body and memory in a fell swoop of a monster's jaws was enough to compel even the most daring juveniles from venturing into the darkness in town.
Everyone had seen one before, of course. Why, finding a monster was easier than finding a stray dog if only one knew where to look. Some of the big children, faces set with dirt and oil stains, claimed to have witnessed such horrors and lived to tell the tale. Some described the monsters as hairy and wiry, with no eyes and 5 arms and teetered with an uneven gait, a flaw that allowed for said children's survival. Others mentioned gigantic feet. Or claws. Or hooves, depending on which side of town you went to to listen in on such yarns.
A few boys, drunk on their own braggadocio, like Jasper, claimed to have even wrestled one into submission, forcing it to beg for mercy, before giving it a good licking. Jasper's lackeys were never ones to deny such intricate plots, swearing upon their left eyes that every detail was honest-to-pino truth, vehemently shaking their heads and fists at any of the other children who dare say otherwise.
"Naysayers are born liars," they'd chant, "Naysayers are scared cowards. We don't take kindly to pussycats."
Perhaps those boys were right. Perhaps naysayers really were liars. Because when THAT came, no one believed it could have been true. No one dared say ITS name. No one acknowledged the calamity laid around our very eyes as though shunning its existence meant nothing had happened. But no one could forget ITS name, etched, branded into our minds with the very air of death itself. Everyone knew what IT was, and feared it was the one monster that truly devoured souls like we were trained to fear:
I N Z A N I O

 

Episode 2
It was unusually dark into the evening, the afternoon had only a few hours descended into the night, yet the sky appeared bleak and ominous against the light of the dim lantern.
The young mistress was still in the upper quarters; she had arranged for a playdate with some of the other girls in her academy, and the silence of the mansion was frequently pierced with bursts of laughter or shrieks of varying emotions whenever Marie passed by the mistresses's quarters.
Marie carried on with her chores; the life of maids for incredibly wealthy families were not easy ones. There were always sheets to be cleaned, garments to be laundered, and groceries to be purchased at the ocean of stalls nearby the estate. More often than not, any one of these tasks would end up taking the whole day to be done, and even then, waiting upon the family throughout the day was another constant source of exhaustion. It was a very taxing profession for a teenager like herself, but her family needed the money badly. And there may have been a certain boy in a neighboring mansion that Marie perhaps might have taken interest in, maybe? she didn't know. Perhaps a certain boy from the Portington's, with onyx-colored hair that gleamed in the sun, and eyes a brilliant shade of blue, as brigh-
"MY EYESSS!! WHERE ARE MY EYES!! DAMN IT I CAN'T FIND!"
Startled, Marie turned towards the source of the noise, coincidentally finding herself facing the young mistresses's chambers. Surely she would not want any servants intruding, but she seemed as though in extreme pain, so what could Marie do but rush over?
"I'll only peek in through the crack," Marie assured herself, "Just to make sure. Just in case something happened to the young mistress."
She rushed towards the room, and right on cue, the door swung wide open, nearly striking her in the face.
"Oh-! W-well, I apologize, my lady, but-"
Marie froze. It wasn't the young mistress. Rather, her friend stood in the doorway. But... something was...strange, to say the least. The friend hadn't seen her. Or even looked Marie's way for that matter. She simply stood there, poised, intensely staring at a portrait on the adjacent wall, and suddenly toppled over. And lay where she fell
"Miss?" Marie asked, "Are you feeling alright? Miss?"
The girl suddenly started shaking. Her limbs started to jerk and her body conformed into a bizarre set of poses. Her jaw chattered violently and her head started gyrating, yet her eyes never left the portrait, as though her very life depended on it.
"What's going on here? Are these girls cursed??
What of the young mistress?"
A wave of dread rushed through Marie's spine and and she felt her very bones bite the ice. She stepped over the girl's motionless body and her eyes frantically scanned across the room, witnessing eight other girls sharing the same symptoms as the first. Then there was a familiar hand. One with a blue gem in the center that the young mistress would don so proudly. She too was in hysterics, but was sweating profusely when her body was cold. Marie then noticed that her collar was covered in powder. Shining purple and with small inconsistencies in its make, it seemed like Marie was able to find some more of it under the young mistresses's lip and nose. And on the other girls. There were several more vials of the substance uncapped, poured into a small pile and lined up in small rows. Along with a few notes rolled into what looked like makeshift straws.
Marie rushed out of the room to find a doctor. Nightmare crystals were the most addictive narcotic those days, and it seemed more victims would be seeing their last sweet dreams that night.

 

no

 

...And this is why us adventurers just give it to Lefina for god knows what she does with all these Nighmare Cry- I mean narcotics.
I mean, it also makes us stronger... WAIT!
We give stuff to Lefina, and we get stronger...
... Oh my god. "Winners don't do drugs, except steroids. In that case, do lots of drugs." It all makes sense now.
Anti Degradations... are steroids. Lefina is a drug lord.

 

STFU ALYCIA DRUGS ARE FOR COOL KIDS