Blood Is Life

"Die!" A knight that I feel like I have seen before approaches me and shouts as he cuts off my head. My head falls as I watch helplessly as he repeatedly slices the rest of my body into small chunks of wood. I wake up from my dream and find my eyelids instinctually trying to open.

'I have eyelids?' I was thinking as I kept them closed and so I started trying to figure out where I was without giving myself away. I hear no sounds besides a few bugs in the distance and I did not feel anything weird, it felt like I was lying on a bed in a pair of soft clothes with a blanket over me. While I did smell something it was a faded scent of food and seemed irrevelevent. Without any senses left besides taste I began to slowly open my eyes to a creepy ghost like skeleton face that's staring at me.

"AAAH" I let out a scream as I immediately moved as far away from this thing as possible. However with a second look I realize that it is just a really old man.

"Where is this?" I asked the man who said nothing and just creepily stared at me. With a glance at my surroundings I could confirm most of my observations. I am wearing a bath robe and under a blanket and on a bed. This appeared to be a small house in the middle of a forest so the bugs were likely outside. My observation skills perplexed me because in the past they had never been nearly as good as now. My eyes that were wandering came back to the old man.

"Are you just going to keep staring at me?" I decided to ask to see if it would make him stop. I took a glance down at my wooden body in a bathrobe and just knew who changed my clothes. Somehow it didn't bother me but what did was that he was just staring at me silently.

"Sorry, I was just figuring out your magic affinity." I listened to the old man speak in a slow drawn out way with a raspy voice.

"Magic? With magic can I get my body to turn back to normal?" I immediately spoke my mind.

"Ah so you are one of those original monsters from 200 years ago. I happen to have found a book on blood magic which happens to be your affinity and may allow you to change your body. Fate truly is mysterious." The old man seemed to be excited as he quickly left my vision. His words only gave me more questions I wanted to ask. Only a minute had passed before the old man came back to the room I was in with a book.

"So I have a theory on how to open this book since I was not able to do it myself..." The old man's voice rattled on as I was only listening for key words. "...anyways I am pretty sure if we use the blood of someone with the blood affinity it should work!" He and I both looked at my wooden body.

*Cough

"Don't worry I am pretty sure I know a way to make blood that counts as yours." The old man set down the book on a nearby table, and he made a gesture that suggested he wanted me to get up.

"What do I need to do?" I began getting up. The old man was facing away from me and a dripping sound echoed from in front of him, all other sounds seemed diluted while this dripping sound was amplified by multiple decibels. I could see a small puddle of blood form at the old man's feet.

"All you have to do is transfer your magic power into this blood." The old man was now facing me and I could see that he had a bandage on one of his fingers and a knife in his other hand that had a bit of blood stuck on it. With a second look I could see that the blood puddle was contained in a shimmering light.

"How do I transfer my magic power into it?" My eyes could not leave the puddle of blood as if something was drawing me closer to it.

"It is different for monsters and humans so try doing what seems natural." A smile grew on his face as he gestured with his hands for me to get closer to the blood. I approached the blood slowly as I tried supressing myself from thinking that this old man was only acting kind and that he was just like those knights. My hand went towards the blood as a warm energy left me and made me feel cold. I watched as the blood stretched into a spike that stabbed the old man right in the heart.

I did not feel bad about this in fact I felt like this was his retribution for thinking of me as a monster. The old man tried saying something but stopped in his tracks as a large flow of blood quickly exited his body and entered a ball of blood where the puddle was before. The old man quickly became more withered and ghostly than before right in front of my eyes at a visible pace. Without my order the ball of blood gravitated towards the book and was absorbed into it. My mind felt blank as I didn't know what to think about.

*Pop

The book swung open to the first page. I had nothing else to do but to read it.

"INTRODUCTION TO BLOOD AND SOUL MAGIC" I read the top line of front page of the book. Reading had always calmed me down in the past so I sat down on the hard floor and set my back against the hard wall and I read the book.

Unlike other kinds of magic, blood and soul magic does not require the magician to remember fancy circles or long chants. All blood and soul magic asks from you is understanding and compatibility. You may be wondering why blood and soul magic are being placed together despite being completely different sounding but however different sounding they are, learning one is the same as learning the other. Being compatible with one means you are compatible with the other.

Blood and soul magic are learned and practiced the same way, through this book. The first step to practice magic is to kill atleast one person and collect their blood. Now that blood will come in handy later, for now try to look at where that person died. Imagine the person is healthy and living, but instead of like normal imagine that they are apart of the air and are barely maintaning their shape. If you can look at the spot where the person died and see the person outside of your imagination all that's left is to accept them into your body. Like you're breathing in air, it is exactly the same.

I can see the old man standing their helplessly holding together his body. It seems like a small wind could blow him into pieces

"Do you need help with that?" I ask.

"Actually I need help with the opposite." The old man says to me showing that he understood what I was asking. I nod to him as I remember the words of the book.

"Like you're breathing in air, it's exactly the same." I say as a look of fear shows on the old mans face. It told me he wanted to shout out that this wasn't what he meant. I breathed in and he came in with the air. My entire body felt lighter without a moments delay. Just looking back at the book sitting where I left it filled my heart with excitement, not only about what the old man said regarding me being able to change my body but also the thrill of being able to hold power over others. I quickly returned to the book and began reading where I left off.

You may feel sad or pity over the soul that you just absorbed, but you shouldn't because although that soul can no longer go to the afterlife it is still alive as a part of your power and gets to watch you learn the most powerful magic. You may be wondering if the souls you absorb have the posibility to overthrow you and either take over your body or kill you. The answer to that question is yes however it is unheard of because of how rare it is.

The next step after absorbing your first soul is to use the blood you aquired. You may have found that this book can absorb blood and lost your blood to the book, don't worry because using the same method as moving blood can allow you to take blood out of the book. You should be able to move around the blood seemingly with your mind now, but it is actually with your soul. Next step is to try and put as much pressure onto the blood as possible by using your soul. It may take some time but try compressing a sphere of blood with a 4 inch diameter into one with a 2 inch diameter or smaller if possible. Once you have this sphere all you have to do is take a portion of your soul and bind it to the blood sphere. If you can compress the blood sphere this step should be easy. What you just created is a blood core, it is used to control something made out of blood without the need of you being close. It basically makes golems, but if you want to become the most powerful blood magician then you won't put that in anything else. Next step is put the blood core inside your own body.

With a blood core in your body although not as easily as controlling a blood golem you should be able to control any blood infused objects. Your soul should be stronger as well as your control over blood. This blood core can even act as a tool to escape death if you transfer all of your soul into it you can either stick it inside something else before your body becomes lifeless or you can just take some of your blood to create a new body around the core.

I immediately saw the importance of a blood core so I started by pulling blood out of the book. A four inch diameter sphere formed from the book as I pulled it out with my soul. With just imagining it shrinking and willing for my soul to put pressure on it, the ball of blood shrunk down to a much smaller sphere right in front of my eyes. A one inch diameter sphere floated in front of me as I attempted to seperate a part of my soul.

A suffocating feeling filled me as a nearly invisible thing that looked like cloth followed my orders and went straight towards the blood ball I made. My soul met the blood and seemed to melt into it from my point of view. The previously bright red ball of blood turned silver and became solid where my soul entered. It was not long before the whole sphere was silver, and without a moment of hesitation I pushed the small core into my stomach area. A cracking sound was audible for only a moment and I knew that this was the sound of my wooden stomach getting a hole torn in it. A sharp pain from where I shoved the core in explained its needs. I need blood!