ARCANE - LOL: Alchemist Prelude

A quiet alleyway among many is something that was found rather easily in such a bustling city - especially when the said time of the day was a clear night.

Listening closely that quiet was not entirely in silence. In a certain part of the city, people were partying and celebrating. In other parts, some still collected together to commune.

But in that certain little alleyway mentioned, there was something of a darker nature happening.

A bulky tall guy packed with muscles punched into another young man's face. Blood splattered to the ground when the hit came into contact.

After that punch, the red liquid once again started to flow down from the broken nose and ripped lips that had already swollen up greatly.

Some of it even collected inside the young man's mouth and this accumulation also brought him to cough up some more of it.

The young man initially tried to look up through his ginger locks of hair that fell on his face but he seemed to become slightly delirious and only lost focus.

No wonder with the beating he received. His right eye wandered around disoriented while his left eye was already swollen to the point that it was clearly impaired.

"I'm asking this again..." Another guy that was dressed in a suit came closer to the youth now and squatted low to get on the young man's level. "And this will be the last time. I hope for you, that you will come to your senses...Now then. Where is the book?"

"I...*cough*...don't have the slightest idea what the fuck you are talking about." Answering his interrogator, he closed his remaining eye and tried to get some breathing time with haggard gasps.

Puffing some smoke towards the youth that was inside his mouth through his cigarette, the guy didn't seem all too happy about the way the ginger tried to talk back at him.

"Fine..." The man then took his cigarette and pressed his still burning bud into the inside of one of the ginger's palms.

"Urgh." The young man tried to pull his hand away but at that exact moment, the bulky guy from the side swung his monstrous arm again and another punch brought the young man completely to the ground.

"Enough, we can't waste more time with him." The man in the suit interrupted now after standing back up.

"Then what about him, boss?" The brawn asked the brain. Clearly, this hulk was only a punisher and dumb as they come.

"Just get rid of him." With that order, the man started to walk away before stopping. "Oh, and don't forget to take his ID-Cards and smartphone. We still need to search his parents and friends' places."

The young man suddenly jolted up hearing those words and grabbed the man's leg after crawling to him. "No! My family has nothing to do with this!"

That action only irritated the guy in the suit and he performed a strong kick to the face of the young man. "Then you should have cooperated and not got yourself in this situation in the first place."

The man then stared down at the young man and noticed that the youth seemed to have become limp.

Looking confused at first he crouched down again and checked the gingers pulse, noticing quickly that there was none left.

"Fuck, dying just from that? Well, doesn't matter. Don't take it personally. You better wish for better luck in your next life, kid. And don't fuck with the wrong people." The guy then looked back at the brute. "Drop the body into the river after you get his stuff."

---

While that continued on in time and the young man's body now sank into the depths of the river that flowed straight through the city, another accident happened in another city, or better to say cities.

There, two opposing factions were colliding forces on a large bridge and killing themselves with guns and other weaponry.

Among that chaos, a small boy with short crimson hair lay unconscious on the ground. But suddenly his body jerked up and he gasped for air. His hands went straight to his throat as if wanting to claw away at something stuck in it.

But when the feeling of suffocation slowly vanished the relief soon washed over his mind and calmed him down. That was the moment the boy looked up and observed his surroundings.

What he could see was corpses laying on the ground and littering the bridge completely. There were hundreds if not thousands of them.

That is at least what he could see from his vision. There was enough of the bridge obstructed by the thick smoke and fire in the surrounding air that one would wonder if a large forest was burning up nearby and cloaking this place with its smoke.

When he tried moving and finding out what the hell was suddenly going on, he noticed something heavy obstructing his leg movements.

Looking to the side he saw a woman lying near him. She had long crimson hair and the light in her amber eyes had already dimmed away.

Being spooked slightly but not to the point where he was afraid, the boy started frowning and tried to push away what seemed to be a corpse.

After all, he had seen corpses already. That was how life as a criminal was.

If you dive deep enough into that life, no one remained with a clean slate. Everyone would have some nooks and chipped-away parts.

Though how far that slate was stained red was everyone's own decision to make.

So, with his frown still intact he soon noticed something even more shocking. His hands were soaked with sticky blood all over from the corpse now.

But what was more alarming was that they looked small. Way too small.

Taking a closer look at his own body he found himself being a small young boy.

"What is going on?" His high-pitched voice sounded out when confusion rolled all over his mind.

Then he suddenly heard someone singing softly, nearly inaudible.

Looking over to the source of the sound he soon saw a girl with short pink hair and another smaller girl with short bright blue hair walking past all the corpses.

The smaller girl was the one that sang the little song and had a hand right in front of her eyes while the other held the hand of the taller girl.

The pink-haired girl glanced over to him and even stopped for a quick moment to look at him and the woman lying near him.

Her shocked and horrified expression from what is happening here still lingered on her face.

That brought the boy looking at the woman again and it made him realize now that this probably was his parent. Or to be more precise, the biological mother of the boy whose body he is now inhabiting.

He came to understand quickly that he seemed to have awoken inside this body taken its place for some reason.

Searching for a reason, it probably was because the boy had died as well. He could still feel pain all over in some areas of his body.

But that would also mean he also had died before. And everything he seemed to have thought a dream, was actually real. The beating and drowning.

That reminded him of his family and friends from his old life. Especially after knowing those guys that killed him would definitely bring danger to them as well.

And to make things worse, now he could not do anything to save them. He was not there anymore and that brought sorrow deep inside him.

He even hunched over and started crying like the little boy that he was. His emotions clearly let loose in this child's body that was not yet hardened enough.

The two girls that had been standing and looking at him also had started crying.

It was not because they were hit emotionally seeing him cry but looking up ahead there were other dead people not far away.

And seeing them focus on a certain pair of a female and male corpses, only meant those were their parents.

There was also a man standing close to them and looking at the two crying children with a grimaced face.

When he also glanced over at the boy that still had stains on his face from his tears, he scowled and dropped the iron gauntlets that he had used previously to beat down a masked man in a uniform that carried a gun.

Hugging the two girls and taking them in his embrace to comfort them a little he took them away from this place.

The man also stopped near the boy and waited. Since he already carried the two girls in his arms, the boy had to decide himself.

But the boy only stood slowly up and walked up to him. His amber eyes stared back into the steel-colored ones that the man had.

And at that certain day, on that fated bridge between two cities. That was the moment the boy came to meet his new family.

The man that was called Vander adopted the three. He took them away and gave them a place to stay and call home.

So the two girls that were called Violet and Powder became Mordyn's new sisters.

Taking into consideration that Violet, or Vi for short, was taller than him and Powder was even shorter than that, he could say he got himself a big sister and a little sister that day.

Weirdly enough Mordyn just went with the events and accepted that he was now in a new world.

But what he was not yet aware of was in what world exactly he had been put. Something that he would come to realize later.