A Strange Seed Blank/Malice

[Blank]

Blanks eyes opened. The only sound that could be heard was the sound of other kids snoring. He rolled over, his eyes scanning for any light in the room. Satisfied that no other kids were awake, Blank silently got up and got dressed. He crept out of the sleep hall and made his way to the recreation room. Of course, that's what the orphanage caretakers called it. The room was just a room with a really old TV with rabbit ears still hooked onto it, and some jigsaw puzzles that had pieces missing. It also had a bookshelf that had some books crammed onto it.

Blank crept over to the bookshelf and selected a book out of it. He sat down on the worn couch and slid the fake cover off of the book. The actual book was a journal. The journal was something he carried with him ever since he started moving from home to home. It was his dream journal, a journal that he wrote every dream he had in it. The writing was actually pretty tidy, because he dreamed about the same thing; a world called Allorum.

The dream he was writing down into it was about this group of heroes battling this archangel dressed in red. Blank smiled at his imagination, it really was wild. Not only did his mind come up with this make-believe world, but he also dreamed about the world every night. Of course, his imagination might have to come up with a different world. The archangel dressed in red was threatening everything in existence just to build a utopia. Blank finished writing his dream and put his journal back into the shelf. Right on time too. The bell rang, waking all of the kids up. He sighed and he walked to the cafateria, different day, same stuff.

-Later that day-

Blank walked through the small town. The only thing that was even remotly big was Wal-Mart, and it was small compaired to other Wal-Marts. That wasn't the where he was walking to, however. Some of the kids at the orphanage had threatened to beat him up if he didn't do something for them. Due to his small size, Blank hand been able to give them the slip, and was now walking rapidly, finding somewhere to hide. He walked past the park and stopped. The small grove of trees, that was a good place to hide until dark. He walked in the grove and sat down under a tree with yellow and brown leaves.

[Maliciferum]

Malice was in all-consuming darkness. The last thing he could remember was calling on Trucido in The Witch's Forest in Alberisato. He drifted through this void for what seemed like an eternity, thinking about how his life had gone although he couldn't remember how it ended. For a while, his consciousness fell in and out of madness until he became bored with insanity. He pondered the fate of the universe, the fate of his friends in Allorum (he was sure that they had died by now), and whether or not this was how he would stay until the end of all existence.

In the middle of what one with a physical body would call a day-dream, Malice's thoughts were interrupted by an obscene light and what can only be described as unimaginable pain. Malice was then overcome by the terrible feeling of free-falling, which was then cut short by a crash, another short fall, and a final crash.

Malice tried to open his eyes, but had none. He tried to move, but felt encased and immobile. Somehow, as if a third eye had been opened, Malice became aware of himself and of his surroundings. It was at that moment that Malice realized that he was a seed. A single, tiny, purple seed.

All he could think was "...damn".

[Blank]

Bonk! Blink felt a slight pain on the top of his head. He snapped his eyes open and looked up into the tree he was leaning against. There were no signs of squirrels, so what was the thing that hit his head? He stood up, wondering of someone was here, and if that someone was Dan and his gang. But as he looked around, there were nobody around him. Blink took a step foreward, and noticed something fall from the folded bottem of his shirt. As he reached down to pick it up, he noticed it was a seed... a purple seed in fact.

Holding it in his hand, he decided that it was no ordinary seed. A purple seed doesn't come from an oak tree. This must be from a special plant then. Blank looked around, deciding where to plant the seed. There, in the middle of the trees, a small ray of sun shone down on the ground. Blank nodded and walked over to the patch of soil. He kneeled down and pushed his index finger into the soil. He gently put the seed in the ground and covered it.

The hooting of an owl above him startled Blank. He looked up and noticed that the sky was dark blue. Was it that late already? He quickly scrambled to his feet and ran toward the orphanage, vowing he would be back tomorrow. Boy, am I gonna get it from the caretakers bigtime!

[Maliciferum]

Malice's mind shrieked as he was surrounded by a fleshy mass, then darkness, and then a cooler darkness. Malice could sense the presence of a child, an innocent and unbiased energy. As the energy seemed to fade into the distance, Malice began to wonder where he was and how he had come to be like this. Experiment gone wrong? Spell gone awry? Either way, something had to be done.

The moon rose high that night, casting it's silver light onto the spot where Malice had been buried. All the while Malice attempted to gain a better awareness of his surroundings, and was constantly confused by them. The ground seemed to be vibrating in strange patterns, odd noises came from all directions, and voices in strange tongues passed by every so often. *Where could I possibly be?* Malice thought.

As the night droned by, Malice's curiosity grew until it had consumed him. Frustrated with sitting still for twenty-four hours, and maddened by curiosity, Malice forced what little magic he still had into growing. By morning, Malice was exhausted but proud of his work. He had become a decent sized seedling about four inches tall, with long, slender leaves tipped in black, and crowned with a single tiny bud.

With the sunrise came small animals and the chatter of many annoying birds.

[Blank]

Finally, Blank was let out at noon. In his hands was a bottle of water and his journal with the fake cover on it. He hadn't had a chance to write in his journal that morning, his punishment was to clean the dishes, and he hadn't gone to bed until 11:30 last night. Zig-zagging his way across town in the hopes of throwing off any bully, not to mention Dan, from where he was going. When he did finally get to the grove of trees, he suddenly stopped. The air was thicker for some reason.

Blank moved further in the grove toward the planted seed, and the air got even thicker and... warm. What is going on here? As he finally reached the small clearing, his eyes widened. In the middle of the clearing was a seedling of a plant that was alien to him, but somewhat familiar at the same time. He put his journal down, shakily unscrewed the bottle of water and dumped it around the plant. As he was watering the plant, he was thinking out loud to himself. Woah... did I discover a new plant species?

[Maliciferum]

Sensing a familiar energy, Malice's attention focused. Seeing the world without eyes was a brand new experience, it was as if the world had abandoned it's physical anchor and existed only as various energies. These energies flowed and changed rapidly, making it difficult to tell exactly what was happening most of the time. But this child-like energy seemed quite out of place. It was jeweled in desire, in longing, but behind it was a tinge of despair and pain. An intriguing spirit, indeed.

Malice became unable to analyze this spirit as the water reached his roots. His consciousness was overrun with ecstasy. Nothing Malice had ever felt was a wonderful and fulfilling as being watered. His botanical body shivered with glee.

[Blank]

Blank scratched his scar as he watched the water finally disappear into the ground. Then he saw the plant shiver a bit. "What kind of plant are you," he asked mostly to himself, because plants wouldn't really talk back. Blank took back the bottle and drank the rest, which was only a quarter left in it. He sat down beside the plant and started writing about his dream this morning. It wasn't about the battle in heaven this time, it was just some people talking about the battle in a city in Crepusculum. He turned back to the plant and tapped one of the leaves, thinking again.

[Maliciferum]

Malice soon recovered from his water experience and noticed the attention was no longer on him. What could possibly be more interesting than an otherworldly plant?

He wondered how he was going to get out of this situation. He needed to discern his location, how he came to be there, and how he was going to make his way home. His memories didn't hold the answers he sought, and the sever lack of a biological nervous system prevented him from gaining information from his environment. His only option was to grow. Even that path held it's own obstacles.

"Think, Malice." he told himself. "You can sense some of the energies around you, however blurry the images may be. If you analyze other organisms around you, you may be able to use that information to plan your growth." Malice loved logic, but wondered why he was thinking to himself in the third person...

Malice focused himself, expanding his mind outward, enveloping his surroundings in it. At first, nothing made sense. The world seemed only to be a chaotic flow of clashing energies, all fighting for dominance over the other. As his senses sharpened, and the pictures began to align, Malice was terrified by what his senses told him. It became all too clear that he was somewhere almost completely different from Allorum. Everything, the grass, the trees, the air, the earth itself...seemed to have lost hope. It was as if the natural world had given in to despair. The plants were alive biologically...but there was no spirit behind it. "What is this place!?" Malice's mind shrieked in disgust.

[Blank]

"Augh!" Blank yanked his body up from where he had ben lying. Yet another dream. Yet as he was about to learn the outcome of the battle, someone had yelled at him. He looked around, seeing nobody. The voice had been tiny, almost a whisper, but it still held... dislike? He looked at where he had fallen asleep at, right next to the plant so that it had been touching his head. Is the plant poisonous? Other thought swam around his head as he picked up his journal that had fallen when he suddenly woke up.

"I hope you're not deadly, I don't want to be poisoned." Then Blank had an idea. He flipped his journal to the very back and found a blank page. He looked at the plant, then sketched it fast. As he got up to go, his eyes suddenly opened wide, and his heart started racing. Dan and a few of his thugs were standing a few feet away, a smug smile on Dan's face.

[Maliciferum]

"Deadly? Me? Of course I am!..." Malice suddenly realized that someone had spoken to him, and he understood it. His mind raced. Who, how, and why? Obviously, whoever it was feared being poisoned. How? Malice deduced that extending and opening his mind must have allowed a sentient being to hear his thoughts. Now, who? The only energy within his "mind-field" with any glimmer to it. The child!

Before Malice could even begin to decide what to do with this realization, his attention was drawn to a sudden change in the energies around him. An ocean of emotion swept around him, flooding his mind with both fear and aggression. A group of new energies entered Malice's senses, each swelling with arrogance and violence. As Malice fought to channel the energy away from himself, his mind shrank back, pulling a great deal of the miasma towards him.

[Blank]

Blank stood up, deliberately trying to stay in front of the plant. "What do you want?" There was fear in his voice, but he tried to contain it. Dan walked up to him, cracking his fingers as he walked. His two friends stayed out of the little clearing. "We were looking for you. What are you doing out here, loser?"

Hastily, Blank closed his journal and hid it behind his back. He didn't want Dan to steal it and ruin it. Too late. "What did you put behind your back Zip?" Zip, the nickname Dan, and practically everybody that knew him, called Blank. It came from a joke that they made of him the first day he came to the orphanage. "Blank? You do know that means nothing, right? Nothing, nadda, zip."

He blinked his eyes and returned to the present, not that anything became better. Dan took a step closer to Blank, and held a hand out. "Give it to me," he said a bit more forcefully. Blank shook his head. "No." Dan rolled his eyes, "Do we have to do this every time I want something from you? I'm tired of asking nicely" He walked up to Blank, stopping about a foot away.

Before Blink could flinch, Dan swung his fist into Blanks chest. The air went out of his lungs, and Blank was knocked backward by the punch, falling to the ground. His arm brushed the plant again, and his journal fell from his hands. Dan gave another of his smug grins and bent down to pick up the journal, that had just happened to fall right next to the plant.