text: The Valley of Panark was a beautiful and desolate landscape, a vast desert with a scattered village where many dangers lurked that people couldn't speak of. There were no chances for warnings; sometimes the encounter alone was too late. Many people have vanished without a trace, and for the strangest reason, their families often feared their return, because whatever came back was not what left. And whatever came back, always took someone else with them. The townsfolk called them "Chaqugos," and they could never describe what they looked like, because anyone who saw them ending up becoming one. Except for me. I saw The Chaqugos, and what they did to my family explains everything, but like I said, there were no chances for warnings. I know what they look like, so I'll know if I ever see them again, which I know I eventually will. They never return to finish the job, because they had no job to finish, only the endless spread of their curse. They looked like men, without hair, eyes, ears, noses, or even bones. Their arms and legs were nothing more than the tails of earthworms, constantly squirming and coiling about almost uncontrollably. They travelled by flopping around on the ground like fishes out of water, slithering like sidewinders to prey on any living being they could catch. A single bite will transform you into one of them quickly, the mutation happening within minutes. When my family turned, they all ate each other, like a plate of living spaghetti. I only survived because of Paloma, the mysterious guardian of nature who showed up almost as if she were waiting for them. My life made absolutely no sense until I met Paloma, but as I got to know her, my life began to somehow make even less sense. I assumed Paloma was the same age as I when we met, but her near-infinite wisdom told me that she might have been the same age as time itself. She never spoke more than one sentence at a time, and she always wore a mask that covered her entire face, and put me in the mind of a clock with no numbers or hands. Her mask was round, white, and featureless with the exception of two shiny black half-moon shapes for her eyes. The mask was always attached to a loose black scarf she wrapped around her head tightly like a hood. She always wore a form-fitting black dress that fell to the ground. She also had long, feathered black wings like those of a vulture, resting on her lower back, folded around her hips like part of her skirt. She wore black gauntlets with retractable seven inch claws that sprang from her fingertips. Paloma was all I had growing up from that point, but I've never once seen her face in all the 12 years I've been in her presence. She would always have her back turned to me whenever she pulled off her scarf and mask, revealing long black hair that reminded me of a horse's mane. As children, it never really bothered me for her to hide her face, though I often imagined it to be equally as beautiful as her voice. I grew up with this masked angelic being after my family was slaughtered by creatures of an unknown origin, much like herself. I'll never forget how she protected me from the Chaqugos that attacked my family, and eventually ate himself. It was indeed a horrifying experience, dampened by Paloma's heroic display of power in her defense. She had the forces of the elements on her side, and she used alchemy and ethereal spells to conjure weapons out of nowhere. At first, I thought that i would learn the things I saw her do, but I ended up becoming her apprentice instead. She explained to me that my body had not yet been conditioned for the basics of magic. I had to return to a state of complete harmony with nature, I had to live off the land and understand the hidden laws of the universe before I could bend said laws to my will. We meditated together, and went out to hunt game in the wilderness, which I prepared and served each night. However, we never ate together. We lived in a 40 foot treehouse, with bridges and towers connected to at least two other trees as large as the oak that held the two story cabin. It was the type of large hollow space big enough for her to hide in the shadowy interiors of the short towers built into the house. It was her way of saying "good night." I looked outside one evening, and soon noticed that the dreaded hour was nigh. We were several minutes from a lunar eclipse, and I already started to hear thumps from beneath the floor. It was them. After 12 long years, the nightmares of my past had finally begun to emerge once more. With all the fishing and hunting I did, I should've been trying to learn about the Chaqugos, and how to stop them. Paloma taught me only one spell, but ordered me never to use it without reason. Sure, one could say I knew my way around a spear or a crossbow, but for what purpose other than hunting? I never practiced the spell. I never fought, or had to fight since I was under Paloma's protection. When I told Paloma how I felt, she said, "You are ready, because you can acknowledge that you are not." Before I could ask what that meant, random parts of the floor busted up, and the carnivorous invertabrates sprang through, bigger and more elongated than I remembered. Perhaps they had grown, too. I last remember them being roughly human size, now they looked big enough to swallow a horse whole. Their growls had gotten deeper, too. They sounded like the rumbles of an empty stomach. Paloma and I stood next to each other as the boneless monsters surrounded us. Paloma formed an orb of white light in her hands, and hurled it at The Chaqugos like a small comet in the room, blasting them into frozen chunks across the den. I grabbed a spear off the wall, and pierced one behind me, the blade poking through the top of the head from inside the mouth. As it died with the gurgling squeal of a drowning pig, I jumped over it on my way to kill another. With a spin and upward swipe, I split the creature's head in half vertically. Suddenly, it regenerated into having two heads as it lunged toward me. I dropped the weapon, and rolled out of the way, reaching for a sword from the nearest wall. Paloma shot another icy blast at the two-headed wormlike monster between us, but it ducked. It slapped her with all its might, and she flew back into a china cabinet, smashing it on impact. Her mask flew off along with her scarf, but her face was hidden by all that long, flowing hair. I held my blade in the fireplace long enough for it to glow with searing heat, then I swung the nearly molten blade wildly, hacking them to pieces as they dared come near my Paloma. After killing three of them, ten more showed up in their place. I grabbed a huge brass shield from over the mantle, and rushed through the horde on the way to Paloma, who was still unconscious. Although I slashed away at every snaky limb that reached for us, my burning sword alone wasn't going to be enough. I was grabbed by the two-headed abomination, who I had just realized hadn't been killed yet. To my left, I saw Paloma stand up, hunched over, hair draped over her face like curtains. "Paloma," I shouted, "Help!" When she realized that she was unmasked, she buried her face in her hands, and ran for the stairs. Before the creature could get me into either of its two mouths, I came up with the quick idea to use the one spell Paloma taught me, with no regard to what that magic would cost. I picked up a frozen chunk of dead Chaqugos flesh, and threw it into the fire as I shouted, "Eniyan Ina Zolosish!" The fire place exploded with a change of color from orange to blue, fire to lightning. The ashes quickly swirled up into a trio of glowing skeletons that ran out in all directions, incinerating the creatures by running past them like oversized fireflies in a jar. Paloma was attacked by a Chaqugos that caught her by surprise by popping up in the middle of the staircase, knocking her down the first flight. Two of the sprinting, burning skeletons grabbed me by the arms, freeing me from the clutches of the two-headed creature, and hurling me at the one on the staircase as if I were a javelin. On impact, I kicked it right back into the hole it emerged from. I almost fell in with it, until the speeding skeletons caught me and rushed us out of there, Paloma in tow. There were too many of them to continue fighting, I just looked at the burning house with giant wormtails flailing about from the windows. I looked up at the cloudy sky, and noticed that the eclipse was almost full. When I looked back down, I finally looked upon Paloma into her own eyes, realizing that she had dealt with a curse of her own all this time. She had the face of a spotted owl, darkened patterns around her large, sparkly purple eyes that resembled runny makeup, and a small, shiny black beak that almost resembled lips from certain angles. She was still beautiful in a strange way. Though I didn't mean to, I jumped back in shock at the very sight of her, with no mental preparation for her sudden reveal. "I know," Paloma sobbed as her wide eyes began to well up with tears, "I'm not pretty!" Before I could say anything, she squatted down with her wings extended, and rocketed straight upward with a powerful flap of her wings. The tremendous force of her takeoff knocked me off my feet, and when looked up, there was no hint of a winged figure seen anywhere on the blackened horizon. I stood up, and called for the Eniyans to report to me. The three skeletons engulfed in flames then surrounded me in a triangle formation in the blink of an eye, standing perfectly still and awaiting my command. They became my only source of light in the woods as the eclipse was now complete, plunging the world into utter darkness. The Eniyan Zolo in front of me stepped forward, and handed me Paloma's mask, which miraculously did not burn. The fire of the Eniyan Zolosish was harmless to the touch, and could only burn and spread by conscious choice. I looked at the mask, remembering all the memories I created with her, cut short only because i saw her face. I felt awful about my subconscious reaction; she appeared so ashamed. No wonder she hid herself from me the way she did. From that moment forward, I decided to start answering the many questions that surrounded the mysteries of Panark. I wanted to know what happened to Paloma, and what made her that way, if she didn't always look like that before. Who knows, maybe it wasn't a curse, maybe that was how she actually looked. It was easier to believe that she was never human to begin a. I held up Paloma's mask, and confidently declared that we were to go find her. They nodded silently, and and we began the search for the wise owl who got lost in the world of endless night, surrounded by thunderous rumbles and moving shadows throughout the woods... This adventure will continue, as I am currently working on part 2. Thank you for reading.