Rain.
Matthew sat inside his brig, staring endearingly at the little golden amulet that sat on his desk.
picking up and opening it, he saw a large “M” engraved in the gold, as well as red paint creating a skull symbol.
Matthew tried not to tear up again as he shut the amulet and put it away.
“I miss you Maddox.”
Getting up to do something else, Matthew sighed wearily as his stomach grumbled. He hadn’t eaten in days. Truth be told, the tilly battle he had that destroyed palo town with might’ve traumatized him more than he wanted to admit. Rummaging around his ship, as the rain pattered and stormed outside, Matthew found some ingredients worthy of making a stew. He found some seasoning, some safe to eat fish, and… some strange looking mushrooms.
Matthew bore a rather disappointed, and concerned expression. These mushrooms were edible, but at the same time he knew something was up with them, for they were plucked from his most recent dark sea adventure. Some of them looked less, corrupted than others, but a few appeared so pungent that they oozed a strange purple slime.
one of them oozed a milky, pearly substance.
Matthew used his wood magic to pick up the mushrooms with some roots to avoid getting contaminated, as he hoped the heat from his pot could neutralize the insanity somehow.
He was desperate for food.
After a few moments, Matthew had created a seemingly innocent enough pot of mushroom stew, it smelt good, and Matthew’s mouth flooded like a dam. His ravenous appetite almost took control of him like a savage animal as he scarfed down 2 bowls of the soup, eventually letting out a hardy burp.
“Man… not bad…” Matthew thought to himself as he looked outside to see some clumsy lost sailors wander about on a small piece of driftwood near his brig, the food digesting.
“…”
“I guess I should…”
“oh…”
“urkk…”
“I don’t feel so good…”
Matthew began to stumble and he collapsed in the middle of the floor of his quarters.
…
Waking up on… a hard cold surface, Matthew weakly rose to find himself in… a strange new place that was not his brig.
the polished concrete floor he was on revealed itself to him, Matthew also noticed he was in an aisle of some kind. 2 shelves were next to him that were filled with random strange little objects he had never seen before, with bizarre names and appearances, one aisle was behind large glass doors that seemed to host potions inside, the glass cold to the touch. these potions seemed nothing like the ones in the bronze sea however.
“RAD FIZZ”
“Hubbl, no sugar guilt free flavoured carbonted drink”
“This is literally just rocket fuel please don’t drink it”
“MOKA MOLA”
Matthew stumbled about the row of shelves and found himself in a new location that was somehow even weirder than the last one. surrounded by… metal… objects of some sort. He couldn’t even begin to explain this room. filled with… objects that completely defied his explanation, and he thought atlanteans were weird enough. the room boasted strange contraptions on more aisles that had weird warning labels on them with a small symbol that resembled… lightning magic? did these metal devices have something to do with lightning? Matthew had no idea, he also noticed a lot of them were “on clearance” and “were 50% off”, what perplexing terminology.
His expedition was halted in its tracks when he saw something that made his skin turn white.
There was an odd looking counter at the distance, with a man standing behind it. lots of odd devices and trinkets were on it, and the man seemed to be sorta… enchanting them with a small red light from what looked like a weird revolver. another person on the other side of the counter would be staring at the process, presumably this stuff was theirs.
the man… no… it couldn’t be…
“That’ll be… uh… 56.99$” Maddox said slyly to the other person as they gave him some strange looking paper and a few galleons before leaving the building.
Matthew was about to cry, he… it shouldn’t be possible… was this HIS maddox? something felt wrong and yet, he wanted to believe this was real so badly, he began to walk over to try and greet his friend.
Matthew soon noticed some… very odd visual differences on this maddox.
His witch hat… it was replaced with… a strange beige looking beanie of some kind…
he wore an apron with the initials “GG” on it, what did that mean?
his face wasn’t bearing the same manic expression as usual, he seemed, calm, sane, and dare matthew say, normal, though his eyes looked similar.
He didn’t have any of his weapons on him.
As Matthew tried getting closer, he soon noticed the store around him began melting.
melting into a pearly white milky ooze, as well as maddox.
“MADDOX… MADDOX ITS ME!” Matthew screamed and cried as Maddox didn’t even seem to notice him.
“MADDOX PLEASE! MADDOOOXXXX!!!”
Gasping for air back on his brig, matthew realized he was laying on a massive puddle of very oddly colored pearly vomit.
“…”
Matthew didn’t move much that evening.
Some lost sailors were trying to break into his brig as they weakly scraped on his windows… he didn’t really care after what happened tonight.
