Magnolia Gardner

ORIGINAL:

Magnolia, real name Aquila Gardner, used to be a regular boy at a regular village. After losing his father to an earthquake, he ran a local wood-carving store with his mother and older sister, Cassian Gardner. It was their main source of income. Though not the wealthiest, they were happy as a family.

Until the King were searching for participants for his newest “survey”, promising decent monetary rewards. Wanting to help out their family, the siblings decided to sign up as participant.

The “survey” turned out to be a test that helped the king pick out the most promising candidates for his human experiment prison, and the siblings were one of the chosen. The experiment was to combine the human body with other living organisms, in order to create the strongest beast, an ultimate almagamation for the king, so he can easily take over other continents.

Over the course of a torturous 6 months, out of many participants, Aquila and Cassian were the most promising candidates. They were the first ones to successfully adapt to parasitic Magnolia plants on their bodies. They were thrown into a separate camp, and endured more drugs injected to them everyday. However, Cassian was growing weaker as her body couldn’t adapt fast enough. The plants slowly took over her body, taking her nutrients. As the host’s body slowly withered, her magnolia flower turned black.

The kingdom’s scientists could have done anything to prevent this, but they were curious to see if anything else would happen, despite Aquila’s pleas to save his sister.

Cassian passed away on a cold winter night, after 9 months of endurance. Aquila was devastated. The few nights after, he prayed and he prayed for his sister to come back somehow, because he was so lonely, because he was going deeper into insanity by the second. And it came true. Cassian returned as a vengeful spirit, and she swore to stay by Aquila’s side until he lets her go.

Cassian took over Aquila’s body one night to help them escape. Aquila went on an inhuman rampage, murdering an entire floor of scientists and guards with a single shard of glass from his glass cage. They ran into the forest and hid there for two weeks, feeding off of forest critters. During this time, Aquila slowly got used to his sister’s ghastly presence by his side, ready to take over and kill if needed.

They returned to their small village after those 2 weeks, excited to see their mother. However, the sight before them was beyond horrifying. The King, angry because his most successful experiments have escaped, poured his anger on the village they lived in. Their village was burned down to ashes, burnt corpses and unnamed graves scattered around. The only way they could find their burned down house amidst the ruins, were the leftovers of wooden masks that didn’t burn out completely. They found the rotting, burned corpse of their mother, clutching an Oni and Hannya masks that she made for them in her arms.

Aquila burried their mother along with the masks, and silently left. Cassian’s ghastly presence was all that he had left. He wandered aimlessly into the forest, having nowhere to go. At one point, he was so malnourished that cracks were forming on his skin for the plant to takeover. Cassian had to overtake his body to temporarily stop the growth of the plant. With Cassian’s help, he lived on eating leaves and forest creatures for a whole month, in order to keep his magnolia plant from overtaking his body.

Until they met a fallen angel named Cendre, with the warmest smile and the most welcoming arms, offering to help. Through Cendre’s words, it seems that Aquila was assigned to Cendre, and helping Aquila “find happiness” was his task to regain his place in Heaven.

Which was nearly an impossible task.

Cendre managed to lead Aquila to a small town and started their new life there, as the first stepping stone to find “happiness” to Aquila, Cendre figured. They opened a flower shop, thanks to Cendre’s ability to grow plants and flower out of free will (which is entirely useless to Aquila, ironically). Aquila went with a new name, Magnolia, to forget his past. Their blue roses were the fastest selling product in the store, because a certain novice magician kept coming to buy them for her tea parties. Magnolia quickly bonded with this magician, named Yuu, and became a regular guest at her tea parties. As they grew closer as friends, he wanted to introduce Cendre to Yuu’s caretaker, Astre.

And the bickering and drama began, as Yuu and Magnolia watched with a sigh on the sideline.

SANCTUARY ARC:

Updating.....

PHANTASMAGORIA ARC:

Yuu and Magnolia were chased by the King's guards. Magnolia (was possessed by Cassian) and Yuu opened a portal with magic for an emergency escape. It went wrong. The portal remained open, they entered and didn't come out. Astre and Cendre jumped in the portal to find them, and Incendius casually walked in out of curiosity.

Phantasmagoria is a nightmare-like, fairytale based world that fucks with anyone who enters it. People who enter will be transformed into Soul Reapers - an alternate form of themselves, as a character in different fairytales. Its where backstories no longer matter because they are re-written. They get to keep their memories of the people closest to them, but forget things about themselves. The only way to escape Phantasmagoria is to find “Original-self”.

To find “Original-Self”, anyone who wants to escape has to slaughter other people in Phantasmagoria. Killing the right people will give the killer a Soul drop, which can be exchanged for a piece of memory of their “Original-Self”. This makes the killing process very random, since killing the wrong people with reward the killer nothing (but guilt). The key to finding the targets to kill is to identify your fairytale story, then to kill the people that play the role of your enemies in that fairytale. If killed, your body would be found in the real world.

Magnolia, upon entering Phantasmagoria, was given the name Dormouse. His fairytale story is based on Alice in Wonderland, meaning he has to target enemies in the same story in order to gain Soul drops, such as the people who assumed the identity of Queen of Hearts, Card knights, Cheshire cat, Jabberwocky, etc,.

Magnolia was separated from Yuu and was dropped in the middle of the city. The weather was rainy and he hurried into an inn named London Fog to hide. The inn’s rules are never to kill inside the inn, or a team of executioners will come after the murderer. The inn, aside from being an inn, is a powerful headquarter of an underground organization that is researching the ways to collect soul drops with out killing. To repay the inn’s host for letting him stay the night, Magnolia offered to work there for a temporary stay, at least for the time being until he could return to the real world. He joined the Messenger division of the executioner team, and his job was to deliver messages, letters and do some spying work through trained pigeons.

During this time, Magnolia also got to go through intensive training to utilize his power and to protect himself from getting killed for Soul Drops. Thanks to this, when he returns to the real world, he no longer relies on Cassian for self-protection.

During one of his spying missions, one of Magnolia’s pigeons caught glimpse of Yuu just casually selling Oden at her new family’s Oden stand. So Magnolia quickly reunited with Yuu, and took the time to convince her to leave her Phantasmagoria family and return to the real world with him. Yuu was reluctant at first, but finally gave in after thinking about Astre being so worried for her at home. After learning that Magnolia’s identity is Dormouse, an ally of Alice in the original fairytale, they decided to team up in order to gain Soul drops faster.

• Magnolia has a love-hate relationship with his old name, Aquila.
• Magnolia turned down Yuu's invitation to her tea parties at least 5 times before agreeing.
• He's scared of being possessed by Cassian, but he never shows it.
• His favourite tea party combo is Earl Grey tea and scones.
• Magnolia's favorite colour is Cyan.
• Phantasmagoria: Magnolia learned so much through killing in this world that he doesn't need much use for Cassian when he escaped Phantasmagoria.
• Phantasmagoria: He hates it here because Cassian doesn't exist in Phantasmagoria.

• Bad Apple!! by Alstroemeria Records
• Doomsday by Architects
• Waves by Chloe Moriondo
• Phantasmagoria: Rain by BTS
• Phantasmagoria: Colors by Stella Jang
• Sanctuary: Take This Lonely Heart by Nothing But Thieves