Beneath the Well
Our village had a well, much like many others. It was unremarkable. Lowering the bucket brought up water from a freshwater spring within, serving its most basic purpose.
However, it was rumored by the townsfolk to grant wishes for a copper. This was a very basic superstition that I'm sure many other villages shared, but the difference was how many of our peers insisted that their wishes would come true, if trivial enough.
As a child I watched many a commoner throw their copper into the well, and then rejoice the following day when they won at dice, or their fruit tree bore ripe fruit for the upcoming festival. I was convinced of its myth, that if you sent that coin in with a mundane desire, somehow the coin released magic.
I was in a rebellious, daring, mischievous phase of my adolescence when I decided that I could take that magic for myself. So, lowering the bucket, I descended the rope into the darkness. As I did I saw the glint of metal scattered across the floor of the subterranean cave, and I began collecting the coins, touched by wish granting powers.
I thought I could take these wishes for myself, they were supposed to be my wishes! But when I returned home, I found my mother ill, our livestock sickly, and our crops began to wither before my very eyes. Every wish I could dream of began to be stripped from my very existence. While I cannot for certain say we didn't just fall on circumstantial misfortune, the timing was more than coincidence. All debts come due someday.
Hey all!
Along this well-worn woodland path stands an old stone well that has served weary travellers for generations. But recently its water has turned bitter, leaving the well abandoned as rumours of curses, poison, and dark magic spread through the nearby villages.
Those brave enough to descend into its depths may uncover a forgotten truth. Far beneath the earth, beyond ancient tombs and glowing waters, stands a legendary Tree of Life, flourishing where no sunlight has ever reached.
So why has the water turned bitter ... and what has awakened below?
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Matt