2?th Velerie 1117, ???day.
He wasn't quite sure what he was laying on. He hoped, prayed even, that it was rotten food and waste. The fire and energy had left him, and seeped away up high into the unforgiving night sky. His vision cleared, and to his dismay, but not surprise, the sky was of slate. Rock dripping down in long spikes, surrounded by black smog and residue from it. He tried to move from the pile he'd found himself on, and without delay he realised how he'd landed here. His entire left shin was cracked upon like a barrel, the wine having poured out and dried. His head was spinning around perpetually, never seeming to stop.
"This, this can't be what was meant for me…" Judari laid there, his clothes torn into rags. He tried to cry, forcing it with all his remaining strength, but no tear could be summoned. His lips were cracked with fleshwry canyons running through them due to the extreme dehydration.
A small rat scurried past Judari's feet and up along his body, then jumping up on a clothed sack dripping crimson from the bottom. With no control he leaped towards it, his hunger and id fueling him towards this meal. He got ahold of the small creature, squeezing it tight, and like a snake his jaw unhinged to consume it. Before he could bite down, his mind screamed and reeled back. The rat was let go and Judari slunk back into the same position as before, his shattered shin blazing pain even more searing than before.
As he was about to drift off into the abyss once more to get relief from the pain, he felt a pair of thin hands grab upon his still kicking leg. He was dragged upon a stone staircase, his head gliding up across each step and taking a hit. Like a soldier he managed to keep his consciousness afloat, as he was thrown upon a table by a machine inside a small room. It stunk of wet spoiled rodents and dust. The table felt like razors against his skin, and yet it also stuck to him like half-dried glue. Above him stood a fat figure cascaded in deep blood orange light, scratching words upon a notepad. Every surface not claimed by light, stood decked in complete shadow. Judari laid with the essence of a corpse being presented in a coffin. He could hardly think past instinct, wishing only he'd wake soon from this terrible nightmare. He heard steel tools ringing their ugly screeches not far from him, grating up against each other with the promise of pain. Not long after, a mouthbreath hit his entire being like no other, one that made him flinch with its stale yet abhorrent nature. The fat figure stood looking directly at him, smiling.
"I ain't no waster, so I must ask ya'. Are you alive under all that flesh?" Judari felt a knife cut a slit into his thigh, his blood running down and past his leg hair.
"I'll start cuttin' if I don't hear a peep, my friend." Judari felt pain, as the man spoke.
Slowly the steel severed through the fibers of his muscles. The man giggled and swooned as if he was cutting ribbons apart at a parade. Judari felt the knife scratch and peel at his innermost bone, and only then could he fathom the ever faintest exhaust out from his lungs.
"Ah great! You're livin' still. I won't cut ya' up then, unless you cain't pay me back for my services. Say you muscle-bound man, can you pay me back?" The man leaned close in, his stale breath funneled into Judari's nose. He felt that he couldn't speak, as if his throat was sealed shut with a searing welding tool.
"Allow me to live." Yet his mouth spoke, the man above grinned, then hid the scalpel away.
"Shall do. I will make ya' perfect, and you shall perform, perfectly." The man grabbed a bleach white roll of scratchy bandage along with a thick glassed bottle of wood alcohol.
"With the state of ya' bone… You're gon' need some killing of the pain and numbing my friend. When you wake, we'll talk the cost of your recklessness. See you soon, muscle boy." The man put the lip of the bottle on Judari's lip, and made him chug one small glass's worth of the drink. Not twenty minutes of laying, the alcohol seeped into his inky bloodstream, numbing his mind and body. Judari sunk beneath a bliss of waves, the sploshing water seemed to calm him.
The water was cold but in a sedative sense, like it was making a barrier around Judari, each hair upon his vast body felt the chill and each one gave a shock into his system. It was like a cleanse. His eyes were open, yet he couldn't see anything. All that dared present was a deep ocean of black and blue. He couldn't feel his body anymore, as if it had dissolved into the black.
"It's calm." He muttered, unlike any moment in his life, this was truly calm. A serene sparkle of the colors a prism holds within itself glittered across the void. Though despite it all, he wasn't happy, for he knew that reality awaited him, draped in a white dress with strips of blood seeped into the fabric and equipped with a spiked whip and malicious intent. He hung onto the void like a toddler would their parents, wishing and praying for residence.
He sunk further into the darkness, his limbs long gone in the void. In that darkness now shone a swirling violet light, it seemed to call to Judari, much like a siren. He turned his unbound gaze downward, apathetic to what awaited his sight. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking at, but he could tell it was beautiful, geometric and shaped. It laid at the bottom of this endless dark sea like a treasure begging to be found. He drifted toward it, as both sadness, rage and all he could cry over welled at his dissipated throat. As if all negative within the boy was summoned to ravage and command over him. He reached out to the thing, not with his hand but with his ideals. But for a moment, he touched it, it was smooth yet jagged. Tendrils rose from beneath the gem, grabbing Judari, hugging Judari.
"YOU YOUNG FOOL." It hissed, and dug its tendrils into Judari's skin.
"YOU WERE DESTINED BY THE STARS." The gem's tendrils grew in strength by id.
"YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE." He felt his self be slowly torn apart.
"THE CHOSEN COG." He knew, as water flooded throughout his ears.
"YOU ARE THE CATALYST." He cried yet didn't fight.
"YOU ARE LOVED IN THE WAVES." He hugged back, and as he did, his eyes broke open.
A dim candlelight in his eye, which was promptly reduced to ash and shadow by a finger's touch.
The man stood above Judari, ash and blood covering his hand. The man ripped the burnt down candle from its rustic candelabrum, replacing it with a new spritely yet ghastly looking new young stick with its wax yet to be put through the steel's fire.
"Welcom' back to the world muscle boy. I was fraid' you'd die right here on my table. Though you're as tough as ya' look." Judari forced his neck upward to get a glimpse at what had been done to him. His leg was wrapped in layers of bandage stained with oxidized blood all over. The alcohol still raged through his system, thus the pain was yet to come with its assault.
"Now to discuss what I'm owed." The man said.
"I need me a new butcher, and you seem the perfect fit for it. You start the minute you can walk ah'gain." Judari could barely listen to the man's yapper as he hung between a dream and this nightmare. He tried to close his eyes, though with the fading alcohol it became too painful to even consider the option of rest, and thus he simply wept, waiting for his body to give out to exhaustion and the sizzling sorrow in his throat.
He could feel his body being carried around on a loose stretcher that could barely encompass his absurdly grown body. He swung back and forth, his hair collecting dust and scraps from the street he was being strung along, his legs high in the air and slung over the stretcher to secure his placement. He smelt burnt hair and heard cries of sickness, till a door shut. He was placed upon a crib of feather and stone textured cloth.
Judari heard murmurs from his left, of owed labor and health, then promptly the voice left and he was left be in his rock cage. Despite not being chained, he couldn't move a limb nor muscle. His bed rose, and the floor beneath him became an imaginary legend to touch upon, so he gave up. He pried his eyes open, and saw the macabre room he'd been dumped inside. A dusty mirror, a nightstand, a bucket for all purposes and lastly the bed he was laying on. He felt around him, an angry race of fallen kings judging his tempest soul. His own lineage, unknown and burdening.
4th Cinnatul 1117, Quaday.
Judari always stumbled through the street, his filthy curly hair sticking out amongst the dreary gray and ash crowds. He carried sacks of red and brown, no one caring to inspect them. He went back and forth from the clinic at which he worked to destinations of commerce to trade for food, candles and all, as commanded by the doctor. Only his body's physical strength carried him, as he was commanded from place to place. He was the very best in town at being beaten down. Not a day went by where his desires and lust didn't attempt their assassinations of his character and stable, if dull life. He was healing, day by day, yet his mind was fractured still. Someone had begun talking to him in the boring days of labor; his morals. Lost without a self, he was left with the bare bones of the soul, two polar extremes dueling everyday for supremacy. Though despite the incessant pull of thrill, his higher mind pulled harder.
Then, on one of his many casual supply runs through the stone city, he saw someone, of familiar shape. A shape he desired. He forced his body to move against the orders of the doctor and the judgement of his higher mind. Gray skin, brown hair, and a distinct sweet smell he could grab onto, evoking memories. Judari limped through crowds, snaking his massive boulder arms through series of folks dressed in rags, hard hats and shoes with no bottoms. He skulked and stalked throughout the streets, still gripping tight around the supplies he carried, as despite being led by his id for a change, he was still ruled by thunder and chains.
He clung to stone walls and lanterns, hiding in the darkness, never catching a glimpse of the chased's face, only the hair and shape. He carried on regardless. Cloaking his face with shadows and cloth whenever his desire turned around, to gaze at her surroundings. Judari thought back to that small pocket of time where he felt someone actually adored him, and not someone who he could be or was meant to be. He thought that in his current predicament, anything that even remotely acted or felt like a connection between two mortals, could somehow save him.
"Iris." He beckoned and breathed into his clothes. He followed her up, down and through the streets, only stopping once she did. His feet bounced up and down like a child's would, unable to contain the boiling giddy. Judari peeked around the corner, seeing the brown hair flow and bask in the stone city's smog. As she walked away with brisk steps and a confident stature, he heard yelling close by. A pair of Sigil Knights had surrounded a man with a basket of bread, who was standing under a small onning of some higher built marble structure, where statues of ancient beasts with great legs and manes lined along the exterior molding of the building.
The man with the bread basket had golden eyes and graying brown balding hair, his skin similar to most residents of these streets along with an accompanying set of black stains running along his arms, face and ragged clothes. He stood innocently as the Sigils circled him like vultures ready to pick the remains of a broken man. They taunted and told him he was loitering, the man didn't move, and was thus punched in the gut. Judari stood and watched, feeling a calling to him, someone in need of assistance. Though in the corner of his eyes, he could see her disappearing into the crowds and rounding alleys. Judari's eyes darted side to side, stuck between two desires, with no choice to stand. Before long, he had chased after the red thread of love.
He skipped through the streets, giddy and guilty all at once. From the bottom of his soul he felt a sizzling, like sin boiling.
"How could you chase desire? Please restrain yourself." He could hear a nagging voice in his head, it sounded similar to Isaac's warm, soft voice.
"I never get to do anything fun! I'm just slaving away, no different from when I was a knight! It's about time I got to control myself, eh?" Judari said as he wandered down the street with his halt, not minding the many stares.
"You've held up so well. And you're going to throw it all away to chase lust." The voice, whilst soft, sounded disappointed, like only a guardian figure could.
"Relax a little. Quick fun and all, saying hello to memories." Judari said, the voice quieting down, though still he could hear mumbles of disapproval at the far reaches of his mind.
"All you do is make me miserable." He grumbled, as he sought his prize.
Judari finally caught up to Iris, her shiny brown hair nearly in his grasp. Though he waited, and waited, till the right moment struck. In his mind, images of an ideal life ran past him like oil paintings, all flooding into one another. A small cottage house in the middle of the Royal Woods, a deer-stall to manage and feed, and Judari's very own study wherein he crafted buildings of immaculate shape. Iris managed the finances in his dreams, all the boring, hard work that required consistency and will. He would create, and expand his mind. He could not think of a better future. This idyllic premonition was met with Rito's friendly face, coming home from some far off battle. Though even in Judari's delusions, the painful tendrils of reality crept in, and Rito was washed out into a shape of white and black. He'd name his deer after his mother and father, to honor their legacy. The strongest deer named Inari, and the fastest deer named Vari. He imagined all sorts of names, all sorts of deer, prancing around on open grassy fields. Though it felt like, the more he involved himself into the dream, the more it turned to nightmare.
He attempted to ride on a deer in his dream, and while it rode, it rode slow, it hooves blackening with every step. It felt as if even in his mind he wasn't allowed freedom. He again tried to imagine his cottage house hidden away in the forest, alongside Iris standing outside of it. He tried to hold this concept, but the closer he held, the more rotten the image appeared, as if his very presence was poison to the land, a disease.
He wiped a tear off his cheek, one he didn't notice crying out, and continued forth, trying to forget his conscious mind. He could not wait any longer, and despite the crowds, he rushed forward, heart pumping and ready for salvation. His hand reached for her shoulder, turning her around to face him.
"Can I help you?" She said. It looked like Iris, and sounded like her too. But it wasn't her. Just some stranger. Judari couldn't help feeling betrayed, by this woman, by his lust and most of all, betrayed by himself. In disbelief, he tried to bend reality to his wish.
"Is your name Iris?" He asked, hoping she'd lie.
"N-no? What do you want from me… sir." She clutched her hands together, the crowds bumping into her repeatedly like she barely existed.
"And… you're sure your name can't be, Iris?" Judari gagged on his own words as he spoke.
"Get away from me… you creep." She backed away, keeping an eye on Judari as he stood shaken and deadeyed. If a fly landed upon his iris at this moment, he wouldn't even consider blinking.
"Love… is for those with weak, unfulfilled hearts." Something whispered in the wind of the street, Judari stood alone amongst the moving waves of crowds. Nobody seemed to be talking to him, yet he could feel someone's lifeless breath upon his neck.
"Is anyone there?" Judari spun around in the middle of the crowded street, no one answered. Memories flooded into his mind, of what happened during his trial, of something speaking to him, helping him. He remembered the strength he felt, the absolute power, to do anything and everything he pleased. Though it wasn't long before he simply shut off feeling, being too exhausted to even ponder upon power and a better life. On his sluggish walk home, he wondered if he should stop at a red house, one last hurrah for his temporary dedication to desire, though decided against it, only partially due to his morals screeching at him not to do so, but refusing so mostly due to pure apathy at the thought. He tried to imagine who else could bring him salvation, and none came to mind. All the faces he knew before, were slowly turning into a fleshy paste of identical faces. His head hurt, and the Oresfall streets around him… darkened.
13th Corbet 1117, Quaday.
Judari's body was decked in fastening dry blood, though his shirt was partially spared thanks to the butcher's apron he wore, which left a square shape of cleanliness upon his chest and stomach. He hurried out of the butcher's room with his still healing leg, he couldn't bear the smell of the place anymore, his body was screaming at him to run for the wilderness, or at least puke. Though he was halted in both attempts. Only after hours more of grueling work, did he allow himself to wander out in the street, with a candle in his hand.
He went to his tiny apartment, and locked the door. His emotions felt like a graveyard in the process of reanimation, unnatural and undead. Yet instead of feeling overwhelming, he felt defeated and empty. Like the very idea of an overload essentially equaled to zero, a black buzz of thought. He felt as if sand bags hung from each of his ankles and under each of his eyes. He could only travel to the foot of his bed before his broken leg and spirit gave out, dropping the candle upon the floor. He held upon the end of the wiry mattress to get himself back on his feet. Judari laid himself to rest, because even after all the grueling hours of bleeding labor, was he even halfway done with today's assignment.
He waited in his room, hoping the doctor was busy, or simply hadn't noticed. After some hours, his heart calmed, and when finally the city outside stood quiet; except for the occasional drunkard, Judari could then truly rest. Though before he could fall into starfilled dreams, he heard sounds at his doors, a key scraping against metal, and then a distinct click.
"We had a deal." The doctor stood in the door, a dull knife in his hand. His very entrance dimmed Judari's presence in reality, he could feel his body raise itself, whilst his own being sunk, sunk deep beneath the waves. In the dark waves, he saw a figure.
"D-dad?" Judari said. The figure turned.
"Yes, it is I. My sweet boy, I have missed you so." The figure spoke. Judari rushed forward, hugging his father tight, as if trying to choke the life out of him. Judari looked at his father's black eyes, and cried.
"Do not worry, child. In tomorrows to come, all will be crying. There is no shame in bringing change." His father spoke with dignity tied around his neck, bellowing out into a long black cloak that clung to his thinly clad bones.
"I'm so scared. I don't know what to do. Everything's gone to ruin. I've eaten and seen things. I've killed people, people that didn't deserve it, and people that deserved it." Judari cried.
"Fret not, child. You may not realize yet. But you are upholding your holy duty to this land, and of course, your duty to I, as my son. For destruction brings change. The starless nights were never your intention, was it?" His father spoke, as he took Judari in the hand and guided him across a blank, black sea. Each of their footsteps rippled in a star riddled reflection.
"What are you saying, dad?" Judari looked at his father, with the sparkling innocence of a child. In return, his father slowly put his pointing finger upon his mouth. The quiet should reign now.
"Today is a special day, your day of birth, and thus a gift shall be granted to you." The figure moved them along the black scape, there was nothing to see, yet everything to see as well.
"Look." He whispered, and pointed. There laid a Vind with carved out eyes and a gaping maw. Several of its features were burnt and charred. Greasy hair hung from its scalp. Around its neck was a rope, which was tied to a pole, the body being leant up against the pole.
"Do you see?" The figure spoke. Judari stood, stunned.
"What do you see?" The figure spoke.
"My dad." He said.
"No, what do you truly see?" The figure leaned close.
"Death. Defeat."
"Weakness." The figure gloated as it wrapped its arm around Judari. He leant into the embrace.
"Destruction brings change. Your destiny has only just begun." The figure let go of Judari, and he instinctively reached out for the figure.
"Reach for the stars, son." The figure disappeared. Judari clenched his hand tight, feeling pain. He closed his eyes, when when they opened once more, he was sitting on the floor in his dusty room. A bucket of water between his legs, and his hand was submerged deep within it. The water was a murky crimson. Judari felt dizzy. He was cold, yet sweating profusely.
"A deal's a deal, Jubari. I'm glad we could come to an agreement. Your part will also giv' great benefit, many necromancers search for Vinds." The doctor stood tall above Judari, fiddling around with some small object.
"I hope you'll remember this for'a the next time. Don't fuck with my product. If it happens again, it'll be more than a pinky." The doctor took his knife and small leather suitcase, and left the room. No lights were kept alive in the room, as Judari bled into the bucket. When the pain of his missing finger finally set in, he let out a screech which tore his throat.
He jumped up from the floor and broke into his small closet, pulling out bandages and oils. He spent an hour properly mending his wound. It hurt. Judari thought around his mind, thinking about the vision he'd just encountered. It felt divine, and purposeful. Judari raised himself again, and from the depths of his closet, he pulled out a small pan of sugar and bread he'd collected over the months. He poured a bit of water with the sugar, making what could be called a glaze. He dressed the bread up, then searched his room around for the candle. Once he found the dusty rod, he pierced it down in the doughy flesh of the stale bread.
"I… thought I was lost." Judari barely noticed, as the candle lit by itself, as he lost himself in delusions of grandeur.
"Maybe, it was all for a purpose, a divine one." Judari fiddled with the stars in his hair, they felt almost buzzing, with potential.
"The pain I've gone through, wasn't for nothing, it all wasn't for nothing." Judari's eyes welled with tears, as he smiled. He clenched his fists tight and sunk down his dry throat to suppress his emotions and outburst.
"I fear that in tomorrows to come, I'll be crying." He mustered up his will, and blew out the candle's flickering light.
"There's still so much pain to endure. But you will endure it. The world will know you endured it. Patience will be our virtue, the only hope and light in this dark city." Judari's mind spoke to him, it was soft, gentle and reassuring.
"Running now would be a coward's play, to endure will surely pain us as saints. I know that you can bear this burden, body." Judari didn't know how to respond, and simply nodded in the dark. He began clawing the stale bread into his mouth, it tasted like wet paper.
"I will reach for the stars."
"Virtue awaits us."
"I will be great, and free-"
"Free to prosper, and create."
"The starless night is not for me, and shall not be for the world."
"And we shall again become Judari Onyx."