The Bonds That Bleed, Part II

There was blood and bone in that barren room what felt like a battlefield. It was a rebirthing room, angry with the contractions of a woman in labor.

The hotness of her was searing to the touch, instantly evaporating all forms of disillusion and would allow for nothing but cold fact. The methodical touch like one would graze wood or stone was all I could give her. But give to her I did.

My hands worked over her like an experienced man deflowering a virgin bride, for that was what she was to me, now and ever more. She was my bride sealed by that of blood and unity; the very beat of her heart was the throbbing of my seed filling her like a womb.

Broken was she, that I set her a-right the best I could. A fickle game that had need of the poison coursing her veins. It was the clock by which I worked.

On the verge of death I managed to salvage her life, while stripping the last of her dignity away in one fell swoop. Although at that very time I could not admire her shapely body, I knew that in hindsight when I saw her lying there she would not be broken and bloodied, but the harbinger of sensuality, accepting me with her breasts as they heave with exhilaration, hips wide and wonderful for bearing a man as well as child. The fiery union of her exalting sweetness a mixture that no man could resist. I knew that in hindsight, should I view her complete and whole and ready, my loins would burn like tomorrow set afire.

The Darkness had tainted me, for I was not always so callous and thoughtless to a woman and my desire for her. While my love thought myself impure, I danced the gray and melted the blackness with my infidelity, even if it were only in thought.

Thoughts pervade; salacious and infectious. This known to men like me...if ever there were any.

Back to thought, I moved like a whisper on a dream through her shrouded perception of life. When weak and dying, there were always regrets and life unlived. I knew that and that was the curse I knew that was bestowed upon me from that omnipotent whirlwind of Darkness. I could only imagine what other damage had been caused me by my curiosity that was not sated.

Exhaustion took me then, and as she slept, I turned away with a callous indifference. I could not let myself even admire a life saved, because work must be continued and she was now incapacitated, dead to the whispers that were out and about, needing to be harvested.

There was only one other who should be given the right to managing her care, and this skrell of haloed horns was whom I sought. Her with her single-point trident and unwavering ignorance and devotion. A psychopath incorporated into the path of the gods, who even to this day I am uncertain as if they care naught for the havoc wreaked by the Ebon Plague.

I paced well my passage to Milford, leaving alone the living dead, trying to focus on bringing solitude to her for I could not give her that when my own body denied me peace. I could no longer look at her as just a child shroud in cloak and concealed from me. I had seen her naked and I will see her mend; when those two combine I know the blasphemy will be mine to bear; my heart upon my sleeve.

The third mistake I made that night was the fire in my loins.

The outpost empty and vague, a decrepit bastion of armed solitude, reminding me of a promise I made at the quotation of another: I will be the war that protects you.

She was not there, this Zealot of the Fields. She was not there when she was needed, and I curse her name, condemning her to the shallowness that fermented within the rotting core of this haven.

So I find solitude where I can; the demons and wolves leave me be as my memories and thoughts brood and churn. They are afraid, as they should be. Even I am not left without the mocking laughter of the unvoiced Gods as their blessings condemn.

So I find solitude where I can; the sun of my light palpitated like a heart, bright and then dimmer than before.

So I find myself before the spearing tip of the Darkness that had yawned and swallowed me. I watch its veins of blood and heat throb through the smoky blackness, ominous and inviting in a way that would attract a mortal with its maliciousness.

I do not find myself daunted by the realization that men and all other races were violent and sloth to begin with, because the gods could do only as they could, making us in their own image. The fact that they begged for loyalty and faith and perfection, while they themselves spread the seeds of arrogance and self-worship was not a paradox, it was a contradiction.

A hypocrisy.

Too many times I had stood on the cusp of the precipice and screamed for them to answer me. What was to be deified as sacred was nothing more than a rotten mold cast upon the earth, told to be the bread of the gods. Why separate themselves when they knew full well their disease and lies, and that they all were forged from the mold of trickery and deceit.

The Eight are One.

I said this to the portal crawling over the ground like the dead pulling itself from the grave. Clawing. Clawing.

There was blood upon the ground nearby. I could see it glittering like diamond-encrusted rubies in the night's poor light, when the red moon kissed the sky in the Witching Hour. I paid no heed knowing that people of all walks of life were intrigued by what the Darkness held. The only problem was that they wanted to know but could not tolerate the pain.

I am not a man of combative prowess, yet I stood the wrath of it for much longer than any other. I am the One. But again, like the gods I knew that that was a double-edged sword. My life was destroying itself piece by claw-raked piece. And that was only the surface of it.

Something tickled at my senses. I looked to the blood again and became the leopard, tracking down its passage, like moving forward, back in Time.

Through the fields I hunted, untouched by demon and man and beast alike. I was a child of the Night, as I always had been. I am the Walaffai, the Whisper Shaker, knowing a fly upon my web through all senses simultaneously.

I was brooding, cold and methodical. I was being me in all my splendor and glory, a Dark Templar of an onerous nature. Reap what had been sown.

That was until I saw the rose on the abandoned campground earth, forlorn and drenched in fresh blood.

The sun of my light quivered and imploded.

The Bonds That Bleed, Part I

The sun of my light pulsed, dimming and drawing in on itself.

Like a whorl, my two existences collided with one another and melted together. Drawing inward, always inward.

A kiss of passion ended when he interrupted me and mine. What had been a promise of sexual brimstone and fire was gone now, like ashes choking out life, when he said those fated words.

"She needs you."

Like a switch, forlorn was dormant and an echo of a memory, as it should be.

The tavern's main room was not as I had just left it. The quietude had shattered and now concern and voices mingled with the smells of blood. Like a leopard on a scent, was I, as I stalked down she who was grievously injured, sitting upright awaiting judgment from me, whom she had come for.

The words of my lover were muted and distant, and as much as I had not wanted to take that flight, it was mandatory. For the sake of prosperity, I needed this redhead alive. Like her carmine hair, she was part of the blood that flood from my veins into the city about me.

Damn it all, you pasty fool, do you know what you have done?

There was ticking in the backdrop, soft and true. It called my secret name.

It teased me.

There was no longer any way to conceal my involvement with this teenage girl. I had relied so heavily on the image that I partook of her sweet sex, fucking her into adherence.

But now that was gone; I was forced to reveal my hand and play off of the River. I could not stave off the wolves and whelps and envious children of the Ignorant any longer. I had to openly require the right to touch her, this skittish girl.

Now they knew I was not her lover. While they may not have put it together then, the pieces of the puzzle fell inevitably, irrefutably in place, for one would remember and pass that knowledge onto someone who could discern fact from mask.

Her bodily injuries baffled me. It looked as if something had played her like a fiddle until she cracked and broke. I could smell fresh blood exuding from her. I could taste the salt of her sweat as it, vermilion and burning, mixed with her blood.

She should not be here; she should be in the hospital.

Gripping me like a lifeline, the first touch she had ever laid upon me was faint and distant, she whispered to me, those gray eyes hot and vague, lost to everything common and decent, strive within to plead and beg me for life. I was not the Berserker, and I did not take life needlessly.

I do not abandon those to Annwn when my blood was theirs.

Maybe I was angry with her or with myself, but I knew that I was enraged at the fools and bigots that littered this tavern, staring and gawking like fucking fish upon the sight of their own reflection.

"Please," her eyes pleaded, crying out for me in pain and exhaustion. "I crawled all this way because I need you. Help me help you! HELP ME HELP YOU!"

Down on my knees for her, in front of my own lover, I cooed with my own eyes that were not as dead as my face. "I promised my blood for yours, lover-mine of the Web. I will adhere to my words and make love to your wounds until they curl and close with sighs of contentment."

Discarding the pale rider was simple enough; a quick flick of my barbed tongue and he mewled like a kitten starved. I am a leopard on the prowl; I am the viper that spun the webs that connected deceit to deceit.

The first mistake I made that night was enlisting the one person I should not have. My lover, her skin as dark as mine, hair as metallic and wild as mine; yet it were her eyes that I spoke to then, summoning the unpredictability within those emerald orbs, and I had honed it to my own calm and measuring windows.

Through the streets I had carried that young woman who had cuts and tears and breaks externally to match those that she hid from the world. I heard her light sigh and groan. I had to move quickly. Before she flickered and faded.

My second mistake was taking my lover to the home of this girl, which ironically poisoned her mind in the exact opposite way that it had infiltrated the others. She was to not know these things, not like this, and it came as a pain to me as my hallowed heart was quaking.

She delivered the young, broken woman's things to her doorstep and left me there with a look that said to me so many things I shall never forget them, for they slipped through my defenses like a hot knife.

"Goodbye, my love. Goodbye, so that when you see me again and hold me in your arms and eyes, it shall be without my heart and mind, for you have bled me so this day, taking this last innocence from me. And I shall never forgive you."

She bade me farewell and left with the flight of foot so common to her gypsy blood, my rose still in her hair. But I could not cry for her, not then, and I did not pursue her for my task was to heal and nurture another woman...at the cost of my own deep love.

A snick and the door closed. A sound that emanated the closure of one chapter of my life.

The sun of my light swelled in upon itself and the dark side of light became my own.

Pearl

You against the door; whispers in your ear. "Bear with me."

Bear with me, because I am about to just...let...go.

Fingertips down your face, the one I know so well over such a short time. There is passion there, desire; there are emotions here, too, ones that you know. Ahhh, can't you see, darlin', that I can tell? Any fool can see it in your eyes.

A kiss, soft and tender, so I may bask in your essence. I breathe a sigh, hot against your lips. I let my hands roam free to palm back your thick hair. Another kiss. Ahhh, I must control this, until you follow. I don't think you'll understand until it's too late.

So be it.

The desire comes forth unbidden, bubbling up to the surface and I just let it out. I have done all but bear my soul to you, so why let it stop now? The Darkness has a way of giving despair; I am driven now into your arms, love, by that very thing but for hope, longing. A bit of human touch.

To the bed we go, hand in hand, mouth to mouth, and I am dancing with you to this lovers' tune. Breaths and sighs lacing through our anticipation, and I cannot wait--but I must. I try.

Slowly so that my eyes may know every part of you, let my hands remember every contour, every fiber...every tremble. But that can't happen. I'm incapable of doing it. I don't know what's harder for me, restraining you or controlling myself.

Let go.

Hands drift from your coppery hair to your dress, pulling it up and over, removing the barriers between us. It dawns on me then as we do this that there is a hunger inside of me that spoke truth before. We are walking down a path that probably nethier of us were looking for but more than likely need.

I am drawn in by the scent of you. It makes me lightheaded, and the pressure of being inside you is a welcomed bliss. You and I savor the feeling of being one. I hold you and close my eyes.

A flash of sooty crimson smears across my vision and I clench my eyes tight. Arms beneath you, I hold on, letting your beauty and the slickness of your skin fill my senses, washing away these dark, dark images. I let go and pour myself out into you, releasing every fear and passion of mine with every emotion my body carries. I tense with the suddenness of this yearning that, at this point, is undefined.

I hear your breaths and feel your hands clenching my shoulders and it sounds like you cry out in a way that has so much more inside of it than mere lustful pleasure, and this I cling to, only now realizing that I am on the verge of tears that will not come. I hold you tighter unwilling to focus on the release of the floodgates, and I think that maybe I am afraid right now to know just what it is I'm doing, possibly ashamed but not stopping because it is far too late.

Now I know, somewhere out there, between the sheets and nestled in your hair, I am begging quietly, and you can hear me. You and I, amidst this rolling wave of energy, because I know this is not just a simple experience we share. To me, at least, it is so much more.

Depleted now, I stare unfocused at your hair upon the pillow. I am too exhausted, I think, to see the damnation of days past, but I am still ashamed to expose myself this way to you. In the afterglow, I am still on the verge of tears.

Have I offended you? I just need you to hold me tonight.

The Rack

"Hush, now. Shhh...hushaby, baby. Shhh...quiet now. Just over there, can you see him?"

"I can."

"Isn't he getting big? Looks more like you everyday. Acts like you, too."

"Awe, I ain't so bad, am I?"

"Not so much that I can't handle. You have your sweet moments. I think those are the reason why I stay with you."

"How'd he get so big?"

"Don't be surprised, hon. He's twelve now, almost a man grown."

"Jus' so hard t'believe. Does he know me?"

"Do you want to go and talk to him, love? Alright, then! Go see him. He's been very eager to see you."

"He has, huh?"

"Yes, he has. He wants to tell you about how his skin rots off and grows back as scales. How he plays with the other kids, tearing out their eyes and gorging himself on their innards."

"Wh-what?"

"Love? What's wrong?"

A searing pain lanced through his body causing him to buckle over, leg shooting out to catch himself. The black hotness like the suns bake his insides, making him sweat profusely. His foot slid on the brown and bright red blood. A rumbling emitted from the walls, thrumming like wardrums, each beat sending a wave of agony through him like a liquefied explosion. It was like breathing.

Forcing himself to look up, he spies the great slab of cerulean gemstone and watched a reflection that had no real presence vanish out of range, and then like a sigh the stone merely vaporized and a few chunks of coal tumbled down, splashing into the blood like slop. Now there were bodies everywhere, unknown faces staring out with empty eyes or sockets. They were burned and torn and skinned; most had their intestines and other organs flowering out of their chest cavities and stomachs.

The walls pulsated like an artery, blood spurting up behind the cloudlike substance that roiled and churned, groaning in ecstasy. Every sound a lick against the man, forcing him to his knees, and all he could do was wrap his arms around his stomach as if to hold it back from bursting open.

"Stop it! Dat tickles! Hey, don't complain, yer likely tuh get more den a slap if y'keep it up! Hey! Hey! That--stop dat! Ooh, gods...no, don't stop..."

It throbbed, from inside of him outside. This was a queer feeling when it wasn't agonizing, and pure chaotic turmoil when it felt like his liver and kidneys were boiling or ash flaking away from the walls of his lungs. He cried out because the pain was all too real. Rents and tears slithered onto random places of his body, feeling like a sword's cut, slow and meticulous.

On his knees now, with as much strength as he can muster he forces himself to look around yet again, as if somehow trying to discern the reality of that place. But he snapped his eyes shut as a bloody tear evaporated from off of his cheek, leaving a brown snowflake drifting in the chamber.

He screamed.

"Look at me for once, please! I know you see me. You see everything. You. You make my life worthwhile and it's you that I'm too frightened to thank! Gods, I want to just express myself, give you that one thing which you really want! But is it enough? Is it good enough for you that you can have what you want, but I'm left without so much as a goodbye? What is it about you that keeps me hanging on. Why do I feel like I should just--nevermind. This is too much for me. I'm crazy."

Words echoed in his head, but they were his own. Or was he speaking aloud? There was no difference to him as he felt the palpatating anger drive him over, to his knees, to his hands, on his face. It was a heavy burden that moved over him, not unlike the stare of a loved one scorned. Something clicked.

With Will his only ally, as he knew it would be when he originally came to this place, he pushed himself up. Ribbons of flesh separated as muscles strained, scarlet beads popping out with a spitting sound. He groaned in agony. The chamber moaned in ecstasy. He sneered and squinted and focused, his ears filled with the voices of things once said, things left unsaid, and those that were yet to come.

He could see them out of his peripheral but he could not touch them. At a chance to see them he would look and nothing would be there except for the corpses, the rot, and the blood. The veins in his neck bulged out as he came to his knees. Turning, he could hear the thoughts and voices clearly, knowing the web in his mind was spinning.

Turning, he fell and dragged himself forward. Palms bubbled with blisters that popped, blood mixed with puss and sweat. His mouth was open as he breathed, focusing, trying. His will was still his own though it was wavering, no longer steadfast and true. Lacerations covered his face and neck, bones snapped and protruded from cut skin. Massive humps separated on his shoulderblades and still he pushed on.

What had occurred to him, what had given him the means to actually retreat, was that he should be dead, yet he was not. Each time he moved, he screamed. Screamed in torturous agony, screamed in determination, and screamed to simply hear the sound of his own voice. Vermillion saliva dripped from his mouth in a long, continual strand that turned carmine on the bloody floor.

Upon his knees near the wall of billowing clouds of ash and bone and blood, he reached a hand out, touched the face of the wall and wanted to recoil back. A great spasm of pain quaked through his body and he continually trembled with the shock of it. The heat and cold and pain and despair wound through his frame and made his flesh quiver over his muscles like a sheet in the breeze. Eyes wide open, he stared with an open mouth unable to make a sound. His heart thumped. Stopped. Thumped. Stopped.

Thump.

Thump. Thump. Thump, thump, thump-thump-thump.

"Are ya' still wit' me, love? Heh, good. 'Cause it's time t'wake up. Wake up."

Behind Eyes Wide Shut

The sun has just risen.

The horizon melts away into a bulbous form that takes on the shape of a large semi-sphere just beginning to ascend into the sky. Green bleeds back into a whitish sky-blue, and then further up, an indigo. Cirrus clouds streak the heavens, awed and sitting next to her on a slope of a hill, backs to the way they have traversed. Molten colors begin to shiver with the haze of the early morning mist beginning to burn off. It will be a few hours until that eventually happens; it is always a pleasure to watch until the sun is fully in the sky. Then, and only then can the day begin.

Impatience is nonexistent. On the grassy hill, the scenario unfolds for those youthful faces full of hope and quiet awe, while staring off into the distance, captivated. The bare tip of the sun breaks away from the horizon like a retrogressive teardrop; an invert bead of gold. The edge of the horizon shakes, ripples, and then separates mint-green from the copper base of the star. Liquefied air quivers before settling. Already the shadows are retreating, awaiting night once more. The paper thin clouds drift by lethargically, airbrushed onto the canvas of perpetual blue.

Dark eyes find green ones, and she smiles with love and unbound passion. Soft, heart-shaped thoughts budding from a river of sighs. Leaning in, she offers a kiss as languid and soft as the morning dew. She draws back to open eyes of sincerity, but there's a darkness lining the edge of her countenance.

Pain like sliding down a razor's edge fills her eyes, mouth peeling back as lips melt into the haze of a deteriorating backdrop. Teeth shimmer in the sun and laughter fills the air, but it's source isn't from her, yet it is a yawning hollow at the crest of the sun's form that twitches and slyly curves up at the newly budded corners.

Her, life as it has always been known, dies in all but reality as skin slides like wax over bone growing from her cheeks and brow and shoulders. Empty sound emits, she hunches over, quaking and jerking as hands grasp at the voided air before her. She reaches.

Reaches.

Golden hair, once so beautiful, crowns an ashen skull that grins; agony turns to emptiness in her eyes, while the smile bears more empathy, desire. Reaching. Reaching.

Running, breathing hot and thick. Suffocating. Tears burning through the darkness that infests everything it touches.

Grass slithers and withers as tiny horns spiral from green stalks. Gnarled hands spread from branches of trees, opening dormant eyes and jagged teeth of bark, speaking with voices from within the recesses of blistering red, furnaces once hollow and quiet. Great behemoths with unsteady gaits lope in the distance, corporeal body parts joined together in a melting pot, limbs protruding from its bulbous body; its eyes, thousands of them upon its husk, twitch and stare all around its form as it walks. They raise their heads, one after another, and cry a deep, mournful sound full of tears and pain and despair.

The carcasses of the dying still moving drag uncooperative limbs behind them as they dawdle, trying to bite the air. A mockery of a kitten nipping at bugs. Others were humping each other or rocks or trees. The latter would coil fingered branches around the violators and drag them into hungry mouths, roots rising to shove the foodstuff greedily into their orifices. Smoke plumes from between the teeth of crunching jaws smiling like the sun.

Distance needs screaming, haunting. Home. Through the door and past remains of one parent being eaten by the other, and into the nursery...

Web of Whispers

When it came to him, he was the kind of man that loved, and well. There was nothing he wouldn't do, come Hell or high water. But he was a two-sided coin; he did not contradict himself, though he led two very separate lives when it came to personal affairs and those of business.

Those that tried to cross that very broad line he laid out were not going to like his response. He wasn't a combative but he was a warrior. A violent, sadistic man with a twisted, warped heart when it came to those that could not leave well enough alone.

There was one person who wanted to test that line and that man was about to find out that race and status and disease were not enough to overcome the capacity of dynamic evils that he could realize. It was always the same with him; the farmboy look and unruly, disheveled appearance. People never accepted that he was so much more than they could imagine him. That was their weakness, he knew, and this person who wanted to play with cards undealt was in for a surprise.

He knew that the manwhore was in need of shoving his furry dick in anything that's female and receptive...and from what information flowed his way, even when they weren't. Now that there was a pseudo-romance in his life, one that felt and looked promising, he was not going to take his chances, especially when the term Nemesis came to mind. Nemesis: an agent or act of retribution or punishment, personified by an unconquerable foe.

The fact that this rutting slag of a mutt was beginning to realize that there was something left unsaid. The damned man was going to let his pride get in the way and cross into hallowed grounds. That was unacceptable, and he must be dealt with as quickly and effectively as possible.

Already, though, the conversation with the skittish girl was roiling in his mind, and as he walked down the road in the thundering rain, he saw what he always saw when he jacked into his information network. Words and phrases, images and expressions were like fireflies for him, dancing in the air and willing to be picked. They were pieces of a puzzle to him, and every time the lass spoke, he filed away the relevant and made certain that every piece of logical deduction was made from what he learned from her, he sapped her memory and will without remorse.

She knew so many things, delicious and tantalizing giblets of information that he found himself oddly aroused by it. He knew that he would burn her out and break her down, and more than likely she would die because of it, but that was part of the cost. He would have to be careful with her, though. She was like a sponge, and that kind of trait was hard to find in a person. Maybe he would train her to hone this...no, for now that would be too risky. There was no sense in wasting something needlessly; to sacrifice a person for an unjust cause only created martyrs, and Seahaven had no need of any more.

Through the slums towards the market district, he Sees the intricate, divining the subtleties from the actions and words of others, tying and looping them together in his mind until they form a gargantuan web of whispers.

It was because of the fragile girl that he was able to devise a beginning action that would, when put into motion, nullify the halo-haired bastard's reactions. Let him know just how useless he would be when faced with the tide of moblike mentality. Let him try to hide behind the skirts of a soon-to-be disowned lord. Even Cymur's pet will turn his way and ask for aid, and if not there are a few levers to pull that would trip his interest. With interest comes focus, and focus can be controlled. Fan the fanaticism within him...and there is nothing left to do but aim and release.

Whispers sang as he moved on.

The people who sling back and around to another was amazing. All he had to do was gather a few more pieces and lay them out accordingly. Animosity was a wonderful ally to one like him. He could use it. The Lost One had begun to find herself through the Truth of others; it was a shame that most people never bothered to discern the difference between Truth and Fact. The former was based on perception, the latter was objective, solid and backed by unwavering evidence.

It seemed to him, though, that before her rendezvous with Fate, ill will had sewn the seeds of hatred. His need to fuck every piece of ass had, inevitably, put him in direstraits.

Everything was coming together, but the more he knew, the more he was capable of effecting larger audiences with his actions. Actions that were nothing more than a whispered word here and there. Rumors knew how to consume people, and he was there to make sure that emotional distress would crescendo at the most opprotune moment.

The Calm of Propinquity

It was in that moment that he felt himself for the first time in years. It wasn't necessarily the fact that there was a woman next to him in bed, but that he had made a connection, something that he had not felt the spark of in years. It was a calming infatuation that loosened the coiled nerves of all people. That was a desire he knew all too well: loneliness and the need to challenge it.

He took a moment of his time to look at her, his vice even if she were only a blip in the greater picture of his life, and he enjoyed the sight of her sleeping. While she had eyes of sparkling spring water reflecting the moss on the riverbed, and that they burned with a passion that could only be rivaled by the same reckless abandon, he was pleasured by them being closed while she slept. Her hair light and wavy against her sun-kissed skin. She looked much like he did, and that gave him a warmth that he savored.

While she slept, he stroked her back with his fingertips; slow, languid movements that sighed against her skin. Typically when he laid with a woman it was immediate and charged with a violent need to expell those physical desires so that he may focus on his work. As they slumbered, he snuck out into the night, absconding with what he needed and no more. Sometimes there was a necessary play of words required to bed a woman, while other times it was just the common sharing need to just be fucked.

Right now he felt different.

Already they had slept for a few hours before one or the other would wake aroused, and engage the other. It was a pleasing sensation that left his body desiring her more and more. Better to drive it hard and fast and be done with it; the candle that burned twice as bright lived half as long. Yet for now, he was not yet satiated, still incomplete. So he merely let his mind drift unfocused in the afterglow.

There was a curling locket of hair resting on the side of her nose. It brought a small smile to him. Making sure not to turn while she slept upon his chest, he moved the strand back, careful not to make contact with her ear. He had already proven himself correct, knowing that, given her racial history, her ears were highly sensitive. There were ways of sparking wanton desire with a certain touch, and he was tempted momentarily to entice the emotional responses to a more heartfelt reaction.

That was what it would be, a reaction to his action, and it may have been because of that that he resisted the impulse.

Her arm was draped across his midriff and he committed to memory the difference in contrast between their skin tones. The similarities became fundimental and the differences were the flavor. It felt right, if only for a moment.

He knew that he should get up soon, he knew he had to get back to work. But it was so hard to move when contentment fought with an iron fist. So he laid his head back onto the pillow and continued to trace random, meaningless patterns across her back, mermorizing the touch and sensation of her in every possible way he could, until he could recall at will. Because when she was gone--there was no lying to himself about her and her free spiriting ways--he would be able to relive those moments, helping him to get by just a while longer.

The Darkness at the Edge of Town

Finally, the time had arrived. Shut away in the rickety bolthole that constituted as an inn in that misbegotten haven, he could finally lower his guard, the facade he carried with him everywhere he went. There was no one left he could just be himself with anymore. He had a woman once, nearly ten years before, right before the rise of the Darkness, when the Cataclysm struck home and hearth, obliterating Life-Worth-Living. At least, that was how he looked at it.

She had seen him with all defenses down.

It had taken him years to help people--commoners mostly--where he had lost his sense of self. Now he was finally reemerging as what he was originally molding himself to become. Eyes half-laden, he stared up at the ceiling but only saw his memoirs. He allowed himself those few precious moments of solitude where all he thought about was the haloed-haired hoyden with a smile that could melt and cut and chill all at once.

That was how he had felt now: frozen, imploded, and torn. Likely just a play on words.

Effort and work were his partners now, not some misbegotten love from times shrouded by the Darkness and its omnipotent inertia. With that thought, his time to reminisce was now over. He had work to do.

Still lying prone on his unyielding bed, he looked up and could See. The cities and townships not completely overrun by the Darkness were quickly corrupting from within as the years rolled by and despair set in, like rot, always spreading outward. There were pieces to this puzzle that needed contemplation before being set down, to find exactly their placement where there were numerous options available. This was the ability to be objective and meticulous to every known detail, all while leaving room for change. This shift could be either a growth or shrinking.

The first thing he had done was lead fools around by the nose, especially the wolfkin who prided themselves on extraordinary prowess when it came to detection and subtlety. What they believed uncanny was, in all actuality, nothing more than misplaced arrogance that had been curbed--in not so light a term--like a bitch in heat. Learning quickly about these shifters, he had made the mistake of being openly visible when they spoke their secrets so blatantly in a city center where anyone could hear them should they had passed by.

What got him was their audacity to approach him and did everything, up to and including threatening his life, if he did not keep their secrets to himself. The humor to that is the fact that they are completely incapable of keeping their own private matters private, and yet expect others to do it for them. The initial offense was pure stupidity; no one could blame it on ignorance because they were of their kind and they simply knew better.

One was downsized and malleable--on both ends due to intervention--and now both were in each other's pockets. As he was told, as long as their paths coincided with one another, then they were temporary allies. The trick was to shift the party back in his favor and create (if need be) a common cause. The day and age made that ridiculously easy.

The other was, well, a bit harder on the matter. More forceful and tried his damnedest to force his strength and prowess outward. While a bad situation could have been made much worse, luckily this other mutt was horrendously easy to cast adrift, which ended with a mutt who couldn't control his mouth to offer riches and power beyond the wildest of dreams.

The man had to smile. No, the darklings would all be cast away in a booming echo of light and all would be as it was ten years ago, if he had had the power to do anything. No, he was nothing but a bitch with a penis, over-thinking his boundaries because no one ever got it through to him that he is almost completely useless.

He would have to be handled with caution, nevertheless. Uncontrollable to themselves made for poor bedfellows when it came to unpredictability when cornered.

Vek. There are rumors out there that there are more than one. Just recently, one was condemned and burned by the holy fire of Cymur, and yet all people could do was pray that it would be enough to keep this one down long enough to find a remedy for his kind. Pompous fools. And they questioned why he was not of any faith. If the gods cannot smote even a single Vek without him returning with laughter in his eyes, then how did anyone expect them to do anything but be there, jealous of mankind for its mortality, for its ability to shine far brighter than any god could because each man, woman, and child knew they would one day die.

A careful eye must be placed upon all that had handling in this for the hunt, the kill, and those that witnessed. Yes, there were bloodletters that feared and rebuked the burning of a mass-murderer, and yet they had the gull to claim to be protectors? Already the rot had set in, wrapping itself around the very core of this remaining civilization.

Purity is found in faith, he believed, and he knew that to earn faith, you first had to earn love. To do that, you needed to convince--not prove--the smallfolk that their desires were one and the same. Only then, when they wholly, maddeningly felt that way, would their fanaticism drive them to make the ultimate sacrifice, to give their lives willingly and without qualms.

Certainly he could not have been the only person to readily believe that the reason the commoners would not rise up was because of lack of faith, not courage. Courage was a falsified deity, a manipulated and twisted form of one's will bandied about by travelers and worshipers of gods alike, to goad people to make themselves fodder for the slaughter.

They needed bodies, but they misinterpreted what was truly of value there. They believed that they needed trained hands that could use sword or axe, but they had utterly ignored the fact that if they had devotion, all else was nothing but a mere stepping stone. The Darkness had not moved much in the last ten years, what made them think that taking the time to train devotees would be a poor idea?

That was their ignorance, as a whole. Always trying to rush the inevitable. It looked to him as if they were doing nothing more than killing as many of the darklings as they could before being slain themselves, and hoping the gods favored them enough to bring them back. But at what price, he wondered? To slide into the palm of a god begged the chance to be crushed in their forgetfulness.

He was not going to play that game. He was not going to play by the rules of beings who watched, doing nothing more than a little give and take where ever the whim took them. Especially if they were incapable of handling the Darkness. Even other gods began to rise to challenge their authority. That was a scary thought of its own, and he readily admitted that said fear. It chilled him to the bone, made him go rigid at the thought. Let the gods work out their own kind.

Since the idea to reestablish some form of stability had come to many people, he was a person to look to the ideas and recruitment of others, whether it be for whichever faction decided when the time was right to rise up, and they had the soundest base to both work with and temper that rot before trying to eject it. It was like a cold; you did not have to kill the infected. The body figured out a way to cure itself and to adapt. That was the best course of action in a deteriorating society.

The wheels were already turning and he knew better men than him were the ones to lead these campaigns. Let him do his part and be done with it.

There were five that gave him pause, though, that he knew he had to find a place for before advancing too much further. The skrell of dragon's yawning, the skittish dame, the quasi-siren who was lost founded, the silhouette of a child of the moon, and the cubling that yearned for utter freedom. Each of these had a place of special interest to him because they, he felt, were the ones who held the corporeal keys to either his success or his demise.

Failure was not an option, he knew, but that was a risk that every entrepreneur had to take. Success was only that much sweeter.