OOC :
| Summer 11-5, 511 AV; Malum's dwelling, 30 chimes till sunset The First Night It had been a day since I arrived back on this world and in such a short time all I remembered… had been flung to the maw of despair. There was no hope for me, it seemed, save for that guiding light which settled overhead and marked the day. It was, however, becoming clear that my being here was something unnatural. The reasons for turned hears and murmurs in the crowds had the possibility becoming directed towards something more than a pretty sight. Still, the stares I received were something loathsome. Among the worst were that which belonged to this…bestial figure who called himself Malum. It was he who brought me here, bound and abandoned me, and all day left me to my solitude. It was dull that cryptic chamber below the earth, in every sense. Somehow, out of sight, light managed to reach through to the bottom where shadows make their home all the day long. Thus, the light was dim and covered. In the air you could see it reflected against the dust on air. The worst of it could not been seen though. Though Syna stretched far, her grasp could only be seen. It was not until the late of day I felt the aftermath of her warming rays which became something of disgust once filtered through the earth and stone above me. There was some…stench that lingered in that room, something foul; it made me sick. It was still, dark, and moist somehow. Probably from those make shift streams leaking into the ground cooling the underneath. But that scent was what was above all to the most disgusting and putrid…I don’t know whether or not to revisit the thought. The culmination was something …familiar, yet so unnaturally concentrated. It reminded me of the harbor…though less dilute. I was bound in hind, something worn and hardened. The feeling about my wrists and ankles ran deep. I would move my wrist, and could feel the broken leather scratch at my skin underneath. They were strained red that much was clear in their abusive history plain to seen. I think I could hear them, all of their pain and hatred, suffering and torment, hundreds of cries echoing through the infinite realm of the eternal halls in the Ukalas, still unable to find peace. No word of woe could describe the unnerving sensation within me; I might be damned to have known what was to come. The ceiling creaked, footsteps… I listened in closely, held my breath. My heart was ready to reach forth and leap from my throat and run, but there’s nothing I could have done. A lock shifted, and the door broke open with Syna’s last light at the coming dusk. The darkness of this man though soon overtook it. Malum, he introduced himself to me as, some brutish man build tall and strong. He needed such given his lacking in looks I suppose. I only saw his feet from where I was, they were bare, dirty. My eyes fixated upon him, looking to find the core of his. Down he came and stood across the room watching me again, despite all lacking of light I saw the shadow in his eyes. He held a smoke in his hand, and puffed in the mutual silence. I felt my throat swallow so hard it might have choked me, and just tried to breath. He spoke then. His voice was gruff and hazed by years of shit sucked down his mouth. “What’s the matter?” He hovered a little longer before approaching me. I tensed up. “That’s a really pretty dress you have on. Quite the shame it’s all dirty.” I had forgotten about it all, that idiot boy…so irritating some of these – “Got a name?” I didn’t expect him to – it must be a trick why else would he have me like this! I need to get out…I need to get away. My being shivered. I leaned my head back and tried to crawl away from him, anywhere other than here would be a blessing. oh please, Syna, see me, save me. He took offense to that, Malum, and walked over to give her reason to crawl. “What’s the matter, hmm? I bring you home, put a roof over your head, help you escape from that sly lad and this is how I’m thanked? Have I not fulfilled your desire? No…? Yes…?” He turned his head back and forth, the scent of his breath spreading over the room by her, the odor of the pipe. He made himself comfortable, the bed I was on shifted lightly to his center, and he leaned in closer. “You going to answer me, darlin’ or do I have to share my sense with you too?” His stone features glared onto me, the wrinkles in his forehead like a shifting cliff, skin so dried and folds so deep I waited for them to shift and fall apart to a smooth, raw surface. The smoke overtook me and I coughed. I was nearly ready to vomit from it all, the smoke and the vile nature of his worked body. “Spit in my face, you spit in my face too. Truly. You know, that’s the thing with you people, all you people. Ingrates, truly.” he continued on. I might have let loose spit when I coughed, but it was too much. He tilted his head left slightly, his features calm and still. Before anything could be known or realized his hand slapped over my mouth and pushed. I panicked, I screamed, I ran, all in my mind I tried to escape. On the bed, bound, I struggled to no end, as he grabbed me and hurt me. He might have been an inch from my face. I just couldn’t do anything. “Now listen here, missy. You’re in my home now, and you’ll show me some respect or be damned by the gods themselves.” The calm of his face changed as suddenly as he moved, now cracked all around with dark valleys fuming with anger. The pipe he had dropped from his mouth and he was looking close into my eyes, his own dark and abysmal… He hovered over her, a lion ready to finish off its prey before a well sought feast. His massive weight held her down, her limbs flailed to no resolve bound by weakness. He bared his fangs and sank them into her deep, “You’re mine now, you hear me? And you’ll show me damn respect!” He pulled his hand away and cracked her across her head. In the coming seconds, the right side of her face began to turn red. Her eyes, streaming with tears and horror looked on as if in a haze to the wall. He grabbed her hair and pulled her attention back to him. Hurt, but not yet broken, she came to, and a rage innate filled her from lives past, a powerful essence of vengeance wanting to destroy, no, annihilate all which dare stand against her might, a might driven by the divine. She shook in her bonds, her teeth pushing together with pressure, and muscles tensed to lash out. Such a fury was felt from her eyes. He laughed. “Furious bitch, huh? I know just how to deal with your kind…I know just how to deal with ye’.” He got up, but stopped before he turned. He went to hit her again on the other side, and she screamed. The blow silenced her, and her other cheek began to glow scarlet. He took a few steps away rubbing his hand. He came back and leaned over for the pipe. She flinched back, her limbs still weakly pulling against the bindings. He laughed some more, “You’re not getting out of there! Ain’t no one been getting out unless I say so, and that sure as hell won’t happen so long as the boss says so.” The sickness of him radiated in scent as he settled by her again. “Now dear, I don’t think I’ve ever formally welcomed ye’ to your new home here in Sunberth. We’re running a business down here, you and me. I work the front desk and you, well you’ll see.” He let out a light chuckle at a thought, “I’m plenty sure Kostaja will break you in mighty fine like… That boy’s like a son to me some times. Does me proud to see a young man of such stature, the confidence, the physique! Oh and does he have a way with the employees…” and so his stale laughter trailed off. The lighting was growing darker with the setting sun, to which Valorae took a great notice for it was Syna who moved across the sky and was leaving her behind again. “Syna…” she muttered in the same common tongue as Malum. “What’d’ya say girly? Hmm, what?” and came in closer again, leaning on top of her. She tried to bury her face down into the bedding, but his head followed her, almost as if trying to be a comfort. She was crying, and had been crying since he first brought her back, left to calm in his absence, and revved up again when he’d hit her. “Now you’re gonna’ tell me or I’ll be force to hit ye’ again, you understand me? Hmm. Now what’d you say?” She whispered her name again, though hopes of an answer were let down. He laughed, “Syna! That lovely lady in the sky, ha! She can’t see you down here lass, no one can! No one ever has, and if they did… well they were probably a payin’ customer! Syna, oh that’s rich. I hope you don’t expect me to think you’d be Syna, hmm, with your weird horns and what not! What are these damn things anyway.” Foolishly, Malum touched things he shouldn’t. He had wrongfully touched many in his work, whether it is sweeping them off into the shadows of his basement, a beating or corruption of the innocent and undeserving. It’s a damn miracle he hasn’t been struck dead yet, but it only proves to show the passion and caution he takes in his work. Like Valorae there were others, all suffering at the hands of some undeserving man. It was incidents like this that aided Sunberth in its reputation as such a shit hole on the face of Mizahar. Anarchy was only the tip of the iceberg; the whole of evil without order of law ran low and deep. Within the darkness of the underground, beneath Malum’s home, this fact reigned true. He took his hand and petted her hair, ultimately reaching for the windswept horns adoring her head like a coronet. She truly looked divine in her beauty, a light of her own to the darkness of the room. Would her light last the smothering though? Along the sleek form of her horn his hand went. His skin glided over what felt like glass, yet no amount of oil on his finger tips smudged their form nor caught his skin against it to a friction point. Unnatural was their design, and against all order was her being here, something Malum weakly grasped. Valorae couldn’t bury her head any deeper between her shoulder and the bedding. She was in such a terrified state that nothing made sense to her, internal or external. No past experience could reach out to her; the restraint was almost ethereal in nature, binding the body and soul. He clicked his nail against it, the material vibrating lightly at a frequency above his range. The horn, as it would seem, was wholesome in its fill, and as fragile as glass. He grabbed a hold of it and went to pull and break it. Before he had gained full strength to do so Syna left the sky with all but her blessing of the next day. The globe hovering on the horizon began to sink into the water over the mainland side. The hills around Sunberth casted a longer shadow until eventually all of the suns light upon the ground way a reflection from the clouds above. Syna had settled. Valorae’s pupils hidden under her lashes dilated and their color dimmed. Some indescribable sensation about the horn in Malum’s hand surfaced. He thought little of it until he saw the rest unfold. Valorae opened her eyes still turning in color and looked across the room; she could see her…Syna. She was calling for her lost child of the sun even as the night took over. Valorae reached out her hand, her extension caught by her binding. Malum glanced at her motion in confusion. Her blurred vision refocused on the present reality, and with them the iris expanded now with a hue of golden brown. From the dark of her pupils a sort of wave emitted, something fiery in nature much like a dying star in its final moments. She focused entirely as it left her iris and spread to her body. From her eyes her skin burned, a magical wave of sun splattered color changing her. The skin around her face burned away in an instant, soon flashing down the rest of her body. Malum pulled his hand away afraid to be burned. The ash color remains left by the wave flaked away from her face. The wave touched her scalp, and stole away the light of her hair, turning it dark, leaving it to look dry. Over her horns too it went, turning the snow white structures into black carbon waste. She tilted her head down, and Malum backed away again unaware of what had occurred. His new prize gone in an instant, burned to nothing. His hopes were renewed. The charred looking skin flaked away in an immeasurably thin layer as if scattered by the wind in the stillness of the room. Away from her body all around the ash lifted into the air and crumbled into dust soon to be lost in the air with nothing but tiny sparkles. The dryness of her hair shattered as she moved, leaving behind the natural oily-silk known of her earthbound race. Her horns too faded away, the blackness graying and fading, and soon disappearing as well. The voluptuous beauty of a Myrian at her prime lay bound and beaten in her place. Malum looked on with shock, awe, and fear of this unknown being. Many questions filled his head. Valorae turned to him and saw that fear, her eyes showing the root of all her fury – Myrian descent. He dared back to retrieve his pipe, then went up the stairs. The faint shutting of a door was heard; Malum had left for the night in search of comfort and answers. Valorae looked at her hand, changed again…she didn’t even notice the first night he brought her back and left her. In some relief of his fear she found comfort and rested for the night. She drifted off into slumber while Leth looked on high, too searching in vain for the disciple of his love. |
