Eighty-ninth day of Winter, 510 A.V."Come boy. We're going on a little journey."
At first, those words had served to only inflate his irrational feelings of sorrow and guilt. His mother, recently deceased, still hung heavy about his heart, but did little to touch his mind. She had been his mother in the physical aspect of birth, but nothing more than an invalid whose care was placed in his hands in every other case. The feelings that swelled within him were confusing which only served to put the young man on edge more so than he usually was. Thus, when his stoic father-only-in-title decided they were to go for an "outing" that day, Meville found himself struggling to force himself to obediently trudge behind the bent and twisted figure of the man who had raised him.
It had always struck him as a bit odd that his father was so very much older looking than those of the other children. If anything, his father was younger than a vast majority of the other parents, yet he moved, sounded, and seemed an elderly fellow with naught but a few years left before Dira came for him. Walking behind him now made it all the more apparent. Meville's blue eyes were clouded in thought, slowly following the curve and bend of the man's back as he moved ever forward into the endless snow. He had thought they were going to visit his mother's grave together. It was the only thing that really made any sort of sense given the situation. After all, they'd never left the house together for the last ten or so years. There was nothing else for the two of them to do, really. So when they passed under the gate, Meville felt a shiver of something more than cold run down his spine and prick at the corners of his mind. They'd never left the safety of Avanthal together. Never.
He thought he might voice his concerns to the stoic figure in front of him, but Meville found the act of forming words lost to him in his growing feelings of panic. Instead, he clenched his teeth, wrapped his cloak about him to better guard against the cold, and continued behind his father. Now, his eyes had regained a part of their glimmer, though the customary mischievous glimmer was replaced by that pale shimmer of fear. Glancing from the left to the right, making sure to keep his head still, Meville did his best to discern where they were headed and what they might do when they got there. The uniform blank slate of the snow did little to aid Meville in his increasingly desperate investigation. There were no signs of anything that might clue him into what was happening. If anything, the absolute lack of anything that stood out was counter-productive to his efforts.
Just when the feeling of foreboding reached its climax, Tomas held up a hand to signal they had arrived. Somehow, the gesture was enough to relax Meville enough that he no longer felt he had to tear at his skin and scream to the heavens. He still felt the irrational nervous fear from before, but now he was able to distract himself with his father's words as the man stared off into the distant, quickly darkening tundra.
"Do you understand what it is to live, boy?"
Meville knit his brow together in contemplation. He'd often used the words "to live", but when asked point blank what they meant...
"Do you understand... What it is to die?"
His eyes now began to burn with suspicion. Meville could feel his body becoming tense in preparation for... For what? He knew little of how his father's mind operated. What he did understand was Tomas was impulsive. He did what he wanted for no other reason than... Well, than that he wanted to. Meville supposed he was a bit like that himself. It was a strange realization to have in the middle of nowhere with the impending feeling of some kind of terrible doom looming over his head. Life was like that though: filled with unexpected tid-bits about seemingly nothing in the face of something great and terrible. What that was it meant to live? To die? To seek out those little treasures hidden within the darker folds of experience?
"I do not understand these things, boy."
The man now slowly turned to face Meville, his hollow eyes gleaming with a strange sort of excitement Meville couldn't explain. The gaze filled him with an oppressive sense of foreboding, but it held him there. He was, in a sense, too afraid to move. The very act of breathing became a losing battle as Meville's bright, scared eyes were drawn into the hollow orbs of his father.
"I do not understand, because I do not care. I do not understand, because while others waste their precious time understanding what it is to do what we're already doing, I have spent my time learning."
A bony hand reached out and latched itself onto Meville's chin with an eerie chill. He felt his head move side to side from the slight tremor of the other man's limb. His body had already broken out into a sweat, but the shivers he felt now were not from any kind of cold.
"Knowledge is everything. It is the only thing, boy. Without knowledge, we are nothing but sacks of meat waiting to be torn open and left to rot."
Upon the final word of his sentence, the bony hand moved back and returned with force upon Meville's cheek. The blow was surprisingly sharp, and the boney knuckles left a sting. He staggered back slightly, more out of surprise than anything else. His father continued in his rasping voice, advancing forward with a malice Meville had never before experienced.
"I refuse to rot, boy! I refuse! My mind... My mind will live on. My research... My knowledge... You will continue it. You will continue it, boy!"
Meville was now pressed against the trunk of a tree. The harsh texture of the bark dug itself into the palms of his hands where he pressed them into it. His father was only a few breaths away, gesturing wildly to emphasize whatever insane point he was trying to make. Meville's mind was too clouded by fear to make sense of what was being said. Instead, his panicked brain kept screaming out that he do something. What was that something? Meville's entire mental capacity was diverted to finding that answer. As Tomas continued his shambling advance, Meville let out shout of terror before shoving his projected arms out to defend himself, shutting his eyes as he did so. His attack was met with a terrible, bone-rattling laugh that emanated from where his father was.
"Good, good! But you're still weak. Too weak to become my legacy, boy!"
Meville felt an incredible grip begin to crush his projected wrists. He let out a cry of surprise as the arms were flung back at him to land helpless on the snow beside him. As if that were not enough, the strange sensation of fingers wrapping around his throat and head caused Meville to begin whimpering now that his initial shouts had had no effect. The fingers extended themselves around his face, wrapping around and around until his entire body was constricted beneath the oppressive astral coil.
"I will teach you how to become stronger, boy. To be like me. To become me."
Slowly, Meville felt a strange tingling sensation dance about his skin. It was almost relaxing. In fact, it was alluring. His body strained against the coils not to free itself, but instead to experience the feeling more, as if his bonds were somehow lessening the feeling. Quickly, the sensation changed from one of mysterious allure to pain. It shot through his body like lightning across the sky. His skin felt as if millions of tiny creatures were all vying for freedom through each of his pores, tearing they way though with minuscule claw and tooth. His screams sounded distant, removed from the unbearable agony of his Djed being forcefully removed from his body.
He kept waiting to pass into unconsciousness, to fall into the open arms of his unfeeling, dream world. That never came. It felt as though his very soul were being torn to shreds, blended, and sucked out through his skin. All the while, his father's laughter filled his ears louder than his own screams. The coils seemed to tighten with each passing second, as if squeezing the Djed out of him to hasten the process. Tears streamed down his face, but the customarily warm sensation of the liquid passing from his eyes down his cheeks was replaced with a burning agony. They felt like streams of fire tearing at his skin as they found their way down his brutalized face. Even the cool feeling of the snow he now realized he'd fallen into burned him with an acidic sting that only served to compound upon his agony.
Images flashed before his eyes. They were strange, terrifying pictures of monsters and beasts twisted and writhing upon the ground. His mother was there too, her screams joining in with his own in a terrible cacophonous symphony. He tried to reach out towards her, to comfort her despite his own unending anguish, but snakes wrapped around him, digging their venomous teeth into his already flayed skin. He tried to call out to her, to alleviate the pounding raucous throb of their voices with a single, kind word, but it was to no avail. The snakes filled his mouth, tearing his throat to ribbons, destroying his cries and replacing it with a pathetic gurgle. The laughter grew then. This time, it came from the beasts, his mother, his father, himself. It grew louder and louder, filling his entire being with that rattling, hoarse tone that scraped against his ears like glass upon glass. The pain began to fade, and with it so too did his vision. The color faded into and out of each other, dancing in the dimming light until there was nothing but darkness. Cold, unrelenting darkness. Yet, in that, Meville found some semblance of peace.
"Do you understand... What it is to die?" |
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by Meville Brightshade on August 7th, 2013, 10:40 pm 
