Written for a friend over on tumblr. I think I should mention that this has a particularly dark theme hanging over it. A bit different than how I usually write.
Forde sensed the urge before it claimed him. Usually, that was not the case.
He moved at ease through the field, too quick for someone who wasn't aware of their every move, who didn't keep their eye trained on the camp and their sword in hand. Monsters lurked in these forests, beyond the hills and out of sight; he could feel them, he could see their eyes watching him across the plateau of dying grass stained red from the battle earlier, and if it weren't for the steady torchlight at his back, Kyle's quiet steps behind him as he followed heels on heels, Forde wasn't sure if the force ever would have been able to root him in place for long. He stopped periodically though, lagged to peer at a tree into the darkness where darkness stared back, searching, always searching, and pondered the circumstances of his situation.
The driving need just wouldn't let up. The urge to lay the canvas against his thighs from a high point, to scan the vista and watch the rain coming in the distance; the urge to mark that first brush stroke against the white linen was overwhelming. He knew before he joined the army it'd be an issue. It'd be a distraction, his younger brother had said, too young to know and too smart for his own good. Forde had offered light-hearted protests, ruffled his younger sibling's sandy hair and reached for the bag of oils and paints and other noxious smelling toxins that was more steadying than the sword at his side, and it was ironic to think, that the once beautiful picture he'd created on the very same canvas and painted over for reuse since then, his brother would never get the chance to see again.
He shivered. This field, this awful place, this forsaken country—they were all infested with him, and it was him, the monster of the night that had taken all he'd ever held close. The green fields—they ran red; the rivers, laced with mud and debris; friends, torn apart by their enemies. Him, the Demon King—Forde had felt the tugging on his chest for weeks now, ever since Franz's unfortunate departure. He hadn't really slept. It was a wonder he could trudge through the fields at all during this time of night, wake Kyle and carry the necessary tools for creation with him with ease, and still manage to lose himself in his own delusions that this was a necessity to wander and face the universe's greater puzzles in the dead of the dark.
And perhaps, to an extent it was—but there was nothing really easy about it. No, he was just aware. He saw, he observed, and when the vista flashed against his lids, the beasts took humanoid ships and his teeth chattered like heels grating on stone, his hands moved of their own accord, his will to forever preserve that imagery engrossed in the paints and the colors that could only offer him freedom in this way. But now—that was ruined. There was nothing beautiful to paint. There was nothing to see. The Demon King had infested him, his art, his painter's brush and his sculpting tools and the water that ran down his throat was dry and only made everything ache, much like his burning muscles and torn clothing and dented armor. There was no escaping this monstrosity that had sprung forth. If Forde could not outrun it, if he could not deny its claims for his soul, the very wit he'd prided himself on—than he would make the best work of it Magvel had ever seen.
Grado was in ruins, a nation brushed aside with the turning of a wheel and a desire for something that could not be dealt with accordingly. It was greed, desire, a human wish that had sent the world to hell—and Forde felt the rage that boiled under his skin nearly everyday since. His back hit the tree with an aggression he hadn't felt since his father died, when as a child everything was hypersensitive and the drop of a thumbtack was like jumping into sea water. It hit him with a crash, and the urge washed over him like the tidal waves that wrecked Frelia's coasts one year, large and sharp and demanding and relentless—a persistent pounding against his skull; the thumbtack dropped to the floor again, a dull little brown thorn in a room of precious merchandise.
Except, this was nothing precious. No, human life was precious, but the people that had caused their own destruction were not. Forde unconsciously ran his hands along the back of his skull, checked for the tell tale signs that his head had finally split open from the concern clinging to his body like a second skin. But there was nothing, and when he woke again, Kyle was sitting outside his tent with a stony expression of perplexity he had not witnessed but once, and suddenly his stomach shifted, his jaw ached, and the urge nearly knocked him off his feet again when he crawled out from beneath his pile of warmth.
The Demon King was taking everything, corrupting what it saw and taking what it could, eating the world away one nation at a time. And slowly, he himself was being consumed, taken from what was once a solid reality into an eternal day dream between surrealism and a horror that shouldn't be happening.
Forde stumbled about his tent, brushing hair out of his eyes when he saw it, the calling that had brought him to where he really didn't want to be.
It was like—no, he was there in the room with him, him painted black with red eyes and large limbs like the bark of a tree and the corpses of his comrades in arms buried up to his neck, their carcasses an armor for the man that shouldn't exist. But he's here, he can feel him, and when Forde's hand brush against the canvas, the rough splotches of pain and the impossibility that is there, lurking beneath the layers, he finds there is a dangerous gift in painting those that should not be.
He tells himself not to think, not to react, throw it in the fire when they camp in the evening and burn the curse away from it like what would be proper—like what would be the smart thing to do. But then, there's another side of him, a stranger Forde to the familiar one gesturing and prompting him to keep it, and he had red eyes and darker hair and wields a sword that runs through it's scabbard and digs down into the earth blow, churning the soil to dust and laying waste to fields and life and what is the human privilege to live and let live.
Forde feels the power, the reluctance, the sickness eating at him. A little bit longer, he tells himself, and it'll be over soon. Ephraim will follow through—he'll remove the sick bastard who took his brother with ease, and when he does—when the king is gone, the nightmares will fade. Canvases will no longer be something to fear, the easy comfort and easy smile that once came so naturally will leak back into his life, and there will be something bright at the end of this walkway. He will move on from this, with his brother's ghostly comforts and his sanity, or not.
But it's dark now, another night another evening of being pushed and pulled in every direction, and he's stumbling, not sure where to place his feet that'll keep him on the bank, steady and paced—and far away from the edge. He's unsure, his confidence is slipping, and Forde's heart pumps a little faster at the linen no longer white that stares at him with fervent eyes in his arms.
The fear is a constant. It is a dull ache, and the urge—a burning desire. It will never leave his side, and until he is removed, his soldiers are cut down and the world falls back on its axis, things will never be the same. Forde doesn't need his art to tell him, or the Kyle pacing outside his tent digging holes with his feet, or Ephraim's expression that says it's too much too much too much, or Franz's lifeless eyes as Forde shakes his shoulders again and again and again with an expectancy he holds of people far too often –
No, it's intuition, an estimate, nothing stable—but it'll have to suffice as his will until there's nothing left to fear. Until, he see's this nightmare through to its end. Until, white linen is white like it should be. And until, there is nothing left to think twice about.
Because there is a lot to fear in the dark—and the Demon King is only one among many.
There will be no sleep tonight.