There was once a child, and that was where it all went wrong.
This child was at once extremely intelligent and deeply flawed. To put it simply: most children are warned not to run with scissors or play with fire or jump off cliffs, because they are judged to be capable of doing those things. This child was instead warned not to leave the bottle of sleeping-gas uncorked, to always remember to sew the chest back up once you've returned the heart to its proper place, and to make sure the shackles are sturdy.
On reflection, the fault was probably with the parents, who were both rather flawed, and clever to boot. One was a metaphysician, the other a philosopher whose work involved the exact location of the soul, and many a malpractice suit had been filed regarding the little dissections used to try and determine this. Such people, one would think, were severely unsuited to creating, and raising an infant, so that was exactly what they did.
Yes. It was mostly the parents' fault.
Of course, the real blame could be put upon the man who set fire to the house, with all its inhabitants still within. A child shouldn't watch its parents being burnt to death while its own flesh is being singed, stink of rot vibrant in the air, so that was exactly what happened.
Years pass. The child grows, remaining both sharp and dull, and the child has discovered the secret of avoiding death. The child (for the child can never, will never grow) makes use of it instantly, first on itself, then on the corpses that have been exhumed from his parents' graves. Disgustingly sick, twisted,cruel experiments are perpetrated, the sort that should never be done – and so, of course, they were.
The child continues its research, looking for the soul. As time drags on, its body deteriorates past recognition, removing the last trace of humanity from its flesh (though it's not like it was ever really human in the first place, as a human could never fall that far, which is exactly why it did), so it repairs itself with metals and the like.
The bird-like mask of the plague-doctors is what its face has become, and the idea is appealing to the overgrown infant. The plague did not discriminate, and it was by sheer luck that the survivors survived. Neither, thus will the child discriminate, nor let anything but chance spirit away its captives. For there will be captives.
There will always be captives, for the child who is so far gone that hope is impossible (and therefore isn't), the child who is determined to find the route to the soul, to find the soul itself, and when it is found, to destroy it, because this is a Quest, and the child will do anything at all to end it. Nothing can stand in the way of the child, can impede the twisted-metal logic.
The search is begun, and nothing is safe.
A/N: I do quite enjoy the Nye.
~Mademise Morte, November 8, 2010.