Warmth
"So don't let the world bring you down.
Not everyone here is that f--ed up and cold.
Remember why you came and while you're alive,
experience the warmth before you grow old…"
- The Warmth, Incubus (From Make Yourself, 1999)
1.
He dons his coat, then shuffles his shoulders to fit into the tightness of the fur-lined inside. He has become too accustomed to snowstorms in middle of March after centuries of hiding in the north.
But now he reminds himself he is now a southerner. A vagrant, a dirty winter rat no more, with more than just frost and ice for a horizon. There is no more need for him to flex his powerful sinews to emphasise his desire for a greater portion or for the aimless sake of territory, he convinces himself. There is no need for dirty tactics either. There is no need for exercising control over bloodthirsty, awakened hounds which are such a pain to discipline. And, most of all (as he truly believes) there is no need for war. He waits at his doorpost and honestly – echoes – with – all his heart – that it is time to beat his sword into a sickle.
Nonetheless, it is too early in all of this to get philosophical: he shrugs his bare shoulders loose from his overcoat as he steps outside. The sun spills over them, casting his shadow in sharp, steep relief as it billows from behind. He knows the warmth is prickling him, but he cannot really feel it, being who he is.
So he sighs. And treading into the fields, his barebacked figure glossy in the high noon, he goes in search for a stream to wash the blood from his hands.
2.
He has always been able to picture himself committing the sins he has for so long been in denial over. Only today, they seem more poignant. More vivid and actively real. As he scrubs the crimson wisps of skin from underneath his fingernails and from between his thighs, he sees some of them, occupying the space in between land and blue, blue sky:
He waits at the empty, ravished part of town. His face, with all its genetically-altered imperfections, he stows away in the crumbling stem of half-light growing from nearby houses. The stench, the impulse brooding under his skin, compels him to leave the safety of solitude and seek out human company. He knows he must act like a human, or else he will attract too much attention.
Careful to straighten his back and smile, he strolls into a tavern – a tavern which he thinks looks like any other from any town in the south (dilapidated, sleazy, dark, smelly etc etc.) – and plants himself at a vacant table. At the sight of humans he requests himself to suppress his other, distressing urges. Instead, he tries to make himself believe he will be content with the fire-coaxed setting of the tavern – and a mouthful of the blandest alcohol he has ever laid his lips upon.
No one has noticed anything untoward, but he has been into places like this many times over. So he recognizes the locals' eyes on him and their tongues unfurling in suspicion of his stranger-ness. But he, a warrior, will not be cowered: as he sips from the grail, he removes his blade, and lifts it in full view of the occupants and adjusts it, as he would an innocent table setting.
There is an immediate hush, a strangling of static noise – only for it to resume in the usual tavern chatter moments after. His grin he conceals with another swig; he knows a slight display of power will deter drunken aggression from bored townspeople against outsiders. But, tonight, as his longings tell him, he is not content just to leave this town to its own devices.
His eyes therefore inevitably wander to a secluded corner of the tavern – its feature attraction, not meant to be acknowledged by those morally upright enough to possess the powers of acknowledgement. He, as he understands, cannot describe himself as a moral person. Do the Awakened have morals? Do they observe ethics? He watches the shadowed movements of the bright-skinned women who linger on customers and immediately reaches his own conclusion:
They do not.
He infers the town has fallen on hard times (he recalls overgrown fields barren without productive crop on his way to the town) and the only business its inhabitants have to offer is the trade of drink and flesh. A girl with a black-eye tries to cajole a drunk customer; another, he feels, has her dress low enough to charge his already blood-burning hunger for a different kind of flesh than he usually partakes of.
Finally he decides he is done with just watching. Seizing his sword, he crosses the tavern in several broad strides, and he goes up to the nearest of them. He brushes he hand against her cheek, the touch of human skin static, charged, pulsing; he feels the raw blood slipping through his fingers and into his palette. His body responds: a pinch in a region below his torso, a reckless escalation of appetite.
He asks her how much.
And he fastens his hand on the back of her neck as she leads him to the inn which would be somewhere beyond. The brooding pulsating desire to satiate his carnal need for entrails catches him at that exact moment; but he obscures it with the thought of this venture. Need, he thinks, must sometimes give way to periods of indulgence.
3.
Memory jolts him. The dissolution of red and pale water reminds him of something else also:
A road, a trade route; he is walking triumphantly out of a town. He cannot remember where exactly, but he knows, as always, he is in the south. He sees the sun forcing its red smear over the hills which dwarf the road, and he looks from the horizon to find himself apparently cornered by four warriors.
They are all women. Fair ladies would be a better definition. He knows he is actually surprised that his former employers have replaced him with an army of the yoma-contaminated who look no older than farm girls. He eyes their armour. Dressed to kill has taken on a new meaning for him.
They block the road: two behind and two from his front. There are no other travellers on this deserted stretch. He understands this ambush is deliberate, well-planned and meant to keep his slaying as quiet as his former employers think they can calculate it to be. But the girls interest him; they also make him conscious he is underdressed, his shirt torn and a greater part of his torso showing. Still he decides, callously, to wait for them to make the first move.
One of the warriors detaches herself from formation. She is blonde, lean, childishly petite (if he thinks such a phrase exists) with one long braid of hair looped like a noose around falling from the back of her head. The armour has, on the contrary, softened her, for behind her splaulders and braces of iron, he notices the bare flush of skin at her neck, the slender strips of muscle crisscrossing her triceps, the dimpled stub of flesh showing from the base of her throat.
"Awakened One Isley," she addresses him. "We come on the orders of the Organization to –"
Take me down, he knows.
"For your crimes as an Awakened Being against humans. We recommend you submit quietly. Or else we will resort to force."
He laughs, throwing at her his biggest smile. If bedding harlots in backwater towns is an offence against humanity, he would gladly accept his guilt, he ventures.
"We don't accommodate your excuses," the warrior replies. At her order, all four draw their Claymores. At the sight of the blades, he feels the twitch of nostalgia: he has not touched a Claymore since his disastrous defeat and conversion. Surely as a creature born-again he does not need steel or iron to kill, he reasons, but the pang of memory stings him, ever so slightly.
"Draw your weapon, yoma," she orders him.
He honestly answers he does not possess one.
"Then we'll finish this quick and clean," she nods at him. Her eyes betray – what – relief? "Thank you for your cooperation –"
He holds up his hand. Not so fast, no so fast. He gestures at the one who has been giving the commands thus far. He inquires her name.
Her eyes demean him, her reaction that of inconvenienced annoyance: "A creature facing death does not need to know his slayer's name."
He smiles once more, then comes up with a proposition too enticing for her to refuse: if you lose, he requests, will you tell me your name?
All the four warriors laugh; at the same time they approach him with blades drawn in a stance he cannot identify. The blonde, lean, childishly petite one smirks at him.
"Over my dead, awakening body," she swears. "I make no promises with vulgar male yoma."
He sincerely wishes that it should not have come to this. But as the warriors all close in around him, instinct readies a steady flow of unhealthy energy flowing from his inside. The excitement warms him. And he issues a final warning to the warrior he has been conversing with:
The next time you answer another of my requests, all your friends will be dead. And I will have you answer me in the affirmative.
4.
He recalls Rigardo's crude regimental slang about women – a maxim too frequently uttered during their free roaming days at the pinnacle of the Organization's elite: in the dark, all women look the same.
So when the tavern-girl leads him up into the room, he insists he light the single taper sitting forlorn beside the grimy bed. At the sight of light (or is it just his presence?) he senses insects and vermin creep out of the room. Like many others he has been into, it is of staple height, width and quality: it is less a room, than it is a suitable station for quick satisfaction.
The tavern-girl is too young. Too quiet. Too mechanical. She knows the routine: she leads him to the bed, ensures he is comfortable, and stands to undress. In one deft pluck of her fingers, he sees her erase all fabric from her skin, and he takes in a view of her shadowed skin, the graffiti of scratch marks mapping her torso from other customers, her bones showing like scales along the entire curve of her figure. She throws her hair back; presumably, he thinks she wants him to see her face.
Her first kiss, he assesses, is equivalent to sucking a carcass. Her second is, taking into account her atrocious acting, even worse. Fearing he will get no amusement tonight, he seizers her by her shoulders, gently lifts her up and assembles her on the moth-holed bed. He waits, and kisses her hand, putting on his most gentle, relaxed touch. Women, regardless of profession, are to be treated with the utmost modesty and respect, he believes.
She startles, but he places a second kiss on her hand, making him seem as if he is waiting for her permission to continue. He asks her name.
"Elsa." Her single breath is hurried, obviously unsure, afraid.
He tells her to drop the pretense. He repeats the first question and, as encouragement, brushes the matted locks of her out of her eyes so she can see him better in the miserable light.
"Alia, daughter of Talib of Aluccur."
One sentence is all it takes for him to know many things: she is a Southerner, she is several days' journey from her hometown and, most of all, she has a beautiful name. Alia. Ginger.
He proceeds, shakily, to ask of her family.
"The yoma killed them."
And here is the stringent, absolute irony about reality, he tells himself, and like many times before he knows even before he makes love to this girl, he is guilty of both the sins of commission and omission. As a human he cannot save; as a monster he cannot be redeemed. He stares into the thin, skeletal face and can only quietly stroke her forehead, as if he is too afraid to commit himself to do anything more.
"You are different."
He wants to laugh, but now is not the appropriate time for epiphanies. Instead, he sees this time the girl initiates: there is the mandatory uncovering of his upper body, and the arduous stripping of his pants. She struggles to remove them, and while waiting he pulls her to him, breathing deeply into her foul, unwashed dirty red hair.
She hesitates, her hands fastening onto his shoulders, and once again he decides to take control: he raises her carefully, and rotates her under him. He releases a miniscule burst of his intense, foreign energy. And he sees her eyes widen. He shifts his weight, and feeling comfortable he fixes his stare, right into her blank dim eyes, until the sweat that lubricates their moving bodies paints her face the luminous colour of dazzling moonlight –
Until she hangs onto him as if he is the only buoy on the dark, murky expanse of their uncovered bed.
5.
He does not need to awaken. He does not even need to transform his famous longbow left arm.
As all four female warriors come in at him, he swiftly moves out from the reach of their swords – one-two-three-four – slipping past their bundling, clumsy strikes. He wants to mock them for their careless swordplay and tactics, but he thinks insults would further distract them from performing at their best – a performance he, Isley, the greatest swordsman the Organization ever had, is sincerely interested to see.
One swings her Claymore right at his face. But he catches the cumbersome blade with his right hand. Its edge stings his fingers. He feels the prickly sensation of a wound. And with his free hand he hits her chin with a lateral uppercut so strong her neck snaps backwards.
The grip on the Claymore goes limp.
Now he has a blade; falling into stance he sees the other three approach, carefully now, their eyes flashing between the blood-tinted Claymore in his hand and their injured comrade. He dons another all-knowing smile, drops the sword and before it even hits the ground, the other three seize the opening to cut him down.
One-two-three. He dodges all their blows. One injects yoki into her moves. He spins away from her furious attempt to sever his head. In mid-air, he pummels a fist into her stomach. A muscle gives way. He forces his hand right through her torso until he feels drenched in a watery, wet blood-shower.
Warmth enfolds his hand. But he tosses the body aside, and asks whether they still want to continue.
"You filthy monster!"
As a third rushes at him, covered by the final warrior immediately behind, he decides to finish them as painlessly as possible. He speeds up and the warriors overreach with their swords. One-two. He aims for the back of their heads, sweeps the final two warriors off their feetand lunges at them as they fall.
He puts enough yoki in his fingers to make them stiffen and strain. Like a pitchfork he punches them down, elongated, into the warriors' faces. Four-three-two-one. The last warrior struggles to stand, but he has brought his hand down, and the pleading grip on his arm, like that of a persistent lover, diminishes.
He picks up a Claymore. Strolling over to where the victim of his uppercut is trying to stand, he kicks her in the ribs, smashes his heel into her neck and then rolls her over so she is facing him. He settles his right foot over her throat. When she chokes, he applies weight.
You did not have to be belligerent, he tells her. You could have just told me your stupid name.
He feels disgusted that he needs to oblige his own promise. The act of torturing a lady – what more a warrior of his former allegiance – really goes against all his own principles.
He tells her not to scream. To be safe he stuffs his foot into her mouth. And, swinging the Claymore, he shears her of her arms and legs at the bone; he clips the limbs with the gentility of a butcher, her armour splitting into pieces where the force of his cleaving skill overwhelms it. He feels her teeth clamp into his toes. When he finally removes them, she has run out of breath. She is crying; veins, spidery and hideous, are starting to overtake her face.
He sits, straddling her chest. Stroking her tears away and asks for what is the last time:
"Will you tell me your name now?"
Her canine teeth turn into razor sharp jaws. But she is human enough to cry out with a monstrous, man-voice her name.
Elsa.
But it is too late. He has already moved with the sword. With one stroke he allows her to pass on honourably as a human.
He stands there. He wants to question the headless corpse. Elsa? Elsa? Elsa? Alia? What? How? Who? Where?
He knows he has been provoked, ruthlessly even. But he still buries all of them by the wayside. The dead should be respected, the correct rites must be observed for the fallen. He even arranges their Claymores in a neat, artistic single file.
6.
It is morning now. Sunlight stumbles in haphazardly from the creaking window where he, cross-armed, his bare skin alight with the morning, watches the street below. He sees the multitudes of townspeople, going about their sorry, sordid business under the weight of his gaze. The drapes stir; he senses movement on the bed behind him. He realizes he is blocking the breeze.
He adjusts his jaw, finds the cracked surface skin of his lips, moistened by her numerous kisses the night before. His fingers betray the faint discolouration of blood, but the girl behind him continues to swim under the covers of bed, apparently undaunted and awake.
He sighs. Here comes the hard part.
He stands such that he is completely obstructs the light, causing the room to fall into claustrophobic gloom once more. The taper has long burned out, a greasy tooth of wax and dirt threatening to dislocate from its perch by the wall. Under the dagger of the burnt out candle, the girl breaks surface from beneath the swirling sea of unraveled clothes and bedspreads. She looks at him. He thinks she gazes as a fish would look at an angler, having been dragged up from the depths to face the unearthly.
"You are different," she repeats. "You are not human."
He does not want to dwell on that revelation. He points to his armour and his sword.
Take them, he tells her, and buy yourself out of this brothel and find a husband, because I have no other money to pay you.
She continues to stare. Perhaps she does not know even how to say thanks. But he is getting uncomfortable, and he does not want to stay, fearing he might find an appetite that would cause him to commit a greater atrocity than fornication. He fishes his coat from the bed. He is heading for the door and then – "no" – her hand latches onto his arm, like a desperate final lifeline.
"No. Stay with me."
He turns his head away. In his previous life, he and Rigardo have had many philosophical takes on this moment. Can a Claymore warrior know true love? Can a woman fall in love with the yoma-touched? Will a strumpet be anything more than a whore? But now, here in this crummy, seedy inn in the middle of nowhere, he stares back, tempted sorely by the morally illogical and the emotional pull that arm, touch and invitation itself exert. She pours kisses on his arm; she laps at his girly thin fingers as if they are a delicacy; she squirms close to that single arm he has yet to retract, nuzzling in her bosom like a second heart. He cannot look: should he have stared into that face, elf-like in its scrawny beauty, with its eyes finally open – he would have succumbed to the obvious choice.
How he wishes he would have been free to make that choice!
Instead he tears her arm away from him and puts on his tattered coat. He hears her cries to stop but he is already out the door and down the stairs. Only when he is clear of the glares of the innkeeper and his regular drunk customers does he curse, swear and blaspheme the heavens for his existence.
Out of pretense he walks warily into the ruined fields where, surrounded by rotting wheat, he tries to cry. He has been through this many times before – real warriors do not cry, says his old friend Rigardo – but, he reasons, he is not a man. And he waters the drought-stricken field with tears as elusive as precious stones.
Later, he tries to contain himself when the four warriors mock him, but he overwhelms them. As he beheads the leader, he finds her name too familiar for chance to manipulate.
7.
So, standing in the southern field dissolving the bloodstains in the running water, Isley stares at the blank horizon made blurry by the noontide heat. He scrubs at the blots on sides of his pants, scrapes the toughest spots from the gloss of his fingernails and then, in a moment of thoughtlessness, dunks his head underwater and arises, as if he has been cleansed by the flow of cool, pure artesian spring water.
When he parts his dripping tresses, his vision opens like the curtains of an ethereal window, taking in the eternal stretch of fields and the miracle of their harvest.
But he fails to see that his cleansing stream has turned into a fountain of crimson.
He takes the trail back to the place where he had last left his sane self. As he enters the doors he truly wonders if he should have forsaken the idea of women, dropped the thought that a creature – a truly hideous and devastating one – like himself could ever be satisfied with anything other than the devouring flavour of human entrails.
Yet on the bed, in a flower of bloodstains, she looks at him meekly, and he remembers that they are not finished for today. Her body bears the savage marks of his lovemaking: marks, which will heal, and are – honestly speaking – a trifle cost to pay considering she has been unfaithful many times over. At the end of their bargain, is it not just an endless battle (life is a battle anyway) for who finds the most satisfaction out of this game?
She crawls to the light, to him. Isley settles her down: a frail figure; he clasps the thinness of her shoulders with one palm, and curls the rest of his frame around her. His dripping wet body, still drenched, feels the warmth of their proximity shoot through him, from the pits of his shoulders to the slick stream of his chest.
But the first word she utters is "Raki?"
Likewise he thinks of Alia, and then Elsa, and then – no more faces. There are too many. Too many to even list by name. He is an honourable man, he believes, who will act faithful even though she chooses not to. Neither does he wish to think how a human can conquer blinded the steep hillside of a misguided agape love, while he an immortal in all his powers, cannot even mount the first slope. Even after centuries of mountaineering.
What Raki does not know cannot hurt him, he reasons. Then bites down hard over her mouth to smother the vile pronunciation of that name.
Thanks to Yosei & Hell for comments that helped to shape this fic. This is one of the rare few times I've tried writing using present-tense.
Edited: 02.10.2008.