THE BEGINING
by Pandora
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If you have not seen the entire series of Escaflowne, I reccomend not reading this tale. If you have, read on.
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The form with the pale, purple hair laid unmoving on the laboratory table. Selena was asleep, and she was dreaming. Above her, the sorcerers were filling syringes with fate-altering injections."Shall we do it now, doctor?" asked the young nurse, his face wide with amazement and curiosity at the experiments they were preforming.
Dr. Gustavian nodded. "Go ahead, Dallen."
Dallen put the glistening needle tip to Selena's throat and injected the illicit potion.
I had been running in a field with my brother when they took me. I had cried out for Allen, but the people had been too fast, and he had not been able to save me. They put me in a room all by myself and made me live there. I wanted my brother, I wanted my mother, I wanted to see my friends, but the only people I saw were the evil men who gave me shots. Every night, they would come and put the stuff inside my veins, and I would be thrust into insanity for a few hours. The first time it happened, I tried to set myself on fire. Restraints and violence had been necessary to keep me calm, and the dose had been less the next night.
They were calling me back, and my memories were fading. Brother.....do I have a brother? Who is Allen? Where am I?
I opened my eyes and realized with a panic that I couldn't move. I screamed, and pulled and tried to twist away. There were leather binds on my hands and wrists, and there were men peering down at me. I could see their lips moving as they spoke to one another, but I could not hear them over my own voice. One of the men, the doctor-he put his gloved hand over my mouth, pressing my jaw so tightly shut that I could not bite him. How terrifying this was......his face...his face was melting. Slowly, his nose was turning to liquid and sliding towards the floor. My eyes could only stare. I think I tried to scream again.
"She should be hallucinating now," said the doctor to Dallen. "Hook the mind-reading device up to her and find out what she sees."
Electrodes were pasted to my head, and I felt a jarring jolt of electricity bolt through all my bones and blood. My heart was pounding and I could feel sweat all over me. It was as if everything in my mind was being pulled through a cord and out of my head.....my thoughts, my memories....the melting faces......
The fear was being pulled from me as well.
The young one stared with fascination at the monitor, seeing his own face sizzling in a flame. "THIS is what she sees?"
The doctor nodded. "Yes, I think she is developing her choice of weapon."
"Weapon, sir?"
"Yes. Images of people burning are what her mind conjures up when under the fate-alteration drug."
I stopped my struggling and pondered their words. A weapon? I looked to the doctor with his dark eyes and his shaded face.
"Selena?" the man asked.
I did not answer. I did not know of whom he meant.
The doctor smiled. "Ah, good, we have rid you of your former personality. From now on, you willl be a Lord, and your name will be Dilandau."
My expressionless lips formed the word. "Dilandau."
"Yes. Do you still see the fiery images?"
The world was hot and he was melting like a big ice-cream cone on a summer's day. I stared up at him and nodded.
"Good. I am going to release you now, and I want you to do everything I say. Can you do that for me, Dilandau?"
Again, I nodded, and the binds were taken from me and the doctor helped me to my feet. They led me to a room where I found a burlap bag about the size of a person. The young one, not the doctor, walked over to it and nudged the bag with his foot. "Let me go!" came a voice from inside the sack. I recognized the fear and my heart quickened with strange delight from it. "Take-take me out of here!"
A bucket was given to me. "Pour this onto him, Dilandau."
I walked forward and dumped the contents onto the person in the bag.
"Now burn him, Dilandau."
"Burn?" I looked up at the doctor, who was smiling at me encouragingly.
"Yes, burn him." The doctor took a torch from the wall and placed it in my hands.
I stared dispassionately down at it. The flames leaped and darted around the sconce, and I could feel the heat. My heart began to thump with pleasure as I stared into the fire. I looked down at the huddled and crying heap before me and tossed the torch onto it. Instantly, there was a ferocious blaze, and I smiled for the first time in my life; for when had I been alive before tonight? The doctor and his helper pulled me away from the burning man and out of the room. They let me watch through a window.
"What do you think, Dilandau?" asked the doctor.
I put my warm hands against the glass and smashed my face up against it so I could see better. "Burn...." came my voice, low and entranced. "You will die, you will burn......." His body rolled around on the floor, and I could hear his screams. I felt the two men massaging my back.
"That's good, Dilandau, very good. You have done very well for the Emperor."
I smiled, then chuckled a little bit. Burn-burn-burn....... "Burn, burn, burn!" I cried out happily. "Yes, oh yes, but you will burn!"
"Yes, he SHALL, Lord Dilandau, and he deserves it. You have done so very well. We must reward you."
But I did not need their rewards. For I had caused pain with my own hands. "Crackle his flesh, toast his ribs," I sang dementedly, "He will fry tonight. Burn, burn, burn......."
"Yes, Lord Dilandau, his life belongs to you."
We watched the flames until they died out completely. Then they dressed me in a suit of armor and gave me a jeweled headband for my hair. I was taken to what they told me was a Guymelef. I stared in awe at the colossal thing. "Beautiful," I whispered.
The doctor's young friend spoke then. "Yes, we can teach you how to use this Guymelef. With a tool such as this, whole villages can be burnt, and all in the name of peace and justice."
I could only grin. "Teach me."
And so Dilandau was born.
END