A/N: Thanks to all my readers for the hits and my loyal
reviewer for the reviews. I'd like to see some more reviews and I'm not
afraid to bust out the rueful finger again stand menacingly. Anyway,
keep reading start review and of course comments and (expecially)
critisms are appreciated.
The Fascinating Despair
By Breaeden Swordwind
Of course he knew someone was in there, he wasn't dumb. He could hear the sounds of battle, the screams of the dead and dying. It could only have been more beautiful if he was the one causing it. Alas, he was not and for now he had to content himself with imagining how it must look, some weak fool's blood splattering colors in seemingly random forms. For now he lost himself in the sounds of battle forget, for a moment, his pains and his coursing desire for revenge against the person who had stayed old Grim. He remember his own fights and how, during battles he felt were particularly easy, he would use the blood burst out of his victims chest after his first incision, let that blood fly through the air and land in ways that once the chaos had died would be akin to a painting. Once, for irony's sake, he had drawn a picture of a battle in the blood of those slain in war. It amused him.
He shook his head slightly, letting his stray thoughts fly off and smash themselves against the rocky ground. He had drifted for a moment and now the intruder appeared to be on the roof, at least that's what he supposed from the sounds of battle. He walked to where the Kirlsa Training Facility leaned supportively upon the adjacent cliffs. Leaping into the air he landed on top of a large nearby rock. He repeated this process up the boulder strewn cliff until he thought he had a good jump to the ledge of the facility. He was off, ever so slightly. He was not concerned, it would only require him grabbing the edge with his hand and he would be fine. It was when he realized instinct had made him reach with his left hand that he was concerned.
His left hand was dead. A memorial token of his ever-present weakness. It was covered up with a mantle of steel, arrogance but it was still there. It never got any stronger only more ignorable. At that haughty metal slammed against the edge but they did not grip the stone. There was no living muscle to dig the claws against the stone. He impacted against the wall and fell like a stone.
He managed to grab a hold of a ledge underneath an open window with his living hand. It had been a long time since he last remembered that he had been crippled. Normally, he could go about life and not really think about the fact that one of his hands was dead. Now, however, he could remember how rehabilitating the injury was. He could feel the advantages that everyone else had, the use of both arms, the world given him this disadvantage in order to keep him from completely dominate this pathetic world.
No! I received this arm because of my weakness, because of my failure. I'm the truest maggot and shouldn't even be alive but that I allowed someone of power to sacrifice his life for my pathetic one! He hated himself, hated his claw, hated his weakness, but he would never, ever, admit it to anyone but the air and even then he did not trust the air to keep its mouth shut.
With his right hand he pulled himself up on to the narrow ledge. He leaned back and sidled close to the rock wall and jumped to a crag and restarted his ascent to the summit. He reached the top with enough time to watch Shelby get finished off by the maggots. Beneath him were two female prisoners that were chained against the wall. He quickly ascertained what had happened.
Apparently Shelby, the promotion seeking maggot that he was had captured these two fleeing Crimson Blades and had decided to use them as bait to capture a bigger fish. The fish had indeed bitten but it proved to have more strength then Shelby and his personal entourage, no surprise there. It made him forget somewhat his failures to be able to watch those of another, weaker fool.
But what fish had sunk Shelby's boat? If he remembered the descriptions correctly then the two male fools were those fools that had crashed the object into Airyglyph the object that was still lodged in the city wall. If he felt like it he could easily capture the two men and return them to Airyglyph's custody and even kill a few Crimson Blades while he was about it. If he felt like it.
He didn't though. He was weak and would only prove that more so by attacking the tired and the captured. It would be better to let them rest up, have their temporary victory over the pathetic Shelby and then when they were in prime condition they could try and prove that they were better then him, try and prove that they were not maggots like so many, many others.
It was then that he turned his attention to the red-headed scum. Her back was turned so he could not discern who it was but the hair trickled through the cracks in his mind and dripped annoyingly that was buried deep beneath boulders. He smirked arrogantly, and decided to get their attention, "How fitting, once a maggot himself now he's food for the maggots." They all looked up at him towering above them, his dead arm resting comfortably on the hilt of his sword.
He finally got a view of the once face and that suppressed memory burst from its prisons. It was that scum that had saved him from his deserved death! His entire body itched for her death. He trembled with the desire to kill. His hate for her had not abated since that day, no it had grown stronger, more acute. His lusted to take that first blood as his claw tore threw her chest a paint a picture on the ground, a thousand splatters that spoke not in shape but in emotion, in ferocity. His knuckles whitened as they gripped his sword, his battlelust lapped at him as it had never done before. No one had insulted him in quite the way she did, giving him mercy like he was her ally, she had basically said that he was no threat to her people, that she could save his life and it wouldn't make a difference. He had trained harder after that incident then he had ever done before, and once his time came he hew his way across the fields of battle, leaving behind only silent bodies and his own burning rage to prove to her that he was the stronger maggot. That her Aquarian scum nation was nothing compared to him. At nights he would beat the walls of his room and tear the curtains from the wall in rage, he couldn't resist it. He was too weak to make a difference based on willpower so he sacrificed what little determination and grit he had to his wrath so that it burned with him and made him stronger.
He almost considered tossing aside his previous resolution of not attacking until the enemy had rested. It was so tempting to just unleash his fury on that red-headed…maggot! To tear her flesh, to drink her blood, to to to AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! He could barely hold himself back. No, he wouldn't be as weak as her. She would attack from behind if she felt her foe was evil so he would not. Besides, there was not evil. There was only the weak and the strong. And he would prove that even if he was not among the strong he was not as weak as her.
He finally dragged himself out of his stupor when he heard his name mentioned, "That gauntlet…your Albel Nox." Thanks maggot, yes, he was. He had never been proud of it but yes he was indeed Albel "the Wicked" Nox. Actually, he was somewhat proud of his nickname, it showed that the maggots of the world feared him, at least securing him a place as the greatest of the failures. It meant that all his training, both mental, physical, and emotional, had paid off at least a little.
He let his arrogance talk with almost no import from his mind. He did that a lot. Not particularly caring what he said as long as it got the annoying people away so that he could focus on more important tasks at hand. There were millions of maggots in the world and they would burn away your time if you let them, however, a slight unsheathing of the sword, some fiddling with his claw, or a haughty word was normally enough to scare them away and leave him to his depression.
He tuned into the conversation briefly only to get an ear full from one of the male fools about how Shelby, as his subordinate, was his responsibility. What a load of crap that was, and he told to uppity idiot so. To think some failure thinks that just because Shelby works under me I should support him. If Shelby wants to take hostages and lure in some executioners to cut short his pathetic life that was Shelby's responsibility not his. Albel should actually thank the pathetic fools and the insufferable girl for getting rid of the obnoxious fool.
Finally, he had taken as much trash spewing as he could from these maggots and decided to leave. Breaking of the "conversation" without a second word he leapt of from the Training Facility. Landing on the ground he made his way back to Airyglyph. He grinned maniacally. So she was alive. And she was someone with marginal skill in battle. This might be more amusing then he had anticipated. If he was right in assuming that the girl was leader of the Crimson blades as she seemed to be, her name was Nel Zelpher.
So that is what the creature Albel Nox had become. It had barely been human when she had saved his life, but then it was a sort of pathetic look. Now it was a monster, Hardly caring about the lives and deaths of others. She wondered what had happened to it to change it from the sniveling suicidal boy to clawed man-slaying monster. It made her wonder whether her actions had made it what it was. She thought it had been an outburst more of emotion then of thought when it had said "You have dealt a grievous and unforgivable wound to my pride today by saving my life. For this insult I will one day kill you and all your people, pathetic fool. I leave you with my undying hatred wench.".
Apparently, it had meant what it said and sacrificed the prospect of suicide in return for the prospect of killing her. So she had motivated him not to kill itself and in the process created a murderer. That was great for her conscience. It still seemed pathetic though. It may be acting tough and arrogant but underneath it had been twisted into something less then human. A mere shadow of a creature that survived off its desire for vengeance. Pathetic. Maybe, killing it would be erring on the side of justice.
She could not completely make herself believe that. What should be something simple, kill a suffering creature as an act of mercy, had become a complex concoction of symbolic actions, servility, and collateral damage and benefits. She hated Black Bird more then she had hated anyone in the world except for maybe Albel. Both made her second guess her actions. Before it had been do whatever it takes to help Aquaria, occasionally that might be complicate by delay repercussions and the like but it was far simpler then this. Now every action became something that might change who you are. If I help Aquaria I could become a slave to institution but I gain a sense of belong. By killing my foes I symbolically harden myself and thus become like Albel, completely detached from the lives of others, but if I don't then I am exposed to revenge. How Albel with his fascinating despair, an endless puzzle, and Black Bird, constantly picking at her despair, had made her life miserable. Their was to much thinking, she could not relax and let instinct take over. The two of them must be brothers or something because they are way to annoying to be anything else.
