Many souls are deathly afraid of the dark, but I bathe in it. Have been for nearly two years. The darkness, though not my friend now, has been a good friend to my kind, and my survival.
We hid when we became sparse, but now fate has thrown the dice against me. Numbers are but a game and knowledge is known only to those that hold it. Still, despite the darkness, despite the tides turned against me, one thing holds me to this world, one thing still keeps that flicker of light strong.
The light, that playful light grew stronger this night, but when you've been in the dark for so long, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never understand it. That light, a flicker of thought, I once believed, now burned my face. The facade of beauty and grace once enough to disguise my true intentions, my true being, now heavy like a mask that wore like leather across my heated body.
A loud dry gasp popped my tongue from my cheeks, hot like red earth and parched like paper. After a loud gasp and heavy breath, my eyes began to swirl until the lids betrayed me. Fire burned before my face from a torch held like the sun over this decrepit realm. It pulled away with a teased flick and cackle, only to illuminate its true self, a centaur.
He glared down at me, the smoke that filled my lungs pleased him, but little did it show on his stone-like face and only glistened in the vile reflection of his eyes. This was the face of a man I saw so few times before, but knew that if I did see him, I'd see something far worse after. The prison guard, one of the henchman for the scum known as Motaro. Incapable of performing his own dirty deeds, hidden within the forests, he lets his lackeys torture and hold captive those that dared to cross their territory, or cross them.
"State your purpose." He spoke, but his words cracked like paper to flame to my withered ears.
Two years ago I crossed the drylands into the Centaur Hills, toward the Living Forest. There was purpose then and still a flicker of hope that it remained somewhere within me, should I ever escape. Those intentions could not be spoken. It could not physically be pulled from my tongue, nor scraped from the caverns of my skull to present to this foul beast as an answer that could sate the ire of the desperate Motaro.
"Water-" A slap was the answer to this request. A flame brought to my face and the sweat from my very being dried like the desert I crossed to get here.
After two years my frame had weakened, thinned and withered. The skin I wore to hide from these beasts began to crack and the illusion held only by the will of my resolve, which, I knew would soon break if the torture continued. As strong as one is, as great as your will, everyone cracks, either mentally, or physically.
When I entered the hills, it was not my intention to get caught, least of all by these odorous oafs, but even a great pirate gets boarded sometimes. It has been so long since I left home on this journey, which has since become a suicide mission, that I've even forgotten my own face, my own true skin.
Two years ago I was unlucky, camped too close to the centaur sentry, arrogant that my disguise would be enough, but what I did not expect was that they had more than just the four-legged at their side. They had magic, they had wisdom. Something unholy and unlike the mind of Motaro to wield on his own. A sorcerer.
It was he that discovered me, but the brute force and the blunt mentality of the Centaurs are what got me captured and held in this forgotten prison beneath the hills. A hidden don jon of ill contempt, I've wasted away until this very day, this very moment that I couldn't have ever seen in a million years. The day I have come to dread.
My eyes, half lidded and wholly untrusted to see the world for what it was, steered downcast to the ground beneath me that melted away to visions of bugs cackling across my feet, or flames that danced with the apathetic shadows. When I looked up, a new light cast upon me, like a veil of moonlight, but far greater than any golden, or silver ray beyond my reach.
"I cannot save you." He said behind the mask, its color changed in the shadow, reflected in the light its wrinkled and worn nature. "I can only finish what you started, for our people."
Eyes do deceive. The illusion of a mortal man stood before me, no longer that of a centaur. It took minutes before my words could form for there was no spit to form it, no breath to gather, no words to speak. Lethargic and faded, he could tell there was not much time left should my condition remain, but he seemed adamant, the fire in his eyes burned brighter than the torch in his hand. The fire of my people.
"My dagger." I managed to whisper from my cracked voice.
"Where is it?" He prodded, and his eyes shifted away, as though an hourglass bleed on and time itself nearly ended.
"There is a scroll wrapped around the hilt. It must go to him. He must know." These words were too many and my throat sealed itself. My body craved moisture, and my ravenous maw needed a savior, salivation. It would speak no further without aid, lest I believed my body itself to wither to dust. Our people are capable of surviving long droughts, and months on empty stomachs, but this was torture, this was not natural.
"I know where it is. What is the message. Who is it going to?" He stared for nearly an eternity, but soon like time, it dawned on him that my body could take no more.
A moment of grace, a spill of water, not enough to sate, but enough to speak. Enough to torture me.
Words needed to be chosen carefully. He grew agitated and impatient. The centaurs may have left me here to die, but that did not mean they were far. He would need to leave now if he wanted to send this message to its rightful recipient. This man was not him, but as kin, it would now be his responsibility to carry on my mission to the chosen one.
"Syzoth." The words echoed the hollow tomb of my mind, my maw scraped itself like claws to pull it from my throat and soon the full purpose was revealed. "We are many."
Those words fell on my kin like a heavy stone. His eyes darkened as the torch flickered less and less. There was something in those eyes I had seen only once before, but in my haze it was taken as a great resolve.
"I must go, Khameleon. I will take your words with me to their rightful place." He then, like a chameleon, faded into the night.
The torch dropped and the air grew stale. The night cackled with magic and my body sunk, not defeated, but hopeful for a better future. Where I have failed, may he succeed. Not the man that stole my purpose, but the man chosen to inherit it.