CeCeHigganbotham: Not anymore it isn't lol. It took a while but I just had to update this one. I'm really thrilled to hear that you like the writing style. She's a fun character to work with.
mat: Yeah, same, she's pretty much tormented.
gemsofformenos: Thanks, there's more disturbing stuff to come. Literally no one deserves to be left to die like that. "It's so dark and shocking how you let her scream and weep through all these emotions, how you brake her agaun and again" dark and twisted is my specialty and goretober gave me my chance lol. Said bad thing is about to be revealed, partially anyhow. "It reminds me so much of your story 'Ashes to Ashes', you have written last October," *has zero memory of what that one was about*.
100NaturalBacon: "It must be terrifying to be chained down and forced to survive." For real tho. Honestly, one of my biggest fears is to be locked up like that. "I hope her wrists aren't infected from all those open cuts from tugging on her chains." They may or may not be. I'm really happy that you enjoyed it. And if it's still of interest, that you keep enjoying it. :D
There isn't a morsel on any of the tables that hasn't been infested and over taken by some form of larva. It is all rot and decay and smells putridly under the summer sun. Azula shambles her way around the tables, clumsy with hunger. She doesn't know how much she has left in her but she doesn't think that it is very much at all.
There has to be something, anything to eat. She scours her way through the tables. The only thing left untouched by the pests has been claimed by mold. She almost wants to pick off the good parts and eat those. Instead she clutches her stomach and falls to her knees.
If they are trying to break her, it has worked. She had been broken from the start. She shakes her head, she has already established that they haven't abandoned her, that something more is at work. But it is much easier to cling to the idea that if she makes a pathetic, pitiful enough spectacle, some sympathetic soul will emerge and end the rouse. She can suffer the humiliation and move forward.
The only souls to come forward were those that belonged to the elephant-rats. They have taken a liking to her legs. She jerks and almost kicks them away from her. She swallows and resigns herself to what she must do. In one less than elegant motion, Azula scorches them all.
She finds that cooked elephant-rat meat is more tolerable than eating it raw but, Agni, do they taste abysmal. Even so, she searches the ground for more of them. She promises herself that this will be the last time, that she only needs to eat enough of them to get her to the palace to find a true meal. One that is fit for someone of her status. She chars two more elephant-rats and forces herself to swallow them, all but their hideous little tails. Her stomach squirms at the thought of those wriggling around in her mouth. She fights the urge to eject the only meal she has had in days...or however long it has been.
She gives herself a moment before rising up and hoisting herself into a chair. She leans back, feeling wholly exhausted. The sun beats mercilessly on her face. It is almost enough to keep her awake. Almost.
Even the sun isn't quite as powerful as stress and fatigue.
Azula succombs.
She hopes to herself that when she wakes it will be in her own bed with her father hollering at her for pestering him with her nightmare induced screams. What she does wake to is far less pleasant. That horrific perfume of rotting meat is the first thing that greets her, followed by a view of the palace dauntingly far off in the distance.
With some of her vigor restored, she rises from the chair and resigns herself to the task of getting to it.
Every step is torture, her body feels so heavy for something that is so emincipated. Her joints are still stiff and fragile from being confined to such a brutal position. And her skin...her skin is her own doing. She had been fool enough to fall asleep under the sun's harsh rays. Elephant-rats or no elephant-rats, her stomach still aches terribly and her mouth is raw and parched.
She forces herself onward, it is all she can do. All she can do until it is wholly automatic; one sluggish foot in front of the other. Left foot, right foot, breathe. Left foot, right foot, breathe. Left foot, right foot…
She trips, her knees smack against the pavement. She lets out a cry to match the sharpness of the sensation in her knee. She is reminded of the eerie silence of the city as her cry rebounds between the buildings before it dies out. Azula shudders. She tries scrambling to her feet but her kneecaps are at the end of their resilience.
But Azula is not.
Not yet.
She drags herself across the street. It takes up far more energy than it had to walk and her elbows are becoming as raw as her scabbed wrists. She is painfully aware that she has been reduced to some barbaric and primitive version of herself that runs on desperate instinct alone.
It takes her what must have been hours to reach the outskirts of the palace courtyard and by this time she has come to accept that she is no longer a human being. She doesn't know what she has morphed into, but it is dirty and pathetic and monstrous.
She lets out a befitting anguished, animalistic howl when she finds herself face to face with a gate.
"No." She utters quietly to herself. "No, no." She repeats as she gives the gate a few violent shakes. She can't reach the lock from where she lays. "No…" she growls, her anger leaves just enough room for her to latch onto the gate and use it to heave herself up right. Her knees are furious and they make it known. She ignores the pain and fusses with the gate's latch. Having been leaning on it for support, she is thrown to the ground when it swings in.
Her breathing is rapid and erratic as she continues her crawl towards the palace. She remembers the stairs and wants to weep. There are so many of them. So many stairs. And they are huge stairs.
"Oh for Agni's sake! Chan, what did I tell you about leaving the fucking gates open!"
"Sorry." Chan mutters.
"Sorry?" She hears the crunch of gravel as the man nears her. "One of them things got in." He nudges her with something. A staff?
'Thing'. The word works its way into her brain. It is too much, what remains of her psyche shatters. She is weeping again, but it is more like a wheeze with her throat in the shape that it is.
"Ho-ly shit." Chan remarks.
"It's...she's human." Remarks the other.