(Jackle inherited wishes, small blobs, and the ability to grant them, from a maren long dead. Jackle named the various voices in his head after his cards. And yes, I do realize I can be a bit... twisted~
Elroy: celestriakle. deviantart .com/art/Elroy-273883364
Read and review, please and thank you.)
Jackle groaned as the wishes suddenly swarmed him, rousing them from his sleep. Sure, they were useful, good for fun pranks, but damn, could they be annoying. "Whaddya wannttt?" he groaned into his pillow, but upon hearing the anxious tinkling of their bell voices, looked up with a bit more seriousness. Like pians, the little blobs were simple, inherently happy creatures; the only time he had seen them upset was when he himself was... When his brother had died. The whisper of a low voice in his head snapped him away from reality, immediately ensnaring all of his attention.
"The girl," whispered the King. "You've lost her!" and the voice began to laugh, descending into a madness that would ordinarily make Jackle proud.
"No," he whispered. The wishes grew quiet, confused. Icy tendrils gripped the nightmaren's heart, and he shouted, tearing out of his bed and swinging into Shirona's, "No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, n—" He stopped cold, frozen, as his twisted mind attempted to process the scene before him. A dark blue blur solidified into a nightmaren, one Jackle had never met, who turned to gaze at him with deadened black eyes underscored by brilliant red markings. A golden loyalty mask encircled one of those chilled eyes. Looking past the strange maren, he noted a very familiar shade of red spreading along the sheets and marring that beautiful mess of golden hair he had grown so fond of. The human he had so dangerously allowed himself to love. A moment passed. Jackle threw himself at the bed, repeating again that incessant refrain, "No!" but something intercepted him. Fingers splayed, the other maren turned and pressed his fingertips to Jackle's face. Blue eyes meeting black, Jackle suddenly felt... nothing. All of his panic, all of his terror, all of his concern simply disappeared as the other maren drew his hand away, clutching a small white orb, no bigger than a large marble, enveloped in wisps of a pure white gas. Even the voices in his head grew silent.
"Gather your wishes, Jackle. Master Wizeman desires a counsel with you," instructed the maren. Without so much as another glance towards the body in the bed, he obeyed.
The two bowed briefly in the hand of their god, and as they rose, Jackle looked around. It had been a long time since he had visited, nearly thirty years by his estimation, but it looked the same as ever. There was only one change: A cage hung nearby, and inside, his daughter, Dot, gazed desperately at him through the bars. "Daddy, I'm scared..." she pleaded. At this point, something inside of him—he presumed it was Heart—told him he should be concerned, but no where in him could he find the will to so much as care, much less be concerned. His gaze slid back to Wizeman, who had spoken briefly to the maren apparently named Elroy and now intended to address him. "Your ill-raised daughter murdered my best nightmaren. The freedom you have so abused ends now, failure. You will suffer together." The Nightmaren King made a gesture to Elroy, who pressed that odd white orb back into Jackle. All of the caped nightmaren's lost emotions came flooding back to him; the voices in his head began screaming unintelligibly; and for a moment, he was filled with fear. A spark crackled below him, and that was the last thing he heard before a current ripped through his body and all he felt was pain.
He could feel it. Every wish as it died, his connection to them as it was severed, his gateway to plotspace as it closed permanently, even his ability to fly as it was stripped away. Fifty two razor sharp cards fluttered down from his body onto the hand below, and he collapsed, unconscious, among them.
Jackle awoke to the sound of his daughter's screams. It had been this way for days. At least he thought it was days. It could have been weeks; it could have been hours. Wizeman's chambers seemed exempt from the passage of time. Either way, the routine was the same: They would wake; Wizeman would find some new, twisted way to cause them pain until they passed out; and he would heal their wounds in their sleep until they woke again. From the isolation of a hand held far away, he watched as Dot thrashed around in her cage, tearing at her flesh with her own claws. He could only imagine what she was seeing. "Dot... please..." he called hoarsely, trying to reach her deaf ears. "Please stop..." Tearing his gaze away, he doubled over, trying to ignore her suffering, when the metallic scent of blood hit his senses, and he was reminded of the terrible burn in his throat and gaping hole in his stomach. Spade worked against him, reminding him of the delicious luxury of flesh in his jaws and claws, the sweet and salty flavor of hot blood running down his throat. "No," he whimpered, pressing his hands to his head. "I won't. Shut up. Be quiet." His voice grew frantic and stern. "I said quiet! Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut uh—" He looked up as the scent of burning, cooking, flesh mingled with blood, and groaned as his stomach let out a ferocious growl. Dot's screams only grew louder as she tried to put out the fire that engulfed her.
This time, the steady fall of a liquid on his face brought Jackle into consciousness. Groaning quietly, he pushed himself up into a sitting position—he had been left on the ground this time, he noted—and looked up. He was almost under Dot's cage, he managed to perceive, before another drop of liquid hit him smack in the eye. "Ow..." he mumbled and touched his face, examining the substance left upon his gloves. Blood. His eyes widened in horror as hunger and thirst tore through him, knocking the wind out of him of their own accord, and he whined, clutching his stomach. That's when another drop splattered onto his horn. He looked up. "No, I..." His mouth was made of sand. "I..." Another drop spilled onto the floor before him. "I can't..." he protested weakly, but his knees did not obey. They pulled him under the stream of blood, and his head bent back, jaws open wide. When the first drop of blood hit his tongue, he could have moaned; he could have cried. He did both. It was exquisite, delicious. While he had been starved, she had been fed and he forced to watch. They had not been allowed to share then, but oh! Here was a way to share now. Greedily, he lapped up every drop that fell; he wiped his face clean and sucked it from the cloth in his glove. Oh, it was good, but it was not enough; he whined for more, and Wizeman was all too happy to oblige. Scooping his maren up in a hand, he lifted Jackle up to where Dot's hand stuck out of her cage.
Jackle wasted no time, roughly grabbing the thumb and ring finger of his unconscious daughter's hand and pulling it close. His tongue found its way into every crack and crevice of her hand, any place where so much as a molecule of blood could hide, and he moaned as he pressed his tongue to the cut on wrist, the origin of the bloodshed. Oh, it was good, but it was not enough: His teeth ached; his stomach roared. His thirst, though tempered, was far from quenched. Groaning in agony, he locked his gaze onto the peaceful expression of his still-sleeping daughter and reached up her arm, his claws touching, but not piercing, the higher parts of her arm. He couldn't. He needed to. But he couldn't. But he needed it.
The spell broke suddenly as Wizeman tore Jackle away from his daughter, squeezing just a bit too tightly. The dazed nightmaren coughed a bit and looked up at his father, but only briefly as he found himself, for the first time, allowed in—or thrown into, really—his daughter's cage. He blinked up at Wizeman, then down at Dot. His fangs began aching again, and over the demands of his stomach, Spade began to speak, to justify. He reminded Jackle of every time his daughter had disappointed him, every incident where she had failed. All those talks with Shirona about being certain they had made the right decision in having a child. All the reasons it was the wrong decision. All the times she needed him to clean up her mess. "This is just another of those times," Spade ruminated. Jackle's fingers began to twitch, and he yelped, quickly backing into the part of the cage as far from Dot as he could possibly get. Whimpering, he clutched his chest and began rocking himself back and forth.
Dot woke with a sigh and, feeling a twinge as she pulled in her hand, examined the cut on her wrist. No blood. Odd. She let the strangeness pass from her mind as she cast a fearful glace up at Wizeman; who knew what he had in store for today? Quickly, she looked around, trying to locate her father before the torture began, and snapped her head towards the sound of a giggle in the corner. He was grinning with open arms; maybe, just maybe, they were going to be allowed to go home! Finally! She let out a shout of glee as she threw herself into his arms, but that joyous feeling quickly dissipated when, like a trap, his arms snapped closed around her, and he whispered by her ear, "You shouldn't have done that." His grin spread ever wider as he added, "Run." and his arms opened. She fled, and he chased, jaws open wide.
At last, his stomach had been silenced. The deed was done. He lay contently in the empty cage, and not even a single bone remained to signify its previous inhabitant. He hummed to a tune only he could hear and gazed contently at a sight only he could see, and when Elroy came bursting in shouting about an attack, he paid no mind; however, after Elroy left, from far away, a voice called his name: "Jackle." His world was too wonderful; he didn't heed the call. "Jackle," the unmistakable voice of Wizeman repeated as the cage door was opened. This time he looked up and crawled to the edge of the exit. "Protect our land," came the command, and he was offered a deck of fifty two razor sharp cards. Jackle gazed at the deck for a minute, then grinned up at Wizeman.
"With pleasure, Master," he said as he picked up the deck, and feeling all of his power return to him, took off out of the chambers, maniacal laughter echoing behind him.