April 6th, 2010
"-aking up."
I woke up to a gag in my mouth forcing me to choke on my scream and the eyeless gaze of a pure white face. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn't skin, as I blinked myself awake, but some strange material curved into the likeness of a woman with her eyes closed in a serene expression. It covered the upper portion of a man's head, the strangely feminine mask at odds with the harder edges of his masculine face. He slouched, leaning in so close to me that I couldn't see anything but the mask, and the start of his dirty blond hair above it, and couldn't feel anything but the pounding of my head and his breath against my face. I wasn't sure if it was his breath or just my general state of being seemingly halfway between dead and wishing I was, but I could feel bile rising up my throat.
Apparently, the man could too, because he lent back suddenly, just barely avoiding what felt like the entirety of my guts spewing from my mouth. Was that blood? The room, and now without him taking up the entirety of my vision, I could see that's what it was, was darkly lit, a singular light fixture hanging on thread-bare cables from the ceiling barely illuminated more than the grey concrete of the walls and floor, but it was enough to see traces of something darker mixed in with the stomach acid.
Now that he'd moved back, I could clearly see the rest of him as he towered over me in the chair. I didn't get the sense that he was tall, just that from where I was 'sat' he loomed over me. His clothes were strange. Light, flowing cloth wrapped around his body, pulled tight with tiny strings to emphasise his figure. Beneath it, a corset constricted his torso to the point his waist was nearly unnaturally thin. All of it was white, stark and ghost-like in the fluorescent light of the room. The shoulders and elbows were covered in feathers, just as white as the rest of his clothes, as well as something that might have been a cloak seemingly woven entirely of them. It would've looked ridiculous if it wasn't also terrifying at the same time.
"Well hello there." The man said, his mouth stretched into a smile too wide to be friendly, his lips thin and black, which only brought attention to the marks on his skin. The light behind him shone around his head, almost like a halo that cast what might have been tattoos into fangs of real bone. There was an accent to his words though one I couldn't place, "It took quite a lot of work getting you here, and I have to say I'm disappointed."
I tried to scream, ask questions, demand answers. The chair I was sitting on wobbled, metallic legs crashing angrily against the concrete flooring as I struggled in place. Something cold bit into my wrists, wrenching them in place and causing a flash of pain to shoot down my arms. I made to look behind me, but someone grabbed me with hands encased in something hard, forcing me to look straight forwards towards the masked man.
"Do you know who I am?" He asked, his gentle tone belying the quiet threat his entire presence gave off. The gag, moist and wretched from my retching wouldn't let me talk, it was tied so tightly I couldn't even close my mouth fully, but I wouldn't have known what to say anyway, "Do you know where we are?"
Did he want me to know who he was? Was I meant to know where I was?
Was I meant to know who I was?
The thought shook me, wiping away every other worry for a moment like a wave, it buried everything else underneath its waters. Because I didn't.
More than where I was, who these people were and what they wanted, or even how I was going to get out of this situation, that feeling of reaching for memories, reaching for my identity, and getting nothing was worse. Where did I come from? What did I look like? I couldn't even remember my name. There was just a great black pit of nothingness where my memories were meant to be, less like someone had taken a scalpel to them and more like they'd been torn out root and stem.
My breaths sped up, already ragged and catching on the wet cloth keeping my mouth, they roared in my ears like great gusts of wind swallowing any hopes of rational thought that I had.
It was only when the hand on my head squeezed down hard enough that I could have sworn I heard my skull creaking that I remembered that the man had asked me a question, his sightless mask somehow looking at me expectantly.
I mumbled something against the gag, though even I didn't know what I'd tried to say, my mind was still too occupied with not knowing who the fuck I was.
The man chuckled lightly, but rather than relaxing me, the sound sent shivers down my spine, and even with the upper portion of his face covered he still gave the sense that he was rolling his eyes. With an almost negligent gesture, he waved towards whoever was behind me, waiting impatiently. A moment later a breeze blew into my mouth, the gag splitting down the middle as it passed. It fell to the down with a wet splat, the cut cleaner than any knife could have done. I hadn't even seen anybody move.
What the fuck.
"I don't like having to repeat myself."
The man's voice shook me from my thoughts. His smile turned distinctly saccharine when my head turned almost robotically upwards from the broken gag.
"No," my voice was rough, like it hadn't been used in a long time, or I'd been screaming. Either of them might have been true, for all that I knew. "I don't know who you are."
His grin dropped slightly, though the sarcastic-looking smile remained. I couldn't tell whether my ignorance upset him or not. It felt like I was a half dozen steps behind at every stage. I had to force myself not to look away from him and down at the seemingly magically cut gag on the floor, and even beyond that I was still scrambling mentally about who I was.
"Or where I am," I quickly shot out, remembering the second part of his question and not willing to risk upsetting the apparently crazy, magical people who had tied (chained?) me to a chair in a basement somewhere.
He looked at me for a few seconds, or I assumed he did, while I tried to stay as still as I possibly could. My head was still locked in place by the hand on the back of it, the fingers were harder than they should have been like they were clad in armor as they bit deep enough into my head it felt like they had a grip directly on my skull.
"Really?" he asked without expecting an answer, stepping back even further until he was directly under the light. It shone down on him such that his hair was lit up a near-brilliant white, and the shadow cast left only the white of his mask visible, the eyeless stare boring into me. He gestured towards himself with a flourish, "I am Valefor, and my esteemed colleague behind you is Eligos."
He, the man, Valefor, said their names like I was meant to know who they were. They sounded strange, like my brain was telling me they weren't normal names, but then again I didn't know any better. Were they famous criminals? They'd kidnapped me and locked me to a chair for who knows what reasons so they couldn't be good guys.
"Nothing? Really?" He didn't sound upset, instead, it was like a kid that had gotten a surprise new toy and couldn't wait to play with it, "How fascinating. You see, we came here to finish Her work, and getting past the wall was no easy feat. And we had to gather all the little pieces of Her glorious work, all to be left with you. So tell me, whoever you are, what's so special about you?"
With every word he stalked closer to me, his shadow reaching out closer towards me with each one. By the end, I was head level with his upper stomach but he grabbed my chin and yanked my head up towards him. I felt the fingers that had been holding my head loosen enough for the movement, but barely noticed it over the pain that jolted through my neck at the sudden movement.
"I don't know," I repeated, too scared to feel embarrassed over how the words came out closer to a barely understandable sob than words.
The sharp crack of flesh on flesh cut me off, it took me a second and the sting that erupted in my cheek to realize he'd slapped me.
"Don't lie to me," He hissed, the thin veneer of civility broken as his smile twisted into something closer to a scowl. Again, his fingers found my chin but this time his nails dug deeper, enough that I could feel blood start to trickle over them. "Everything else had been looted, or torn apart, they vandalized Her work," Valefor spat out, like the very word offended his tongue. He turned away, fingers trailing down to my throat as he did, leaving a wet trail of blood down towards my chest.
Slowly, like he was preaching to a crowd he reached his arms out to his sides. The room was small enough that his fingers almost brushed against them on both sides. He spun to face me suddenly, that creepy smile back on his face like he hadn't just hit me.
"Everything! Except for the machine that brought you here. It was glorious," he spoke like it was a religious experience, something rapturous. I didn't know who this 'Her' was, but I didn't want to meet her if she'd gotten me into this situation. Had this machine they'd used taken my memories too? Just thinking about 'before' made my head swim and I had to bite back another wave of nausea, "glorious divine purpose. And you expect me to believe there's nothing special about you? That She didn't bring you here to carry her Word to us, her people?"
I shook my head as much as my captor's hand would allow, though the motion felt like it sent my brain bouncing inside my skull.
"I-" Bile rose up in my throat again but I forced it down. I tried my hardest to meet where his eyes would have been behind his mask, the serenely closed eyes contrasting with the vicious focus he was paying to my every word, "I don't even know who I am."
The confession left me feeling almost empty. Adrift.
I was shaken out of it by hands on either side of my face, he cupped my cheeks almost tenderly, thumbs drawing circles over the bones. They came to rest, his fingernails colored the same black as his tattoos, on the bridge of my nose, a half inch at most from my eyes. I could barely see them, so focused on his face as I was.
His smile had split ever wider. The peaks of his teeth shone between them, razors in the shadows as the tattoos stretched taut into talons across his skin.
"Think very carefully," he whispered, gently enough that I could barely hear him over my heart pounding, "about your next words. After everything it cost to get us here, to you, I find myself with staggeringly little patience for liars."
I tried to buck away from his hands, but the fingers on my scalp tightened before I could move at all, leaving me staring at the slightly sharpened nails pointed directly towards my eyes.
"I'm not lying," I promised, my eyes flicking between Valefor and the nails threatening to stab into them, "I swear. I don't remember anything."
His mask's pure white closed eyelids peered down into mine and I felt my breath get sucked away. It was like something was pressing down into my chest, as I was unable to move or look away from something horrifying.
Valefor tilted his head to the side, similar to a dog finding something it didn't understand.
"Maybe you are telling the truth," he declared, and I would have frantically nodded my head in agreement if I could have moved it at all. One hand trailed down to my chin where he'd cut into my skin. Slowly, his rictus of a grin relaxed into a triumphant smile, "or perhaps not."
His fingers turned into talons as they pressed my head up and around, forcing the armored fingers that trapped my head further against my skull before they relented, guessing Valefor's intention. With the movement, the man behind me was made visible to me for the first time.
My second captor was taller than the first, at least as far as I could tell from where my head was craned up, and presented to him like livestock. His… costume was a tale in contrast to Valefor's, black in its entirety, it looked to be made only of brutally twisted metal compared to the smooth and flowing fabric that Valefor wore. The 'armor' was covered in spikes, especially the head which boasted two great spires, beneath which one dark eye rested in their shadow, the only part of his body that wasn't covered in the thick-looking metal.
His eyes scanned my face while I took him in, coming to rest on where Valefor gripped my face.
"A Brute then?" The still-nameless man asked, his voice was harsh, nearly guttural but I could hear the note of recognition within it, like he'd had something confirmed that he suspected. Behind me, my arms were pulled taut at an unnatural angle, forcing a pained yell through my gritted teeth. "Not much of one is he?"
He spoke like I wasn't there, but I couldn't find any indignation at that fact, buried deeply as it was under fear and pain. I tried to follow his gaze but without a mirror, I couldn't see what they were talking about.
"It wouldn't do to underestimate someone whom our Lady has so clear an interest in."
Valefor released my head so suddenly that it flopped bonelessly forward without the support of being held in place. The armored hand returned to the top of my head but the white-masked man shot him a look that managed to convey disapproval even with only the lower half of his face exposed.
"We don't need to worry about him attacking anymore, Eligos. There's nothing to fear from a chained dog, after all." He sent a conspiratorial smirk to the now-named Eligos, an inside joke between them, one that the armored man thought funny enough to snort like a bull.
With a great crash of something shearing against metal, the chains that wrapped around my wrists snapped. My attention snapped to them. They were thick, maybe only a little less than my wrists which had deep, angry red marks on them from being pulled against their bindings. The metal was shorn like the gag had been. Impossibly cleanly for such thick pieces of metal. Eligos laughed again when he noticed my attention.
That snapped me out of the stupor at my sudden freedom. I tried to lunge towards Valefor, throwing my entire weight behind it. Compared to the heavily armored Eligos, with his 'powers', for lack of a better word, Valefor and his floaty fabrics seemed the much easier target.
But my body wouldn't move. No matter how much I strained, it was like my body was still tied down. My muscles locked up, and I had to stop trying to move to prevent myself from collapsing out of the chair. Sweat beaded across my brow as I glared up at the madly grinning Valefor, the manic expression at odds with his peaceful-looking mask.
"See? Eidolon himself couldn't do anything against us in his place, I don't think our new friend has much of a chance," he taunted, "isn't that right?"
Powerless to do anything else, I just glared at him, a prisoner in my own body as he leaned down towards me. He patted me on the cheek like I was a dog asking for attention even as every part of my being labored to throttle him. If he noticed how the veins I could feel pulsing in my throat strained then he only seemed more amused at my struggle.
"Now then, what to do with you?" He asked himself more than to me, or to Eligos, but his partner made no effort to answer the question, "I could take you back to Mama, she'd never say no to another Brute. But," he trailed off, his entire body stilling such that it almost looked like he'd lost consciousness while standing up. The sound of creaking alerted me to Eligos moving towards him, but whatever Valefor was thinking he snapped out of it before the armored man could say or do anything, "That doesn't seem right."
Again, his voice fell away into a whisper while he stared at me, fascinated by something only he could see. I wished that I could see beneath the mask, that I could see what the eyes of the man who was doing this to me looked like, or get some kind of idea of what he was thinking behind the expressionless mask.
"I refuse to believe that Her plan for you was for you to be a glorified bodyguard, there's more to you than meets the eye, there must be. She wouldn't be interested in a mere low-level Brute, not when she could take anyone that she wanted and Mother already has Chort," Valefor carried on in a one-sided conversation. I was too scared to interject or say anything. Or too angry, the two emotions mixed so thickly inside me that I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began, "No, I think I'll let you go."
The words came so out of nowhere that they didn't parse in my head for a few beats.
"What?" I sputtered, unable to stop myself. Behind me, I could hear Eligos as he moved in place; I wasn't sure what he was doing but the reminder of how close he was behind me set me on edge again.
"You're Her's already, even if you don't realize it yet. Every step you take is at Her behest, every move you make is in Her plan," his voice grew more agitated with every word, regaining the preaching nature of a priest at his pulpit, "I would not try to steal your fate from Her, for who am I to stand between your destiny and Her will?"
I stared at him for a second, unable to muster anything in response to the sudden rant. Did he truly mean to let me go? It seemed too much to hope for, who would kidnap someone, torture them, and then let them go? Valefor seemed crazy but…
"Not that you'll be going for free of course."
And there was the other shoe dropping.
"As you are Hers, you will be mine," he declared as if what he was saying made any sense. The more he talked, the more certain I was that I was being held captive by some sort of cult, and the more sure I was that Valefor was completely batshit insane. It didn't make me feel better. "Look into my eyes."
I tried to pull away, to disobey his command but that same feeling of being trapped in my body returned with a vengeance. Even if I'd been able to move though, I wouldn't have been able to as Eligos' armored hands grabbed my head below the ears on both sides and forcibly tilted it upwards. The feminine mask stared deeply into my eyes, and I was pretty sure I was going to be having nightmares about it for as long as I lived. There was no way I could forget how it felt to have those closed eyes boring into my own.
"Look into my eyes and be Bound," his voice didn't sound the same. Like there was some kind of echo coming from far away, a distortion or another voice layered over the top of it in a cavernous chamber. It rattled inside my head, reverberating and I could feel my body shake and tremble slightly between Eligos' hands. The eyes of his mask snapped open, pulling back and under the part above his eyes, revealing dark pupils burning with manic energy. "There is only one thing I would ask of one such as you. Run wild. Tear down the PRT, bring the Triumvirate low, do everything in your power to sow chaos."
I couldn't do anything but stare at him, wide-eyed and helpless, but I could feel the words seeping into me. They sunk their claws in deep, burrowing into my head and what felt like my very being, so deep that I could only barely feel the difference between them and my own thoughts.
For a second, a mere moment, I felt something stir inside of me and latch onto Valefor's words. It rankled against them, and a great rage flooded through me even as it tried and failed to tear the orders apart like they were a physical object. Whatever it was, it faded away a moment later, quickly enough that I was left wondering if it had been real, or just my mind playing tricks on me.
After what felt like an eternity, Valefor took an unsteady step back. Sweat had broken out across his brow like he'd been moving something heavy up a hill, and his breaths came like pants out of his mouth. Eligos, whether out of fear for his partner, or because he forgot, never let go of my head, and I was left staring upwards at the ceiling feeling like I'd run a marathon myself.
He sent a nod to Eligos, just barely visible from my position. The nod meant something, but I was too rocked to think about it any further. I'd steadily felt more alive as time had gone on, but I was right back to feeling like I was halfway in the grave. My vision swam, and my head felt weightless as I slumped backwards, only being held up by Eligos' hands. Valefor, his white clothes half floating around him and half clinging to him as he moved away, looked almost as if he was surrounded by white feathered wings before I blinked my eyes clear of the image.
He was looking at me, for once not smiling or smirking, his mouth instead set into a contemplative line. I thought he'd say something to break the silence, everything he'd done so far had shown that he liked the sound of his own voice, but he just stared at me without saying a word. In some ways that was more unnerving than if he'd continued ranting.
Finally, he turned his attention away from me and towards his partner, gesturing him over.
"Come, Eligos, we must leave before any unwanted guests arrive."
I pushed myself to my feet to try and stop them. Or I attempted to at least, as my knees buckled under me when I tried to stand and nausea surged through me again.
On one knee, all I could do was listen to two sets of footsteps walking away and upstairs. A door creaked open somewhere above me, the sound ominous and distant to my ears, before closing shut with a quiet click.
And I was alone. Alone in a basement, somewhere, in a world I didn't know or couldn't remember. More than that, I didn't have a single memory of who I was, or how I'd gotten here.
I stared down at my hands, uncomprehendingly. My shirt was covered in blood, I realized for the first time and was torn in so many places that I couldn't even tell what color it was originally. The pants weren't much better, though they had apparently managed to dodge most of the blood as the worn-down black was still mostly visible. I had no shoes or socks on, the cold of the concrete floor only just registering against my bare skin.
Slowly, like I was in a dream, I raised my hands to my head and cupped my face, sinking into them. I wished it was a dream but with the pain from Valefor's slap and his nails biting into my skin remaining fresh in my mind, there was no point in pinching myself.
Carefully, I rubbed my fingers over where he'd grabbed my face, expecting to find broken skin and still-flowing blood. Instead, there was only partially dried blood that brushed off into small flakes on my fingers, and smooth, undamaged skin. No fresh blood, no pain.
There was no mirror in the basement to capture how I must have looked as I stared at my fingers like they were foreign to me.
I should have felt happy. I wasn't bleeding, my face was fine, and I was 'free'.
Instead, I only felt lost.
And so I let my head drop back down into my hands and allowed the first tears to come. The first opened the floodgates, and soon I found myself weeping alone in an unknown place, by myself and feeling like I was a stranger.
Addendum - Isaiah (Eligos)
Isaiah didn't say anything for a couple of minutes after they left the house and entered the chaotic streets of Madison. The road itself looked like it was from some kind of war zone, great troughs of asphalt were missing from the ground, and fallen, bent, or missing street lights and telephone poles lined up on either side of the street. The buildings around them were hardly better, some of them were missing their entire fronts, others just had their doors busted down, but he couldn't see a single one that was entirely intact. Even the building that they'd come from had no windows, and the basement had been the single intact room, though only on the basis that it had been completely empty.
Empty until they'd left the guy they'd come all this way for in there.
"Are you sure about this?" He asked Elijah, eying him through the one opening in his helmet as he stepped over a piece of rubble that had fallen from a house.
His fellow Cape and friend hadn't said anything since they'd left, absorbed in his own world, which wasn't unusual. As much as he got on with the man, Elijah wasn't the most stable person. Growing up with Mama Mathers would do that to anybody. Isaiah remembered when he'd first been traded to her branch of the Fallen; he hadn't stopped hearing her whispers in his ears or seeing her out of the corner of his eye for weeks. Sometimes it still happened, but it had become so normal he was able to ignore it.
Elijah gave him a look rather than say anything, and he'd been with him long enough to know what it meant.
"There's nobody around," he confirmed, his sense of the air around them flowed through the smashed open buildings and open alleyways far enough that he knew there was nobody but the man they'd left in the basement near enough to hear anything the two of them say.
The pair lapsed into silence again, navigating back towards the Wall that loomed ever-present over the city, and Isaiah was content enough to let it continue until Valefor felt ready to answer. These periods of quiet between the two had become ever more frequent the more time they spent in the quarantined city. He'd often find his partner looking to the sky as if expecting to see Her there, descending through the clouds. The more of the Tinker Tech they'd put together too, pieces that they'd painstakingly gathered from around the country and those that they'd liberated from the locals left inside the city, the more Elijah had seemed to retreat inside himself at times, almost like his body was moving by itself.
Or as if he was being controlled by a guiding hand.
"We didn't have much of a choice," Valefor eventually answered. Now that they were by themselves, the performative nature of his speech dropped away into normal tones, his southern accent becoming more noticeable as it did, "getting outside the Wall will be much harder than getting in. The PRT cares a lot more about keeping the people in rather than keeping others out. And trying to get out with an unwilling captive that could give us away at any time? They'd catch us instantly."
Isaiah nodded along easily, happy as always to follow the other man's lead, "Your power still didn't work on him then?" He asked, gently, knowing how Elijah's ego could take it.
"No," even from behind him he could hear how his lips pursed together in displeasure, "even with eye contact none of my commands took hold. It was like he wasn't even there. And we have no use for someone that wouldn't be loyal, nor would I put Mama in danger with somebody that I couldn't control."
Just like with his voice, Isaiah noted.
"Except that last command."
Elijah stopped near the side of the street, in the shadow of a shattered house, whether by the Simurgh, the Heroes or the residents he didn't know. He'd raised his hands in front of his face. They were shaking. One of them, the one he'd used to slap the man they'd summoned from another world, was bright red and stinging.
"It was like I could feel Her in my head, Isaiah," he whispered reverentially, stroking down the red palm with the other hand's fingers, "the words came to my head and I knew they would work. A Binding to keep him doing Her work." His shaking hands curled into fists.
"And it worked?"
"And it worked," he confirmed, "whatever he is, he will follow those words as gospel and law. With any luck, the PRT will have someone else on their radar, someone that would force their attention off of the Fallen."
They continued walking, Eligos mulling over Valefor's words in his head for a minute as they made their way over debris and broken streets, careful to stay behind buildings and out of obvious sight of the Wall.
"You're certain he'll be that big of a deal?" He asked dubiously.
Elijah gave him another look, but this one he couldn't read, "He was stronger this time. After he came back." He massaged the red spot on his hand absently, "Regenerated faster too. Where does that end? Will he keep getting stronger? If it's enough to delay Alexandria for a single minute, when we need it, then it will have been worth it."
"He didn't seem to remember," he pointed out, feeling the need to.
His friend just shook his head, "No, and isn't that a good thing for us?"
A good thing indeed.
When they'd first summoned him, the crude amalgamation of Tinker Tech they'd used had disintegrated, falling into burnt-out and unusable pieces, leaving them with an ordinary-looking guy that seemingly had nothing special about him.
Valefor had flown into a rage, throwing the pieces around the room and cursing, waking their extraterrestrial guest in the process. They'd asked questions, and when the answers weren't to their liking they'd beat him. When the answers didn't change, after more than an hour of bloody, brutal work, Elijah asked him to kill the man.
So he did. He'd cut his throat with his power, giving the man one little piece of mercy. They'd watched as the life left his eyes, as his blood stained his shirt and the floor. They'd watched as he died.
And they'd watched when minutes later his flesh knit itself back together, a flash of gray and then green under his skin before a breath burst into his chest.
They watched him come back to life.
A/N: So, new fic. Hello. I may have made the mistake of opening a CYOA again. V6 I believe for those curious. Anyway, one thing led to another and I ended up spending half the day balancing points and trying to make a build that seemed interesting to me and, well, here we are. Doomsday.
E(U)STSW has been marked as on hiatus for now, but I do intend to come back for it and have written a little of the next chapter. And there has been some progress made for the next chapter of Tyrant, so that's not done either. But this idea took over my brain and I've actually got some more ideas for how I want this first arc to go, and some ideas for how I want the rest of the story to go/what I want to be the theme/drive. Not sure if I'll post the build yet, as I keep on changing some minor things around to balance points and some mystery is fun, right?
Also, the summary/description is, as ever, a work in progress so may change. And expect maybe some edits coming when I wake up in the morning and realise I hate vast swathes of the chapter and cry.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter, and there'll hopefully be more coming fairly soon at some point. I'm going to go collapse in bed as I once again finished writing past 2am in the morning.
Also also: I have a Twitch where I play games, but I'm also thinking I'll do writing stuff so if people want to hang out and chat/give input for any of my stuff feel free to hang out. It's (without the space) twitch. tv / thesamage2
