What's new
Frozen in Carbonite

Welcome to FiC! Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

The Legends of Bal, a RP character backstory that grew and grew till it expanded into a multiple chapter tale.

The Dark God

Well-known member
Author
AN: Long story short this is the backstory for a character sheet for the Deep RP run by @Parris, this was meant to be the backstory for a character in that RP but it got more detailed as time went on and so now I will post what I have in bits and pieces
Feedback, aid with grammar and spelling, even that most dreaded of things known as criticism is welcome.
Above all I hope you enjoy and thanks for @beast_regards for getting me to post it, and yes Parris, I will be working on this further during the Break I have from school and getting to the rest of the family.

The Conquering of the Flames of Agorth

The story of Bal begins with the birth of the Dead Cosmos, a subsection of the Death Verse that came from the entropic collapse of a entire universe into a pit of fire and pain, millions of lives being thrown away to be devoured and fed on by howling demons and monstrous horrors grown engorged by the gluttonous feast they made of the souls falling into their endless jaws.


In the fall of this universe when the Unseen Fire of entropy burned away light from the forms it touched so only rotting darkness could remain, there was a Sorcerer painting a portrait of the love of his life.


The Sorcerer had fought a great bloodlust since birth, a boiling heat had driven him nearly into the depths of flesh tearing madness many times but he denied his rage.

He devoted himself to the mystic arts, spending long hours reading the texts of the great sages, devoting himself to straining the limits of his mind.


It was the discipline in spell working he sought, the iron handed grip one needed on their emotions for magic to work. He thought if he mastered the arts of shaping mana and bending reality he could cool the savage hunger that gnawed at his mind like a worn bone.


That is what he thought, but even there did he feel a black wrath come over him at times, a terrible red would shadow his spells and ruin them. His rage was not to be denied, the heart of a Berserker had been crafted in his chest and it beat to the thundering beat of bloody battle, the Sorcerer however was not easily broken and so through many years of study he kept to his arts and in time found the anchor he needed.


She was the daughter of one of the greatest archmages of his world, her hair was like woven dawn light, her eyes a beauty of shimmering colors and her voice?


Not even the most divinely gifted of bards with their skill at drawing emotion into life through song could sing of the true glory it held.


The Sorcerer wanted her, he hungered for her and this become his quest, a obsession that was to be the spear of purpose that pushed back his rage, it simmered in him, in his blood a terrible flame seared his flesh and left his souls howling for the wet slaughter to fill it but the Sorcerer was not moved by the storm.


His passions of violence no matter how they battered at him with the fury of the tempest were ignored in favor of the scalding hot thoughts of possessing the girl.


He suffered to hold back his anger, he felt agony puncture him daily with the pain of his savage heart beating against his steeled will and yet the Sorcerer kept back the clawing thing that sought to rip itself from his flesh, with chains forged of his dreams of love he bound his hunger. It tore at them, burning at the bonds that held back the crimson tide but they held and the Sorcerer kept to his goal of having the girl.


He studied her likes and dislikes, found every way he could to be at her side without imposing on her, at the door to offer help with her books, in the garden with its tree that she sat at to read to give advice. Listening to the timber of her laughter, watching the light fall on her hair and slide down it in bright patterns.


She become his world, the object his entire being revolved around and slowly, with careful planning put to nerve breaking perfection he claimed her joys and sorrows, delicately worming his way into her innermost circle to fully capture her heart.


There were many trials the girl had created so that none would take her hand but the Sorcerer was mad with both love fluttering in his heart like a trapped bird and rage dripping through the bars of the cage he put it in to blacken his mind.


He threw himself at each trial she had, saying words that could have broken his mind, speaking spells that should have burned his body into cinder and ash to be blown away.


In his madness though the Sorcerer proved resilient, far too heavy handed in his will to be destroyed so easily and so he passed through the fire and flame of Agroth the Dragon that burned nations


He surpassed the drowning grip of Ican the serpent that had dwelled in the oceans of the world since time begin.


He crushed the skull of Anu, the demon king that ruled the southern wastes with searing winds of plague and armies of the dead empowered by his dark magic rooted in the ritual blood sacrifice of his slaves.


Angroth of ruby scale, a beast of blood red fury, who's eyes were burning suns. His every wing beat a crashing hammer of flame and his claws radiant with volcanic fire that sundered the earth he rested on.


The Sorcerer came to his cave and when he let loose such flame as to burn the dwarfen holds of his world to charred ruin, he raised his hand and commanded the world with words that struck the center of creation.


Let the flames be parted he spoke with thunder that blistered his throat. His robes bellowing around him, the hot wind of the Dragon's breath cooking his skin, the heat of its beating heart pounding at his body.


The Dragon fire was a wall that smashed into his hand, nearly breaking it in two but the Sorcerer commanded and the World heeded his demands, the fire would not reach his flesh, though the heat was a knife scarping the walls of the cave pristine still did the hand of the Sorcerer remain unwavering in its resolute determination but the fire would not let him pass.


He could hold it off but the Sorcerer was unable to move a single step as long as the flames of the Dragon held him at bay.


He was trapped, unable to move, to reach beyond and slay the creature and if he could not slay it, then the heart he so hungered for would not be in his grasp.


This could not be allowed, it would not accepted by him.


But how could he strike back against such a hammer forged of burning radiance he asked?


Let go whispered the fury, release the hold you have over the flame and let it beat you, let the flame wash over you to tear away skin, have the fire shred through your robes and blacken your bones.


Burn and in burning master the flames.


The Sorcerer heeded the voice of fury and let the flames pour over him, the inferno of Agroth melted his skin, pierced through the shielding of muscle to cook his bones, fire engulfing him and leaving no surface unburnt.


Fire smashing his body into burnt cinder, he sang to the flames, his words now barbed by bloodlust, he hooked the flames essence with the shaping of his magic, yoking the inferno that roared over him to will, blistering heat being beaten by the hammer of his spellcraft to gather in his arms and be bound to his fury. Agroth chuckled with glee as the spear of his searing breath seemed to obliterate the interloper.


The Sorcerer though was not dead, his flesh was now at best could be called a molten cloak of blistered skin but he was not dead, no fire and fury melded into red hot wrath churned in his hands, the fire of the dragon bent by his rage into a bubbling orb of flame that he held with his magic now echoing with the rage filled chanting of warriors giving into battle madness.


Where his words were once thunder that shook the core of the world, now they had become spears of iron will cast by the frenzy that overtook his mind. The pain of his wounds were but fuel for the fire he shaped in his hands and when he could on longer chain the inferno he let it blast forth to race into the gullet of Agroth.


The great Dragon that has made bonefires of entire nations felt his own flame cast back at him, its heat punching into his gut and expanding outwards to burst through his scales that had broken even the blades of the great heroes of the ages.


The expanding fireball blasted Agroth everywhere over the cave, splattering his boiling dragon flesh all over the caverns and slathering the nearly dead Sorcerer in searing fluids still holding a trace of the inferno that had raced through the veins of the Dragon.


The Sorcerer rested to heal his wounds and sought out the second trial.
 
Chapter 2, The Sea Mourns and the Mage Laughs


In the depths of the ocean did he travel, through howling currents into the dark abyss of the sea where no light touched the shadows that had lain there undisturbed by any form of land touched life.


Here among the crushing depths was found Ican, a serpent of obsidian scale that was old when the gods first drew divine breath and expelled it to give voice to life. Its eyes were white as the void between life and death, heavy with the knowledge that only comes from seeing not the rise and fall of nations, but the death and birth of entire races that walked on the earth above the abyss.


It coiled around the Sorcerer and spoke with the voice of the sea that drowned ships and left only wreckage of those who had driven them into the howling gale "Why come here into the abyss, mage of the Gleaming Towers? Why come and face me?

The sea around you is a vise that will push on your organs until they eject from the orfices housed in your very skin, your bones will be pressed into a fine dust and your body will be crushed until none could tell who you are" spoke Ican with no malice, only wistful musing


The Sorcerer felt the weight of the sea press on him, the force of a entire ocean being compressed into a vice to snap his limbs and shatter his bones, a grip to pulp his organs like ripe fruit and splinter his spine in twain.


Ican had spoken truth, the abyss would break him, cracking muscle and pushing bone until he no longer could draw breath. His vision grew dark, the sea grinding at his thoughts, the water not giving his mind the space it needed to think. No room except for the most simple and brutal of thoughts.


He began to chant, speaking not words but snarls that echoed in the abyss of the depths and high above where the sky rested over the sea that was to be his tomb, the Sorcerer with those simple thoughts of brutal concepts struck the clouds. He whipped them into fury, shaking the rain inside till it rolled and turned, the sky rumbling and shaking with the power being forced to cultivate in the heavens.


The sea choked the blood in the veins of the Sorcerer, the pressure pushing on his heart, forcing its beat to slow but still he chanted his dirge of death and hate, smelting water and wind into the shape of ruin he desired.


Ican watched the Sorcerer descend into frothing madness as the immeasurable density of the depths gripped his body and with tender care forced life from it. "So you struggle? mage for all the power your words hold to shape this World, I am of the darkest depths of the sea and was young before even the Gods. No magic you hold can break such things rooted in the most ancient of elemental powers, stop fighting death and let it come over you in peace" spoke Ican now with some warmth in his tone that had arisen past his usually frozen words as the struggles of the Sorcerer in their frenzied thrashing had moved his glacial heart a centimeter.


Not enough to ease the pressure turning his blood into immovable sludge in his veins of course but for something as ruthless as Ican that was a feat to be sung of.


The body of the Sorcerer started to fully die now, his limbs loosing feeling as his fingers become numb and his eyes shot through with cracks of crimson from the capillaries rupturing in them, and yet even as death pierced its cold fingers through his soul to lift it free of his flesh he kept to his shaping as droplets of water housed in the clouds were split by raging winds and pounded into shape by the drumming thunder.


The words the Sorcerer spoke if what snarling madness that bubbled forth from his lips could be called speech. Now made the water boil with dreadful heat as the rage that howled in his heart only grew more and more excited as he neared death. His mind now focused not on his slumping body but to the lighting he had forged from the sky, gripping the bolts like arrows he drew them back with a mental exertion of his delirious will.


His mind feeling like it had been cut and braided into the bow string that they rested on, the power thrumming in them tickling his gasping throat with the promise of sweet destruction.


He let go of the bolts of thunder, feeling their leaving as his mind snapped to hurl them to the sea and punch through the walls of water that stood between them and Ican, their tips blasting through the hardened pressure of the ocean that had been concentrated into this one point around the great Serpent and the Sorcerer.


They impacted the scaled body of Ican and no single bolt of thunder no matter the bound power surging through it could have penetrated his royal body, but these bolts were not hitting as one but as a falling volly and so he felt them tear through his scales to scald his inner flesh that had never known the touch of pain.


Ican roared and the seas grew wild and fierce, whirlpools appearing all over the world, ships being crushed by waves that were taller then mountains as entire fleets were lost, husbands never to see wifes and young boys dashed upon the cold unfeeling floor of the ocean, their dreams of adventure drowned as their lungs.


In the abyss of the ocean Ican sent whips of frozen water to flay the hide of the Sorcerer, spears of twisting currents cast to mangle bone and muscle. The great Serpent thrashed as its coils shook the ocean with his scorn and spite, its white eyes no longer calm but psychotic with its hatred for the one that had wounded its precious body so.


It ached from the lighting that struck again and again with cruel repetition, oh how the pain hurt it, how it hated the one that had struck it and sought to make his end an thing of artistic savagery.


The Sorcerer felt with nearly dead limbs his skin be flensed, muscles being torn by the raging currents moulded into spears to obliterate his body, blood filled the water as he was torn apart by the very waters of the ocean turned into butchering blades and if he was a normal sorcerer he would have died.


The Sorcerer though was not a simple magi of the Gleaming Towers, his blood bled from his body as it was stripped inch by inch but the vital fluids that turned the ice cold water around him crimson burned with the wanton heat of a reaver lost to the joy of destruction.


As his body was battered by the ice cold grip of the ocean and now rent by razor currents sharpened into frozen edges, his heart sang in his chest and he exulted in his bleeding form. His chanting growing to match the shaking sea set wild by the mad indignation of Ican.


Again and again did he feel the backlash of his mind snapping to let loose the thunder bolts, the snapping of the clouds as they were moulded to hold the spears of his wrath in place till they were finally set free to spear into Ican and drive him into even greater thrasings of pain.


The cold of the abyss sheered away at him, grinding till his blood had been torn from him to be claimed by the heartless sea.


This pain merged with the crimson heat that consumed his mind and kept him casting thunder at Ican, the force of the bolts bringing blazing light into the abyssal depths that had never been graced with such radiance.


To those sailors who could survive the pounding breakers of the sea they saw clouds rain down lighting into a whirlpool that was set spinning by the coldest winds they had ever felt, a blistering gale that cut through to the bone and left them gasping for breath, panting as they fought to stay alive as they watched the ocean and sky war with a brutality that struck them with primal fear.


Down at the bottom of the ocean the Sorcerer screamed and Ican howled as each committed themselves to the murder of the other


The Sorcerer raved as he was shorn of his flesh and held on only to the rage he had denied since childhood.


His fury that had been chained for ages slipping now into the shaping of his magic and filling up the form of the words of power he spoke with boiling hot wrath.


His pain rendered into but more fuel for the ravenous inferno that had become his dreadful working of monstrous spell craft, where once he had spoken to the world with a voice made refined by days of studying the ritual motions of mana, he now roared at it to kill and slaughter, inciting violence in the very fundamental heart of Creation to strike at Ican and end the elder Serpent.


Ican with his eyes blinded by the searing light of the lighting that struck him, forged from the waters of his domain twisting spears to pierce the body of the Sorcerer, flaying currents to blast away his limbs and chest into a haze of ruby froth.


His scales were now shattered and lighting dug into his flesh, breaking through his old muscles to split them in half with their heat, reaching his bones now that ached with the cracking burns that marred them.


Agony leaving the great Serpent to shiver in fear as he fought for its life and to end the pain that kept lashing at its soft tissue.



Sorcerer and Serpent combated each other, one with the sky made into but a device to cast lances of wind and water so broken and fused they become crackling power and the other using all the frozen malice and cutting movements of the sea to eviscerate.


How long they battled it can not be said but as time wore on the Serpent grew weaker and weaker, its body being split by thunder as its elder glory faded in its eyes. As life was pounded from its mighty frame it thought on the life it lived for so long, of the sights and wonders it had seen, of the wisdom it had gained.


Ican felt death with each stroke of the sky that tickled his frozen heart and though he still fought now he did not scream, he did not cry with no tears in his white eyes as a peace came with the spearing bolts of thunder.


The Sorcerer did scream, his body a bleeding ruin he howled and raved with fury and Ican looked at him and wondered as the light was crushed to a smaller and smaller point in his eyes how such a reaver could have learned magic.


It was the last clear thought he would have, his mind falling away into a deeper darkness then even the abyss of the sea, only the last shutterings of his gigantic body as it fell still at last the last sign of the life of the old Serpent of the Sea.


No one will mourn the loss of the old Serpent, none will remember his path through life but when the Sorcerer finally stopped abusing his corpse, the sea it seemed grew quiet and through even the surface of the ocean a great black came that shut out sound, crushing even the perpetual motions of those sea life that needed to be evermoving to live.


A shadow had risen from the heart of the sea, a shroud of sorrow falling on the corpse of Ican as a voice spoke to the body of the Serpent, it held in it the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach, the smell of noon tide spray blasting off the rocks of the shore.


Its shape was the outline of water as it lay its cool hands on the head of the serpent, cupping the black head large as a great boulder. It held the head close to its chest, whispering lullabies that were sung and forgotten long before land rose from the bedrock of the sea.


The form turned to the ragged and stripped body of the Sorcerer, the pitch black night it brought closing in on him. It made a coffin of its pain, a tomb of sorrow to end the Sorcerer.


Fury clawed at the water though, the blood that had been dripping from his body boiling with fierce heat "You seek to kill me? You think this darkness will snuff out the light of my soul? That your shadow of grief will blanket my broken corpse?"

The Sorcerer laughed, he laughed with a throat that had been choked until it was a raw thing, its flesh red with pain. Madness twisted along the curve of his laughter, a madness born of a melding of rage and love


Hope and wrath.


The sorcery he had spent so long mastering now stained by the bloodlust of his wanton heart. He was cut and beaten till he looked more a grand example of torture then a man but never had his power been so great, never his goal so clear.


The girl was his to claim, there was no god, primal force or power rooted in anything that could bar his path.


So he laughed bloody defiance at the mourning of Ican, he howled with spite at this solemn funeral dirge and the one that conducted it though they were of a might that even the Gods respected. "There is nothing you can do that will stop me, no power of this ocean, no magic of water can hold me. Do you think death is something I fear?

No death is what pushes me to ever greater glory, I will fight you and if I die then I will lay siege to the netherworld itself, I will harness nercomancy till I can rise again and complete the last trial!" screamed the Sorcerer.


"So what will it be? Will you contest me? would you fight a man who would call on anything, invoke even the most terrifying of the eldritch powers to conquer you and keep to his mission?

Would you fight a man torn and unified by the twin madness of love and bloodlust?

Would you do combat with someone who holds the power of the arcane and the will of a iron handed reaver?


The blackness of the sea that held Ican gave no response, all it did was sing its song and let its shadow leave the Sorcerer so that with the last bits of magic he held, he could make his way by portal to land where he collapsed onto the floor of the Gleaming Towers main hall where he had left, horrifying the other mages in attendance with the travesty of his body.


The Girl was the first to come and heal him, yelling at him for his foolish mistakes, scolding him even as she desperately wove frozen flesh, fixed shattered bones, purged with warm light the biting cold that had dug deep into sinew and tissue.


It took many days for her with the aid of others to heal him, to shape torn apart muscle anew, affixing skin to membrane and many more tasks were a dreadful chore. The body of the Sorcerer had been beaten and flayed in all aspects and so from the bottom to top the Girl and others of the Gleaming Towers had to reconstruct limb and organ, blood and mind.
 
"Chapter 3: The Sorcerer makes a Oath of Love"


After many weeks of nonstop restoring of a body that had been stripped of everything the Sorcerer rose from his bed, his body was still tender but the rage of the berserker once so restrained filled him with a heady warmth, a sense of pure strength stemming from violent passion holding him, forcing his body to move when it demanded rest with a voice of groaning bones and whimpering muscles.


The Girl saw him leaving for the third Trial and begged him to stay, to stop throwing himself into such pain. The Sorcerer cupped her cheeks in his hand, pulling her head towards his and when next he spoke it was with a panting excitement, an animal anticipation warming his fetid breath "I will have you, I will earn your heart by defeating all the Trials you set. I will not let it be given to me, no....

It will be mine, your love, your joy and sorrow. I will fight for it, I will tear it from your breast and hold it in my hand!"

The Sorcerer grabbed the body of the Girl and brought her closer, his words dripping with both desire for her and hunger for battle, the emotions mixing into a explosive combination.


"I will be nothing less then glorious, I can not be short of anything else but perfection though it bring me such pain to this body of mine. I am consumed by a hunger that sets my mouth alight with the iron tang of blood and another that drinks in the sight of you, not just your body but your voice, the way you heal others, the way you command the Gleaming Towers. How you read a book under a tree, the mastery of the arcane you hold, how you teach with such kindness and wit.


All of these things, all these facets of your being I wish to study more then any book of lore, more then any text though they hold Runes that would make me supreme to such a degree that the Gods would bow before me." Whispered the Sorcerer in the ear of the girl who's mind was awhirl with fear, shock and in an not so small way affection."I shall bring you the skull of Anu, and in doing so dampen this raging passion, for I am afire with madness!!!!

With the need to break and the need to hold...."

The Girl clung to the fevered form of the Sorcerer, seeing in his eyes a fell light, a dark fire that burned through his veins and set the hand that held her cheek trembling with conflicting passions, a turbulence shook his frame with the clashing forces of rage and love. The heart that beat in his chest thrummed with the furor of a beast waiting for the kill, she felt its rhythm accelerate under her fingers, the thrumming of blood as it was ejected and absorbed by the pounding pulse of his heart.


It was hot to her touch, a terrible warmth seeming to smolder in his body, a blaze that would consume him and leave not even ash if it grew any greater.


She gently took his hand away from her face, leading it to rest against his own chest, covering it up with her own hand as she pressed down on his still bruised breast. Her eyes that so captivated him become as cold steel to his hot iron, commanding him with words ringing with unstoppable authority "Listen well and listen now, you will not die. I will not let you. Go, complete the final trial, go sate this fire that burns you so, make a offering of Anu to this berserker I feel raging in your heart and wielding your magic."


The Sorcerer dared not speak for the words of the Girl were so frozen with crystal meaning that even his red hot mind could not deny being tempered. His words of flaming passion doused by the cooling will of her voice.


Her fingers that had lain so softly over his hand now pressed on his chest with lighting sheathed digits, streams of vicious pain easing into his heart to set a fluttering feeling of ozone seeping into blood. The Sorcerer feeling a tingling sensation ripple through him as blood dripped from his nose.


"But when you return, you will stop this madness, no more will you rage and froth" dripped the sweet words of the girl into the ear of the Sorcerer as she set lighting shimmering into his heart "If you would claim my heart then I would claim your madness, I would shackle this beast I feel racing in your blood, return to me alive or I swear with all my knowledge of the arcane I will bring you back and I will not be pleased"


The Sorcerer who had slain the ruby titan of flame that was Agroth, conquered the raging currents of Ican. The mage that sang with rage to splinter the earth and shake the sky above, trembled as he was stunned into abject silence.


There was no denying the words of the Girl, no protest could be made against such steel intent thrust into the heart of this manner.


She said he would not die, she told him he would return and would be hers. When he did no longer would he rage, no more could he let frenzy shape the mana he summoned in his conjuring.


These were not far flung hopes she cast to soothe the pain of her grieving heart, these words were the commands of a mistress of the World shaping Word that would part the seas with but a flick of her hand, sunder the fortified holds of the Dwarfs with but a whisper.


She held in her mind a spear of focused thought that held in it a power even this Sorcerer of reaving ways could not help but be awed by.


She gave one last surge of lighting and a kiss on the mouth of the Sorcerer boiling with both a lust and wrath to match his. There were no words said as she looked into his eyes one last time, only a unspoken warning.


Return alive it said or I will make you return.


With this terrifying thought buried into his conscious, the Sorcerer left the Girl to make his way to the lands of Anu, the blistered jackal demagogue that had ruled over the blood stained pyramids of the desert for ages uncounted.


Wars were made as ritual offerings to his rapine hunger, virgins of both sexs given for him to use as he saw fit and when they could not elicit any more pleasure from his unholy loins he had them cut into displays of art that he would show to the next offering to be given to him.


His mouth salivating with acid as he told them of how if they pleased him where these ones failed they need not fear such a fate.


Of course he always grew tired of them all but the hope stimulated their efforts, the thought that if they begged and panted enough for the lusts of Anu, if they gave everything to his twisting desires till there minds could no longer scream as their eyes turned dull, that life at least would still be theirs to cherish even under the claws of the jackal demon that enslaved their moaning and crying forms.


This was the will of Anu and as many heroes that had been made to beg for the pain of his whip to end had learned, the will of Anu was baked into the very sands beneath their feet, the fire of his authority seared into their flesh by the sun that baked the desert, purifying it of dissent or betrayal.


The Sorcerer came into this hell of searing winds and hungering altars, he passed into the great temple cities the Demon had constructed of the bones of thousands of those he called his people.


For they were chained to his will and so he used them as one would a tool or in this case the foundation upon which his greatest of works was crafted of.


Be it praying for his ascendent glory as they kneeled in the streets when the bell of devotion rang or as material ground into the shape of mortar and brick, all of them from young and old, to fair and foul were his to bend as his exultant will directed.


The Sorcerer though did not care for that as he wandered through the main city of Anu seeking his innermost temple, he cared not for the scents of exotic herbs used to placate the people who were as pigs raised to be given to the knife of the butcher.


The sounds of prayer given while being beaten for the slightest error did not faze him nor the sight of the undead brought back to life and filled with a sickly flame that boiled their bodies that stood guard over that which Anu held in his grasp.


The Sorcerer held the words of the Girl in his mind, handling them with the care only the most devout of saints give to the objects of their faith, they glimmered in his mind's eye as diamonds stolen from the innermost vaults of the heaven by but a mortal thief who clenched them tight to their breast to look upon them with awe shaking wonder.


In the land of Anu, where not even the dead could know peace the Sorcerer was buoyed by exultant will that shone through his being, a inner light of purpose to act as the channel for the rage that had risen from his blood to douse his mind in the ecstasy of the reaver who has lost himself in the swelling thunder of roaring war.


These shadows of pain, these shades of the miserable and broken were cast off from his mind as the cobwebs of spiders are burned by a raise torch.


His steps as he made his way through the streets of this groaning city were light, a smile pure and honest gleaming on is face.


His eyes shining with determination that had the huddled inhabitants of the dread domain of Anu looking at him with perplexing looks, as only those most high in favor withing the will of the Jackal were ever so light of heart and free of foot.


The sands of the great city were slick with the blood of sacrifice, merchants yawking instruments of death dealing, exquisitely crafted by only the most exulted of master torturers they declared, their jovial voices in sharp contrast to the wares they proclaimed to sell, a young boy went up to a merchant, his dress that of the poor and laid on the stall of the merchant a blood stained bag that contained glistening coins.


The leather of the pouch being soaked in red not of any concern to the merchant as he dipped his thick fingers into the pouch to grip a coin and raise it to his teeth to be bitten, the engraved head of Anu blazing in the sunlight as the rays of the searing sphere aligned with the surface of the coin for a moment.


The face of Anu carved into it seeming to ripple with the movement of flesh and its eyes growing deep with a dark, wet hunger that found the Sorcerer making his way through the crowd of shuffling forms that paid homage to the Jackal be it with the exertion of breath in his name or the stilling of their lungs as they gave their last to his glory.


The ruby eyes were of the coin's engraving were cut of only the most holy of gems sanctified in the darkest recesses of the hidden catacombs with the proper anointment of cobra venom and liver fluids, stared at the Sorcerer, of how easy his shoulders were as they rolled with his gait as he made his way through the city, of the way his body was unmarked by wounds of purification or seared by brands of loyal service.


The Jackal had over thousands of years baked his power into the very sands beneath the city, exerting through rituals of power built up with fields worth of dead subjects on engraving his essence into every stone that made up his temples.


Speaking Words that burned the sky with their speaking, oaths that bound the Jackal to the people of the desert until his fire lay sleeping in the very seed of their men and eggs of their women, his breath mixed in with their own pants of pain or pleasure.
 
"Chapter 4: In the Land of Anu, where the Dread Demon Dominates All."

The boy took the instrument from the merchant, the robes of the buyer spilling outwards to fall as an waterfall of flowing color, a shroud of greed in physical form covering the transaction of bloody coin exchanged for barbed device. The boy, his fair hair like golden corn, thick and rough, looked down at his little sisters who crowded around him like chicks bustling to be seen by their mother.


The boy looked down on them with love worn into a hard thing by the world that he walked on with each weary step across the sands, yet still holding the ability to laugh and play in the sun no matter its heat or the beating whip of the high priests.


"With this if we use it right we won't have to worry about the knifes taking us or the street gangs making a quick buck off our beaten bones, if we can shed enough for Anu.." the boy swallowed, a stone of bitter emotion cutting the inner skin of his throat as he tried to digest the feelings of warring excitement mixed in with the sludge of painful memory.


"If we can give enough to Anu, if we use this tool enough, wetting its barbs to the point the crimson will bake into it from the sunlight owned by the dread master, then we might be able to be allowed into the inner temple."


"Really!!!" cried one girl,


"Thank you big brother!!!" screamed another, her hair ragged and worn like a used rag but her face alight with joy at what her brother spoke of and so on it went that each of the scrambling girls around the boy jumped up and down with glee as they hugged him.


Muttering excitedly about the foods they would eat, of the clothes that only the most noble of the Jackal's court could wear.


In their thoughts they imagined the wise priests that would teach them, the sight of the altars so pristine as a red rain poured over them and flew down the channels carved into them to spread like rivers of crimson paint through the inner temple's complex.


Passing under every entrance way to another section and coursing through the very walls to flow into patterns and shapes that told the legends of Anu, the sanguine flows describing the details of why he must be worshiped with every thought and deed done.


The boy though did not think these things, the girls still held to the beliefs of the Jackal as only children who have never been taught what the wicked and just was, their ears poisoned by the venom of the Demon as lies were spilt into their minds to rot their brains, softening the structure of their thoughts so Anu could mould the soft mass as he wished.


The boy hated Anu, he knew what he would do with this "instrument" was not kind nor holy though his sisters thought it so, he gave no voice to this for he knew though his sisters loved him and he they.


Without a second thought they would tear him limb from limb, separating bone from socket, cleaving flesh from muscle and beating his skull into the sands.


He did not think them cruel for this, he knew how Nyn would care for the animals that walked haggard and listless through the streets, of how An would play the most beautiful of music with only what trash she could use to make sound so that they were not crushed by boredom, of Ryn and Zu dancing and playing silly jokes to lift all their spirit's and yet though it pained him to admit it.


He knew that the Jackal had pierced their hearts with his claws since birth, weaving chains of smoke made of daily teachings that wound around every bone and organ held in their skin, the hand of Anu lay upon their hearts and with but a squeeze he could crush love, suffocate affection to lay still and dead in their youthful mind.


The heat that beat down upon the city was not a wholly natural thing, the fire of the sun in the desert sky but one more aspect of the Jackal, its rays but another means of soaking those that lived under his eye in his radiance, aiding the teaching of his priests as they connected chains of bondnage to the very hearts of those who knew the name of Anu.


Each person in the cities of the desert hooked to the words of the Demon, even the boy who held thoughts of hate towards the Demon was in bondage to his desire.


Deny it though he may his heart was but another link leading back to the throne room of Anu where he watched his people though every coin and the very flesh they had for life was but another thing he owned.


The land itself impregnated with his salacious essence, hellfire piercing the core of the desert to fill it with sickening heat that bent the spines of all born of the Demon's land.


So the boy did not fault his sisters for the chains that had been melded into their very minds since birth, in the lands of Anu such was the lot of those marked by the Demon. Instead he replied "Yes, we will go to the inner temples and when we do I will make you all a cake as we sit on plush chairs and listen to the songs of the Great One." forcing a smile on his face as he hugged them close, feeling their warmth surround him and steel his spine for what would need to be done.


If they shed enough blood on the sands then the priests would have to take them in, the praising of Anu through the cutting of flesh was both one of the cruelest and easiest of ways to earn his favor, public exhibitions of brutal mutilation being much pleasing to the tastes of the Demon.


Of course if they were caught before the innermost temple took them in then the full force of the Incorruptible Law of Anu would smash through their lives and sent them scattering all over the desert.


Some to be given to the brothels where scented candles hid the putrid odor of sweat spilling from skin alongside drops of blood dripping into luxurious sheets.


Others to the arenas where mutated mergings of beast and man gored each other in savage combat for the amusement of a lounging demiurge that basked in the sounds of breaking bone and crunching flesh being caved in by mace or torn apart by blade, and others still to even darker fates, to places where the most "holy" of rites were done.


Sanctums where Anu spoke with his kin, those other children of the Hydra and he made gifts of souls to impress his fellow brothers and sisters of unwholesome hunger.


Gatherings of the most exalted of priests who had long worn away life in service to the Jackal, their bones now made golden by age and their flesh tattered parchment, their veins threading through the papyrus leather like bulging spider webs of sunken red and bruised purple, flowing thick with a dense mixture of demon blood and other unholy substances.


Chanting the Words of Anu, etching with each utterance of his Commandments his glory into the thrashing bodies of those being consumed from the inside out by those the Demon invited to his abode. The forms of the morsels given to the children of the Hydra screaming with cut voice as tendrils of corruption violated their soul, clutching tight their life force as they strangled souls until they were bled of all nutrition that could sate them.


The priests offering their bodies in turn, accepting the embrace of Anu as they felt his fire fill them once more and invigorate their long dead limbs, restoring color to lips dry as barren rock, filling their hearts with scorching essence that relit the fire of passion in their desiccated organ.


Yet not all felt the embrace of the Demon as pleasure and warmth, other priests having done some slight error that echoed with a thunder that the Demon found unfitting for his court, would be torn and consumed, their meek forms being mounted and driven to the ground as the Demon gorged on their power, ripping through all defense or protest as he rent their bodies in twain and spasmased with enlarging delight.


When the heaving form of Anu, splattered in fluids of blood and other liquids of the body made perverse by his obscene communion, rose with shoulders rounded like towering mountains and faced his surviving priests.


They would kneel to the ground, renewed where others had been consumed and as one they spoke their love for Anu, feeling his sculpted hands of black marble burning with the heat of his blood touch their heads, communicating his acknowledgement of their worship.


This was a fate that the boy sought above all others to avoid, in comparison killing someone no matter how vicious the methods used were, was but a drop of water compared to the ocean of misery he and his siblings could suffer, of course one must ask if such a terrible fate awaited those who broke the Incorruptible Laws then why would he risk everything to enter the innermost temple one might ask?


The answer like many things of Anu was at once both infuriating and bleak to hear.


For you see the boy would still suffer this fate alongside his precious sisters as there were many Knifes that Anu sent out to gather fine meat from his livestock to give to his brothers and sisters, they stalked the streets at night shrouded in a mist that made all sleepy, so tired they slumped to the ground. Making it quite easy for the Knifes to lift the sack of meat and bone up to be dragged to the feeding the Great One had ordered them to find delicacies for.


The boy and his sisters had learned how to hide in the cracks and curves of the streets that not even the Knifes with their enhanced senses could find them, though many a time it had seem like they almost had, their ears twitching beneath their hoods as they growled like rumbling thunder, their hands twitching as they sniffed the air.


Looking for the faint traces of little footsteps, the minute shake of wood being moved or some other sign of their mistakes that tripped them up when hiding. The boy would hold his sisters close and with no word said plead with them via his shaking body trying to hold back its shivering and his eyes widened to the brink, to stay still, to be quiet like a little mouse that could move unseen through broad daylight if need be.


Fingers splayed over the huddled bodies of his sisters as he tried to give comfort with digits turned stiff as wood by a fear that coiled around his throat like a serpent, his breath a locked thing in his chest, unable to escape the confines of his lungs except only for the most measured of breathing.


Forced to hold everything that could make a sound from his body still, waiting for the mists to part and the Knifes to leave, taking away their haul and leaving him and his sisters for another day unselected for the daily harvest of Anu, at least for now.


It was a game of time the boy was facing, a game that favored the machinations of Anu, a insanity of having to break the Incorruptible Laws to survive but in doing so ensuring at the same time the same punishment coming from another direction, so it was made akin to a double sided guillotine descending on his head no matter what path he chose to walk.


Either way he was going to bleed, it was simply a manner of how much and would he be able to walk further to provide food and shelter for his sisters.



To end this endless nightmare of hiding and praying each day that the hateful deity that owned their souls would not take them at last, the boy was willing to kill as many as needed, to delve into the most brutal depths of cruelty that the priests of Anu spoke of daily with their preaching of the Great One's desire to feel the love of his people by offering each other up as sacrifice.


It would just be moving with the city for once then against it, what use was it to hold these spiteful doubts of the Demon? What good would it do in the end the boy asked himself as he held the blade in his hand, seeing how it reflected his face with its grey metal, noting the barbs and serrated edges that had been worked into its making.


What good does it do when he must feed his sisters?

What good when he is forced to steal and kill to provide another loaf of bread, another morsel of food for them all?


This hesitation was death, a death he could avoid if he was willing to let go of the fetters that bound him so, to relquinsh his iron grip to deny the Demon his games.


If he played by the rules of the city as his sisters did for once, then he would be able to lift them out of these rat infested streets. To give them clothes blue as the rivers that flow through the sands, to have beds of feathers that cradled their forms as they slept instead of sleeping on a hard ground unsympathetic to the plight of their stiff muscles and bone.


If he were but willing was the question and as he looked and felt the laughter and joy of his sisters he knew that he must be no matter what he feared would come of using the tools of the Demon.


Raising his head up he surveyed the landscape like a vulture seeking out starving beggars to feast on, like the vulture he scavagned through the faces around him, his body made famished by hunger nipping at muscle and fat, his face gaunt from lack of food to fill in its shape.


His eyes burned with need, a red hot coal of molten famine directing his gaze, that one was too fat and plump, signs that he was Favored in some form and so should not be taken, another was strong of arm and had scars across his limbs, marks of the arena and the contests of strength and will he must have had to complete to earn them.


Through face after face the boy looked, seeking out the one he could stalk and learn more of in preparation of a proper offering to the Demon, but his eyes always seemed to glance over a specific set of faces, a set of forms huddled in the alleyways between the market that called to his need. A mother with her young boy, holding him close as she fed him a crude mixture of what many would never feel should be deemed food but made up the main diet of the lesser run of society that raised up the foundation that the Favored of Anu tread upon. Making sure to grind their feet into the dirty, grime covered faces that made the pathways they used to stand at such lofty heights near the pleasures of the higher levels of Anu's grace.


It was wrong they did this and yet, now the boy looked to the mother and her child not with what little sympathy his dried out heart could offer, Now he looked with his hunger for a better life for he and his. Sharpening itself against a grindstone of hollow need, the blade of his desperation growing more kenner by the minute as he fought to find a reason to hold himself back from choosing them.

The boy looked and looked but none were as appealing a candidate as the mother and her child, it would have to be gruesome. The blood painting the walls in the proper signs and the corpse torn apart but it would be a good start......


No, he must be strong, there was no other way the boy thought as he desperately gave one last attempt to find something, anything else that was not as terrible, did not require he let this hollow hunger growing sharper inside of him spill blood so pure even if such a atrocity would be hailed as glorious service to the Great One.


Luckily for the boy there was salvation this day, as on his final scan of the market he found of all things a foreigner walking in the streets, his robes were of a rich red threaded through with gold and black, his boots shining in the desert sun with a glossy sheen. His face unlike those born under the searing eye of Anu that was the sun, was fair as only one touched by cool winds and not hot gusts of searing air can be. He walked in the streets of the dread city with eyes lost in thought, not aware of the danger he was in at every moment.

Foreigners like this often came to converse and trade with the Demon, selling services or coming to give grand gifts in hopes of Anu giving something in return.

As such the gates of the dread city were left open for all to come in, of course most when they came did so with armed guards and a full procession to ward off the troubles that might besiege them in their procession through the city streets, but not this fool oh no. The Incorruptible Laws only "protected" those under the domain of the Great One, twisted and warped in contradiction as those Laws may be, for this stranger in a strange land?


They would be of no use to him, he could be slain at any moment and not a single priest would bat an eye. The boy prepared his ambush by giving the proper hand singles to his sisters, telling them where to go and what they were to do.

The plan as such things are was rather simple, the boy would wander through the crowd with his instrument and when the opening presented itself, he would stab deep into the gut of the foreigner and twist the instrument in his hand.


From there his siblings would also appear to help after having dissolved in the crowd. A skill learned by the priests of Anu that preached publicly every day, one that he questioned but would use no matter how much the idea of his sisters having such techniques learned and what they thought to use them for churned his stomach.


They were growing too old and with age came more opportunity to put themselves in danger and a secret part of him whispered, something he could never forgive.


Those concerns were cast aside like old cobwebs, easily pushed away from the repeated motion of pushing them back, what was important right now is that the girls having listened to the priests of Anu knew how to use some of his power through prayer to do various things. Like for say becoming undetectable through mundane senses.


Everything in place, the boy began using his mere mortal skill of blending in with the other vargants that slipped in and out of the crowds of the city, approaching the foreigner through a roundabout but steady pace
 
Back
Top Bottom