redimere —「andal | the right after.」

napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.
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redimere —「andal | the right after.」 Dec 31, 2022 10:34:18 GMT -5

Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Dec 31, 2022 10:34:18 GMT -5

I.

He wakes up to stars.

He blinks.

The stars do not vanish.

It’s bright, startlingly so, and he rises a hand to shield his eyes from them. The hand doesn’t bulge. He makes another attempt.

It doesn’t move. He tries to sit up, to feel his spine bend and then unbend again, a feeling that has become familiar after all these days, but the command fades away on dead synapses. He can’t move. Every sinew, bone, tendon, and flesh in his body lay as though they were hewn from stone. He felt as heavy as stone, too. The weight of his own body crushes him.

And as his eyes adjust, he slowly understands that the brightness above him isn’t stars, but lights, those terrible school fluorescents.

He begs his lips to move and tongue to speak in a desperate attempt to form words, to ask questions about where he is, what has happened, and what is happening now, but his mouth doesn’t even quiver. Instead it lays sunken on his face. He tastes the lingering essence of the death and the rot it was once filled with, and that was the only reason why he knew he wasn’t dead.

It was all real, and he wasn't dead.

Death would be such a gentler and kinder end to the sins and the crimes he has committed.

But isn’t what most long for?

A gentle beginning? A kinder ending?

Not him.

He has chosen a second path, one that leads deeper into the dark and drowsy woods instead of away from them.

The lights waver, soften, and become undistinguishable from that of stars again for a second before, darkness. A pitch-black darkness that undulates and ripples in ghostly rings, like the surface of a familiar lake.

Something, or someone, croons: "See you soon, Andal."

Last Edit: Jan 1, 2023 10:08:02 GMT -5 by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.

堕落天使

napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.
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redimere —「andal | the right after.」 Dec 31, 2022 21:04:59 GMT -5

Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Dec 31, 2022 21:04:59 GMT -5

II.

Leaves. Mist. Darkness.

The onrush of scenery around him flows like an invisible river in full spate, drawing him closer towards whatever lies ahead. And he cannot resist the pull. His body- wired to race forward, an arrow shot through darkness, engorged with its own volition; his body- treacherous in its will, terrifying in its strength; his body- not his, never his, never had been, full of its own wild ambitions and desires, charges ahead. It bounds and leaps and barrels forth.

He picks up a scent ahead. Sickly sweet, intoxicating, it all but blooms in the night like a nocturnal flower, beckoning him to pick it. He wants to pick it. He must pick it. He must pick it, he must pick it, he must-

He must hurry. It’s so close, this quarry in the dark, that he can make out its half-shape sliced from the shadows. It runs but it cannot hide. It lives because he allows it to.

A growl falls from his mouth, his fangs, an elated hunting thrill that the forest echoes in return. This is his forest, his hunting ground. He feels the earth below him feed to his speed, and the trees part for his leap, and at once he’s on the prey, tackling them to the dirt. They roll, and it ends with him lumbering over their body. They scream. He harmonizes with it, resounding it back in mockery. He is endless hunger and animal instincts, claws and teeth and rip and tear.

”Andal, it’s Jack,” it says. He doesn’t hear anything but a frightened plea. ”Andal, st-“

His teeth gleam as they close in, merciless, and his teeth do not know anything bar the act of eating and tearing— but oh, what they know, they know it very well.

The blood is thick on his fur when it is done. A wind rakes across the night around him, stirring a few wildflowers close by. It’s a full moon. The light of it so bright now that he notices it, everything doused in quicksilver. The leaves of every tree gleam on wicked edges. But there’s something else, something moving behind them. He hunkers down, waits.

A figure pushes past the whorls of trees, trailing a cape behind it. Moonlight limns their form: slender, elegant, poised. He snarls his teeth at it, desperate to see skin, but it is cloaked from head to toe. And it has no face. Where a face should be, glints a metal mask.

”Hello, Andal,” a voice speaks from behind the voice, a man’s. The man looks at the bloody carcass for a moment, brings his gaze back onto him. “What a lovely place you’ve dreamed up for yourself.”

He wants to answer but he cannot. He is the wolf. He is wild hunger and nothing else.

“I trust that you’ll remain comfortable here,” the man continues, “it’s taking a little more time than I anticipated it to, but that is no matter. Great art can take ages to achieve fruition and you, my Andal, are my most ambitious one yet.”

He tilts his head. He doesn’t understand. He slinks back down, licking his lips at the thought of what meal he can find behind that metal mask, what soft flesh …

“Ah, I am honored, but no.” The figure takes a step back. “We’ll get acquainted soon, but for now: sweet dreams, and happy hunting to you.”

The shadows engulf the cloak first, the mask next, but the eyes of the man, moon-bright eyes, linger for a moment before,

darkness.

The same darkness that steals him a moment later.

The same, laughing darkness.

Last Edit: Jan 1, 2023 10:08:47 GMT -5 by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.

堕落天使

napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.
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redimere —「andal | the right after.」 Jan 1, 2023 10:58:51 GMT -5

Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Jan 1, 2023 10:58:51 GMT -5

III.

[Jhin.]

I come home to the letter on my desk: gilt envelope, with the Gamemaker's special seal waxed onto it carefully. The scent of flowers bloom in the night air as it is opened, and in it, the first name that draws my interest is that of a recent phenomenon: Doctor Elysium Carter.

I fold it back. Interesting.

The journey is posthaste, peacekeepers knocking on my door in an hour's span to wayfare my team and I towards the underground bunkers where they once kept the resurrected tributes but now acts as an subterranean facility: a shadow under the shadows of the city. I find it to be quite a sanctum. The place is clean, sterile, and far from the vexing reaches of the eager and the curious, a haven for research.

Doesn’t excite me more than what I have been tasked for, though. The contents of the letter were mostly vague at best, but they made sure to clarify one thing: this was preordained to be my magnum opus.

Finally, a task that trusted my art instead of warding against it.

They lead us past whitewashed halls, closed off wards, long tables strewn about with chemical concoctions, and soon a set of glass doors slide open, ushering us into a small amphitheater. I see her first. Long brown hair held up to illustrate delicately-inked planes of her face: Doctor Elysium. I nod first in greeting, following it with: “It was an honor to receive your letter, Dr.” A surprise, too, but I do not voice that.

Then I see him.

It’s hard to gather what I am looking at from the first glance- what was once his face is now a patchwork of ruined flesh, open skin. And as I watch, the flesh - the red, meaty flesh - throbs.

“Ah.”

I approach the bed closer. My fingers already itch for a scalpel, desperate to sculpt and shape, but I let myself study the askew slant of what was once Andal Searley’s jaw, the bulbous mass that could have been called a face long ago ... oh my.

”Can you do it?” Elysium asks.

My held breath leaves me as a small, tinkling laugh.

“There is a reason they call me the Facestitcher.”

She nods. “Don’t disappoint me,” she adds.

“Oh, trust me,” my fingers ghost over his little furred ears, trace the soft lobes of them. Such a wonderful canvas to work on. “I don’t plan on disappointing the both of us.”

dialogue © to python.

Last Edit: Jan 1, 2023 11:30:09 GMT -5 by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.

堕落天使

napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.
Retired Staff

3,106 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Jul 1, 2024 15:08:37 GMT -5

redimere —「andal | the right after.」 Jan 1, 2023 22:25:43 GMT -5

Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Jan 1, 2023 22:25:43 GMT -5

IV.

His dream of darkness, of pure and night-raw darkness, had no end. And he doesn’t know how or why he knows he is dreaming, only that he is.

The dream is equal parts real and insubstantial, so much like the waking and not at all close to it, and within it he walks through dark woods, in a maze of old trees, the air smelling like a tangle between rot and moss that he wonders if he’s back in the arena. That he wonders if he never left. And slowly, the ground under his feet changes, broken up in places with strange mounds. The grass becomes dirt-stained rags, clothes, patches of exposed skin, all until he is no longer grass he’s walking on but bodies. Piles and piles of broken and bloated bodies, all wearing the same expressions of disconsolate grief. Each one looks so real, so wretched.

But then the trees suddenly part to a clearing, moonlit enough for him to spot his own hands, and he watches the blood on them flow back in reversal, disappearing completely, and that’s-

That’s wrong.

The blood, it isn’t supposed to go away. The blood is his and his to bear, the brightest mark of sin.

He clutches his dream fist.

The darkness takes over again.

And for the first few moments of drifting in that quiet void, it almost feels peaceful. The dark cradles him like a strange, infinite womb, and within it, he is almost birthed anew. The redemption he reached for feels close to this.

But then the dark spasms and chews him out, back into the same forest, back onto the same bodies.

And after what feels like an eternity of it, of the filth and the sink, suddenly the night sky above the woods tears open. Light floods in. He closes his eyes taut, and before he can even comprehend what is happening, he feels his arms again - his real arms - cramping in an instant due to rudely reawakened nerves. The pain wakes up the rest of him. He hears himself gasp aloud, a strangled sound, and feels his body try to sit up, but there are hands pinning him down.

The room is startlingly bright. He remembers the fluorescents, the flickering cold light of them like dead stars.

“Where-” the word escapes him raw, scraping sharply along a throat that feels like it is collecting cobwebs, “am I?”

A familiar wash of feeling overtakes his body.

He can feel his muscles try to expand past their limits, to grow and engorge, but they only reach a certain extent before that exertion fades. He draws in a ragged breath, tries again. He needs the wolf. As much as he loathes what it is capable of, Andal would not be alive if it wasn’t for the dark gifts that his affliction granted him.

The animal, however, doesn’t answer. As he reaches out for it again, it’s clear to be present within him, and yet it wouldn’t rise to the surface, as if caged, as if fenced in to a part of him now rather than taking all of it.

His teeth gnash themselves so hard at the strange men that they shake. He tastes blood in his mouth, plus the stench of old meat and death. It reminds him of what he’s done to live. It reminds him that whatever this trap is, he has endured worse and would escape it all the same.

Andal makes another tug, and the lingering wolven strength overwhelms them enough for him to break loose of their hold. He bounds across cold floor. Glass walls, glass doors. He’ll smash them in, and run, run, run-

Something tackles him to the ground. A bunch of somethings. He wrestles against strong arms, against gloved hands, howling. They won’t take him. Not again. He’ll burn it all to the ground like Elvena’s fire, like Cantara’s.

A thunderous clap surprises him to silence.

Ahead, a masked figure stands and regards him. Perhaps it’s the strange mask he wears, metallic and coin-gray, or perhaps it’s the look he has on him, but as Andal gives pause as their eyes.

“Mr. Searley, it’s nice to have you up,” Steel Mask drawls. “I was preparing for a gentler awakening, but it seems you yourself chose something else. Troublesome, that, but no matter.”

“Who,” pardon me, Ma, “the fuck are you?”

“Oh, yes. Introductions. Please, call me Jhin. And if you promise to not bolt again, I can dissuade my men from holding you down.”

“Jhin,” he says, folding the name over his tongue. It doesn’t mean a thing. For all he knew, he could be lying. However, as what little sense he has left floods back into him, he weights the possibility of someone stealing him from under the Capitol’s watchful eye and finds the scales tip towards the impossible. He lets his bones relax, which they do so with utmost instantaneous relief. Every part of him, from bone to sinew, is as weary as time itself.

”What is this place?”

“Compliance. Good.” Steel Mask – or, Jhin – gestures with a hand and the barricade around him withdraws. He rubs a sore arm, knowing it’ll bruise. “You are in good hands, Mr. Searley, and this is a safe place. After your last standoff, we had to- amend a few things, make a few preparations, before we were ready to put you back in the spotlight again.”

He looks down at his own hands, spreads each one wide. The scars there haven’t faded. Instead they are thick and now calloused and writ starkly against pale skin, with each one being more grievous than he remembers them to be. He’s relieved at that, too. Relieved that they hadn’t taken the few things he swore he’d carry forever.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t much,” Jhin says. There’s an underbelly to his words, like hidden laughter, like he’s telling him a joke that he isn’t in on. He hates it when people make him feel stupid. “Where’s my family? Where’s-“ my crown. My hard-won life. My victory.

The eyes behind the mask glint with the coldness of iron. ”Back in Ten, I presume?”

He growls at him. “Stop makin’ me a darn fool and start answerin’.” The or else gleams as teeth would, heavy behind each word. Another man would not, sadly, heartbreakingly, amount to much else after all the bloody pieces and the torn parts he’s left in his wake.

“As you wish.” Jhin clasps his hands together; they are gloved. He cannot see any skin on the man. “I was called by the higher authority to restore you back to your prime state, Mr. Searley. After the games, the serum created a few abnormalities on your body and altered some features. But worry not. I have taken care of it.”

Serum. The sound of it makes his arm muscle spasm again, and he clutches them to stop it. “What,” he breathes out, ragged. ”What abnormalities?”

“Well, nothing I couldn’t take care of!” He throws up his arms with an upward tilt of his head. And in the warped reflection of his steel mask is something he doesn’t recognize. Andal’s brows furrow. He wonders if he hasn’t stopped dreaming, if this is another place his head has sketched up, but no, the pain is real and so are the scar-like memories etched across his head.

Slowly, almost languorous in a disbelieving pace, he turns his head towards the glass walls.

There is a face there, looking back aghast with ice-blue eyes and hay blonde hair, and it is not his.

That sense of dreaming again drifts around him, eddying in a slow and delicate current, lulling him within its gentle rhythm. This couldn’t be real. This wouldn’t be real.

Jhin starts laughing.

The sound is so distant, away, away, away. Everything feels faraway, at a distance, there and yet barely out of reach. He takes a step forth, as if that would drag him closer, but instead the face he now wears becomes sharper and more defined in that reflection, the only indication that it is his coming from the expression graven starkly into it.

He blinks slow.

And his reflection is suddenly the wolf’s, blood all around its ugly mouth. That feels more familiar than anything else in this cold, wretched tomb of a place.

Last Edit: Jan 1, 2023 23:14:12 GMT -5 by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.

堕落天使