villainy incarnate [aeson vs ingran; day 3]

Leaving a shallow scratch along the mutation's leg did nothing to sew a chord of discourage in your heart. In fact, it left a seed of elation in your chest, made your blood boil and a war horn sound in the back of your mind -- this will be a clash of monsters not men.

You see yourself in that decaying form, a personification of a man who's been sent to the depths of hell and somehow made his way back. Someone who's joints click with every movement and groans with every twitch in his jaw, he wields that spear like an extention of his rotting hand and looks at your with a bloodlust in his eyes. You see yourself in him; a clear personification of the madness left to fester deep within your soul.

Perhaps this is that hell they rave about before you send them there.

You withdraw your hand, blood staining the edge of your spear, and this this groans something barely caught by your comprehension. "Shitstain." You shrug your shoulders, you've been called worse anyway. It is barreling towards you, lunging with its spear outstretched and eyes trained onto marring your skin. You don't have faith in your own ski pole to block his, his speed matches yours, and a brief look of surprise registers on your features as you do your best to sidestep.

Yet you do not manage to avoid the explosion of red that tears across your forearm, blotting the apathy trained in your voice. "FUCK-" you stumble and shake. You shove the pole towards the snow and just about manage to catch yourself before you fall, an angry red sneer looks up at you. A red moon tears itself from your mouth, a mixed shade of agony and rage, and eclipses the previous composure that had carried you through the past two days.

The past twelve years.

You bite the inside of your cheek, the soft pain does its best to distract you from the harsh one but to no avail. You twirl on your heels, remembering never to turn your back on the enemy, and find a red mass dripping from the edge of his spear. You look down at your own arm, the crimson soaking into the sleeve of the sweater but leaving nowhere near the initials EA branded upon your chest. You sneer, hefting your spear and circling the mutations groans and growls as it watches you, tracing your movements as you do the same. This is a clash of monsters, not a battle between desperate men.

The sight of your blood forming a blood trail in a similar fashion to Vesper Daisy's does not strike a fear chord in your chest, little things never struck a chord deeper than hollow, but it ignites a burning desire. You are no Ingran Ansgot, you never have and you never will be, because your beginning comes from black scripture scrawled upon yellowed pages while his comes from ambiguity -- you knew nothing about the fucker past the cannons he fired and the life of his he threw away.

You remember watching, at fifteen, with Ava and Aeryn as he pinned that boy to the ground and crushed his skull between his hands like he was nothing but an ant. With ease and pleasure; Ava saw the captivation in your eyes. Two years later, given the opportunity, you tried to do the same. Pinning the next man, buried up his neck in debt, after breaking his knee and doing your best to replicate what you had seen on television. Despite his cries and his writhing, his skull never shattered and his lifeline never stopped. You had the heart, you had the malice. But you never had the strength; you couldn't replicate the actions of a ghost and the realization struck you as your grip loosened.

So you decided you would create your own brand of brutality, unrefined and wild. You stomped his face into the concrete.

You could never replicate the actions of a ghost, so you decided to make your own red smear on the world. "Don't fuck with me."

And here you stand, your blood forming droplets into the snow because of the shadow of a red phantom that's decayed for over three years and counting. Your beginning came from dark scripture scrawled upon yellow pages, but your end will be in hellfire, not the hands of some wannabe dead man. You heft your spear, gritting your teeth and moving your muscles to the rhythm of agony. This is a clash of monsters, after all.

If Ingran wanted a fight, you would bring a war.

Your spear tears through his calf and draws nothing but emptiness; he doesn't feel.

He shows no signs of slowing, no signs of weariness or pain. He defies human nature for he has been given the gift of not being human in the first place. You remind yourself that this is not Ingran; Ingran has been dead for over three years. His body torn apart by Capitol mutations in retribution for his last act of cruelty towards his allies, it's not possible that this is Ingran. Just a thing wearing his face, mirroring his movements and mocking his language. Despite the black heart that beat in his hollow chest, Ingran was barely human; Ingran could still bleed.

This thing doesn't bleed.

Fear was never a black cloud that hung heavy above your head, that was overtaken by starvation and black scripture, and the idea of mortality never made you stop to think. Death was simply a promise, something that came at the end of a cycle -- your mother and father saw it as a reward, a forbidden fruit to be grasped at the end of their suffering through this sinful plane. Suffering through a sinful existence just so they could meet their father in the sky. Despite your age, they made sure you understood that nothing could truly be deathless, people couldn't lose their humanity. They could only shed its layers.

Perhaps that is why the sight of something as close to deathless as this should send a chill down your spine. Something that wears the face of dead men and doesn't bleed when you try to kill it. Something that still has the twisted bravado to pull its rotting lips into a disgusting grin despite the wounds you have carved across its skin.
You've never been fearful, not truly.

But this is something that lies outside the realms of your comprehension; something your reasoning cannot piece together. Ingran Ansgot has been dead for three years, yet here he stands. Moving with a speed that matches you and a striking with a ferocity you could only ever dream of possessing. Despite his rotting self, clearly a reflection of your soul or whatever, and the gash you've left into his calf.

He surprises you with his speed, his spear glints red in the orange sunlight and arcs straight towards your face, you hold your breath.

(oh, motherfuck--)

And you release it in the form of another harsh scream. You're stumbling backwards, hand pressed against your skin and fighting back against the bloodflood spilling down your face and dripping down your chin like juice from forbidden fruit. And had you lost enough blood, you might've mistaken the layer of snow for white sheets back home and let yourself fall, expecting to be caught and curled into a soft embrace. "Fucker," you mutter, steadying your blurring vision and focusing on the layer of life coating your fingers.

He's scarred your fucking face.

However, this is an atlas curse you're not unfamiliar with. You've paid the price for your allegiance to violence a hundred times over, tendrils of pain wrap around your limbs and torso, and this is a scar you can learn to live with.

The colors of a monster swim before your eyes; you can't bring yourself to smile like it does. You've never seen a that black cloud known as fear hover above your head, it was something you never truly understood, and your icy composure in even the direst of situations was never seen as a cause of concern. It was seen as a sign for something great; a spontaneous delivery in waiting. You've never been cursed with that black cloud, not when you see that damned wheel slow and certainly not at this moment. It may not bleed, but nothing can be truly deathless.

So you heft your spear and narrow your vision on the nearest opening.

You never claimed to be a rational man, you never even said you were a good one, but let it never be thought you weren't a fucking fearless one.

The wound you leave is a trademark, one part spelling rage and another part with an underlying tone of desperation. You're a fearless man, an evil monster with darkness in his chest and hellfire burning strong in his core but in the back of your mind plays the possibility that he may not even be able to be killed. That every scratch you leave across his rotting skin adds nothing to the deterioration process, only another wound to mark the surface level. What if you've finally met a man who's soul has festers as much as you have? An unstoppable force meets an immovable object; Ingran Ansgot could've been a man of legend in your world.

Yet, you see beneath his twisted smile behind his gargled laughter and see a small sign of weakness. The sun rises above the horizon and you see him, every inch of him behind the crimson spatter leaving melted patches in the snow. Behind the snow falling around you like ashes in the wake of a forest fire, you see beneath notations for death and a tale of resurrection. He's weakening, as if he's ready to rest. You smirk.

In the back of your mind, you wonder if this will be you when your time comes.

When the hellfire finishes with your core and spreads from organ to organ, hungry flames licking your skin and exposing you for what you are. What you truly are. No pretty face to hide behind, no cloak of humanity to slowly shed. Just. Truth.

Despite the agony biting at your forearm and the tear in your cheek, you manage a laugh. "Is there a special place in hell waiting for me?" You ask, despite knowing there's no way he'd know. This isn't Ingran, you saw the real Ingran lose himself to blood lust. Plunging his blade through his ally's skin and letting a personification of all his mortality devour him until he was nothing but bone. Every bone is buried back in Six, despite never giving it a second thought, you've seen the tombstone in simple passing. "Have you seen it?" You ask him anyway, out of irrational habit and false hope.

You always send people there before they can show it to you. You question if it's even real sometimes.

Maybe if you went there, you could meet whoever constructed it and make them bleed ichor gold. Then you can find your parents, your real parents, and do the same to them; you still remember learning to count your ribs as you withered at their whim.

Instead of a resolution to the question that's burned your core brighter than hellfire, he decides to answer your question with a spear to the gut. Except the song of metal against metal rings clear through the morning. He tears the armor clad around your chest almost clean off of your torso and you stumble.

(but you will never fall.)

Somehow, he strikes too low to tear the EA initials stitched to your sweater. You grunt, looking down at your ruined armour before sneering and looking up. You meet his eyes, decayed, dead eyes for a moment as the two of you stand there; two hunters desperate to drink from the bittersweet nectar of bloodshed.

"Nevermind!"

(you'll have to keep chasing it yourself)

Your spear arcs towards him, point sharp and bathed in sunlight.