User blog:MockingJester/Forsaken child

--- I...I saw this thing once. Just once. In exploration to yet uncharted lands. I sought to bring the light of the chief god, hoping to gain new followers to our Order. But, this thing, it was...it was---One of its crimson hands clutched a dead...I-I hope...Tar dripped from her eyes as it spoke. Speaking as if recognizing the woman. Speaking such cold judgment. And then, w-with a growl, it---it a--I couldn't look any further! I couldn't hear anymore! It never stopped after the first one! I-I fl---this place is cursed! It-it's cursed! I fled, left the accursed place! I've been having nightmares about this...thing wandering by! Sporting a crown of feathers like a divine entity! Masquerading itself as a servant of a god! Yet, all I could see was the devil walking in a garden of the dead...--- Captain Luther 'shattered mind' of the 5th celestial lance brigade following an expedition to the unsung islands. --- "My child, you need not weep. You need not whimper. Not anymore". A warm voice pouring from the light of the tunnel, slowly descending like a star caught it the sea of its kind. A twinkling red star, ominous, usually. Here, it was naught but comfort.

Slowly descending until its presence illuminates the surrounding, he darkness clutching at the youngling is apparent. Nothing but a den of filth and mud staining the walls of a place once used to collect the crystal clear water. Defiled into a cesspit for degenerates to lump their sins down its throat.

The child was worse for wear, lost in the darkness for days on, left to die. Mud on his face, pungent water on his ragged clothes. His bones are starkly visible, atrophied from a crying stomach left to eat itself and its surroundings. All in the hope that their sins would burn as well. If only they had known that this irrevocable depravity, the soiling of this child, epitome of innocence in isolation was the last straw to her ire.

"Ohh, how long have you been left without eating? Or bathing?" A hand brushes the side of his face, pale in the illumination of the ruby light. The mud caught in its palm is promptly burnt away, leaving the child's cheek as sublime as the day of his birth.

Another hand comes doing the same to his other cheek, searing the filth on his face in a caress he had never felt in his life. A caress pouring in deeply as the sudden warmth of a chest welcomed the side of his face.

The more he felt it, the more he saw of the speaker. A woman. More than a woman, her eyes, a red as the ruby mineral. Her face is unhindered, portraying an expression alien to him. Confusing to his small withered eyes, he struggles a bit shortly before his tiny heart pulsates in its response. Overwhelming to him, soon prompting to knock the poor urchin unconscious, if not for the woman holding him so close.

Her black dress in ornate runes and arcane scribblings do not damper the warmth of her chest, even as she expresses a saddened surprise "Oh, my poor little one. You never even had the warmth of a mother's hug, did you? Or even a father's embrace?"

His tearful response, immediate, comes in the shape of a glistening shine dripping off the side of his cheek. His eyes shamefully lower, unable to bear its searing presence on his mind, struggling not to burst out in tears. Trying to remain as...composed as he could before the woman holding him close.

Her hand rubs off the side of his cheek, seemingly wringing out this feeling. It drips off his eyes like the tears he struggled to keep, breaking his little composure. Deliberate from the woman all-too welcoming to his tiny fist bowling up as he starts slowly crying quietly.

"Children should be allowed to cry when sadness overtakes them and laugh when tickling holds them. You are no exception, my poor little one". She holds him close, feeling the moist, salty tears smear on her robe. The hushed sobbing. The trembling hands. All incorporated over the years of cold apathy piled up into this abyss.

She lets him sniff as much as he needs, clutching his small body close. First time in the arms of a motherly-looking woman was overwhelming for the young boy. Yet, he couldn't let go, couldn't stop. She didn't stop him, instead, offering the mother he never had.

"I can give you what you were deprived of. A mother to warm you. A father to teach you. A brother to bond with. A childhood you were denied".

The child stops his sobbing, hearing what looked like an illusion. Looking up to the woman, he sees a firm assurance. The meaning dawns on him: she was offering to be a part of her family. His eyes widen, still stained with so many tears.

Tears she promptly wipes, softly caressing his cheeks "Yes. You will be our son. Loved just as much as our child. He always wanted a little brother to play with...if you would agree". A gentle smile coats her lips, honing them in a motherly sight.

His response? He buries his head in her cleavage, crying all the more, praying that is was true. That he heard what she said. Her swarming arms assure him, coiled around him as a mother would her child.

Her eyes look to the side, where another entity had slowly appeared. From smoke and shadows, a man entombed in armor of thick onyx metal, all featuring expressions of faces. Even his face was but a mask, much like the woman's own on her hip.

Sensing the presence, the boy moves his cheek from the woman's side, looking backward to the man. His shade, darker than the onyx that shines over him, pigments to a more humane tone.

"Ah Puch, my mistress". A knee on the muddy floor, a hand on his heart, the man kneels, the intricate arcane in his armor desisted.

The woman, goddess of the dead, knees before the man, a hand on his shoulder all the while clutching the curious child with her. A sudden apparition might have had him worried, if not for the undeniable warmth flowing from his aura.

"Osmy, this child would do well in our family. He has been starved for a mother and a father".

"Has he now?" His eyes, painted in the most mundane of a brown, dart to the boy, no longer concealed by his ancient mask. His face was as human as they come.

The child can feel a stoic fortress between the man's arms spreading outward to him, nodding subtly. Called to it, to entrust himself into another. A role that once, would have been given to his birth father. His protection.

The man watches as the child, spurred by the deity, makes timid steps toward him. Slowly. Quietly. Unsure.

Almost worried, his body is coated in the man's stalwart embrace. It was undeniable to his childish mind: he felt that nothing could touch him while in this man's proximity. Nothing.

Ah Puch looks at the two the same way she did toward her husband and their first child, brimming with the pride of a mother, feeling in induction in this slightly less-than-ordinary family.

The youngling was no longer worried, beaming with a joy he never had before. The joy of belonging. Which slightly decreased as he saw the glare of his adoptive godmother back to the man.

A glare he returns as his mask of stone and onyx aligns itself on his face, sheathing his expression behind its darkness. Hands, once as human as the boy, now grimed in a crimson essence, almost like blood, concealing an eerie glow. His voice is hushed in a deep pitch 'How many?'

[All of them, Osmy] Her voice is no longer the gentle divinity that came to him through his whimper. No, it was as if she was possessed by a demon, though the reality was far more horrifying [This child is the last of indignities I will suffer from them].

'They did this, then...' His eyes dart back to the second son he is to welcome, Young eyes look back to him, unaware that the man surrounded by darkness weighted the sins piled upon him. The very innocence of a child, stained with their misdoings...

Ah Puch puts a hand over the young child's forehead, snatching every bit of this dripping stain, cupped over her hand. A scarlet sphere is shaped, one she offers to him. It swirls with stained liquid inside it, heavy to mortal hands.

His hand reaches for it, temptingly pushed back by its energies. The faintest semblance of faces acts as the push back, shrieking in unheard tones. As if the bundle of sins recognized the hand that attempted to grab it. The goddess nooks her head sideways [They fear you].

'Good'. The man, now utterly distant from his human appearance, forcefully clutches the orb and shatters it, the entire weight now pouring on him, dragged inside his hidden maw. His crimson eyes now burn in blinding outrage, laced in impure deeds.

He jumps upward, as silent as the dead of the night to the frightened young child, losing sight of the man. The woman feels his fright, kneeling back to him, a hand on his cheek. Her demonic demeanor dissipated back to the motherly affection "I'm sorry, my youngling. Daddy isn't happy with the people that put you here. He's gone to have a stern talking with them. But, don't you worry about that. A special someone is looking to meet you. Come~

His worry is defaced, replaced with a smiling monument. He eagerly clutches her hand with his tiny fingers, noting a rift torn open behind them to a place, different from this shrouded forest of misdeeds. A place belonging to a child, verdant and clear of skies. A place whose heart is filled with a monolithic building, a home resting over its very peak.

This is where the woman and her new child go, impatient to meet a very eager brother long goading his parents for a sibling. Far from what was to happen here... --- His landing is unceremonious, hidden by indifference. A city of strong murals and stone, built with what must once have been the work of sturdy people.

Although looking around to the den of infested individuals partaking in their hedonistic lives, Osmy couldn't help but wonder what those who sweat to make this place would of their descendants.

Men walking in drunken stupors, prone to violence as they accidentally bump another. One of their victim, another drunk, was slumped to the side of the street, a noticeable bruise on his head, bleeding somewhat. Another was close by, rummaging through his pockets for any shining coin to help himself to. His eyes never glance at the inanimate man drooling in his spit, nor he cares to.

Women wandering in less-than-modest attires, disguising their deception under the allure of feminity, swindling those whose thoughts turn to lust, mistaking them for escorts.

Others more, stripping the most clueless of all they have, bottles in hands as well, to then push them out into the street, laughing. Peasants, guards, nobles, all partaking in this seemingly mundane act. All of them sporting a bottle by a hand. Celebratory bottles, he's sure, noting how every alcohol vendor has a sporting discount on them.

And more debased acts, all in this name of 'ceremonial' aftermath. Cleansing themselves of their sins, so they believe, to commit more. Osmy catches an altercation in the corner of his eye. A dead-end to where he turns.

His first sight is that of a faint trickle of blood on the floor...still spewing from the mouth of a woman. Wincing his eyes, he spots her advanced age, barely able to get up. A red bruise adorns her cheek, the most trembling of her body, weak to physical trauma.

A man stands by the corner, counting up a purse full of coins. Easy thievery, as always. Who would conceivably hear the plights of the old woman, who moments ago, was pleading for help before being unceremoniously slammed to the ground?

"Friggin' old hag! Got my hand smeared in her blood! Next time, it's your life!" He continually counts, snorting and laughing, only to note that their shine was now cut away by a shadow.

Osmy's.

"The hell are you here for, bud?!" Osmy is met with the face of a man in his thirty. Even standing before the robber, the dark man could smell alcohol around him blurring his already precarious morality.

"What, you're here for that hag's bag? Well, sorry bud, you'll just have to rob some other old bitch who thinks this is some hallowed grounds!" The man laughs, making sure to move the gold pieces all the while the elderly he struck still struggled to catch a breath, let alone move.

If the child he had adopted was the epitome of innocence, then this old woman choking in her blood was the summit of the defenseless. Another one who didn't deserve what this place had thrown her. An all-too-common thing, judging the thief's words.

The man laughs, moving the sack around...until he didn't "What the--" He hears it clink away from his hands. The stranger clutched it between laughter, now kneeling toward his victim. Hands-on hands, lifting her back to her feet.

A hand on her broken nose and dislocated jaw, a soft crimson soon went. No longer injured, the mark of her aggressor, withered.

Ire spills from the man's ravenous throat "Hey buddy, what the fuck--

"I thank you for this most gracious aid, young man. I was afraid that no one would have heard my plight..." She takes the bundle of coins worked by decades of sweat, rightfully hers.

"You shouldn't be here". His ears ignore the screeching thief reeling at the back, his attention entirely on the old woman, meeting her soft brown eyes.

"Ohh, how kind for you to be so worried, but, it is a thing I am used to here, in this unfortunate den I live in. I do not have long to live regardless--

"No, no, let me reiterate -- you do not deserve to live here, however old or young. You need to leave this city this instant".

"But, my grandchildren, my children's children and my own young, they all live here. Surely I cannot force them out of a job and a house they've worked so much to get".

Osmy hears the grinding sound of metal running through the bricks of the dead-end that surrounds them in exchange for the irked thief's silence, his step, slowly nearing them.

Yet, the man's attention remained on the elderly among the noise and the belligerent "Take them. Take them and leave this city. There is one nearby. I know of it, they will welcome you plenty, give you labor to make your family's living and reasonable houses to call yours. Here, give hem this..."

Osmy puts a dark coin on the elderly's hand, the latter, perplexed by his words continuing "They will know that I've sent you and your brethren. You can rebuild at the City of Urns. But, you must take your kind and go. Now".

"Well, I...I appreciate this sentiment, but, why so insistent? I've known this way of living for long. A spiteful as it is---

"You are the only pure individual present. You and your family. You do not deserve what this place has cut you with. You do not deserve the calamity that is to strike this city down. It and its sinful residents".

"Calamity?! What could--oh dear!" Perplexed by his words, the elder woman sought to search his expression. Looking into his deep scarlet eyes, the woman saw nothing but death. Death of the myriad residents, their bodies, glazed in black, spitting endlessly. Weeping without reserve. Begging...pleading...as a great red glare shone...

Her trembling jaw spluttered out, the revelation all too clear to her "You! Your eyes! You're--!"

He nods, feeling the alien epiphany washed over her, a hand on her shoulder "The goddess of the dead grant this mercy to you, and your close ones. The rest are damned. But you must go. Take your offsprings and their newborns. Leave this place".

The elderly woman, recognizing the man for who he was, really was, had a struggling desire to kneel and prostrate herself to him. To a man touched by the higher-ups, deeply dipped in divinity.

His hand held her high, turning her to the direction of her close ones "You need not beg. You have my mercy. But take them. No one will interject in your path, nor theirs. Ah Puch will watch over you in your journey. Go. Now". A flight of purpose washes over the elderly, humming in scarlet tones. A touch rendering her a non-entity to the surroundings. As dead as the grave in illusion.

She goes, walking like a herald, soon leaving his sight, gathering her brood and their heirloom, preparing, unaware that the touch he had given had already spread out to her brood. His voice to them, telling them to prepare, to leave, restart in the City of Urn, to never--

-Chink-

The glint of a rusted metal meets the sun briefly, lunged between Osmy's plate, intended to skewer him alive. How the thief could already see his immediate retribution and the twist of the stranger's expression, suffering a fatal stab.

A fantasy snapped away by the grind of metal against metal. "What the hell..." The thief, already previewing the price of robbing a robber on his would-be victim's face was blind to the armor that now befitted him, only privy to it as a strong reflection forced his eyes away.

"What the--Hyeahh!" He feels metal dig into his armed palm, squeezing the flimsy blade out of his hand. His struggle is immediate, caught in a merge of fear and pain.

Pain at the incessant burial of the stranger's armored hand deeper into his flesh, close to cuts.

Fear toward the mask that afflicted the stranger, a wild, untamed set of teeth coursing from the chin. Two rows on his now hidden chin, coated in silver elegance amidst their violent presence. Crimson feathers set as a jagged crown dripping in viscous black on the back of his head. The front and top are hushed in a serrated mask, masquerading in the blackest of onyx, upstaged only by the face that now lurked behind it, incomprehensible darkness dripping from the face.

Dripping from the armor.

Dripping from the neck, the shoulders, torso down to the feet...

...except for the hands, dyed in a crimson so vicious that for but a moment, a split second of lucidity, the thief had but the wonder of whether the man had shed another's blood before coming here "...what the hell are you?"

Trembling, was his voice, his fear overtaking his pain, his instincts. To then become...blind? Darkness, not of Osmy, who now was more than content at staring him down. The madness overtaking his mind as a dark fog overtook his eyes...

...and rational.

"Ah--ahh! AHHHHHH!" Shaking legs and a trembling lip "Get away from me!" Quivering hands and cracking teeth "Get away from me, you devil! GET AWAY!" Fight was no longer a possible solution for the terrified thief, running. Running and screaming.

His shriek gathers the eyes of onlookers, drinking in their indulgence, disturbed by his harrowing yelp. Their sight is inundated with a man fleeing the street. Eyes, flooded in a thick, black tar pouring non-stop. It clogs his irises, caking them in a blinding slime, ever weeping like a victim of a pandemic.

It follows behind his stained top, his feet, the soil, running close to the man blind. Their expressions become that of horror, recalling a sight like this long in the past, distant memories...

...then, they all look at what he possibly could be talking to, daring their sanity to catch a glimpse at the source. They see him...

...they become agitated, unnerved. Then, he...it, speaks, a drenched finger pointed solely at the runner, unknowable maw moving in eldritch accords.

'Gavan Hendro. Your sins pour from your very being'.

Crimson hands bursting from the soil, gnawing at his feet in one forceful tear, pulling more than fabric and soles. His scream tears into the witnesses' ears, echoing far and wide through the accursed city. His blood drips gently from the end of his ankles, rendered useless by moving hands rising upward.

'Accused of robbery'.

'Accused of ransom'.

'Accused of assault'.

'Accused of...'

Bondmen eating the soil that could contain them no longer, leering at the crying, injured man, dark as the night, yet in visages familiar to him. Faces wearing the mask of their killer, abuser, robber...

'...murder'.

The masks screech, those among them victim to murder especially, yearning to cut his flesh from his bone, held back by their judge.

'The jury has pronounced you...guilty'.

Dozens howling at him. Two clutching his arms, his eyes, only seeing them adorned in his expression. Dragging his screaming body, ever screaming, ever begging, ever clawing at them, to no avail.

A face violently seized between the metallic coldness of Osmy's gauntlet, forced to directly view the abstract visage of his judge...and executioner.

'Your sentence...'

Osmy's less-than-human appearance further distorts from what he was, magnifying. Hands growing more scarlet, darker. His crown of feathers and silver, oversized. Jaw overlapping, devouring his bottom in a fit of rage, all while holding still to his victim until nothing but darkness fell in voracious smoke where his legs had been.

Eyes, once secured in a human face, now fully blood-stained, glowing in the absurd color, seated by a larger crown, a mask, a helmet. An ethereal body where his human frame was a second ago. Taller, bigger, more incomprehensible to those who dared a look to the towering entity.

The sight of the sun was dethroned by its counterpart, right in the middle of noon. A blood-stained moon showering the heavens in its bleeding shade, lacing the clouds in dark hues.

All surrounding the one entity that might have had any shred of empathy...

He was as Ah Puch remade him in times of judgment. A devourer, his maw gaping as wide as a house. A judge, holding on one of his harrowingly grown limbs, the victims of the robbers, pointing at him, screeching at him. The incarnation of the judgment of the goddess of the dead.

The eater of the dead.

His sentence is immediate, grasping the maddened man with his second hand, opening his bottomless maw, stretched to the crimson heavens. His cries, his lashing, worthless, powerless.

He screams, his tar-blinded vision fixated on the scarlet eyes of the black entity, slowly forced up and up its jaw, forced to witness the void deep in its--

-Crunch-

And then they screamed...witnesses of this unnamed city, they screamed. Screamed as they saw the man dragged into its maw.

Screamed as they saw it open wide.

Screamed as they only now realized what would happen to the named Gavan Hendro.

...shrieked as it devoured him...

Uncontrollable masses, growing in insanity as the knowledge of its presence grew. The one thing they were supposed to have warded out. A judge that was supposed to have taken the sacrifice of the well.

The shrieked, knowing, seeing their deaths in the hell gestating in the Eater Of the Dead's stomach, his bottomless stomach, his bottomless appetite for the sinners that now ran from the place.

Some begged for its mercy, prostrating themselves under the footless entity, crying and pleading. Only for their eyes to be blotted by their sins pouring from them, blinding them. Coughing, no less, as the dark tar spread out from their mouths and ears.

They were the first to be clutched, crying still, their pleas, finding no merciful being grabbing them...

-Crunch-

-Crunch-

-Crack-

The others, horrified by its bundle of devouring, fleed. Fleed as far as they could, only to see phantoms of the past howl in their track, crimson shackles on their scarlet palms. Their victims, all of them. Hundreds. Thousands.

Shackles taking a life of their own, hungry for the sin that pours from their eyes, tumbling them and ensnaring them to the revenants. Howls spurning more of the slag from their orifices. Screams gurgled by the liquid manifestation of their misdoing, dragged back to the crunching and cracking.

Grabbed...one by one under a blood-lit sky. Hands of an avatar clutching them by the individual 'Marita Lovran, your sins pour from your beings...'

-Crunch-

'Remy Moravek...'

-Crack-

'Vincent Polo...'

-Grak-

'Liza Valereux'

-Crunch-

One. By. One. They fall to his maw. So soon after being touted the totality of their sins. Devoured without mercy. Condemned to a hell of their making.

To the last one. The mayor. The progenitor to this year of sacrifice. The last sinner to a derelict town torn apart by the idling revenants.

"I-I don't understand! The sacrifice! There was--" So clogged in his misdoing, the mayor couldn't endure the accumulated tar drooling in the base of his throat. It painfully compresses as he vomits the entirety, unable to discern it from the darkness surrounding his eyes.

"The sacrifice...if was...supposed to...it worked before..." He vomits more black tar, barely able to breathe.

'...'

Surrounded by the revenants, cupped by crimson hands, amidst a town now in ruins, he hurls, smeared by the silence and glares.

"It was...to satiate you...your...patron...Ah--Hhnn!"

Squeezed from his words 'The patron of the dead has been irked by your continual defilement of innocence. The child you and your ilk have hurled to the well has done nothing but draw me to this sinful den of your making'.

"W-what---"

'You have sullied her child. Hence, you have sullied her. No more. Your name and their names will be forgotten. You will drown in a hell of tar, a tide of filth calling your name. Your eyes will see nevermore, forever blind. Forever...'

"No--cough, cough--no...no...please, I beg of you, I plea--

-Crunch...-

-...crack...-

-...crack-

Silence in the derelict. The revenants long gone, returned to the maw of the Eater Of The Dead. Slowly, considerably welcomed back to the Eater's hands, leaving a city, dead. Forever dead, for explorers and travelers to debate as to what happened, what occurred within its rotted planks and rusted metal...