Fated (Chapter Sixty-Seven)
Monday, December 21st, 2015 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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mindcrackloveBut WARNING! There is a LOT of heavy shit in this chapter, including writing in blood, mentions of abuse, some self-harm kind of actions, and some possible hints at suicidal and torturous thoughts. You have been warned so please be careful.
Chapter list: http://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/382.html
Map of the continent: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/F
Character status spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Ruins of Dalania, Minecraftia. November 11, year 573. Time instance 483Z.
As the group silently got ready to set out once more, their injuries addressed, Niel gently tapped Samuel’s shoulder and pointed at a forgotten bag sitting in a familiar spot.
“Trymdas’.” Niel mumbled, but Samuel was already on his way to pick it up. He carefully opened it and was surprised to find what appeared to be a journal bound in leather within. He frowned slightly and pulled it out, flipping to the first page and realizing, with horror, that the words were written in blood. However, the words were unmistakably put there by Trymdas due to the way he introduced himself, and Samuel realized that this could be their only chance to find out what had happened.
The only record of the past of the Sharran brothers.
He scanned the first few lines and nodded slightly to himself, shutting the journal. Niel looked at him curiously.
“What’s in there?”
“An explanation, I hope.” Samuel’s voice was low. “Let’s get out of here before we read it, though. I don’t want to stay here any more than is necessary.” He glanced at the ledge and shivered before waving for the group to follow. They gratefully moved away from the site of the attack, feeling disturbed and afraid.
They walked for only a couple of hours, enough to get them back down the slope and onto solid ground, before Samuel waved for them to make camp. It was still the afternoon, but he knew that he wasn’t up for going any further and he suspected no one else really was, either. Once camp had been set up, he sat down against a rock and re-opened the journal. Niel sat beside him, curious as to its contents, and he looked up as Shred moved over to them as well.
“What is that?” She tilted her head slightly.
Samuel sighed softly. “It’s a journal I found in Trymdas’ bag. I’m hoping that it has answers.”
Shred nodded and sat beside him, eyes locking on the pages as Samuel turned his attention back to it and began to read the words of Trymdas, written in blood and bound in death. Here and there across the journal, beside the paragraphs, were small, yet significant, drawings, some of which illustrated his points further and the others seemed to hold no particular meaning and yet they still stood out to Samuel. Droplets and trails of blood also covered the pages, making Samuel wonder under exactly what circumstances it had been written.
At a quiet request from Niel, Samuel reluctantly began to read the pages aloud, pausing every now and then to take in the information presented.
My name is Trymdas Sharran, and I hate demons. I hate myself, too, but most of all I hate my brother. Valkan’s the reason we are the way we are, he’s the reason it all happened… He’s the reason I write in blood and not ink. As I write this, we are in the middle of nowhere, fleeing from humans and skettisren alike. We’re on our own, at ages sixteen and eighteen. Life hasn’t been good to us, and you can thank Valkan for that.
I should probably explain. Back when I was seven and Valkan was nine, we found a stone that shook and glowed with malicious energies. I wanted to leave and never return, but it spoke to Valkan and he took it hope, making me promise not to tell. He was an okay guy at that point; everything I ever wanted to be. I didn’t tell on him, and I should have.
The stone whispered to us both, but mostly to Valkan. It told him it was the spirit of a man named Kal, who had been wrongly slain and his spirit locked within the stone. He helped guide Valkan to achieve victory wherever he sought it; at our village’s school, at home, or with his friends. It mostly ignored me, meaning that I got left far behind my ‘perfect’ brother.
What I didn’t realize, however, was that it was slowly corrupting him over the years, shaping his morals and teaching him horrible things. What he did show me didn’t register as bad to my nine-year-old mind. I didn’t realize that my brother was a bad person until he lashed out at dad with his newfound powers, killing him.
At eleven, Valkan was a murderer.
He then turned around and tried to convince me that he had to kill dad, he had no choice. He said that we had to run because we, like Kal, would be hunted. We were stopped on our way out of town and that’s where all hell literally broke loose. Valkan tapped into the evil, demonic energy that had festered within in for two years, opening a minor hell rift and calling forth the yellow demons for the first time.
The yellow demons…I’ve never seen anything like them. They’re a type of imp, the lowest class of demon, but they’re powerful for their rank and come in swarms. To villagers, they were the worst thing imaginable.
They tore apart everyone. Blood was everywhere. Everyone was dead, and Valkan was just laughing, howling with laughter as his eyes glowed blue and the demonic influence clawed its way into his heart.
I panicked and ran. What else could I do? Predictably, I didn’t get far. Valkan set the demons to knock my down and hold me there as he slowly approached.
“You could be like me, you know.” He whispered. “Kal and I could teach you.”
I obviously refused and that was the first time Valkan hurt me. Like, really hurt me. He kicked me in the face and called me a coward for crying, for running, and kept doing it until I bled and sobbed and shook. He eventually released the demons back to hell and grabbed my hand, forcing me up and practically dragging me along.
We wandered for weeks, my terror too great to even try to escape again. Valkan’s demonic powers grew the more and more he talked to the damn stone, to Kal. He kept trying to make me accept the power, kept trying to make me like him. I kept refusing, kept backing out, but eventually my brother’s patience wore thing and he ‘choice’ was made for me.
I won’t describe the ritual. Even thinking about it makes me want to tear my veins out in order to forget. Let’s just say he forced it into me, made me more of a carrier of the power than the user. I became bound to him, an extension of his power. Together, we held twice the power he could alone. He cast spells of binding and locating, so that he could never lose me, never lose his power source.
I was, and still am, technically capable of using this power, but I refuse to. I won’t sell my soul, won’t sell my self, like he did. The only times the demonic energy flows through me is when Valkan calls it forth. I could stop him, but what’s the use? He’ll just turn his power on me and might bind me ever tighter to him.
My back still bears the burns and clawmarks from when I kept the energy from him the first time. Those scars are only a few that will forever haunt me and will forever burn in my mind.
For seven years we carried on, fleeing from more and more places as Valkan used his powers to get what he wanted, Kal driving him onwards.
Eventually, though, he made a mistake.
He killed a group of skettisren and tried to force his way into the underground, thirsty for the knowledge that they possessed. Unfortunately for us, they knew exactly how to vanish demons. The stone containing Kal’s spirit was lost in our escape, which Valkan has blamed me for despite the fact that I didn’t want to mess with the skettisren in the first place.
That was a week ago. The skettisren are still hunting us and part of me wants them to find us and end it.
I can only hope that it’s not too late to save our souls.
I write in my own blood because Valkan hasn’t bothered to kill for ink, and my veins are almost always leaking anyways, between Valkan and whatever hunts us. Sometimes its even me, trying to ground my mind, to pull me away from the demonic haze.
Most of my pain is Valkan, though. He’s hurt me until near death until he found out I was writing this. Burn it and me together. But he wouldn’t kill me. No, he wants the power I hold for him.
I always thought brothers were meant to protect each other, but I guess I was wrong. I wouldn’t do shit to save Valkan if it meant his death.
I know, maybe that does make me a bad person. Maybe that does mean that Valkan’s influence is at last sinking its claws into my broken and bleeding heart.
But if we’re both damned in the afterlife, I hope Herobrine inflicts the same pain I’ve felt these past seven years on Valkan.
Or maybe he’ll let me do it myself.
As the final words of Trymdas’ journal faded into silence, Samuel felt his heart ache for this poor kid. No wonder he had felt so much agony from his soul…
The words of the broken, the writing of the damned.
He glanced at his friends and noticed the tears pouring down Niel’s face. He put an arm around the smaller boy’s shoulders before looking at Shred. Even she looked like the journal had struck something within her. She whispered something in Skullspeak and gently took the journal from Samuel, shutting it and slipping it back into Trymdas’ bag. She leaned against Samuel and stayed there until Niel eventually left to check on Adrian, at which point she carefully wrapped her arms around her friend.
“You can cry if you need to, you know.” Shred whispered.
Samuel slowly shook his head. “No.”
“You’ve been through a lot in the past couple of days. Between Trymdas and Xullos, you’re emotionally shot.”
“I know.” Samuel paused. “I wish I could have saved them.”
“You did your best.”
“No! I didn’t! I had no idea what was going on with Trymdas, what was wrong with his brother…I should have looked into it more, I should have insisted that he tell me, I…I…”
Shred shook her head, noticing Samuel’s voice wavering. “No. If you had pressed it, Valkan would have flipped sooner and Trymdas might not have been able to save us. You did what you could, okay? It could have turned out better but only if you’d somehow magically known exactly what was going on and had killed Valkan in his sleep or something.”
“I knew.” Samuel whispered. “I knew there was something wrong with Valkan since I first saw him, and I knew that Trymdas was in pain…”
Shred looked curiously at him. “How?”
“I…I don’t’ know. I don’t know, but I could tell, and I didn’t do a single thing about it!”
A certain kind of sensitivity.
“Samuel…”
“I…I just…” He pulled slightly away from Shred but she held on, her Skullblade strength outmatching his own half-hearted attempts to escape. He shuddered and she shifted positions to hug him tighter, not saying anything as Samuel buried his face in his shoulder and sobbed for the lost, the broken, and the bleeding.
-~-
Paul sighed quietly, shooting a sad look at Blame.
“So that’s what happened.” Vechs whispered. “Poor kid. Poor, poor kid…He didn’t deserve that. Neither of them did, but Trymdas…”
Blame, on the other hand, was pacing, something clearly bothering him.
Paul sighed again. “What’s wrong, Blame?”
“Does that not sound really fucking familiar to anyone?” Blame demanded. “A spirit that goes by Kal, locked in a stone, that associates with demons? Didn’t Skera tell us that she bound Kaltaerion’s soul within a stone? Doesn’t that ring some fucking bells?!”
A whole new level of horror settled on the room.
“Kaltaerion.” Vechs whispered. Of course. He wouldn’t just stay down, would he?
People like that never do.
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Date: Monday, December 21st, 2015 04:44 pm (UTC)G.C. (::)(::)(::)(::)(::)(::)
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Date: Monday, December 21st, 2015 07:53 pm (UTC)- Observing Anon
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Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 06:04 am (UTC)-Anon Cami
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Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 09:06 am (UTC)-Observing Anon
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Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 07:12 pm (UTC)-the lurkiest lurker
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Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 12:34 am (UTC)-Anon Cami
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Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 12:45 am (UTC)welp?? P:AM is a go i guess, rip P:M? XD
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Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 01:45 am (UTC)other than that, great!
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Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, December 21st, 2015 11:43 pm (UTC)-Anon Cami
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Date: Monday, December 21st, 2015 11:53 pm (UTC)-Onserving Anon
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Date: Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015 07:18 am (UTC)One question. Is Onai (who I believe is in the other group) going to figure out that they've died and tell his group? It seems likely.
-the lurkiest lurker
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Date: Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 02:50 pm (UTC)-the lurkiest lurker
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Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 04:27 pm (UTC)...right?
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Date: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 07:10 pm (UTC)-the lurkiest lurker
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Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 12:46 am (UTC)Because I'm an asshole to fictional characters. That's why.
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Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 08:21 am (UTC)-the lurkiest lurker
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Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, December 24th, 2015 05:04 pm (UTC)...and he's STILL lying around somewhere. Wonderful.