Micolash, Host of the Nightmare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
grantuseyes) wrote2017-12-22 06:12 pm
grantuseyes) wrote2017-12-22 06:12 pm
Broken Boundaries
((Content Warnings: Scenes of mind control, force-feeding, suicide mention.))
While Micolash continues his angry piano playing, Abysa does not linger to hear it, instead warping himself to a different floor of the dungeon complex.
He reappears within his garden room, treated instead to the soft sound of trickling water as the magic-run fountain flows throughout. The air is damp yet not uncomfortable to the demon, neither too cold or warm, and he spends his time floating amongst the flowers, herbs, shrubs and trees, trying to centre himself.
He doesn't know the depths of his own cruelty because he never learned. The point of taking him in is to teach him, but it will be slow, and it will not be easy, you know that. You must keep acting with patience and kindness. Patience, Abysa. He thinks to himself, the tension in his body slowly dissipating as he reminds himself of his duty and goals.
Hours pass before Abysa lets out a tired sigh, stretching out from floating in a curled-up position, knowing the time has come for Micolash's dinner and medicine. While he has managed to calm himself, he can only assume the human is going to be as sour of mood as he left him; humans tend to be like that. Just as he had entered, he leaves his quiet sanctuary once more, fading out in a swirl of purple smoke.
He is on the floor of their dwellings once more, in the kitchen where he must prepare Micolash's 'food' and medicine. The food, of course, a syringe of nutritional fluid, with a couple of potions mixed in. The potions are of the pharmalchemist's guild in Hell, specially-ordered to assist in boosting the human's natural regenerative abilities, as well as provide a dense source of needed vitamins, minerals, and so on. This is high-grade stuff! The dropper had been replaced with a syringe as a larger vessel had been needed, but feedings had been going smoothly even with the change... but Abysa suspects today will not go smoothly. He floats out of the kitchen with dinner floating alongside him, along with a roll of bandages and a fresh blindfold joining him as he glides down the hall, listening for a sign of his charge.
The piano is no longer heard now, nor is the door to the newly christened music room open. Henry the cat sits in the hallway by this door, swishing his tail slowly back and forth against the floor and meeting Abysa’s gaze with a half-lidded one. If Henry lingers here, then Micolash must still be in there rather than having fumbled himself blindly to someplace else.
And the first thing Abysa is going to find upon entering it is, of course, the broken vase. The pieces clatter and tinkle when the door opens and swings into them, sweeping a good amount of the shards and flowers aside. Always something more to do and clean when caring for this man…
And the man himself is not seated at the piano any longer. Instead, Micolash is standing facing the far wall, his back to Abysa. His left arm is raised straight up, palm flat. The right, held out perpendicular to his shoulder, that palm also left flat and facing the ceiling. His arms thusly form a right angle in the same gesture he’d made when he spoke of making contact with Mergo.
He doesn’t say anything nor turn around. The only thing that happens is Micolash slowly and smoothly switching positions of his arms. Right now upright, left now out straight. Who can even say how long he’s been doing this…
Abysa has seen this odd gesture before; perhaps he had asked about it at some point, as he recalls it being a greeting of sorts? But it's clear he is not greeting him. He knocks on the doorframe a few times, despite his entrance already made known by the shattered vase. Henry sits in the hall still.
"Micolash, I have returned. It is time for your medicine and your evening meal, I will let you be once more when we are finished, if you wish it."
“I’m not hungry.”
The answer is given flat, the man not turning around nor halting in his strange position. His voice lacks his sometimes dreamy inflection, where his words drift and cascade lazily and drawn-out. Instead, it is neutral, stern, controlled. Consciously measured.
"Ensuring your nutrition and hydration is crucial to your recovery, Micolash." Abysa floats closer, keeping the syringe floating out of possible grabbing range by the human. While Micolash sounds stern and alert, Abysa's voice is cautiously soft, speaking only as clearly as he needs to. "If you finish, it will be of benefit to your body and your eyes. And then I will leave you to your, ahh, solitude."
“Will it, Kin?”
He’s asked this many times before. Begging for affirmation that his eyes WILL return, that he WILL see again someday. Desperate for reassurance. But this is different. This is said in a skeptical, doubtful tone. Edging into sarcastic. “I’m not so sure you would overly mind if they didn’t heal.”
Slowly, Micolash’s arms trade position again.
"Of course they will! I have done naught but work towards your recovery ever since you had returned from your Nightmare." Abysa floats about Micolash, trying to get a look at his expression, checking to see if his blindfold is intact.
"I gave you the blood you needed to live, I protected you from those who blamed you for that disaster, brought you home... I staunched your bleeding, bandaged your eyes, healed you, eased you into sleep, fed you, given you medicine and eased your pain... And forget not, I have bound myself by contract to see your healing through. Do my deeds not serve as proof of my dedication?" He tries not to let passion show in his tone, like he had earlier, but it is difficult. Micolash sounds upset, even outright skeptical of his own healing, and the priest can hardly stand to think that the human's opinion of him has dropped so low.
"Please, at least drink some, for your sake if not mine."
Micolash’s bandage is still in place, but there’s a LOT of dark fluid soaked into it. Enough that there’s dried streaks of blood down his gaunt face, enough that it trailed and dripped from his neck and chin to soak his collar as well. The only blessing here is that the blood is in no way self-inflicted. Simply another strange and unfortunate flare-up of Micolash weeping blood when he’s grown emotional or upset.
There’s no way that bandage is comfortable right now. But it stays on all the same.
“Let’s just.” Micolash sighs through his nose and finally his arms drop to his sides. “…Skip it today, shall we.”
"That cannot be so," replies Abysa. "This is hardly a reason to break routine, which must be adhered to in order to make recovery go smoothly. And you need your wrappings changed besides. Let us go to your room and I will tend to you." He reaches tentatively over, snapping his fingers lightly once to alert the scholar to his proximity before touching one of Micolash's arms.
Micolash, regardless of the warning, flinches away from Abysa’s touch with a hissing breath through his teeth. “Fine,” he replies after a moment's pause, but rather than wait for Abysa’s assistance to find the way out, the scholar just heads towards where he thinks the door is, one arm held outstretched to feel things, his chin lowered and brow furrowed.
He meets the wall first, but only an inch or two off; it’s not hard to navigate towards a door in a place like this, where one being open invites in a cool airflow. Micolash gropes and pats his way further left, the correct way out, his spindly fingers soon curling around the door jamb.
Who’s to say if he forgot about the vase or if he just doesn’t care. But one way or another, Micolash’s bare feet lower onto sharp shards of porcelain with a crunch as longer, curved pieces snap in two beneath the pressure. The only response to this poor footing is for Micolash to make a soft, pained ’ah’ and then to just keep going.
Red footprints follow him out as he stumbles his way up the hall, heading towards where the man assumes is the way to his room.
Abysa frowns deeply, his heart feeling heavy with regret. He should not have become so upset earlier and saying such horrible (but true) things to the scholar. Still, part of him knows too that the vase WAS Micolash's own doing. Almost fitting, that he be hurt once by more by destruction he had wrought. The priest shakes the thought from his mind. What Micolash needs right now is patience, as he had repeated to himself in the garden earlier. Patience, and kindness.
Henry trots along to walk in front of Micolash, letting out soft trills and mahhs to lead the man forward. He has been quite helpful in this regard, for which Abysa is thankful and impressed by. With such a clever cat leading the way, they do make it to the hallway with Micolash's room. And Henry paws at his cat door with a thud-thud-thud to alert his master of their arrival.
"I will also heal your foot, and clean the blood, so worry not of infection..." Abysa says quietly, willing the door open with a few clicks and a creak.
“This used to not matter,” Micolash gripes bitterly. “I could be torn to pieces or peel my own skin off and it would be fine later.” As to the hows and the whys, he probably came to take that for granted as well over time. The Nightmare saw it fit to reform and repair him time and time again, as if his damage from before was merely in fact a dream. Perhaps Micolash forgot the reasons or forgot the logic of it. It was simply a fact of his new existence and he adapted to it as he did all the other hellish factors of the place.
Micolash is at least careful and mindful of Henry, always hoping that he would be quick enough to not get in the way of his feet while leading him. To kick him unintentionally would feel awful.
With the door opened, Micolash walks into the padded bedroom, now leaving stains on the blanketed floor with his footsteps. Once inside, he simply wraps his arms around himself and keeps his chin ducked down, ‘looking’ at his feet with a frown.
"To live is to possess tenderness and vulnerability, but it is important to know them, as lessons that guide one's actions," Abysa says quietly, letting a soft sigh escape as he speaks. To think he has resisted learning them this long, ever trapped in his own ways, longing for something he cannot and should not have, not yet. Longing for it to the point of destructiveness...
Once inside, Abysa floats around to the front of Micolash while there is a distant thump of Henry jumping onto the desk. It is the feline's favoured spot now while the scholar is awake in his room. Gently, the priest places his fingertips to Micolash's head, at his cheek.
"Come, let us sit, and I will change your bandages first."
“Why?" is Micolash's grumbled response. "You’re the judge of what I do and do not deserve. Perhaps all of this is is still punishment? Rendered for my supposed mistakes and fatal flaws?”
Rather than wait for Abysa to begin helpfully unwinding the cloth and bandages, Micolash just reaches up and grasps the blood-soaked front in one closed fist, the other reaching to the back to pull at the ties. Roughly yanking and tugging, pulling it loose and finally up over his head with a grunt and dropping it onto the floor.
Micolash looks back up now towards Abysa, his eyes open and glaring. His gaze is minutely off center for lack of his sight once again. The edges and lids are crusted with shed blood, darker than the ghastly red his sclera has become with its veins of black. His pupils devour all of the iris to seek light it can’t find, wide enough to let out all it can of that orange, frenzied glow.
“Judge, jury and executioner. Is that what you are, Kin? Am I only to be remade into what you deem good and right? Until I’m corrected into what you see fit?”
Abysa is momentarily stunned by the display, and Micolash's outburst, his hands raised but no longer touching.
"My entire life encompasses guiding others, Micolash. I am not infalliable, perhaps, but I do understand things, basic things, that you do not. It is not of cruelty or assimilation that I wish to see you become a kinder, better man, but that the nurturing of compassion and love will lead you down a better path." As Abysa speaks, he hurriedly gets a pitcher of water and a rag to float to him from elsewhere, wetting the cloth to loosen and wipe at the dried blood around Micolash's eyes. His long fingers are careful and dextrous, though the human may still feel the uncomfortable tugging of skin as dried, clinging clots of blood are removed. Abysa tries not to look directly at his pupils.
"To be certain, I am no judge, but nor am I an executioner. I am a guide and I am a healer, and you are lost and you are broken..." Once Micolash's face is deemed Clean Enough, Abysa sets to work binding his face once more. Bandages that had been floating lazily with him are dampened slightly before wrapped around the man's head, obscuring those frenzy-filled pupils once more.
"And I do apologize for such harsh words. I just wish I could make you see how deeply it affects me, to know the depths of human cruelty."
“You’re not sorry.”
Micolash spits the words in a tense tone, speaking out of a broiling surge of indigence and anger. It’s a small blessing alone that Micolash stayed still for his face being washed and the bandages reapplied. But he’d been visibly fuming the entire time, glaring at a demon he can’t see.
“You said I deserved it and so I must have deserved that too.”
"I can hardly see where you believe you have done no wrong; ambition is not without consequence. But now you are misjudging me out of spite. If I apologize, it is the truth. I am not as predisposed to lying as a mortal may be." Abysa shakes his head and sighs. He kneels before Micolash now, hands moving to the injured foot. His fingers press into the skin, using his empathy to gauge the seriousness of the wound.
"There is some glass within your cut, if you would lift your foot...? I will not let you fall." Abysa's telekinetic aura extends to Micolash as well, and of course, he is welcome to hold to the priest's shoulders. He doubts he will do so.
“You can apologize, but they don’t mean anything if they are not accepted,” Micolash mutters venomously. He certainly doesn’t say outright if he does or doesn’t, but the implication is clear. And rather than do as he’s instructed, the scholar just hobbles around Abysa until he feels a leg bump into his bed. Both hands reach out to feel for it before he lowers himself to sit on it. He folds his spidery hands together between his knees, trying to keep his fingers still by clasping them together firmly. They still shiver and twitch even when pressed tight, though.
“I just want to be left alone.”
The clear maliciousness in Micolash's tone, mood and actions causes an uncomfortable tension in Abysa's chest. He dislikes this feeling, knowing it to be the precursor to unsightly emotions and shameful actions and does his best to breathe evenly and deeply.
"That may be, but consider my presence a necessary but temporary inconvenience then. Regardless of your feelings or mine, your healing is a priority." As with the bandages, Abysa works quickly to expel the glass from the man's foot. Rather than use his fingers, or tools, the intruding fragments are identified with his empathic power and then forced out with a minuscule burst of telekinesis. The fragments float in the air, tiny crumbs of glass coated in blood that are shortly wrapped within the used bandages (also floating) to be carried out and disposed of. He follows up with a familiar healing spell, going quiet for a moment as he concentrates.
The priest can hardly put several racing thoughts from his head as he works. Micolash's sweet yet crooked smile as he holds Henry for the first time, the unsettling twisting of his face as he reached forward to grab him in his bed, his bloody and pained tears, begging for his frenzy to be banished, and to the simple, childlike wonder in those pale eyes as they watched stars streak across the great dark horizon, and finally, his prone, pallid form laying in a pool of his own blood... It is like every step forward is met with several steps back, progress never lasting, those little hints of kindness, vitality, tenderness destroyed in front of his eyeless gaze over and over.
"Your cuts have closed. Now, just your medicine and dinner remains. Then you shall have your solitude." His voice cracks just slightly. His heart is pounding, suddenly. Keep it in, Abysa. Patience, and kindness.
Micolash sits in tense silence as Abysa works to remove the sharp bits from the bottom of his foot. Abysa isn’t alone in feeling an awful pressure in their chest either. The scholar’s own is fit to burst with a wild maelstrom of vile emotions. He’s still furious, but he’s also afraid. He feels close to tears, close to a screaming fit, close to laughter, close to a full-throated howl like a wild animal. His breathing trembles through his nose, in and out, and his throat feels tight.
He thought Abysa was his ally. Maybe his friend. But those awful things he said to him! Those horrid accusations. The one thing that struck hardest and stuck worst: Your death was justice, Micolash. You were judged and found unworthy.
You don’t say things like that to people you like. You don’t accuse people of awful things if you enjoy them. Only people who think you strange, think you loathsome, think you mad say those things. Micolash bites down on his lower lip with a vivid, sharp memory along these lines. A grown woman grabbing him by the back of his shirt and shaking him violently, screaming at him. Monster! You little wretched monster! Look what you’ve done! I’ll see to it they send you away for this! You belong in a home with bars and locks, you horrid, horrid brat! And THEN we’ll finally be rid of you!
He tastes blood. He’s bitten hard enough on his lip to draw it. Micolash is quick to part his teeth and release it, rubbing his tongue along the moon-shaped wound inside his mouth. He doesn’t want Abysa to know about it.
“You should just kill me and be done with it.”
Abysa stops just as he stands, reaching out to grab the syringe at last. What a thing to say, even after all the work, the ceaseless healing, turning over a piece of his very soul, of which is more precious than any jewel or relic in the vast expanse of Hell...! The effort, the tears, powering through this mortal man's insufferable ignorance and malignancy, and for what?
Kindness. Pride? Patience. Selfishness?
I want to be proven wrong. Or does he want to be proven right? Is the vile, hypocritical, traitorous natures of humans absolute after all? Did they not turn their blades not just upon him, but of his dear, beautiful War? Does he want a reason to turn his back on humanity after all, and take up a blade as High Priest Terevra before him had all those ages ago? Or to relive the catharsis of rending and dismantling human flesh, deserved, justified, vindicated?
"No, Micolash. Twice I have saved your life, and constant is my work to see you alive and well. Your sins cannot be undone, but your soul can be saved yet still. You have been given life anew and it can be lived better than before. You can avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Please, please..." He turns the syringe over in his hands, moving to sit next to the man, the tension between them feeling electric, their unseen bond tense and hot like a live wire, threatening to burn itself up.
"Choose to live. Come, just this one last thing remains. Drink up, please." He places his hand gently upon Micolash's chin, to hold him steady, and he leans in close. At any other time, how easy it would be to place a gentle kiss upon his brow, and whisper him kind reassurances...
He doesn’t even think. It’s an immediate response to feeling the demon touch his face again, a response to the white hot, blood red anger that it instills in him. A senseless rage, so beast-like in nature that makes the scholar lash out without a second thought. Without ANY thought.
Micolash spits into Abysa’s face.
A mouthful of saliva tinged with the blood from his bitten lip sent where he can feel the demon’s closeness, hear his voice. The only way he can hope to aim.
The second it happens, there’s a roaring of emotions again inside his chest, inside his brain. Anger, that this being is so audacious and self-secure in the certainty he is doing what is best and right. Glee, soaring and dizzying that he dared to defy and strike back at the person he perceives as his present adversary. Fear, that he dared to act in such a way, that there will be repercussions. A nameless hope, that maybe this will be the breaking point.
Abysa feels it before he can even comprehend what had just happened. A wet, viscous fluid, but of a vile sort, hitting his face. Metallic scent, unsettling froth, from a dehydrated mouth that could still work up enough mucus to be spewed forth in disrespect. The surge of emotions is mutual, and he gasps in shock.
"Why can't you LEARN?" His voice starts soft and ends with a roar, punctuated by a sob. "You FIGHT IT and you FIGHT IT and for what?! Why is being proven wrong worse than MURDER, worse than ABDUCTION? WORSE THAN DEATH to you?!" His voice raises until he is screaming, and Micolash finds a curious, new sensation taking over in his body, as though the muscles in his body have simply stopped listening to the firing of his synapses and the electricity flowing through his nerves, instead hijacked by a cold, throbbing presence.
"I am sorry, I am, but you deserved it! You are a horrible man! You are a heartless beast who thinks naught of consequence or guilt or love but are consumed with your own despicable self! That is what it is to be an animal, Micolash! To pillage and kill and lie and steal and rape without regret! How many of those have you done without so much as an afterthought?! I have given you everything BUT my own life in exchange for your well-being! But the lives of others mean NOTHING TO YOU! And I won't let you die! I want you to live! I want you to heal!! And if it brings you naught but misery, SO BE IT!!"
Abysa's psychic hold borders on possession, only he leaves the thoughts and the perceptions of his victim be; what he needs is absolute control of the mechanical aspects of Micolash's body. His form is made to sit stiffly like a doll as Abysa takes the syringe, forces it into Micolash's mouth (and he may find himself unable to bite down), and grips the man's hair as he forces the room-temperature, bland, slightly thick concoction of potions and beverage down the man's throat. The sphincter responsible for breathing shuts and his esophagus's reflexive undulation is activated and for a few seconds. The scholar is without breath and without control of his own body, until the syringe is emptied, and only then he is allowed air once more.
Abysa flings the syringe aside and it crashes to the floor, much like the vase Micolash had thrown prior. Spit, blood and the demon's dark tears streak down his face, his sharp teeth bared, violet fire flaring up from his shoulders to his horns like a hellish halo. A sight the scholar is perhaps thankful he cannot see. But he can at least hear Abysa wailing loudly, his anger cooled to dark, clinging despair. He cries loudly like a child, long periods of howling sorrowfully interrupted by wracking sobs. His hold weakens just slightly, enough that Micolash could move slowly, or perhaps speak, yet he is not in full control of himself still.
Any victory or gloating Micolash could have been feeling evaporates like smoke the second Abysa’s voice rises sharply in volume. Gone is the glee, the hope, even the anger. Abysa’s dwarfs his into complete insignificance. All that’s left if the fear and it expands rapidly inside of him to take the place of the other fleeing emotions.
He can’t make sense of what’s happening to him now. He can’t see it, unknowing that it would still be just as unseen without the bandages and eye damage. The trembling in his hands stops as if forced by his own tendons and that is the first thing that makes Micolash realize that something very bad is happening. Cold blooms and surges through his veins and muscles and tendons and arteries and skin and hair like bulging fluid, things and places and parts that he didn’t ever even know could feel cold to begin with. It pounds in time with his heart, a heart he feels or thought was beating much faster than before. Now it does so hard and steady, feeling like a violent, controlled pulse. Someone else squeezing the organ to force it to do its job with unfeeling precision.
And that is not the worst of it. The worst of it is to realize that he feels all of himself. Every centimeter of skin, every follicle of hair, every patch of mucus stuck to his sinuses and throat, every ounce of his stomach’s bile, every individual bone and the synovial gel between every joint, every drop of his spinal fluid, every foot of his coiled intestines, every root of every tooth, every movement of the blood and humours in his veins, every fingernail, toenail, tendon, organ, fluid. Everything. Feeling it all because Micolash’s body has been rendered into a machine operated by someone else. All he has left is his perception and his thoughts. And they alight in screaming, burning horror of this fresh level of hell. The ceaseless wounding and bleeding in the Nightmare was nothing compared to this. Pain is negligible. This horrible, horrible feeling of acute awareness of a mortal, living body he is forced to endure, something he reviles openly, this is infinitely worse than pain. Forced to dwell and feel nothing but how he is just an animated, fleshy being made of raw meat and wet tubes and countless liquids that requires endless care to ensure his mind and soul persist in the reality mankind knows.
He can’t even laugh. His breathing is automated and controlled by an outside force. He can’t scream, his vocal chords are pressed into stillness by another’s will. He can’t claw to freedom because the desperate electric impulses from his brain stay there, locked in and denied access to his own limbs. This must be how the Brain feels, is a mad and glittering thought that surfaces unbidden. Useless. Alive. Trapped.
Micolash’s thoughts are sent into a tailspin when Abysa, still furious and heartbroken, grasps his hair and pushes the implement into his mouth. Oh, and he thought to dwell on his own parts was vomitous torture? To feel something foreign against his maddeningly sensitive tongue, to feel it drip down his throat, that nutritious sludge coating it as it slides past pharynx and esophagus on its long journey down to his stomach? It is a horror. A complete and abject horror to endure.
And endure it he must. His posture has been snapped into place and held there by that cold grip before the feeding began. The first solid thought that Micolash musters in the wake of this is to think of his puppets back in the Nightmare of Mensis. Is this how they felt? If they could feel? Directed and positioned by the will of another?
The second thought is this: You deserved this. You brought this upon yourself.
Micolash doesn’t even begin or try to take advantage of Abysa’s barely slipped hold. The only thing he can do with it is unconscious, and that is to lightly tremble from head to toe.
Abysa's weeping does not cease, but he does gasp, his sobs quieting just silently as Micolash's trembling registers in the demon's own brain. He has not yet broken his hold on the human's body, and it's distressingly difficult to let go. He doesn't want to.
"Oh, no... No no no..." Abysa says, his voice hoarse from yelling and crying in a way that has never been heard ever since he discovered this Nexus. Perhaps not since he inhabited a body that had long been reduced to ash in holy light.
"Micolash, Micolash... What have I done, what have I done?" The sound of Abysa pacing about the room is interrupted by various things rising and falling, the sundry objects he had kept floating dropping to the floor: the porcelain water pitcher shatters, joining the syringe, the bloody bandages fall softly into a heap, the unused blindfold meant to go over Micolash's bandages slides unseen into a soft corner of the room. Other objects are picked up by invisible power as though the effort to catch the others is delayed, confusedly lifting a pillow, a book, before they are also dropped.
"I wanted proof, that is all! I wanted to know if mortals could be good, could be kind! If even a broken man could be made whole again, to love and trust, then I could do the same...! I am selfish, a fraud, a horrid...mistake of a High Priest..."
Soon, Abysa marches back to Micolash, takes hold of his pale hands which move only when he pulls them so. He kisses the man's knuckles, his inky tears cold on his skin.
"Who am I indeed to judge, to lead, or teach? I am so sorry, I am sorry... If I let you go, I am so afraid. If I let you go, you might kill yourself, and I would not blame you, not after this." He shivers as another wave of sobs and croaking, whimpering cries escape him, his hold on Micolash growing weaker and weaker. Unfortunately, as Micolash feels control being returned, he might also feel a familiar sensation of cool air or mist hitting his skin and the accompanying fatigue associated with the demon's sleep spell.
"I am sorry... I am sorry, please..." the demon repeats, interrupted only by hiccups and sobs. "I will seek my punishment, and I will face it. You will have proof of my devotion, Micolash..."
The slipping psychic grip is met with Micolash's trembling only growing more pronounced and violent, almost as if in seizure. The first sound he makes, the only one he can, is a thin whine in the very back of his throat, barely louder than a whisper. The cold is leaving but it clings in a way he can’t describe. Cold in places not meant to feel anything at all, places that have no such nerve receptors to transmit the sensation. It’s not a natural cold.
And much to his plummeting chagrin, the first and only act he can do with his restored free will and use of his own body is to piss himself.
When he feels the sleep spell hitting, Micolash wants to scream in a mixture of fright and frustration. He doesn’t WANT to sleep! He doesn’t WANT to be unconscious! What happens in there when he does? What will he dream? What will he feel? What if it doesn’t save him from this awful cold and this worse awareness of his form? What if he’s plunged into the admissions of wrong-doing Abysa wants from him, the accusations leveled at him? Left to dwell upon his sins as the gods and worse intended and nothing, nothing else.
The trembling stops when sleep devours the scholar’s thoughts and he goes limp, left to hang awkwardly from whatever control Abysa still holds.
Abysa, meanwhile, remains weeping on the floor of Micolash's room for a time, even after the human's mind is rendered unconscious by the priest's wishes. He wishes too time would stop, so he could spend the rest of his life caught up in the wrenching anguish of his own misdoings. Unfortunately, the smell of the human's accident eventually wakes him to the reality of things; his care does not stop with one mistake, or several.
With numbness weighing down his emotions and thoughts, Abysa sets about to work once more. Focus on the tasks, and the rest will follow. The patient must be cleaned, clothes changed, sheets and blankets replaced and washed, shattered glass disposed of, go go, get to work, busy busy busy. Henry, who had been puffed up behind the bookcase, emerges at last, green eyes staring at the scene with wordless wisdom and opinion. He keeps a quiet and impartial eye on Micolash as Abysa sets about cleaning up.
The beddings are changed, the old ones sent to be washed. The glass and porcelain is swept up with telekinesis and disposed of. The blood on the floor is mopped up. The scholar's limp body is manipulated in the normal way now, with hands physical and psychic, changing him out of his clothes, wiping down his body with damp cloth, dried, new clothes given, all before he is laid back onto the bed. With an aching heart, Abysa places a kiss on his forehead, wishing and praying for sweet dreams.
When all seems clean, organized and stable, he leaves Henry to keep watch over Micolash, even though he will not wake for some time. Henry sniffs at the scholar who is left laying on his side and tucked in meticulously. The feline circles Micolash, walking over his legs back and forth, before curling up close to his chest and purring until sleep takes him as well.
Abysa returns to his chambers, walking with his feet on cold stone, the gesture of humility. As always, the walls of his room are draped in large banners, more like tapestries in their complexity, each one representing a Lord, seven in all. He steps before the wall-hanging that bears the colours of pale grey, dark gray, and gold. Easy to mistake for black and white, if it were not for the black and white hearts weighed against each other on a golden scale held in the hand of a stylized depiction of his Lord of Guilt. He kneels in silence, eventually sinking lower still until he is hunched over, groveling on the floor in desperate prayer. He does not move for hours or perhaps even days.
.
.
.
.
Perhaps it was the priest's wish that spawns the dream, and perhaps it is the piece of Abysa's spirit inside him that awakens an ancient scene in Micolash's dreams. It is in the soul that memories of ages past are kept, inherited when the DNA of two bodies is combined to create new life, summoning the lives of all it had originated from. A code written into one's own cells that calls back, very far back, to the source of all life itself. This memory does not go nearly so far perhaps, but it is old all the same. And calm, and warm, and gentle.
An autumn breeze, a sunset draping the countryside, a valley of patchwork farmers' fields, rivers glistening in the light, foothills in the distance. A woman, or a voice that is deep yet feminine, softly sings a song in a language Micolash may have even heard once or twice. The language of demons being sung somewhere on Earth.
He is walking alongside the owner of the voice, or floating, like a bystander or a visitor unseen. A tall figure draped in faded robes walks along a dirt path. In her(?) arms is a bundle, a baby that mumbles and wiggles as its caretaker sings. Only the baby is much too small or the strange woman far too tall. It would make sense for the infant to be human and the woman to be a demon. A veil hangs from her horns, large and curved and elegant, ribbons are tied to a long tail that brushes the ground behind her lightly, her bare feet are inhumanly shaped with four toes clawed at the ends. Her face, if she has one, is obscured by her hood, looking down at her precious passenger as she continues to sing.
"There's no way they'll let you keep it." A voice from behind. A man's voice? The language is not human still yet is understood completely. The female demon stops singing to address the other.
"Who is 'they'? We are stranded, you know. We can hide, until the portal is opened again."
"And what, raise a human baby to pass the time?"
"I do not see why not."
The man she speaks to is another demon and not an Eyeless one. A hulking, armored figure whose features are hard to identify otherwise, aside from the fact that his legs look like the legs of an animal ending in two dark hooves. He sighs deeply, steam poofing through the faceguard of his helm.
"It will be a mistake. When it grows up, it will learn what you are, and if it does not kill itself, it will kill you for tainting its life and slaying its father and mother."
"A baby is innocent. If I raise it with love, and kindness, it will not be like its parents. Surely it would understand, the reasons why we did what we did..."
And with that scene, things become mixed up and jumbled as dreams often go. The odd thing is each subsequent dream following the first are visions in a similar vein. The seasons change, as does the scenery: from farmland, to woodland, to the deep wilderness, surrounded by mountains. The Eyeless demon and a tiny human child living far away from civilization, learning to live as one with nature on Earth.
Whatever part of Micolash that witnesses this, as he very much feels he is not himself nor feels as anything at all but a silent passenger, a passing thought, left to float in place like a cloud and just as immaterial, left to simply absorb and observe. To take in the views, the sounds, the emotions, the feelings.
The last time he ever felt like this was the moments between the Ritual taking hold and his spirit flying to the Nightmare. That time between stars and layers of reality where he was not a man or a human or a person or even Micolash. He was something that was only once called that, yes, when he inhabited a body made of carbon and blood. But the part of him that is NOT his body, the greatest, deepest part of him of all, was set free. Free to feel the winds of the cosmos pass through it and to stretch out and find that it could reach and blend with all other forces like what he’d become.
It was to experience the joy of becoming what he was meant to be all along. A being unbound from a prison of flesh to take luminous, untethered spiritual form so it could navigate the streams between reality. Propelled by thought and a stranger to any need but that to press higher still.
He’d forgotten about that. The Nightmare immediately following that moment of bliss and freedom turned it into a faint memory bleached and stripped of all tangible markers and meaning. A forgotten and faded trophy to keep him motivated and working tirelessly towards proper ascension. He knew that something good had happened but he couldn’t remember what, but if he keeps going, he’ll find it again.
Here is like that time. Not quite, but very close. It is to be a wisp and simply absorb the calm and pleasantness all around. To witness this scene and these people and store the resulting memories away like little precious jewels that he can take out and turn over and marvel and wonder and try to figure out for as long as he likes because he has the time to do so. There is no limit to it because time is a mortal construct and to be outside the cycle is to be nestled in among eternity.
There are blacker thoughts and horrors that drift like fog somewhere underneath this nice place and this nice thing he’s become. Like tasting something bitter or mouldy in a bite of sweet fruit, but just a trace. Just enough that you are aware that this is present and it is not as fine and pure as what you otherwise taste, likely something brushed off on it that you do not have to worry about much more than the little bit you’ve already swallowed.
Except instead of the rot or telltale dirt-like flavour of mould, it is something telling him that this is a lesson he must be keen on as it will inform further understanding of that black undercurrent. See this, feel this, remember this and it will set you on the right path. This peaceful dream and this dark, distant unease are part of a contrast and that is important, so important that he can forget everything else, but he mustn’t forget this dichotomy either. It’s a key to unlocking greater Insight and he has to clutch it tightly, unlike the rest of his musings and wonders, so it leaves with him when he must go.
But that is not now and that is not anything made to feel threatening. Instead, he is allowed to curl up underneath a peach tree and breathe in its sweet perfume and watch these memories and feel the warm sun and learn to carry all of that with him even as the scenes change. A little inconsequential ghost given a place to rest awhile and know peace.
While Micolash continues his angry piano playing, Abysa does not linger to hear it, instead warping himself to a different floor of the dungeon complex.
He reappears within his garden room, treated instead to the soft sound of trickling water as the magic-run fountain flows throughout. The air is damp yet not uncomfortable to the demon, neither too cold or warm, and he spends his time floating amongst the flowers, herbs, shrubs and trees, trying to centre himself.
He doesn't know the depths of his own cruelty because he never learned. The point of taking him in is to teach him, but it will be slow, and it will not be easy, you know that. You must keep acting with patience and kindness. Patience, Abysa. He thinks to himself, the tension in his body slowly dissipating as he reminds himself of his duty and goals.
Hours pass before Abysa lets out a tired sigh, stretching out from floating in a curled-up position, knowing the time has come for Micolash's dinner and medicine. While he has managed to calm himself, he can only assume the human is going to be as sour of mood as he left him; humans tend to be like that. Just as he had entered, he leaves his quiet sanctuary once more, fading out in a swirl of purple smoke.
He is on the floor of their dwellings once more, in the kitchen where he must prepare Micolash's 'food' and medicine. The food, of course, a syringe of nutritional fluid, with a couple of potions mixed in. The potions are of the pharmalchemist's guild in Hell, specially-ordered to assist in boosting the human's natural regenerative abilities, as well as provide a dense source of needed vitamins, minerals, and so on. This is high-grade stuff! The dropper had been replaced with a syringe as a larger vessel had been needed, but feedings had been going smoothly even with the change... but Abysa suspects today will not go smoothly. He floats out of the kitchen with dinner floating alongside him, along with a roll of bandages and a fresh blindfold joining him as he glides down the hall, listening for a sign of his charge.
The piano is no longer heard now, nor is the door to the newly christened music room open. Henry the cat sits in the hallway by this door, swishing his tail slowly back and forth against the floor and meeting Abysa’s gaze with a half-lidded one. If Henry lingers here, then Micolash must still be in there rather than having fumbled himself blindly to someplace else.
And the first thing Abysa is going to find upon entering it is, of course, the broken vase. The pieces clatter and tinkle when the door opens and swings into them, sweeping a good amount of the shards and flowers aside. Always something more to do and clean when caring for this man…
And the man himself is not seated at the piano any longer. Instead, Micolash is standing facing the far wall, his back to Abysa. His left arm is raised straight up, palm flat. The right, held out perpendicular to his shoulder, that palm also left flat and facing the ceiling. His arms thusly form a right angle in the same gesture he’d made when he spoke of making contact with Mergo.
He doesn’t say anything nor turn around. The only thing that happens is Micolash slowly and smoothly switching positions of his arms. Right now upright, left now out straight. Who can even say how long he’s been doing this…
Abysa has seen this odd gesture before; perhaps he had asked about it at some point, as he recalls it being a greeting of sorts? But it's clear he is not greeting him. He knocks on the doorframe a few times, despite his entrance already made known by the shattered vase. Henry sits in the hall still.
"Micolash, I have returned. It is time for your medicine and your evening meal, I will let you be once more when we are finished, if you wish it."
“I’m not hungry.”
The answer is given flat, the man not turning around nor halting in his strange position. His voice lacks his sometimes dreamy inflection, where his words drift and cascade lazily and drawn-out. Instead, it is neutral, stern, controlled. Consciously measured.
"Ensuring your nutrition and hydration is crucial to your recovery, Micolash." Abysa floats closer, keeping the syringe floating out of possible grabbing range by the human. While Micolash sounds stern and alert, Abysa's voice is cautiously soft, speaking only as clearly as he needs to. "If you finish, it will be of benefit to your body and your eyes. And then I will leave you to your, ahh, solitude."
“Will it, Kin?”
He’s asked this many times before. Begging for affirmation that his eyes WILL return, that he WILL see again someday. Desperate for reassurance. But this is different. This is said in a skeptical, doubtful tone. Edging into sarcastic. “I’m not so sure you would overly mind if they didn’t heal.”
Slowly, Micolash’s arms trade position again.
"Of course they will! I have done naught but work towards your recovery ever since you had returned from your Nightmare." Abysa floats about Micolash, trying to get a look at his expression, checking to see if his blindfold is intact.
"I gave you the blood you needed to live, I protected you from those who blamed you for that disaster, brought you home... I staunched your bleeding, bandaged your eyes, healed you, eased you into sleep, fed you, given you medicine and eased your pain... And forget not, I have bound myself by contract to see your healing through. Do my deeds not serve as proof of my dedication?" He tries not to let passion show in his tone, like he had earlier, but it is difficult. Micolash sounds upset, even outright skeptical of his own healing, and the priest can hardly stand to think that the human's opinion of him has dropped so low.
"Please, at least drink some, for your sake if not mine."
Micolash’s bandage is still in place, but there’s a LOT of dark fluid soaked into it. Enough that there’s dried streaks of blood down his gaunt face, enough that it trailed and dripped from his neck and chin to soak his collar as well. The only blessing here is that the blood is in no way self-inflicted. Simply another strange and unfortunate flare-up of Micolash weeping blood when he’s grown emotional or upset.
There’s no way that bandage is comfortable right now. But it stays on all the same.
“Let’s just.” Micolash sighs through his nose and finally his arms drop to his sides. “…Skip it today, shall we.”
"That cannot be so," replies Abysa. "This is hardly a reason to break routine, which must be adhered to in order to make recovery go smoothly. And you need your wrappings changed besides. Let us go to your room and I will tend to you." He reaches tentatively over, snapping his fingers lightly once to alert the scholar to his proximity before touching one of Micolash's arms.
Micolash, regardless of the warning, flinches away from Abysa’s touch with a hissing breath through his teeth. “Fine,” he replies after a moment's pause, but rather than wait for Abysa’s assistance to find the way out, the scholar just heads towards where he thinks the door is, one arm held outstretched to feel things, his chin lowered and brow furrowed.
He meets the wall first, but only an inch or two off; it’s not hard to navigate towards a door in a place like this, where one being open invites in a cool airflow. Micolash gropes and pats his way further left, the correct way out, his spindly fingers soon curling around the door jamb.
Who’s to say if he forgot about the vase or if he just doesn’t care. But one way or another, Micolash’s bare feet lower onto sharp shards of porcelain with a crunch as longer, curved pieces snap in two beneath the pressure. The only response to this poor footing is for Micolash to make a soft, pained ’ah’ and then to just keep going.
Red footprints follow him out as he stumbles his way up the hall, heading towards where the man assumes is the way to his room.
Abysa frowns deeply, his heart feeling heavy with regret. He should not have become so upset earlier and saying such horrible (but true) things to the scholar. Still, part of him knows too that the vase WAS Micolash's own doing. Almost fitting, that he be hurt once by more by destruction he had wrought. The priest shakes the thought from his mind. What Micolash needs right now is patience, as he had repeated to himself in the garden earlier. Patience, and kindness.
Henry trots along to walk in front of Micolash, letting out soft trills and mahhs to lead the man forward. He has been quite helpful in this regard, for which Abysa is thankful and impressed by. With such a clever cat leading the way, they do make it to the hallway with Micolash's room. And Henry paws at his cat door with a thud-thud-thud to alert his master of their arrival.
"I will also heal your foot, and clean the blood, so worry not of infection..." Abysa says quietly, willing the door open with a few clicks and a creak.
“This used to not matter,” Micolash gripes bitterly. “I could be torn to pieces or peel my own skin off and it would be fine later.” As to the hows and the whys, he probably came to take that for granted as well over time. The Nightmare saw it fit to reform and repair him time and time again, as if his damage from before was merely in fact a dream. Perhaps Micolash forgot the reasons or forgot the logic of it. It was simply a fact of his new existence and he adapted to it as he did all the other hellish factors of the place.
Micolash is at least careful and mindful of Henry, always hoping that he would be quick enough to not get in the way of his feet while leading him. To kick him unintentionally would feel awful.
With the door opened, Micolash walks into the padded bedroom, now leaving stains on the blanketed floor with his footsteps. Once inside, he simply wraps his arms around himself and keeps his chin ducked down, ‘looking’ at his feet with a frown.
"To live is to possess tenderness and vulnerability, but it is important to know them, as lessons that guide one's actions," Abysa says quietly, letting a soft sigh escape as he speaks. To think he has resisted learning them this long, ever trapped in his own ways, longing for something he cannot and should not have, not yet. Longing for it to the point of destructiveness...
Once inside, Abysa floats around to the front of Micolash while there is a distant thump of Henry jumping onto the desk. It is the feline's favoured spot now while the scholar is awake in his room. Gently, the priest places his fingertips to Micolash's head, at his cheek.
"Come, let us sit, and I will change your bandages first."
“Why?" is Micolash's grumbled response. "You’re the judge of what I do and do not deserve. Perhaps all of this is is still punishment? Rendered for my supposed mistakes and fatal flaws?”
Rather than wait for Abysa to begin helpfully unwinding the cloth and bandages, Micolash just reaches up and grasps the blood-soaked front in one closed fist, the other reaching to the back to pull at the ties. Roughly yanking and tugging, pulling it loose and finally up over his head with a grunt and dropping it onto the floor.
Micolash looks back up now towards Abysa, his eyes open and glaring. His gaze is minutely off center for lack of his sight once again. The edges and lids are crusted with shed blood, darker than the ghastly red his sclera has become with its veins of black. His pupils devour all of the iris to seek light it can’t find, wide enough to let out all it can of that orange, frenzied glow.
“Judge, jury and executioner. Is that what you are, Kin? Am I only to be remade into what you deem good and right? Until I’m corrected into what you see fit?”
Abysa is momentarily stunned by the display, and Micolash's outburst, his hands raised but no longer touching.
"My entire life encompasses guiding others, Micolash. I am not infalliable, perhaps, but I do understand things, basic things, that you do not. It is not of cruelty or assimilation that I wish to see you become a kinder, better man, but that the nurturing of compassion and love will lead you down a better path." As Abysa speaks, he hurriedly gets a pitcher of water and a rag to float to him from elsewhere, wetting the cloth to loosen and wipe at the dried blood around Micolash's eyes. His long fingers are careful and dextrous, though the human may still feel the uncomfortable tugging of skin as dried, clinging clots of blood are removed. Abysa tries not to look directly at his pupils.
"To be certain, I am no judge, but nor am I an executioner. I am a guide and I am a healer, and you are lost and you are broken..." Once Micolash's face is deemed Clean Enough, Abysa sets to work binding his face once more. Bandages that had been floating lazily with him are dampened slightly before wrapped around the man's head, obscuring those frenzy-filled pupils once more.
"And I do apologize for such harsh words. I just wish I could make you see how deeply it affects me, to know the depths of human cruelty."
“You’re not sorry.”
Micolash spits the words in a tense tone, speaking out of a broiling surge of indigence and anger. It’s a small blessing alone that Micolash stayed still for his face being washed and the bandages reapplied. But he’d been visibly fuming the entire time, glaring at a demon he can’t see.
“You said I deserved it and so I must have deserved that too.”
"I can hardly see where you believe you have done no wrong; ambition is not without consequence. But now you are misjudging me out of spite. If I apologize, it is the truth. I am not as predisposed to lying as a mortal may be." Abysa shakes his head and sighs. He kneels before Micolash now, hands moving to the injured foot. His fingers press into the skin, using his empathy to gauge the seriousness of the wound.
"There is some glass within your cut, if you would lift your foot...? I will not let you fall." Abysa's telekinetic aura extends to Micolash as well, and of course, he is welcome to hold to the priest's shoulders. He doubts he will do so.
“You can apologize, but they don’t mean anything if they are not accepted,” Micolash mutters venomously. He certainly doesn’t say outright if he does or doesn’t, but the implication is clear. And rather than do as he’s instructed, the scholar just hobbles around Abysa until he feels a leg bump into his bed. Both hands reach out to feel for it before he lowers himself to sit on it. He folds his spidery hands together between his knees, trying to keep his fingers still by clasping them together firmly. They still shiver and twitch even when pressed tight, though.
“I just want to be left alone.”
The clear maliciousness in Micolash's tone, mood and actions causes an uncomfortable tension in Abysa's chest. He dislikes this feeling, knowing it to be the precursor to unsightly emotions and shameful actions and does his best to breathe evenly and deeply.
"That may be, but consider my presence a necessary but temporary inconvenience then. Regardless of your feelings or mine, your healing is a priority." As with the bandages, Abysa works quickly to expel the glass from the man's foot. Rather than use his fingers, or tools, the intruding fragments are identified with his empathic power and then forced out with a minuscule burst of telekinesis. The fragments float in the air, tiny crumbs of glass coated in blood that are shortly wrapped within the used bandages (also floating) to be carried out and disposed of. He follows up with a familiar healing spell, going quiet for a moment as he concentrates.
The priest can hardly put several racing thoughts from his head as he works. Micolash's sweet yet crooked smile as he holds Henry for the first time, the unsettling twisting of his face as he reached forward to grab him in his bed, his bloody and pained tears, begging for his frenzy to be banished, and to the simple, childlike wonder in those pale eyes as they watched stars streak across the great dark horizon, and finally, his prone, pallid form laying in a pool of his own blood... It is like every step forward is met with several steps back, progress never lasting, those little hints of kindness, vitality, tenderness destroyed in front of his eyeless gaze over and over.
"Your cuts have closed. Now, just your medicine and dinner remains. Then you shall have your solitude." His voice cracks just slightly. His heart is pounding, suddenly. Keep it in, Abysa. Patience, and kindness.
Micolash sits in tense silence as Abysa works to remove the sharp bits from the bottom of his foot. Abysa isn’t alone in feeling an awful pressure in their chest either. The scholar’s own is fit to burst with a wild maelstrom of vile emotions. He’s still furious, but he’s also afraid. He feels close to tears, close to a screaming fit, close to laughter, close to a full-throated howl like a wild animal. His breathing trembles through his nose, in and out, and his throat feels tight.
He thought Abysa was his ally. Maybe his friend. But those awful things he said to him! Those horrid accusations. The one thing that struck hardest and stuck worst: Your death was justice, Micolash. You were judged and found unworthy.
You don’t say things like that to people you like. You don’t accuse people of awful things if you enjoy them. Only people who think you strange, think you loathsome, think you mad say those things. Micolash bites down on his lower lip with a vivid, sharp memory along these lines. A grown woman grabbing him by the back of his shirt and shaking him violently, screaming at him. Monster! You little wretched monster! Look what you’ve done! I’ll see to it they send you away for this! You belong in a home with bars and locks, you horrid, horrid brat! And THEN we’ll finally be rid of you!
He tastes blood. He’s bitten hard enough on his lip to draw it. Micolash is quick to part his teeth and release it, rubbing his tongue along the moon-shaped wound inside his mouth. He doesn’t want Abysa to know about it.
“You should just kill me and be done with it.”
Abysa stops just as he stands, reaching out to grab the syringe at last. What a thing to say, even after all the work, the ceaseless healing, turning over a piece of his very soul, of which is more precious than any jewel or relic in the vast expanse of Hell...! The effort, the tears, powering through this mortal man's insufferable ignorance and malignancy, and for what?
Kindness. Pride? Patience. Selfishness?
I want to be proven wrong. Or does he want to be proven right? Is the vile, hypocritical, traitorous natures of humans absolute after all? Did they not turn their blades not just upon him, but of his dear, beautiful War? Does he want a reason to turn his back on humanity after all, and take up a blade as High Priest Terevra before him had all those ages ago? Or to relive the catharsis of rending and dismantling human flesh, deserved, justified, vindicated?
"No, Micolash. Twice I have saved your life, and constant is my work to see you alive and well. Your sins cannot be undone, but your soul can be saved yet still. You have been given life anew and it can be lived better than before. You can avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Please, please..." He turns the syringe over in his hands, moving to sit next to the man, the tension between them feeling electric, their unseen bond tense and hot like a live wire, threatening to burn itself up.
"Choose to live. Come, just this one last thing remains. Drink up, please." He places his hand gently upon Micolash's chin, to hold him steady, and he leans in close. At any other time, how easy it would be to place a gentle kiss upon his brow, and whisper him kind reassurances...
He doesn’t even think. It’s an immediate response to feeling the demon touch his face again, a response to the white hot, blood red anger that it instills in him. A senseless rage, so beast-like in nature that makes the scholar lash out without a second thought. Without ANY thought.
Micolash spits into Abysa’s face.
A mouthful of saliva tinged with the blood from his bitten lip sent where he can feel the demon’s closeness, hear his voice. The only way he can hope to aim.
The second it happens, there’s a roaring of emotions again inside his chest, inside his brain. Anger, that this being is so audacious and self-secure in the certainty he is doing what is best and right. Glee, soaring and dizzying that he dared to defy and strike back at the person he perceives as his present adversary. Fear, that he dared to act in such a way, that there will be repercussions. A nameless hope, that maybe this will be the breaking point.
Abysa feels it before he can even comprehend what had just happened. A wet, viscous fluid, but of a vile sort, hitting his face. Metallic scent, unsettling froth, from a dehydrated mouth that could still work up enough mucus to be spewed forth in disrespect. The surge of emotions is mutual, and he gasps in shock.
"Why can't you LEARN?" His voice starts soft and ends with a roar, punctuated by a sob. "You FIGHT IT and you FIGHT IT and for what?! Why is being proven wrong worse than MURDER, worse than ABDUCTION? WORSE THAN DEATH to you?!" His voice raises until he is screaming, and Micolash finds a curious, new sensation taking over in his body, as though the muscles in his body have simply stopped listening to the firing of his synapses and the electricity flowing through his nerves, instead hijacked by a cold, throbbing presence.
"I am sorry, I am, but you deserved it! You are a horrible man! You are a heartless beast who thinks naught of consequence or guilt or love but are consumed with your own despicable self! That is what it is to be an animal, Micolash! To pillage and kill and lie and steal and rape without regret! How many of those have you done without so much as an afterthought?! I have given you everything BUT my own life in exchange for your well-being! But the lives of others mean NOTHING TO YOU! And I won't let you die! I want you to live! I want you to heal!! And if it brings you naught but misery, SO BE IT!!"
Abysa's psychic hold borders on possession, only he leaves the thoughts and the perceptions of his victim be; what he needs is absolute control of the mechanical aspects of Micolash's body. His form is made to sit stiffly like a doll as Abysa takes the syringe, forces it into Micolash's mouth (and he may find himself unable to bite down), and grips the man's hair as he forces the room-temperature, bland, slightly thick concoction of potions and beverage down the man's throat. The sphincter responsible for breathing shuts and his esophagus's reflexive undulation is activated and for a few seconds. The scholar is without breath and without control of his own body, until the syringe is emptied, and only then he is allowed air once more.
Abysa flings the syringe aside and it crashes to the floor, much like the vase Micolash had thrown prior. Spit, blood and the demon's dark tears streak down his face, his sharp teeth bared, violet fire flaring up from his shoulders to his horns like a hellish halo. A sight the scholar is perhaps thankful he cannot see. But he can at least hear Abysa wailing loudly, his anger cooled to dark, clinging despair. He cries loudly like a child, long periods of howling sorrowfully interrupted by wracking sobs. His hold weakens just slightly, enough that Micolash could move slowly, or perhaps speak, yet he is not in full control of himself still.
Any victory or gloating Micolash could have been feeling evaporates like smoke the second Abysa’s voice rises sharply in volume. Gone is the glee, the hope, even the anger. Abysa’s dwarfs his into complete insignificance. All that’s left if the fear and it expands rapidly inside of him to take the place of the other fleeing emotions.
He can’t make sense of what’s happening to him now. He can’t see it, unknowing that it would still be just as unseen without the bandages and eye damage. The trembling in his hands stops as if forced by his own tendons and that is the first thing that makes Micolash realize that something very bad is happening. Cold blooms and surges through his veins and muscles and tendons and arteries and skin and hair like bulging fluid, things and places and parts that he didn’t ever even know could feel cold to begin with. It pounds in time with his heart, a heart he feels or thought was beating much faster than before. Now it does so hard and steady, feeling like a violent, controlled pulse. Someone else squeezing the organ to force it to do its job with unfeeling precision.
And that is not the worst of it. The worst of it is to realize that he feels all of himself. Every centimeter of skin, every follicle of hair, every patch of mucus stuck to his sinuses and throat, every ounce of his stomach’s bile, every individual bone and the synovial gel between every joint, every drop of his spinal fluid, every foot of his coiled intestines, every root of every tooth, every movement of the blood and humours in his veins, every fingernail, toenail, tendon, organ, fluid. Everything. Feeling it all because Micolash’s body has been rendered into a machine operated by someone else. All he has left is his perception and his thoughts. And they alight in screaming, burning horror of this fresh level of hell. The ceaseless wounding and bleeding in the Nightmare was nothing compared to this. Pain is negligible. This horrible, horrible feeling of acute awareness of a mortal, living body he is forced to endure, something he reviles openly, this is infinitely worse than pain. Forced to dwell and feel nothing but how he is just an animated, fleshy being made of raw meat and wet tubes and countless liquids that requires endless care to ensure his mind and soul persist in the reality mankind knows.
He can’t even laugh. His breathing is automated and controlled by an outside force. He can’t scream, his vocal chords are pressed into stillness by another’s will. He can’t claw to freedom because the desperate electric impulses from his brain stay there, locked in and denied access to his own limbs. This must be how the Brain feels, is a mad and glittering thought that surfaces unbidden. Useless. Alive. Trapped.
Micolash’s thoughts are sent into a tailspin when Abysa, still furious and heartbroken, grasps his hair and pushes the implement into his mouth. Oh, and he thought to dwell on his own parts was vomitous torture? To feel something foreign against his maddeningly sensitive tongue, to feel it drip down his throat, that nutritious sludge coating it as it slides past pharynx and esophagus on its long journey down to his stomach? It is a horror. A complete and abject horror to endure.
And endure it he must. His posture has been snapped into place and held there by that cold grip before the feeding began. The first solid thought that Micolash musters in the wake of this is to think of his puppets back in the Nightmare of Mensis. Is this how they felt? If they could feel? Directed and positioned by the will of another?
The second thought is this: You deserved this. You brought this upon yourself.
Micolash doesn’t even begin or try to take advantage of Abysa’s barely slipped hold. The only thing he can do with it is unconscious, and that is to lightly tremble from head to toe.
Abysa's weeping does not cease, but he does gasp, his sobs quieting just silently as Micolash's trembling registers in the demon's own brain. He has not yet broken his hold on the human's body, and it's distressingly difficult to let go. He doesn't want to.
"Oh, no... No no no..." Abysa says, his voice hoarse from yelling and crying in a way that has never been heard ever since he discovered this Nexus. Perhaps not since he inhabited a body that had long been reduced to ash in holy light.
"Micolash, Micolash... What have I done, what have I done?" The sound of Abysa pacing about the room is interrupted by various things rising and falling, the sundry objects he had kept floating dropping to the floor: the porcelain water pitcher shatters, joining the syringe, the bloody bandages fall softly into a heap, the unused blindfold meant to go over Micolash's bandages slides unseen into a soft corner of the room. Other objects are picked up by invisible power as though the effort to catch the others is delayed, confusedly lifting a pillow, a book, before they are also dropped.
"I wanted proof, that is all! I wanted to know if mortals could be good, could be kind! If even a broken man could be made whole again, to love and trust, then I could do the same...! I am selfish, a fraud, a horrid...mistake of a High Priest..."
Soon, Abysa marches back to Micolash, takes hold of his pale hands which move only when he pulls them so. He kisses the man's knuckles, his inky tears cold on his skin.
"Who am I indeed to judge, to lead, or teach? I am so sorry, I am sorry... If I let you go, I am so afraid. If I let you go, you might kill yourself, and I would not blame you, not after this." He shivers as another wave of sobs and croaking, whimpering cries escape him, his hold on Micolash growing weaker and weaker. Unfortunately, as Micolash feels control being returned, he might also feel a familiar sensation of cool air or mist hitting his skin and the accompanying fatigue associated with the demon's sleep spell.
"I am sorry... I am sorry, please..." the demon repeats, interrupted only by hiccups and sobs. "I will seek my punishment, and I will face it. You will have proof of my devotion, Micolash..."
The slipping psychic grip is met with Micolash's trembling only growing more pronounced and violent, almost as if in seizure. The first sound he makes, the only one he can, is a thin whine in the very back of his throat, barely louder than a whisper. The cold is leaving but it clings in a way he can’t describe. Cold in places not meant to feel anything at all, places that have no such nerve receptors to transmit the sensation. It’s not a natural cold.
And much to his plummeting chagrin, the first and only act he can do with his restored free will and use of his own body is to piss himself.
When he feels the sleep spell hitting, Micolash wants to scream in a mixture of fright and frustration. He doesn’t WANT to sleep! He doesn’t WANT to be unconscious! What happens in there when he does? What will he dream? What will he feel? What if it doesn’t save him from this awful cold and this worse awareness of his form? What if he’s plunged into the admissions of wrong-doing Abysa wants from him, the accusations leveled at him? Left to dwell upon his sins as the gods and worse intended and nothing, nothing else.
The trembling stops when sleep devours the scholar’s thoughts and he goes limp, left to hang awkwardly from whatever control Abysa still holds.
Abysa, meanwhile, remains weeping on the floor of Micolash's room for a time, even after the human's mind is rendered unconscious by the priest's wishes. He wishes too time would stop, so he could spend the rest of his life caught up in the wrenching anguish of his own misdoings. Unfortunately, the smell of the human's accident eventually wakes him to the reality of things; his care does not stop with one mistake, or several.
With numbness weighing down his emotions and thoughts, Abysa sets about to work once more. Focus on the tasks, and the rest will follow. The patient must be cleaned, clothes changed, sheets and blankets replaced and washed, shattered glass disposed of, go go, get to work, busy busy busy. Henry, who had been puffed up behind the bookcase, emerges at last, green eyes staring at the scene with wordless wisdom and opinion. He keeps a quiet and impartial eye on Micolash as Abysa sets about cleaning up.
The beddings are changed, the old ones sent to be washed. The glass and porcelain is swept up with telekinesis and disposed of. The blood on the floor is mopped up. The scholar's limp body is manipulated in the normal way now, with hands physical and psychic, changing him out of his clothes, wiping down his body with damp cloth, dried, new clothes given, all before he is laid back onto the bed. With an aching heart, Abysa places a kiss on his forehead, wishing and praying for sweet dreams.
When all seems clean, organized and stable, he leaves Henry to keep watch over Micolash, even though he will not wake for some time. Henry sniffs at the scholar who is left laying on his side and tucked in meticulously. The feline circles Micolash, walking over his legs back and forth, before curling up close to his chest and purring until sleep takes him as well.
Abysa returns to his chambers, walking with his feet on cold stone, the gesture of humility. As always, the walls of his room are draped in large banners, more like tapestries in their complexity, each one representing a Lord, seven in all. He steps before the wall-hanging that bears the colours of pale grey, dark gray, and gold. Easy to mistake for black and white, if it were not for the black and white hearts weighed against each other on a golden scale held in the hand of a stylized depiction of his Lord of Guilt. He kneels in silence, eventually sinking lower still until he is hunched over, groveling on the floor in desperate prayer. He does not move for hours or perhaps even days.
.
.
.
.
Perhaps it was the priest's wish that spawns the dream, and perhaps it is the piece of Abysa's spirit inside him that awakens an ancient scene in Micolash's dreams. It is in the soul that memories of ages past are kept, inherited when the DNA of two bodies is combined to create new life, summoning the lives of all it had originated from. A code written into one's own cells that calls back, very far back, to the source of all life itself. This memory does not go nearly so far perhaps, but it is old all the same. And calm, and warm, and gentle.
An autumn breeze, a sunset draping the countryside, a valley of patchwork farmers' fields, rivers glistening in the light, foothills in the distance. A woman, or a voice that is deep yet feminine, softly sings a song in a language Micolash may have even heard once or twice. The language of demons being sung somewhere on Earth.
He is walking alongside the owner of the voice, or floating, like a bystander or a visitor unseen. A tall figure draped in faded robes walks along a dirt path. In her(?) arms is a bundle, a baby that mumbles and wiggles as its caretaker sings. Only the baby is much too small or the strange woman far too tall. It would make sense for the infant to be human and the woman to be a demon. A veil hangs from her horns, large and curved and elegant, ribbons are tied to a long tail that brushes the ground behind her lightly, her bare feet are inhumanly shaped with four toes clawed at the ends. Her face, if she has one, is obscured by her hood, looking down at her precious passenger as she continues to sing.
"There's no way they'll let you keep it." A voice from behind. A man's voice? The language is not human still yet is understood completely. The female demon stops singing to address the other.
"Who is 'they'? We are stranded, you know. We can hide, until the portal is opened again."
"And what, raise a human baby to pass the time?"
"I do not see why not."
The man she speaks to is another demon and not an Eyeless one. A hulking, armored figure whose features are hard to identify otherwise, aside from the fact that his legs look like the legs of an animal ending in two dark hooves. He sighs deeply, steam poofing through the faceguard of his helm.
"It will be a mistake. When it grows up, it will learn what you are, and if it does not kill itself, it will kill you for tainting its life and slaying its father and mother."
"A baby is innocent. If I raise it with love, and kindness, it will not be like its parents. Surely it would understand, the reasons why we did what we did..."
And with that scene, things become mixed up and jumbled as dreams often go. The odd thing is each subsequent dream following the first are visions in a similar vein. The seasons change, as does the scenery: from farmland, to woodland, to the deep wilderness, surrounded by mountains. The Eyeless demon and a tiny human child living far away from civilization, learning to live as one with nature on Earth.
Whatever part of Micolash that witnesses this, as he very much feels he is not himself nor feels as anything at all but a silent passenger, a passing thought, left to float in place like a cloud and just as immaterial, left to simply absorb and observe. To take in the views, the sounds, the emotions, the feelings.
The last time he ever felt like this was the moments between the Ritual taking hold and his spirit flying to the Nightmare. That time between stars and layers of reality where he was not a man or a human or a person or even Micolash. He was something that was only once called that, yes, when he inhabited a body made of carbon and blood. But the part of him that is NOT his body, the greatest, deepest part of him of all, was set free. Free to feel the winds of the cosmos pass through it and to stretch out and find that it could reach and blend with all other forces like what he’d become.
It was to experience the joy of becoming what he was meant to be all along. A being unbound from a prison of flesh to take luminous, untethered spiritual form so it could navigate the streams between reality. Propelled by thought and a stranger to any need but that to press higher still.
He’d forgotten about that. The Nightmare immediately following that moment of bliss and freedom turned it into a faint memory bleached and stripped of all tangible markers and meaning. A forgotten and faded trophy to keep him motivated and working tirelessly towards proper ascension. He knew that something good had happened but he couldn’t remember what, but if he keeps going, he’ll find it again.
Here is like that time. Not quite, but very close. It is to be a wisp and simply absorb the calm and pleasantness all around. To witness this scene and these people and store the resulting memories away like little precious jewels that he can take out and turn over and marvel and wonder and try to figure out for as long as he likes because he has the time to do so. There is no limit to it because time is a mortal construct and to be outside the cycle is to be nestled in among eternity.
There are blacker thoughts and horrors that drift like fog somewhere underneath this nice place and this nice thing he’s become. Like tasting something bitter or mouldy in a bite of sweet fruit, but just a trace. Just enough that you are aware that this is present and it is not as fine and pure as what you otherwise taste, likely something brushed off on it that you do not have to worry about much more than the little bit you’ve already swallowed.
Except instead of the rot or telltale dirt-like flavour of mould, it is something telling him that this is a lesson he must be keen on as it will inform further understanding of that black undercurrent. See this, feel this, remember this and it will set you on the right path. This peaceful dream and this dark, distant unease are part of a contrast and that is important, so important that he can forget everything else, but he mustn’t forget this dichotomy either. It’s a key to unlocking greater Insight and he has to clutch it tightly, unlike the rest of his musings and wonders, so it leaves with him when he must go.
But that is not now and that is not anything made to feel threatening. Instead, he is allowed to curl up underneath a peach tree and breathe in its sweet perfume and watch these memories and feel the warm sun and learn to carry all of that with him even as the scenes change. A little inconsequential ghost given a place to rest awhile and know peace.