Tortured
Quinn fell to the ground in the alley, teeth gritted in effort. The voices were coming again, surging into his consciousness like a plague, bringing their terrible energy, the power, and the madness. He fought them this time, rejecting their cajoling and urging and pleading, trying to block out the sound of a billion voices screaming at him in unison. He writhed on the floor in his effort, eyes alternating between burning white and deep, deep green. Silent white fire came in random spurts, erupting from his body at all angles, burning and melting all in its path.
He opened his mouth in a wordless scream of anger. A couple of weeks ago he wouldn't have been able to do this, to fight them back. It was becoming easier lately to resist the seemingly insurmountable burning drive within him to possess, to let the voices free and into the world. He closed his mouth, refusing to scream more.
Slowly the voices subsided as he lay still on the ground. He needed help, he decided. He couldn't face them alone, all those voices, not for long. Somebody in this city must be able to help him. Perhaps an Eldritch, or an Angel, or even an Undead. He tried to stand as the dead screeched at him from the beyond.
Zaigar just got back from her hunt. She wasn't too fruitful. She only caught a few birds and stuff, but that was it. She was ready to find a secluded place and start a fire to roast them when she saw a distant light before her.
Curiosity got the better of her. She stuffed the birds into a sack and walked cautiously towards the lights that were gradually going dimmer and dimmer until it finally disappeared.
She soon saw the owner of those lights lying on the floor, looking very tired and almost near dying. He looked as if he was in some kind of torture. A torture so great, that her own tortures of the past could never measure up to it. She didn't want to do anything with someone dying and she sure didn't care whether he's dead or not, but the temptation of seeing if he had any weapons she could steal from him was growing. Her last weapon got wedged into someone's gut because he tried to rob her of her food and she was running out of arrows. Her catch never made much money and she desperately needed something worthwhile to hunt.
As she reached over and touched his shoulder, she felt like an electrical surge go up her arm and it felt as if it was pulling her in. She heard screams, dozens of screams, all of them filled with agony, anger, pain, suffering and hurt. She heard cries and wailing of sadness, and voices of people wishing to be back in the living world. She didn't know how long she was in that stance, but she knew that she had heard millions of voices within her mind in that particular time and space.
Zaigar let out a strangled yell as she pulled herself away from the man. It sent her skidding onto the ground. Her arm was numb and her ears were still ringing like mad at those voices. She felt it still echoed softly in her head. She tried to get up and catch her breath. She was shocked into realization what kind of person she was dealing with.
"Crap," she cursed. "It's a freaking Herald!"
Quinn shifted on the floor, and was mildly surprised when someone appeared beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. For one long, blissful moment the voices were gone, they went somewhere else, and he was left alone in his own head. An expression of pure joy started to form on his face.
The hand left him, and the voices came rushing back. The expression half formed on his face turned into a picture of pain and outrage in one and he let out a scream of anger. Was he never going to be rid of them.
He turned his head to see the woman who had appeared, slightly confused by her appearance. The vocies weren't though, and they urged him forwards. Driven by them he snarled as he lunged forwards, pulling her to her feet by her neck. For a moment he stood there, holding her up by her neck in a hard grip, blazing eyes staring into hers, skin glowing slightly from the fire waiting to be unleashed. For a moment he stood there, then...
He let her go. It took a supreme effort of will, but he released her. Enfuriated screeches echoed in his head, but he paid them no heed now. This had to end somewhere. He couldn't just keep doing what they wanted, he couldn't just keep torturing and maiming. Instead he stood there and looked down at the half-breed, immense sadness mingled with struggle on face.
“What you seek my master can give... Herald...” The old bird squawked as it landed upon a low line that strung across the alley.
Slowly a man came from the darkness his eyes flickering like candles in the wind. He slowly approached the suffering man. Slowly the great bird fluttered to his shoulder. This man was the bird’s master.
Quinn turned to see the man coming, anger in his expression. His eyes smoldered and a strange, faint light wavered across his skin as his body quivered. He was only just keeping the voices in check, but something of their anger was seeping through anyway.
"Is that so?" He said, walking forwards slowly. "You think you can just come and wipe away my pain? You think you can just step in and solve my problems? This is bigger than just me!" His voice was raised to a shout. Somewhere inside him, part of him was shouting at himself not to do this. This man could help. He ignored it. The vocies raised to a clamour in his mind. "Don't you see? Can't you understand?"
He advanced on the man, snarling at the bird on his shoulders but not actually attacking.
"I can bend this world to my will," he said, "I can twist and tear the very fabric of this place. I can make your darkest dreams a reality, or bring to bear your worst nightmares. My power is beyond reason, beyond even my own understanding. One time, long ago, I would have craved this power, would have killed to have it. Anybody would, even the 'good' people out there. But now that I have it, now that this power is mine, I don't want it. I would do anything to be rid of it. Because it carries a terrible price. It's more than just voices in my head. It's more than just endless violence and torutre. I am trapped under a burden nobody can help me with. The dead themselves have chosen me!"
He paused, wondering where that had come from. He didn't know these things. This must be someone else speaking, not him. What were the souls doing? He carried on nonetheless.
"I cannot die, but I cannot live. All this power, and to no avail. I'm slaved to one purpose. My only purpose now. Cure me, you might, but this burden will not be lifted. I must empty the beyond, whatever happens, and closing the link will only make it infinitely harder, and you will doom me beyond the limits that even this plight may reach. There's only one way to end this."
With that said, unable to stop the words and unknowing where they came from or what they meant, Quinn felt something surge into him, moving his body. His lips curled in another snarl, and he reached to grab the bird. What was he doing? This man could help! But he was helpless to stop himself.
“Excuse my bird... it can’t hold its tongue... I have no idea if I can do anything for you.” Lumiere muttered between his sentences. The man lunged for the bird but Artimus was too old and too wise to let him self be caught. The Herald fell forward onto his face and Lumiere simply let him fall.
“You know... You should control your self. Voices heh... they are the dead... but you must ask are you a vessel or simply a radio through which they speak through. If it is the former then you must seek a way to expel them but if they the latter. You must turn off the radio.” Lumiere muttered as he took a seat upon a crate that lay strewn within the alley.
Quinn picked himself up and looked at the Synth. He laughed, and the laugh echoed off the walls and reverberated, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
"You don't see do you?" He said, almost hysterically. "You can't understand. Nobody can. Not until they know what I suffer." For a second he paused, looking at the pathetic man before him. "Do you think..." He said, plodding slowly forwards but somehow not moving from the spot. "...These dead..." His skin blistered and changed, rupturing in places, turning the distinct colour and smell of rotting flesh. His hair thinned and became bloody. His eyes became white, and maggots squirmed from every patch of skin. "...Are the horrific, inhuman monsters from the stories? That they are something to be fought, or dealt with? That they must be defeated, or ignored? You miss the point!" That last was a shout, and he shoved his face right in front of Lumiere's, the decay disappearing in an instant, his old face back, eyes blazing brilliantly.
He backed up, a slightly mad expression on his face.
"They're human," He said, quietly. "All of them. Every single one. Like you, or me before they came. And when you die, when your life ends, you'll join them, you'll go to whatever hell they're in, that emptiness the other side of death, and become just another voice in my head. There is no escape. Nobody is immortal. We're all trapped."
As he finished the alleyway changed, becoming darker. There was a rustling, and millions of small roots began to emerge from the ground and the walls, wrapping themselves around Quinn and Lumiere, preventing any movement. In a second they were gone.
"You think this can be helped? You think this is just my problem? This is everybody's problem! And I'm the only one who cna possibly help. All those souls... all those human beings, tormented. I can help them. 'Turn off the radio' you might, but I will strive to empty that barren place until the end of the universe if needs be, and then I will have some peace. That's the only peace any of us can have."
He suddenly became the image of an old man, bent over and wrinkled, shaking with old age.
"What do you think you can do?"
“Me... what can I do for you... I do not know entirely... but they say by fire we shall all be purged. So why not start there?” Lumiere suggested this with a gleam in his eye. He snapped his right fingers together and his forefinger glowed.
He traced a door upon the wall and a black indentation left its mark as he passed over the brick. “Now...I warn you this may not work. But we can try.” Lumiere offered as he placed his palm upon the cold brick. Slowly the indentation smoldered and then into flame it burst. Slowly a dark archway appeared and only golden flames grew behind it.
“My training room...” Lumiere muttered as he entered. “The flames are kept alive by my own brand of gunpowder that burns for a hundred years... or at least it’s supposed to. So shall we begin... you may join us too hunter.” Lumiere finished as he stood just within the smoldering doorway.
The old man's shape snapped back into Quinn's usual appearance. He felt a ripple as Lumiere opened the doorway, like he always did when magic was used in his vicinity. He thought it had something to do with the backwash affecting the power flowing into him from the beyond. He looked into the training room sceptically.
"What do you think this can do?" he said, "Pain will only give them a chance to possess me entirely, and toil is pointless with this." He motioned his hand, and bolts of electricity jumped from it and grounded in the concrete, leaving behind flashing afterimages and the sharp smell of ionised air.
He entered nontheless, wondering why such a place existed. Gunpowder that burnt for a hundred years? Quinn wasn't an expert, but he thought the whole point of gunpowder was that it was supposed to be explosive, quick.
"Do what you can."
“Pain I will not give them such... I will give them what they want a door. I do not know how or why they posses you. However, I hypothesize the reason you are so possessed is because you simply are a way out. I believe the pain you feel is due to the facts these are the spirits who did not live a virtuous life.” Lumiere said.
He took a deep breath and raised his right hand. With a snap of his fingers, the flames around them extinguished. He took a great tome from the now much dimmer room and opened it to a place some where in the middle of the book.
“Darinius an old Philosopher once acclaimed that either, when a person died, they went to a place of peaceful rest or if they did not want to rest they sought a way back into this world. I believe old Darinius is quite right. What you must do, with my help is to get them back into that plain of eternal rest.” Lumiere Stated.
“Now it all depends on your resolve. If you truly wish for these spirits to vanish, they will. Moreover, if I do not miss my guess you will be able to control them from ever getting in again, whenever you are ready.” Lumiere stated rolling up his right sleeve.
Zaigar slowly awoke from her slumber. As she painfully tried to get up, she remembered the searing pain on her throat and the horrible voices in her head. Her pride and anger surged as she realized that she had let down her guard and allowed the herald she tried to approach almost kill her. Before she passed out, she did hear a soft conversation between the herald and some other guy, but the voices that were still ringing in her head like endless echoes was so deafening she couldn't catch what they were talking. Before she knew it, they were already gone.
"Let me live..."
"How ugly I feel..."
"My son...I want to see my son..."
"SHUT UP!!!"
Zaigar held her head in agony as the voices she had heard coming from the herald burning into her skull. It was like being bombarded with a thousand people talking at the same time. Zaigar growled in anger.
"That freaking Herald infected me!!!"
Slowly, as she tried to blot out as much voices as possible, she caught a scent. The sense of smell she inherited from her gargoyle side had not failed her. There was also a scent of a bird and another man. She decided to go for her gut feeling and follow her nose.
"Just you wait, Herald! I'm gonna get you for giving me your curse! I'm gonna get you if it's the last thing I do!"
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