True Despair {Nameless}

This was the world that unfurled before him like some ungrateful wingspan: dark and filthy, festering with gangrene. Everything was writhing, twisting, seeking to worm its way inside. Insidious, calamitous, dark -- a dark that few ever witnessed. It was the dark that had nothing to do with violence, and everything to do with devouring. Disappearing. Extinction. It was the echo of silence that stretched on endlessly in your nightmares: the very quiet before the storm. It was the waiting quiet of stretching jaws just over your head, ready to destroy everything in a single bite. It was a parasite, a demon, and it clung to him more intimately than the stench of his mal-birth. It slithered through his bones, made of him nothing but a puppet to be used and thrown away. So the weapon walked, and walked, and walked, without a hand to guide him, but the madness that made him chomp so heavily at the bit.

The heat maddened him, the moisture that clung to him in the air aggravated the restlessness inside of his marrow; his claws were unfurled, his jaws cracked opened as he panted, panted, fangs unsheathed and poignant against the black stain of his lips. He was pestilence itself, wrangled and hideous in the midst of this jungle of green. He was the sin that cut through the foliage without destination, so far from his little pyre of hope.

The Goddess was out there, somewhere, but it mattered little. How long had it been since he had looked at her face, since he had felt her claws against his flesh, pushing him down, keeping him chained so fiercely to her person? Not so long at all, and yet too long indeed. His mind was fractured, splintered into a kaleidoscope of infinite distractions, and each of them were traversing deeper into the darker territories. His mouth remembered the taste of blood, the thickness, the heat of it on his tongue, splashing against his face. He remembered the fear that darkened their faces, and envied their ability to fear. He envied, and killed. Always, always, without her knowing -- it was a thing he did not speak of. It was a thing he could not stop, could not even dare to curb.

What did a weapon do when it was put down after a battle? Did it simply sit and wait so quietly and so patiently for the hand to come pick it back up again? No, no -- it thirsted. It hungered, and the insatiable need had spread through his belly and saturated his dreams until he found himself wandering, as he always wandered, looking for something, anything, to kill the hunger inside of him. But he was an unwanted thing. A thing that should never have made it past it's first breath. {Pitiful cat} --- the thick rope of his tail lashed out violently as the sound echoed inside of his head, ears flattening down against his skull. No. No. But it would not stop -- it could never stop -- not until his hunger was gone for good. Not until he had atoned for the death he never felt guilt over, the meal he had made of something he had pretended he had cherished. The sound of her ghost hissed violently in his head, cracking down like thunder -- but he could only lumber on more poignantly, his claws catching in vines, in roots, in dirt. She would not stop until he was dead. {Will your little mistress help you now?} She crooned, so venomously, so terribly, with such aching need. Her love, and her hatred walked parallel lines, and each one was directed toward his heart. "Shut up." he muttered, not realizing he had even spoken.

This lost weapon, ambling so far away from his bright-light Goddess, this temporary thing given a second chance and squandering even that away -- this horribly nameless, decadently and utterly deliciously insane, unfathomable creature moved as if he himself were a blade. He cut through the jungle as if he would skewer its heart with his path; and just maybe, maybe, it was a possibility. The nameless one cut through everything as if by simply moving he could shut off his thoughts from the remembered touch of hot flesh that he had left to rot in this endless, humid wasteland. So much green. He felt the pulse of his stone burning a hole in his eye socket and pushed the feeling outward, flexing it as if one would flex a claw on an uncooperative paw. The stone responded, pulsing, throbbing, surging forward at the need it sensed thrashing around within him. This paltry trick was nothing in comparison to the darkness he knew resided in others, but it didn't matter. His darkness was of a different flavor, a different, darker shade than the shadows that coalesced in corners, even in the brightest of days. Yet this stone moved, as if it had it's own motives, and he flexed with it, washing the world before him in white. So much white, like the piled snow of his homeland's mountains. Like cold rock, and even colder snow-fall.

He felt it shimmer in the air before tightening on his body; the color drained, there is no other word for it. The garish, shrieking rosettes cut in pieces by scars and black were bleached white, as bone seen between torn flesh. He gleamed, this whiteness, pulsing outward, washing even his very mind in a bright, daring white. The magic moved, draining every color he had but the white: the grey inbetween the rosettes, the darkness around his eyes, the very galaxy that roved so restless within his iris. White, on white, on white. He was nothing but white, and in that glorious rush of white, even his mind was silent. White static, a hazy, fuzzy sound that he was slowly beginning to enjoy -- a peace that he had never found outside. It was in this state of mind that he caught that stench of male, right before the tiger appeared, so bright, like a jewel in the jungle. His eye tightened, pupil shrinking to a pinpoint as he watched the writhing, tangling shadows play at the other cat's feet.

The madness was held, briefly, so poignantly in this wash of white -- unperturbed even by the catching sound of the other's voice: What are you looking at? nearly a snarl, with a tempering inflection. The nameless heathen, brimmed over with white, did not even have words to respond with: he simply stared, his tail long and thick curling along his side, ticking at the very end. Aggression was a foreign concept: he did not understand it.

So the cast-aside weapon took a step back, claws kneading at the earth, all of that darkness beginning to eat at him, to infiltrate all of that seamless white noise he had begun to treasure. Color returned in bits and pieces - dark, smeared blotches destroyed by a catastrophe of scars. filthy grey mottling the underbelly of white. He had never been a clean creature, his maw and throat smeared with the vestiges of that not-so-secret killing. Did he reek of death? {Will you eat him too?} the voice cackled, as the last of white disappeared from his very small world. He chuffed, the rest of his body curling under him as he sat down, so briefly, watching the tiger, full of nothing but eaten desires.

"I don't remember." He said, finally, voice rough even as each word was so carefully pronounced -- so careful, as if he would forget the way they sounded if he did not concentrate. His ears flicked up, cupping forward, his one eye unwavering and devoid of anything relatable. "The shadows." He paused, "I think."

{Stupid cat}

word count || 1255

tags || Tejas Mithra

OOC || So exciting !!

They always spoke of darkness as if it had only one face, one facet that watched out from the rippling mirrors of their reflection. They always spoke of sadness, dormant and dark, slithering through the lines of the heart and wreaking silent havoc in their bones. They didn't know activity. They didn't know the vile hand of violence slipping up into their spine and wiggling its fingers like a puppet. Age didn't matter: very few knew the truest face of the dark -- the truth that it carried as many faces as the wind held scents. Each face was a different flavor, a different intent, but all part of the same dismal, abysmal dark that cracked it's cynical grin at the world.

How long had he seen that darkness before his eye? Was it before, when he had two? Or was the removal of it, the moment he had been finally released of the ignominy of life, and given a glimpse of what lay beyond the shadows that coalesced in corners, and dark alleys? He could see them now -- writhing, and gyring, a maniacal dance, to a song of bloodlust only they could understand. They could rile the blood -- and it they sucked up on the ether of this tiger with the eagerness of a kitten at the teat. He was fresh meat, and he was poisoned by something inside of him. The nameless was a creature long abandoned: often picked up and discarded, again, and again. The nameless knew broken when he saw it.

His heart was heartless, his mind a scattered wind-chime lost in the chaos of the whirlwinds the fever had created. He had been purposefully broken, and haphazardly put together -- but in his coming together he had lost something precious. His feelings were not feelings at all, but instinctual desires that could not be suppressed. So it was the stone, buried in his eye, pulsing like fire deep in the socket. So it was the crooked grin that ripped through the black of his maw, venom and cynicism tearing through the neutrality like some battle born cry. A part of him, had sensed prey -- and the hunger still raged calamitous in his gut.

The Goddess was no where to be found, and her voice was the only thing that could hold him back -- without her he was a loose cannon, lost in the machinations of his mind. Without her, he simply destroyed. The shadows? The voice called, the tiger called, his muttering a delicious rumbling that tickled the snow leopard's ears. The hell are you on about?

Oh, oh. The snow leopard chuffed, his stone fluctuating, feeding off the inner frenzy that was slowly beginning to stir. did the tiger know how wonderfully terrible these words were? Did he know how tantalizing the desire he played with? The world had become a reflection, and in that reflection the nameless one carefully walked the thin wire of sanity. {Play with him, just like I taught you} the voices purred, a chuckling, derisive sound that bounced around in his empty skull. He knew only instinct, and desire. And the Voice.

It had been months since he had stopped trying to stop. He no longer fought the voice, but remembered her touch, her sound like claws on stone, raking up the line of his spine. He shivered, the mass of muscles seemingly liquid beneath his roving, roiling fur. "Your shadows." He said, his voice as careful as thought, his one eye gleaming, the other empty but for the glistening, surging power of his soul stone. "It looks like you're about to be eaten." and the nameless chuckled -- wasn't that the fate of all life? Wasn't that the fate of the tiger? Eaten by shadows, eaten by Nameless? Oh yes, yes.

{Go one, little cat}

So much urging, so ungentle the command -- so delicious the feeling of entrapment. Not even an hour ago he had feasted, and yet he was never full, never sated. Something was always missing. Would this cat feel fear too? Or would he show a different expression? Would the nameless finally find a way to ease the discomfort in his chest with this one's death? Or would he be forced to forever be at the heels of his waiting Goddess?

--- but the cat was disappearing, turning around and leaving, his claws heavy in the underground foliage, his unease a stench that floated back like superfluous perfume. The snow leopard opened his mouth, inhaling that stench, tasting it, rolling it around in mouth like something sweet and wonderful. "You smell good." he said, not knowing he spoke, his tail lashing as he rose up and followed the tiger, into the dark, to where ever the creature decided to run. Prey always ran.

{Show me what you can do}

Oh yes, yes. Would this one's head make a good little present for the Goddess? Or would he have to let it rot in the heat of the jungle like so many other corpses, for fear of her discovery? He didn't know -- and the not knowing urged him forward.

word count || 875

tags || Tejas Mithra 

OOC || doot-doot

He was losing grip on reality, slipping in between the cracks of what was supposed to have been known, and what he saw, withering and dying in the shadows -- the shadows that writhed like broken lyrics along the stripes of the infantile tiger shuffling along before him. His stench was a thing of beauty, a thing of internal damnation -- he tasted, and tasted again, mouth open, rolling the flavor of that flesh over the gland in the roof of his mouth. He didn't just scent, no, no, he knew what the tiger would taste like, what tenderness would be found in the softness of his belly, the stringiness of his tight, tight shoulders. There was so much to know, to taste, to feel, to discover, if only he had had the motivation to seek it out and tear it open with his claws -- but the snow leopard was a creature of abhorrence, of pestilence, and he waited, and watched. Disinterest lurked in the darkness in his galactic, starry eye; judgment warred along the crevices of scars tearing apart his unaccountable visage: even the crooked grin that had ripped open through the neutrality was beginning to fester with the beginnings of restlessness. It was an easy thing to be over-looked. He did not mind. He didn't mind anything.

Tigers don't just get eaten.

The nameless one, the deficient one, the shameless, faceless mongrel's face tore open with a laugh, dark and rumbling, like distant thunder surging up from the darkness of his chest. Tigers don't just get eaten. Tigers don't just get eaten. "You are right!" he laughed, his voice slithering through the cavities of his teeth, a filthy thing full of implied meanings, and half-hearted thoughts. Even the demons that rode upon his back had to laugh at the simplistic delusion. "You are right, little one!" his voice suddenly full of mirth. "They just get devoured!"

Vanity did not truly exist in the dark; ambition, greed, pride -- the truest of shadows devoured everything without reward. To survive the tsunami, one had to become the shadow, become everything that was hated in the world. One had to become the silence, become the watchful, the knowing; one must throw away one's heart, and one's blood. The little cub thought he knew dark? Hah. Hah!. Even his Goddess, his precious little Goddess, her heart full of vengeance and her so-called darkness, did not truly know what moved beyond in the ubiquitous dark. She glowed, in her own delectable way, and he like a silly moth to an equally ridiculous flame, floundered while the black wave came surging toward them: but he knew they would drown one day, while she pretended so prettily she was more powerful than even the abyss itself.

They didn't know -- they never knew: the abyss was part of all.

The abyss was everything.

If you can smell me that well, that's a sign you are too damn close. Back off, cat. The nameless flicked his ears back, hearing the words even as his mind rejected them. Maybe the infant didn't realize that his stench could be picked up miles off, and it smelled delicious to the right sort of cat? The snow leopard chuffed, confusion slithering in between the cracks of his broken, fried synapses.

{Another stupid cat}

This time, the nameless one could only agree with the voices in his head. His body sprawled along the cooler foliage, noting with increasing disinterest the little game the tiger played with his stripes. Another chuffing sound puffed through his nostrils as the snow leopard opened his mouth, fangs unsheathed, inhaling that sweet, sweet scent.

word count || 609

tags || Tejas Mithra

OOC || -----