Something Wicked (III)

Knox

His eyes opened to the gold encrusted walls of the palace interior.

They adjusted again to the artificial light blasted from outside, and he felt the air of the First Layer play across his face once more.

Not like the sands of home. Back home, the sands carried nothing but dead dreams and sad whimpers. Here, the sands spoke to him of life.

Life that he could use.

Today, he was scheduled to perform another series of cuts against Revok's enemies, many of whom had risen up alongside him in the wake of Jael's departure. Some of them, however, still maintained their old loyalties. Most of them, he could break. He could break them and piece them back together even as they screamed, begging him for death.

But that was not his purpose.

He donned his flea-bitten cloak and brushed off some fresh specks of crimson coating its frayed sleeves. He then proceeded to survey his room and carefully pick out the tools for the day from the rows of implements Revok had bestowed upon him years ago, when he had been merely a boy fumbling in the larval stages of his growth as a Glancer. His instruments were metal rods twisted by his power into something new - objects imbued with the perfect purity of suffering and life that the wind brought as it brushed even his scorched face.

He breathed in. Exhaled. Felt the air enter his lungs and coarse through his arms, pooling at the tips of his fingers. Just like the old Master once told him, he was special. He was one who could feel the love of the Everloft - the beautiful melodies that danced through the desert skies and nestled themselves in his ears. Their melodies were for him and him alone, but the tools he now fastidiously fiddled over he saw as his personal conducting wands.

And the girl below was to be his Magnum Opus. Today, he was going to perform on her again.

She was a challenge. He knew it the moment he locked eyes with her as she tried, as they all did, to resist Revok's claws. She had the lingering flame of resistance in her that all mortals maintain before they realize that they are little more than flesh, blood, and bone. Wet sacks who could never amount to more than their futile corporeality.

He would need the perfect wand to pluck her strings. Most cried out in agony at even the sight of him. But she was different. She held to her body and her body supported her right back. He didn't need to heal her. And every time she recovered from his patiently, lovingly carved mutilations, he felt himself shiver with deep-seated excitement.

Or perhaps it was anger. He had yet to decide.

He felt a thin smile creep across his face unconsciously as he remembered her eyes - so lively, fiery, filled with such exquisite pain beyond what he could deliver. She was one who had lived with disappointments and disillusionments that reminded him of himself as a meek, sickly child first finding his feet in the world. He had needed a teacher to show him how to create his own personal songs - maybe the girl needed him in the same way.

He looked outside at Revok's mindless myrmidons yapping away, 'training' in the courtyard with their puerile knives or leering at the scantily clad female servants. Their concerns were little more than the niggling gossips of children, unfit even to dance upon the shifting stage of the winds that blew through this place.

He breathed in again as he returned to his tools, considering his next move - which bones of hers he would twist, which organs he would clench in his spectral grip, and what kind of stare he would face her with today, down there in the den of the lost, below the sands. Perhaps, he now thought with sudden sharp trepidation, he truly had met his match with this one. She would neither yield to the Don nor beg him for mercy even as he plied his trade on her skin, carving into her wounds that would have brought even the brightest of the old Argents to heel like the dogs they were.

He closed his eyes. Anger was not useful. Once, he had loved Lord Jael - as had they all. But such love was rejected, spat back at him even as he begged his Master to allow him to continue on his path, to learn more of the Everloft's secrets.

What was it Lord Jael had said before he left him?

"Your destiny is here, young Knox. Here, you can do the most good for your brothers and sisters. They are your family now. And here is a life that shall last forever. You may break and you may mend to your heart's content. For all shame and all the evils of this world are swallowed by the Shifting Sands."

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He grit his teeth in mute frustration. He understood now - the girl's face, her determination, and her valiant need to resist him tore at his heart because he could see his own confused loyalty reflected in her eyes. She still believed in the silver-haired snake. And her belief gave her power, even if it was misplaced.

So, could he break her? he wondered, staring at his withered hands. Could he make her see the truth, without words to guide her?

For that would be love, would it not? Laying her loyalty bare, exposing the lie at its heart. That pain would be the greatest gift he could give. But would it make her sing?

His mind was so preoccupied with such thoughts that he barely registered the towering form of Revok hover in through his doorway. With him was his favored concubine - the Red-headed, buxom woman, resplendent in her shimmering veil. At times, he had sweated at the prospect of plucking her flesh to see what music her bones would yield, but Revok's will was to be obeyed. Thus, he kept his predilections as quiet as his existence, even as his eyes sometimes strayed towards her exposed, pierced midriff.

"Enjoying your morning, Knox?" the old bird cawed. "I see you're almost ready for the show."

Knox bowed obediently and then continued perusing his equipment. The Don, however, lingered in the room, a grisly smile playing across his ruined beak.

"Yes," he said. "An artist must be ready when on the cusp of creating his masterpiece."

With icy calmness, Revok placed his feathered wings on Knox's shoulders and slowly he felt his arms fall to his side, his eyes closing as he felt the warmth of the bird-man consume him like it had on many rough winter nights of his childhood.

"Dearest Knox," Revok whispered. "Even as you stand so strong in your silence, I can tell you are excited."

Knox closed his eyes, letting the sensation fill him. Letting the wind pass through and into him. Yet, still, the only vision that swam before his eyes was that of the girl - her gaze a gimlet threatening to impale his soul.

"You want to break her, don't you?" Revok continued, lowering his beak to Knox's ear. "You wish to see her scream."

He nodded once, saying nothing.

"Leave us," Revok suddenly barked at the Red-woman.

Knox heard the fear in her trembling voice as she replied, "But, I am thinking-"

"Thinking does not befit one of your station," Revok interjected. "Do your thinking outside, or I shall allow dear Knox here to dictate your thoughts forevermore."

She bowed and obeyed without further question.

"My friend," he said once she had gone. "We have lived through much, have we not? We have both endured the sufferings of this world - both those of the surface and this great, endless pit. And we have perpetuated such suffering a thousand fold - as we were born to do. As he told us we were destined to. We have made this place into a kingdom fit for only those like us, while those of the surface world drink and make merry, ridiculing our very existence."

Knox's dried lids slowly closed as the truth of his oldest friend's words sunk deep into his bones. He felt the same futility of all mortal existence whenever he touched the open wounds he tore into his organic canvases. All life was little more than a fleeting, failing heartbeat, and theirs was one that would be heard by no one. They were forgotten, Discarded. Down here, Knox's only pleasure was in his work.

"But now, Knox, we have a way out."

He felt Revok withdraw, and when he opened his eyes Knox saw the suddenly serious Jilae was holding something in his blackened claw: a piece of pale, bloody skin, wrapped in cloth.

He threw it down on the table beside Knox's tools.

"From the girl," he explained.

Knox turned to face his friend in mute confusion.

"Come now, Knox," he said. "Can you truly not see it?"

He returned to the small piece of flesh and removed the tiny wrappings that hid its center. At first, his eyes told him nothing at all - this was the Argent girl's flesh, alright, a piece he himself had sliced away at the orders of his friend. But he saw nothing within it.

Then, seized by a sense of inspiration, he closed his eyes and breathed deep the air of the Shifting Sands. He felt the Everloft's dark breath come into him, consume him, and then leave him all at once.

And when he opened his eyes again, he opened his mouth in a silent gasp.

The skin had lost its pale sheen - replaced by a miasma of onyx that wavered in the air above it. It was like an aura of night had draped itself over the flesh - no - was being secreted by the very cells within the bloody piece. And, looking at it with pincer-like focus, he could swear he saw the thing move of its own accord.

"Knox," he heard his friend say beside him. "It's him."

Impossible, his mind raged. His unblinking stare communicated what his vestigial mouth could not.

His friend, however, was rapt. His blind eyes were fixed on the skin, and the hidden magic imprisoned within.

"I did not believe Nils' report when it came," he whispered. "But there can be no doubt now. Old Jael succeeded. Miron succeeded. They brought sin to the world above, and now it has come home."

Knox saw Revok's smile widen as he caressed the crimson-cloaked skin flaps with his feathered claws, and now it could not be denied - the black aura slashed out as though in an attempt to strike at him.

"Pain is the stimulus," he said. "She is strong, but it is not submission I require from her. All I need is for her to bleed."

Knox's surprise withered away to eventual acceptance. He understood now what Revok was asking even before he said it. Now, there was purpose to his art.

"This could be it," Revok continued. "The end might finally be in sight for us. For all of us."

He touched the flesh with his own scarred fingers and felt it - the will raging behind the sickeningly corporeal thing. A true sentience trapped within something as banal as human flesh. Knox let the rage twist round his fingers and found himself smiling without even knowing it.

The girl would be more than just a new symphony in his repertoire. From the plucking of her strings, he would conjure new life itself. Love and pain would be entwined together, as they should be.

"Old friend," Revok said. "Can you bring me more?"

And with little more than an uncharacteristic grin, Knox nodded.