In this world born twice, in the third age of men, and populated by the Primati, Sedu, Terdu, and Novidu races, change of the kind it hasn't seen in 800 hundred years was about to usher in.
In this world ruled by the three lords of old: Solamus, Tercadus, and Olphasum, the Custiqua composed of Dragons and Spirits that cradled the first races when the world was young, the Kings and Queens that watch over the two shattered continents in political warfare and lastly the Chamu which keep the circle of Magic and Darkness ever spinning, imbalance was on the rise.
In this world existing only in the now and tomorrow, the mortal races lived to the fullest they could, for any day it could end. The inhabitants, for all their will and desires, be it of the kind that primates, serpents, avians, feline, or canine possessed, could no longer match the arising challenges.
Yes, in this very world, known as Abadar, on the first continent called Cardem, in the Rejuvenated Forest, appeared a strange statue. It was a masked man, concealment that was so large and ingrained in his appearance, that it seemed as if it was part of his very biology.
Concealment was a very fitting adjective for this depicted person, for not an inch of his stone skin could be seen. Long patches of silky rock veiled over his thin, leech-like plate armor, from his gloved, petite hands down to the heavy reinforced boots. But strangest of all, this stone being was chained by restraints of lights that, as if it was on command, shattered into vaporizing mist.
Crack, the stone shuddered under the sudden movement below the rock. Click, plates began to separate from the being below. Thud, the encasement crumbled into gravel and pulver, letting the prisoner free, who fell onto the grassy surface below like a freshly hatched magpie.
Sarge was reborn but also shackled.
With growling which slowly ripped in his throat, swole up while he slowly pushed himself on his legs. "Was it like this the first time too...?" Sarge questioned while rubbing his masked face, and yet it felt so close to reality, the sturdy material gracing his 'skin,' it was less so of a separate object, but more akin to a permanent extension. "Blue grass?" He suddenly asked with confusion, the previous groggy groan momentarily swallowed, he rose to his feet and inspected the alien surroundings.
Sarge found himself in a forest, but not one an earthling would ever see with their own eyes. Blue, fluffy grass grew under his feet like a carpet, almost like moss in a way, and next to him were trees more akin to fungi than barked poles. The stem was silver, and the tops were mushroom caps of azul. And well above the clouds watching over the lands was a pale sun granting cold light.
Sarge's skin took in the alien climate and as he breathed, breathing which he hadn't done in the minutes he eyed this world, felt unnaturally envigorating. He could not differentiate whether this new body was more receptive than his old one, or if the world was more bright. Yes, he knew that he wasn't in his old body, the new senses, the increased height, and prime strength he felt, in short, inhuman abilities were nothing new to him. It was after all not the first time he has been 'blessed' before, not, that he was allowed to panic this time either, the Aether didn't desire a tutorial phase, they desired for their avatars to be ready the second they awake. it was also very apparent that he felt no heartbeat in his chest, and no mouth or nose was present either.
Sarge knew that all too well, for when he was reborn the first time, with his flesh remade, he killed three soldiers, a trio of lads who should be home instead of plundering corpses. From birth on ready to fulfill the contract. And despite being shot four times in the chest by them, it didn't stop him. He was, after all, still able to entertain the Aether, after all.
With clenched fists, Sarge tested his strength, slowly rotating and moving the joins, finding them to be, he couldn't quite describe it, but this time there was a severe difference, unsynchronized with his mind.
'You have been merged and mended with a body that remained for many cycles within the vault of the judges. It really isn't a surprise, especially with an old man such as yourself. Haven't been actively doing cardio now, have you Quodo?' A voice, one with no physical presence spoke to Sarge as if he stood within an empty room, the sounds coming from every corner.
Sarge leaned his head forward, and 'closed his eyes,' going inside of himself and grasping at the faint presence of peace in himself in hopes of calming himself. "My name isn't Quodo, it's..." Sarge added firmly with a short remark, and as he was about to reveal his name, his voice stopped and had he a tongue, it would've frozen as well. There was no memory of his name. He peered deeper, for the times his wife, mother or father called the birthday cards or cakes that bore his name, not even his id, all of them had his name whipped.
"I really didn't think that my watcher would be a second voice in my skull." Sarge prematurely gave up his search and remembered the trial once more. "Why are you calling me Quodo?" Sarge called with a demanding tone, before looking at the horizon and seeking a sort of structure, almost like a great wall looming over the woods. With interest sparking within him, as well as relentlessness pushing him to action, he trotted forward towards what seemed to be civilization.
Suddenly Sarge felt motion from his left hip and beheld a sword, one that reminded him of many weapons, but not the one he viewed exactly. It was far-reaching like a longsword, possessed the shape of a bayonet, but light as a katana. The weapon was colorful, vibrant like metals of myth, purple, silver, and green were dominant. From the sword emerged, like a phantom arising from a puddle, a spiritual creature.
Sarge saw a creature that reminded him of a ferret, yet it bore serpent features; its scales were blue while white fur patches adorned the strange body. Short limbs and claws hung of the, in comparison, big and fluffy body, but transportation was not a question, for it flew, and rings of gold clung tightly against its skin. The eyes the creature bore fascinated Sarge most; its eyes' color was that of illuminated Amber.
"Because that, Quodo Dobromir, was the name given to you by the judge of destruction, his highness Osmodeus, with the input of the judges of Idobaht and Premura." The strange creature spoke with suddenly found respect, the kind one gained through severe reminding of the most direct kind. "And little ol' me is going to be your watcher, bound to the fair blade Agramir: you are roped to me. Oh, and I'm Devula. Hoi."
If Quodo could raise an eyebrow, let his forehead sink or wrinkle, or display any other fascial expression other than that of a plain, porcelain mask bearing but two black spots appearing as eyeholes, then he would.
"Amusing." Quodo muttered with false pleasure, before turning his eyes away from the Serpent of vigor. "Tell me, what does the Aether want this time?" It was a sudden shift in voice, the voice of this artificial body reached a kind of dreadfulness it was never meant to display. Far more vicious than the bloodstained flesh he previously bore, or perhaps the marks soiled his soul just as much?
"Huh?" The spirit asked with confusion, floating along with the spirited away man. "Not going to judge you for the sloppy introduction, but what do you mean?" A hunch of stale emotions filled the fleeting atmosphere between the unlikely pair. "Whatever, 'so long it's entertaining."
Crack.
Quodo, not halting for but a moment, punched a tree while passing, but to his surprise, a deep indentation formed within the wood, and it either seemed this world was too soft for his body, the crafted creation bore too great strength. As for the provocation, of such action, were twenty-six months of hazy fragments of memories.
"Blood." Quodo muttered while shaking his head with great discomfort, hunching forward and trying to banish old lingering thoughts that pooled within him. Lifeforce was the most prestigious of currencies for the Aether, and it was more than generous to reward bloodshed. It was the greatest entertainment.
"Blood?" The spirit asked as the duo walked past a usual, humanoid skeleton bearing great similarities to the homo sapiens, but with differences present such as spring-like feet and a more profound chest cavity. "Oh, quick tip bit, don't try to actively wield blades that aren't the rapier on your hip, just trust me, it's for the best." Devular added with ballistic remembrance, upon seeing the broken sword at the side of the corpse.
"Yes, blood, it's very entertaining, it would seem. If it gets dirty, brutal, inhume, all the better. 'I' once killed some poor man who tought I was some native vietnam man with an revolver." Quodo noted, before his eyes turned towards an old, nearly crumbled tower, only the foundation and the cellar remained. It looked like the structure was shortened by extreme heat, for the top was scorched and the fallen bricks appeared to have molten to some degree.
"It's an balisitc intrument, if I am not mistaking?" Devula asked, but if she expected Quodo to agree or correct her proved to be fruitless, because he didn't answer. "Doesn't sound that brutal to me." She spoke about the topic casually as if it was not about the death of someone.
"The gun, not the bullets." Quodo snapped, his voice hissing as he looked at the spirit with such anger, it almost looked like it caused some sort of surface tension that floated over his body to waver. "Blood." He repeated once more, but the malicious, rage-fuelled emotions saturating his speech now lacking.
"You, uhm, already said that." Devula said with uncertainty.
"No, blood." Quodo corrected the false assumption and pointed with his finger at a not so far off tree around which blood, fresh lifeforce, gathered and grasped the extended bayonet firmly with both of his hands, at least, that would be the use he intended for the weapon if things turned sour. Although, he did not wish to savor the taste of strangers' blood again, ever again, despite it being, at least under the influence of the Aether, sweeter than any drug he ever used.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
With heavy, steady footsteps that dented the soft forest floor with every single motion, almost like it couldn't even bear his weight, only swallow his sounds, he advanced towards the fresh corpse. Looping the source of interest, awaiting a foe or beast to jump from the shadows, he found but a desecrated body of an animal that never was on earth.
A quadruped bearing great similarities to a dog's silhouette, a mix between great dane and husky, but completely furless, draped in tarry skin from which several antennae sprouted. The Legs consisted of blade-like appendages, and its face seemed to have once been able to split into four parts, each bearing an eye on the outside, and a patch of teeth on the inside so tightly placed, it might have a used as natural sandpaper. Now, a great hole seemed to have been forcefully implanted into the animal's skull, from which's wound yellow blood flowed out and gathered as a puddle around a long, slick tongue once belonging to the dog.
"Eww, that's way worse than roadkill." Devula muttered as she floated above Quodo's right shoulder.
"Silence, we aren't alone." Quodo spoke coldly, before turning his attention to the sudden visitor, or perpetrator revisiting the scene of crime.
A bulbous creature eyed Qudod with interest, supported only by four long, barbed legs like that of locust. A mosquito-like head, bearing three honeycomb eyes peered upwards to stare at Quodo, for he towered above it with size being twice as great, as the bug.
The sharp blade of the creature waved in front of his body, pulsating, as the creature twitched and titled its head before suddenly acting. Quodo took a quick, great step forward with his weapon drawn at the bug while taking on a threatening pose. With fear or instinct kicking in, the mosquito creature jumped away deep into the forest with intense, elastic propulsion of such magnitude, that the vegetation that resided under it moments ago, was shredded.
"Hmpf." Quodo huffed with satisfaction, before sheathing his weapon. His mask turned towards the corpse again for one moment, perhaps there was a momentary thought about taking the corpse with him or mayhaps an idle second of imagination: After all, such monsters didn't exist on earth, but to Quodo, he greatly preferred these beasts to his previous threats. Greatly.
"Uhww~ you're something of a veteran when it comes to entertaining, aren't-cha?" The pesky serpent asked, to which Quodo replied by continuing to walk. Quickly, however, the watcher floated faster, perhaps this demanded power walking or jogging? "Oh come on, only blood gets boring too quickly, a conversation can't hurt, 'sides, I'm sure being more talkative will pay of your debt much quicker." Devula said in a disturbingly persuasive way, tracing one of her claws along the outline of his mask, the sensation was 'unique,' a faint warning that so much so as taking the mask off would reward a new kind of hell. It was like an interrogation: Answer or scream.
"Why talk at all, if you can just scoop out all my thoughts?" Quodo asked with... genuine curiosity? "Would make things quickers, less annoying."
"Pfff, that's soo boring, 'sides, the journey is the destination, not the finish line." Devula spoke with a sharp tone, before tapping the mask once more. "There are certain liberties to my proficiency, of course, I can't steer fate or physically change your course of action, but I can watch a memory or two of yours, maybe even have a peek at your imagination and see how you knock." At this point Devula laid with her back atop of Quodo's shoulder, spraying her body and taking on a relaxed demeanor.
"If you relieve my memories. " Quodo stopped in his tracks, staring deeply into the eyes of his ball and chain, "I'm going to kill you." before resuming to walk like nothing ever happened.
"You know you can't kill me, right?"
"I'd find a way."
"Nothing made by the Aether or his trusted Judges can hurt me unless directly ordered high lords Osmodeus, Premura, and Idobaht. Of course, me perishing would also kill you since it's the connection to the outer realms keeping you alive."
"It doesn't change a thing."
"..." Devula pursed her lips, releasing a quiet, squeaking sound, before smacking her lips with an empty look. "Oookay then, let's switch to an topic not involving my taxidermy. How are you feeling?"
"Empty, bored, tired, annoyed, tired again, but physically more than sufficiently efficient." Quodo answered with short breaths while eyeing the grand forest reaching as far as his eyes could see.
"Another topic then..." Devula secretly rolled her eyes, before turning her head back to the displaced man and forcing a smile, she possibly still had hopes that this champion would still become pleasant enough. "So, hmm, random question, but if had one wish, what would you want to have."
Quodo stopped once again, looking down at the ground and sighing deeply with annoyance. "If I tell you, will you shut up for like three hours?"
"Nod." Devula said while nodding herself, excessive.
"I'd tell my family I love them." Quodo said coldly.
Devula lifted her claw as if she was about to question the answer given, but then remembered the deal. Puh, oh well, she'd give the old man 181 minutes of silence, but not an ounce of generosity more.
----------------------------------------
'Finally some fucking silence.' Quodo would've thought fifteen minutes after striking yet another deal with an associate of the Aether, wasn't it for the telepathic parasite stuck to his skull. There was a certain irony for the judges to steal his face, but then again, he didn't need it again, he hadn't expressed much with it in the last thirty years anyway, but the question was if he still needed to eat or drink. While the thought of nourishment lingered in his mind, his mind suddenly expanded, bombarded with new sensations and old, haunting once at that.
Quodo turned around out of instinct, his vision swaying past Devula holding her mouth shut with her claws while pointing her tail towards the origin. Before the masked man's vision even grasped the intruder, and dreadfully, tormenting and well-known sounds echoed in his skull.
A small creature's neck was caught in the hands of Quodo. Thick, grey hide covered its almost juvenile, humanoid, if not outright ogroid, body. A head, bearing not features but two great, yellow, bioluminescent eyes and a shark-like maw, leaned back unnaturally. Quodo broke its neck, before even thinking about it.
Quodo's stature froze, before jerking violently and tossing the dead body onto the floor while the man himself slowly distanced himself with shivering overwhelming his flesh. His state wasn't bettered or worsened when the corpse turned into a dispersing, black mist.
"Not again, not this easy." Quodo cursed under his breath while attempting to keep his vibrating hands under control. Quodo looked up to see the serpent filled with worry and confusion. He grunted deeply, before tightly clenching his fists and holding them to the sides of his new body. Muscle memory seemed to be transferable from body to body.
He continued walking towards the great wall with stiff pace, while his back faced the origin of his latest victim, a great maw of stone leading down into a dungeon-like undercroft
----------------------------------------
"So, not so fond with killing?" Devula asked, gaining a unique kind of interest from the masked man, perhaps it was irritation, possibly anger or most likely he forgot the serpent already. "You seemed quiet gibberish back there, which is weird for a man with such an big killcount."
"Do not call it a 'kill count', that's unrespectful to the dead, and I've never wished to kill to begin with." Quodo grumbled lightly while pushing low handing shroom sprout from the trees out of his path.
"If I remember correctly you joined that one war willingly." Devula asked while momentarily looking away from the man, using the time to watch a majestic mushroom, the size of two mean surrounded by large, pushy, and seemingly shining spores floating peacefully through the air. When she looked back to Quodo, she found him pointing his finger to his chest with an angered manner, before retracting his limbs from her quickly and begrudgingly.
"It wasn't some war you inconsidered reptile, it was hell." In thirty years Quodo didn't hiss once, neither when someone tried to steal his car or have him transferred into a retirement home, but this seemed to have struck a nerve. The words left Quodo's mind only tediously, broken while attempting to isolate fact with emotion. "It was 1967, the army was desperate to get bodies to the front. I was about 21 at the time, stuck in prison with no friends or family. 'was desperate and at the time thought nothing could be worse than another 23 years in prison."
Quodo stopped for a moment and leaned against the bark of a tree, his maks momentarily looking upwards to see the pale sun descend below the horizon.
"At the time I already killed someone in a ruffle, we tumbled and he broke his neck on a stool's corner, an accident, but his friends saw it differently, got beaten up twice and stabbed once." He shook his head with a regretful undertone. "So when the chance arose, I took it alongside a selective bunch of inmates: A clean record, military pension, and a new life. Chub, one of the few good ones volunteered me, said he'd cover me, said children shouldn't rot." It was clear for even the greatest of fools that Quodo wanted to remain silent, he didn't know why he opened his lousy mouth, to begin with, but he did so and retold a skeleton of a story. Leaving much, for imagination.
"How did the story go?" Devula held a claw to her lips.
The serpent spoke as the sunlight slowly trickled down the two unlikely creatures until they both were veiled in the bright moonlight of the two titanic moons. Both silver but one bearing a charlotte aura, and the other a green shine, hung in the sky. One rose from the south, the other from the north, they traveled towards the center, where eight stars, each for one celestial direction waited in a circle for their siblings.
"His promise couldn't stand against the betrayal of Hans Schneider and artillery during a supposedly peaceful recovery mission in the Fall of 1968." Quodo panted, tired in a tireless body he looked to the night sky for a moment of solace. "I don't know why you care for the lament of an old man, but just so you know... Ultimately I got what I wanted, what I deserved. I never wanted to live because I desired life." Quodo turned back to Devula and walked past her to the great wall forward, and whispered, not out of fear for the truth or possible listeners, but because it was a truth that laid heavy in his heart.
"I wanted the power to kill Hans, and killing him I did by firing a bullet through his right eye. But, in my waning sanity, I also took 112 poor people down with me into damnation, and many more through uses of poison and chemicals."
Only a few steps after telling his watcher the painful knowledge that plagued him, the one he previously had ever only repentingly admitted to his beloved wife, he coughed and noticed a dark pulver escaping his mask there, where his mouth should've been. He shook his head and threw it to the ground, oblivious to the vegetation that died around the fallen dust.
He did, however, notice something different when he felt his power leave him as if a flight-giving rush had abruptly stopped, and the man turned golem fell onto his knees and upon a field of grass, a haven so peaceful, it almost appeared to Quodo like a haze.
In the light of the two moons, the blue grass began to shimmer and insects rose from the grassy meadows. Previously slumbering beasts, critters, and creatures arose, were awakened in the light of night, just as we rose to day's embrace, and arising they did; so many they couldn't be counted. Some climbed, many flew, a few fell from the capped crown trees and others left the underground.
Quodo held out his hand and an insect landed on it, it reminded him of a butterfly, but it was much larger. It bore fluffy fur and two sets of wings, one yellow, the other red, but lacked mouth or eyes. It played around, tapping the gloves a few times, before fluttering away with the bright moonlight shining through its wings, mayhaps that is how it ate, or it just enjoyed itself.
A slight popping woke his curiosity, and he saw that flowers began to grow in seconds, first sprouts and later blooms of the most colorful hues. The petaled flowers basked in the glow of the night.
Quodo sat there silently, just watching the play unfold, and while he could not say that all the day's troubles were worth the sight, he couldn't deny that it was beautiful. Quodo hadn't been in a flower garden since his fortieth birthday, a day he held so dearly to his heart, it was perhaps a cornerstone of the man he used to be. He was so deeply trapped in the mirage before him, that he even failed to notice the serpent landing upon his very head like a cat imitating a hat.