The crisp sound of a slap thundered through the damp, dark, underground cell.
Blood flew out of the broken, shattered mouth of the young white haired man. He spit the rest out. Teeth rattled almost off his gums, tears on his lips and inner cheeks washed his mouth and face with red hot blood.
“Don’t yell so much. You’re hurting my ears and I can’t focus on my job.” Said the thickly muscled topless man as he stood over Jean’s his hurt and starving body. Bandages turned yellow suffused with puss, green and brown with mud and rot all over his body, laid to the ground covered head to toe, the smell of oriental ointments turning a sickly sweet the more torture he went through.
Jean did not answer. He only clenched his teeth harder yet as sweat gushed out of his pores. He saw the torturer move with a shrug. He bent over Jean’s arm with his tools in hand. Jean felt the cold sharpness of a rusted iron spike centered over his open wound. Even the lightest touch sent shivers across his whole body. With hammer in hand and a single stroke the spike pierced through living flesh, bones turned to dust. Jean felt cold turn to a burning blaze as his body rejected the steel inside of it, he grunted and screamed through closed teeth. He foamed at the mouth and tears flooded his eyes. His squirming adding to the pain.
“See. You can do it just fine.” His torturer said, though then he turned his head and questioned himself. “Your sister, The holy maiden, Did say to make you scream till you died as the price for betraying her… But oh well. You know how it is, you’ve been in the business.” The torturer lumbered away from jean, like a master painter envisioning his master work. He cracked his neck and stretched his back. He stood tall in the underground dungeon. His sweaty clammy hair stuck to his skin and reached all the way down his waist. He gathered them up, tied them in a bun with string of leather before continuing. Jean closed his eyes and waited in silent anticipation. He thought back to his numbered days as a free man, and then further back to the crimes he had committed to civilian masses in the name of his sister, her faction, and faith.
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Atlas walked down the cobble path towards the Western gate of the walled off estate, tufts of his long ink-black hair bobbed, in between his headboards gaps, along with his stride. He moved around the weight on his back for better comfort as he passed by even smaller compounds belonging to the individual families of this many acre large estate.
The low sun peaking over the Eastern hills and mountains, pierced the misty mornings of the Forest his Clan called home. Shadows cast on the open grounds of the Clan of trees that towered in the skies, 100 meters at least.
New growth, having grown exponentially with the advent of Qi. They now hid the Laertis people deeper yet within their little clearing, deep within the earthy birches of the ever green forest.
A sharp cold wind drafted from the faintly light blue sky and dug into Atlas’ clothes brushing his skin, and pulling on his hairs. Along with the wind came a sharp pain on his ear. Atlas turned around to look at his luggage.
“It hurts, you know.” Atlas grumbled as his luggage took form in his eyes, his pouting little Cousin. Argea. A creature cuter than a baby bunny. With the cheeks of a squirrel yet the black hairs of a cat. An animal whose cunning she shared, that thinking gaze now replaced with the lazy glow of her sleepy anger. Her rightful indignation trumping over her sleepiness. It was this challenging glare that made Atlas smile. Pearly teeth glinted in the first rays of sun.
“You were ignoring me, acting all serious.” Her eyes darker than the night sky grew like the shadow of a waning moon.
“Morning musings. What were you saying?” Atlas said as he stretched a hand over his shoulder and ruffled her luxurious black hair, taking a strand out of her mouth at the same time. “What have I told you?”
“To not chew my hair. I know.” Argea whined, a want to gawk at the silver jewels that were his almond eyes, yet with a blush blooming on her face she only nodded. It was sore sport for Atlas ever since his mother’s passing, after whom he had inherited those glowing balls of molten metal that danced under the sun and moon. Her thoughts suddenly turned to that woman. Having been bound to a chair for most of her life, doctors and ancient practitioners the most frequent of visitors, she had learned to look at the world with a much different lens than most. Even as young as she was she knew a lot.
His mother had been a woman unable to integrate herself into the Clan no matter how long she had stayed within their grounds. Yet Atlas’s love never faltered when he was mocked by cousins and extended family, alike. Argea always admired Atlas that way… “Well?” Atlas’s insistence brought her back, from her own morning musings.
“Right. Can you go faster? I don’t like being out in the open with the Crow’s flock so close by.” Argea said, tactfully trying to not mention the fear she held for that flock, ever since the prophesied Change had come and injected the world chalk full of Qi, bursting at the seems with it, he senses had gotten sharper somehow. It was a barely noticeable thing for most. But she depended on those senses more than the rest anyway.
Atlas did as she wished without a complaint, his steps grew larger, yet silent, almost as if he was slithering at a blistering pace over the earth. In three simple strokes, using stacks, crates, and logs, he leaped atop the western wall, gate tens of meters to his right. His sleek, barefoot-simulating, training shoes ground to a halt on the coal black ceramic tiles of slanting over the many meter tall wall.
Atlas took a breath as he stared over the compound housing hundreds of his family members isolated from the world. To the north the desperate cries of abyssal-black crows as they dove at their team of training younglings caught Atlas’ attention once more today.
Their daily scuffle had finished, under the caws of the biggest, meanest, of the flock they took high to the air, heading away from the clearing cut by the clan and into the forest proper.
Atlas commented, on the retreating flock. “Every day their actions grow more incomprehensible.”
“To me everything has gone weird.” Little Argea responded.
“Or, maybe we have?” Atlas questioned as the last of the flock disappeared out of sight and out of ear.
“ You sure are, today that is. Maybe you’re on your period?” Argea questioned. A mocking, foxy, glint in her eyes.
“Don’t go acting all grown up, now that your time has come. I’ve dealt with more blood that you. Both from inside and outside my own body.” Atlas rapped the sides of the wooden crate carried her in.
“Ugh~ Men,” Argea sighed and rapped Atlas’s head with her little hands. “Too much thinking too little acting. You’re never gonna finish all your work today at this rate.” Atlas nodded at the wise reprimand.
Using only two buckets strapped to a long straight stick carried on his shoulders, more than 40 liters of water were brought back in time for his next task to the northern side of the compound. Despite the arduous task Atlas had barely worked up a sweat, only now that the Sun was high up in the sky. Now that it washed the world truly with its white-yellow fire. Atlas dropped the empty buckets and nodded at the approaching woman.
“Aunt Xanthip, thank you for the save once again. I would not have been able walk another step with Argea on my back.” Atlas said and accepted the pinch on his ear as it came and went. He turned around as his dear aunt took Argea off his back and onto the wheelchair she brought with her.
“Atlas you’re such an idiot. I won’t talk to you ever again.” Argea pouted and turned her wheelchair around, pushing its wheels along, all the while moving her bony legs in small jolts, painful as they were she tried to do them as mush as possible, she bounded over the terrain.
“Auntie! Leave that brute alone! Let’s go tour the Estate!” She shouted from afar. Aunt Xanthip simply pinched Atlas’ other ear with much more strength than Argea had, and held her kind smile as Atlas buckled. “OW! Please stop! I won’t do it again! I won’t ever mention her weight again! OW!? Why?!” Atlas fell on one knee, his voice shock.
“You were being childish Atlas, that’s no good.” Aunt Xanthip, older sister to the Patriarch of the Clan and Atlas’s father, said as she kept a kind smile on her eyes and lips. “Now I’ll be taking my leave. I have a tour to take part in, If you’ll excuse me Young Master.” Aunt Xanthip said and twisted away.
Atlas dusted himself off as he rubbed at his bright red ears. Both felt like horn grown on his head. Now he headed North. Today’s hunting party should be coming back soon and he would have to take care of their pray, skin and gut it. A rigorous job when you had to deal with beasts drunk high on Qi. Growing and evolving by the minute.
Right as Atlas reached the northern gates the news of the hunting party’s return reached him. All 5 returning on foot at a slow pace according to the Watchman’s report. From atop the watchtower near the gate.
One Large, Brown-green Python slithered dead on the backs of four out of five hunters riding on their shoulders. Its body twisting and turning invisible even in plain sight, its camouflaged scales working eve after its death, it was only through the pink skin inside its gaping maw that someone could truly notice the massive beast, 12 meters in length easily.
The last hunter of the 5 walked ahead of the rest, limping. People jumped down form the walls and the Northern gate was opened immediately. The injured Huntsman was carried in and checked. Broken ribs with no internal bleeding but they could not be too sure. He would be out of action for some time at the very least.
Atlas went ahead and helped bring the prey into the Clan’s grounds and had the hunters move it into the freshly made butcher hut he had put together. There Atlas crammed the beast, as much of it, onto his chopping table, and got to work with the sharpest knives and cleavers the clan had on hand. Atlas chopped its head off with one clean strike and drained the blood that came spurting out with said head into a many large tubs, and buckets. He then set the head aside and skinned the snake with great expertise. Even with his extremely deft knife handling, near superhuman strength, and dexterity it took the rest of the morning. At least 3 hours of constant work to carefully finish taking apart the massive Python. At every step its delicate organs threatened to burst open and turn to waste, its elastic fascia withstood his knives cutting edge and its hard scales bit back against his steel.
Atlas cleaned off all the blood, and organized all the gathered materials, his sweat adding salty water to the buckets, his clothes and skin one and the same.
It was Carius', a distant uncles, voice that tore through the open grounds, studded with leftover trees for shade. From atop the watchtower he rung the warning bell. “Party of people on our doors!” He bellowed.
Atlas jumped on top of the walls and in a quick scan he could tell of their circumstances. One injured, other running and tired. But as he made to move the visage of one particular young woman caught his attention. She was around his age, untouched white cotton, thinner than most wrapped her dark skin and muscle from shoulder to ankle. He eyes where on the wounded, her hands drenched in his blood yet the shine of her emerald pupils did not miss Atlas. She balanced on pointy shoes with a wooden bottom that dug hard in the dirt, her wild curly hair tied high to a ponytail untamed by her efforts. Some strands clung to her scalp, tangled with sweat, while others flared brimming with pride to the skis like a lions mane.
It was when she felt his look that her emeralds turned and clashed with his silvers that Atlas felt his legs free, once more, of the rosy vines they had been bogged into. He ordered at the men on the gates below. The large bar gate cluttered to the earth and the iron lined oak double doors were pushed open. Atlas jumped down to greet the injured yet when the gathered patrolmen and other clansmen saw their weapons, they unsheathed their own.
Atlas stepped back, pushing some of his clansmen with him. “Make way! Let the dying man breathe, call for a doctor! Do not be startled.” He spoke, loud and clear, for his clansmen, even those coming from further inwards, to hear. “Let the man down, drop your weapons, strangers.” He locked eyes with the lioness. Her expression had mellowed, her womanly features, her youthful vigor, and a hint of a smile brought the summer heat blasting in Atlas’ face. The smell of pine cooking in the sun, mixed with the last flowers of spring. He knew not what was coming over him, even as she thanked him, uncertain, guiding her fellow men to drop their belts, and steels. He distanced himself when the doctor rushed forth, another one of his extended family, and gathered his wits.