Frost 62nd, 120
Two days...
Two long, long days...
I can barely beat my wings.
A horrible, retching pain traced down Nuraku’s spine as she kept her wings aloft, drifting in the skies. The village she sought was so close, yet so far, the puncture wound in her back beginning to feel like a spear had delved in and twisted.
As she flew, her head nodded, and everything went black. She awoke with a sharp inhale, free-falling in a spiral, down, down and down. “Ah, nnnhn-aah!” she shouted, trying to grip the wind. No matter what she did, she was too weak.
The earth seemed to rise up like a swatting broom, striking her across her entire body as her fall was broken by a thick, tangled bush. Nuraku began to curl her feathers, trying to twist and turn in the brambles--it was no use, she was stuck, left panting to rot.
The woman’s beak opened, then shut. You can’t give in. Not now. Drag yourself into the city if you have to.
”But first... a little rest...”
Everything slowly faded to a quick, sudden evaporation of all that ever was, the bird slipping into a deep, near-comatose state.
It was night when Nuraku opened her eyes to bristling embers and billowing smoke. Her small body was subdued--wrapped, and her head turned to gaze down upon a band of gauze circling her chest. “Wh--” Her beak fell open, a shadowy figure descending to kneel before her, his black and crimson robes splayed behind him.
By the dog-like muzzle and that pink, wet nose, Nuraku thought him some kind of dog Rathor, a Beastalt no doubt. His hand reached for her, and she felt such malice in those burning, red eyes staring back into her soul.
“You are a mage, are you not?” asked the figure in a cold voice, gathering up her folded wings and lifting her from the ground. “Can you move? I treated your wounds.”
But Nuraku was transfixed, frozen. “How did you find me?” she croaked weakly as the Rathor turned her around and pricked at her bandages.
“I have a good nose,” he said simply.
”A bird that smells like a bleeding cat. How strange, how strange.”
”What bit you?”
The dog was giving her a strange, hungry look. A look Nuraku knew all too well from hunting the very thing she was sure this man was. He couldn’t hide it. His teeth were big and sharp, his voice almost having a lisp from those oversized incisors, and that snaggletooth--no, she was sure of it.
The fear that she felt then was hard to mask. She started breathing harder. Wounded. Desperation filled her. Got to... muster... strength...
He’s gonna eat me.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” asked the white-furred Dranoch with concern.
“You’re a--” Nuraku inhaled.
“You’re a--!” She couldn’t finish it, the words catching in her throat.
The figure frowned. “So, you can tell, then...” The male’s nose lifted, staring down its bridge with a predatory, thoughtful gaze. “I wish I could tell you I was a vegetarian, but I gave up trying long ago,” he said. “I will not eat you, for you are alive. I only consume that which has died by means outside my control.”
Nuraku still stared at him, wide-eyed in disbelief. “I will not fall for your treachery, blood-sucking cretin,” she hissed at him in Vithmi.
“Well, I could leave you here to die,” he muttered to her. “But what a waste that would be. Can you let your prejudice lay still for one moon? What possible benefit would I have to keep you captive?”
“L-lots of things,” Nuraku blurted out. “You could... chew on me, and heal me, then chew on me again in some manner or other, for one! I doubt your intentions, truly. I spent my life hunting your kind, so kill me now, or--”
“--Then you are a good person,” interrupted the dog, turning her over and dabbing a cool, pasty substance on her back. “I harbor not an ounce of respect for other Dranoch who have given in to their desire.”
Nuraku’s eyes lidded, and she laid there as he tended to her, uttering a groan. I am so sure...
This monster...
How can I trust...?
The dog pulled away the sticky bandages and replaced them with a fresh set, balling up the little bits of cloth and pressing them to his nose, inhaling deeply. He seemed distracted when he next spoke, reaching out to turn her over again. “Your name?” he asked through the cloth.
What a bizarre sight Nuraku saw in front of her, a Rathor salivating over her bandages. “Why would I tell you my name?” she shuddered out weakly. “You’re... the enemy.”
The dog’s eyes rolled in a lazy sway, letting his hand fall down to his hip as he sat there on his knees in front of the fire. “What to do... what to do with you...?” He tapped his thigh repeatedly. “Maybe if I told you my name, that would help you understand that I don’t plan on eating you, though you certainly tempt me with your stubbornness” he remarked.
”I am Aeraku,” he uttered in Vithmi.
The name puzzled Nuraku immediately. The name was in reference to an orphan, like her, and more-over... the name was so familiar. “Years and years ago, when I was a child...” she told him. “I knew a boy, a dog like yourself... Bloodless, like me.”
”Are you that Aeraku?”
The Rathor kneeling there smiled, his tail beginning to furl and unfurl by his side with almost feline pleasure. “The very same,” he told her.
”Seeing as we have a past, now you have to tell me. Fair is fair, is it not?”
“Don’t you... tell me about... fair,” growled Nuraku, but she couldn’t muster the strength to move.
Aeraku’s eyes moved from her, focusing on the treeline, seemingly distant. “I am well equipped to lecture on the--” his voice cracked, a shudder shaking from his lips, “--unfairness, of this life.” His eyes moved back to Nuraku, who couldn’t help but turn her head to meet that gaze, feeling something other than vengeance begin to take hold.
He looks so... sad.
But that doesn’t change what he is.
Nuraku fell silent.
“Would you like to hear how I was cursed?” asked Aeraku. “I haven’t had a soul to confide my tale, and a captive audience that may one day be my undoing seems worthy to know.”
The bird merely sighed. She would not give him a yes, nor a ‘no’. She didn’t want to be persuaded.
“It begins with the journey of an orphan curious for the world, studying its myriad of mysteries, and chasing after the promise of magic,” said Aeraku. “Without kin, I entered this world unwanted, looked down upon, and trivialized. Nary a job waited for me when I grew of age. Pah, I could not even become a librarian. They thought me a thief, a lecher... Bloodless.”
“I was also ...Bloodless,” Nuraku answered back. Aeraku paused to consider her revelation, and then continued.
“I came here, to Daravin, for my fortune. The only man who would mentor me... I did not know what a monster he truly was, but I fell prey to his fancy. He seemed so eager to share, I thought him in love with my work, but...” Aeraku’s voice cracked, some great pain behind his eyes. “He raped me. That man pinned me down, and when he was done, the Blood Sickness began. It was only then that I learned of what he truly was, and I was such a mindless wretch that he dragged me to Sil-Elaine to serve as his apprentice without complaint. Those first several nights I attempted to end my own life, and I made so many attempts thereafter even as the sickness cooled to resentment...”
Listening to Aeraku’s sad, sad tale, Nuraku stared up at the blackened void above the tree-line. It was hard not to feel something for him, to feel moved by his struggle. “Why are you telling me this awful story?” she asked. “Do you e-expect me t-to, p-pity a monster?”
“...The torment continued. The abuse. It was all I had... to cling to...” Aeraku continued, his voice fading. A long sigh followed, and he brought up a paw to wipe the tears away. It was the first time Nuraku had heard a Dranoch cry.
“I’m looking for a cure,” he told her. “It’s easy to find meat markets for the dead at night, given my senses. I have not broken yet, beyond a man who once tried to kill someone before my eyes, and I would rather die in this moment than eat you, for that is -who I am- and I refuse to let this curse get the better of me.”
“How do I know this is not some story, some lie?” huffed Nuraku, clinging to her common sense. “Deceit is your second language.”
Aeraku hesitated, and then began to unbuckle his robes with a sigh.
“Wait--wait, what are you doing?” Nuraku blurted out, but she understood why as the cloak rolled over his head, and those fluffy dog ears popped up behind them, the garment bundled up in his lap.
“Do you see now?” he asked. “I have not been... eating, so...” He could not look at her, and so his eyes once again moved away.
“You’re...” He was starved. Nuraku could see every single bone in his body poking up from the taut skin wherever the fur wasn’t thick enough to hide those rows of hills jutting up from the lackluster frame. Beneath that robe, the man looked like a ghoul. “How much pain are you in right now?” she asked him.
“The pain is more mental. It’s a sickness of the mind. Physically...” he sighed, “I feel lethargy? I’m sure the source is a corruption of my soul, but I know so little of what can tamper with such things.” His eyes moved back to her. “Are you convinced that I mean you no ill will?”
Yes. “No...” Nuraku muttered. “If I had taken another path in life, I would hug you. I remember you. The... little carvings you made. You made so many.” Aeraku had always been the crafty one. The one with the ideas, the plans. Everyone thought he would be something, that he would get out of the orphanage and marry someone important. “To think... nothing ever happened?”
“Who ...are you?” Aeraku asked.
It was hard to utter the words. She didn’t want to feel for someone with the blood curse she’d swore to fight. “Alphonse...” she told him.
“...The Rakura girl?” Aeraku chuckled, starting to pull the cloak back over himself. “I remember you. Alphonse! Ah, yes,” he clapped his mitts together. “You speak far more eloquently now than I remember.”
“Yeah, well. Lotta shit happened,” she told him. “But it sounds like you’ve been through worse, Aeraku...”
”Fuck, I’m warming up to you!” she grunted.
”This isn’t going to end well.”
“You should be stitched up enough to take your original form,” he told her. “How tall are you now? I bet you’re enormous... to think magic could fit such a huge Rathor into such a little body. Fascinating.”
“Not so fast... I’m a little cursed too. Can’t get back to my body since I first Molded... Guess we’re all... broken.” Nuraku sighed. “Has it really been that long? You sorta... vanished when I was pretty little. What happened?”
Aeraku cupped his chin, breathing sharply through his nose. “I suppose so...” He shook his head. “Well, I had my Purpose,” he told her, “and nobody stopped me from picking up a few books and wandering out into the wide world young and green.”
Nuraku’s eyes fluttered shut. “Ughhhh...”
”You fucking...”
”The fates... why?”
Why did the little dog I had a thing for way back when have to grab the pendulum and let go into the depths of the Nametaker's Tides?
