What happened
Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 12:39 am
40th of Frost, 120
In the hours proceeding the assassination of Catharine Florent, those who'd only joined him for revenge dispersed and left. They still had family and could pick up the lives that house Florent had shattered. The same couldn't be said for all those that joined him; House Florent had taken entire families and stole the lives of so many loved ones in his following. The death of one girl wasn't enough to quell their grief. They sought more, and he promised more. Even if he was unsure if they could pull such a stunt again, he needed allies, people that agreed with his ideals.
With the aid of the bereaved, Arkash piled the bodies of those that fell in the cattle for the courtyard, doused the pile with lamp oil, then lit it. The Argent that survived were taken prisoner, and the group relocated after looting the manor. In the coming days, Arkash fed off the Argent. Though Fayeth held her reservations and turned cold over those few days, she did take care to ensure that Arkash didn't gorge himself.
Catherine's head was mounted on the spiked fence of her ransacked manor, before a pile of burned bodies. Their work was for all to see, and the reactions they received were... mixed, at best. Still, Arkash cared not for public opinion. It didn't matter if the common citizen disagreed with his methods; he only cared for the views of those close to him. Fayeth's came to mind and he considered her that day while he fed on the recently deceased knight.
The meat was tender, laced with unknown chemicals that offered the Argent their strength. They did nothing for Arkash while he chewed and splintered their bones, but they did offer him a bounty of nourishment and power in the fibers of their being. He'd tucked himself away in the darkened basement of an abandoned home with the rest of the nameless, savant, and lustrians holed up far off on the fringes of the city.
As the sound of descending footsteps rang from the staircase at the far end of the room, Arkash looked up with a mangled tendon hanging from his lip. Fayeth stepped onto the basement's landing ahead of him, then folded her hands before herself while she watched him eat, as though she expected something. Arkash tilted his head upward to swallow the last of his mouthful and forced the blockage of muscle scraps and skin to his gut. "Fay?" he asked as he began to scrape the coating of gore from his claws with his forked tongue.
"...You seem happy," she spoke simply and began her approach, only to sit beside him with crossed legs before the mess of broken bone and mangled flesh. "People don't normally embrace the curse with such ease," continued her evaluation as she brought her pale arm to rest over his shoulders.
Briefly, he looked at her with a shift of his yellow eyes, and quickly returned his gaze to his meal. The knight's strength seemed to deepen the pit in his gut. That meal, he wished to indulge more than any other he'd encountered before that day. "Whatchya mean?" The rath asked as he dug his claws into the shoulder's ball joint and pushed with enough pressure to pop the ball from its socket.
"You're digging through someone's body, Arkash," she reminded, and gave his shoulder a squeeze as he freely pulled the flesh that bound the arm and the torso apart like cold elastic. "You ate the corpse of a human on the second day without pause or hesitation; it's like you're completely fine with what's become of you."
Arkash paused while he gnawed the shoulder joint. When his teeth met bone, he bit down hard and pulled on the bone with enough force to make his head tilt. He tried to use the leverage to snap it into more manageable chunks. His body came to shake with a strain before the muffled pop of snapped bone echoed, and the taste of marrow filled his palette. Very briefly, he chewed the mouthful before he swallowed the chunk, then sighed in satisfaction. "...I was starvin'," he answered at last. Indeed, the hunger was maddening when he first woke up. It was so intense that he couldn't sleep or think about anything that wasn't the sounds beyond his rusty iron prison. The distant thuds of beating hearts rocked him to his core.
"But..." he continued as he looked over the knight's cadaver. "...Youer rite sayin' it was easy faw me," he nodded in agreement, then squeezed the mangled arm in his claws with a wet squelch. "I dunno, I fink It'd be 'ard eatin' anuva' rath, bu' Pod an' Cynistre... I dunno, if 'ey'd bin ass'oles, I would'n'a 'esitated," he continued. "Iss'at odd?" he asked with a furrow of his brow, and looked up from her meal. "I'ss liek I dun' give a shet 'who I'm eatin', liek I dun' relaet or empa'fize at all." His coldness did concern him at times, how not one of his kills weighed on his conscious or slowed him even a little. He could speak freely with Fayeth, he trusted her.
"...Well," she resumed after a pause, and took a deep breath while she thought. "I know you're not without empathy, Ark. You've shown me your soft side more than once. Do you remember how we met, all those months ago?" He could. He remembered cowering behind the crate, staring up at the killer with such sickness in his gut that he vomited what little food he'd had to eat that week. "You intervened on what you perceived to be an attack on a defenseless woman in the dead of night, and put yourself in harm's way to do so. Since then, you've shown me genuine concern and warmth when speaking of my curse... And let's not forget how you behaved when you discovered the truth of your father's passing." On the last one, she pulled on his shoulder to bring him closer.
Arkash let his arms down and his shoulders fell lax as she held him. He knew her words to be true; all those mentioned points were things he'd done, but they were distant. They were like someone else's memories; as if someone else had guided his claws and his tongue; someone who was long dead. He'd lost part of himself somewhere, and all that was left was a shell.
"You do care, Arkash," she continued. "Yours is a love that isn't freely given. Those you hold dear are truly dear, and the rest are background noise," the Cardinal spoke in conclusion and pulled the rath closer yet.
Arkash held quiet while he thought of it. His love? He couldn't think of anything he loved on the spot. Was that what he'd lost? He couldn't imagine weeping for someone's death, but when he found Liu, he froze himself half to death crying over her. When Cojack passed, he lost the light of the world. They'd both taken so much of his heart when they left, but they were all he'd known his entire life.
Locked in that wooden shack for so many years, just to keep warm and safe from Lorien's freezing weather, he hadn't any opportunities to make friendships or relationships that weren't with his parents. He'd always been isolated from the outside world, alone. Even when he was old enough to start working as a young boy, the only social interaction he had was with the hollows of labor camps and, occasionally, other nameless. Losing Liu broke his heart, losing Cojack broke his spirit. Even though he had Fayeth and Asmodei, he was alone, directionless in the world.
Self-pity welled a tight warmth in his throat, and his eyes dampened as he breathed in. The knight was right about him; he was born wrong, raised wrong, and lived wrong his whole life. He was stunted, starving, and trampled in his un-ending loneliness. No matter how many facades he took or personalities he assumed to appease the faces around him, he could never connect with anyone from within his unbreakable walls. He spiraled, falling deeper into a pit of reflection and self-pity. And as he began to sob and tremble, his progenitor drew him into a hug. Even though he wrapped his arms around her in turn and smeared her pale skin with the gore that covered his jaw, the hug was hollow; he couldn't feel her. "I'm... I'm so fukt up, Fay," he mumbled through his quiet, somber crying.
Fayeth's hand came to brush over his scalie head while she held him, much like Liu had when he was a child. "There's nothing wrong with you, Arkash," she spoke softly over his ambient sobbing. While she cradled him side to side, she added "you're perfect just the way you are."
