15th of Searing, 4622
Vivian found himself consumed by the study of Malformity. He was recovering slowly from illness. Overstepping was not a quick thing to recover from, but he found himself getting better in fits and starts. One day it would be headaches, where he could not even rise from his bed and spent the day curled around a bedpan. The next day it would be nausea, and he would have to take breaks from his chores to vomit into the nearest sink, garden, wash bucket, or convenient pan. The servants had never really liked him, and he had gained a dubious reputation as Degare's whore, but they were slowly beginning to pity him. He was making an effort to help them. He had learned housework in his youth and was no stranger to it, which was a pleasant surprise to most of the maids in the household.
After all, he had spent time on his knees whether scrubbing or sucking since he could hold things reliably.
Vivian was also finding time to meditate during long hours scrubbing the floor or polishing wood. There was life even here, and unlike many Malformists who found kinship with birds, or cats, or wolves...his kind were everywhere. There were spiders in the rafters and between the floorboards he scrubbed. There were cockroaches in the kitchen despite the cook's best efforts to rid himself of them. Everywhere he went, there were allies. Wise old spiders who kept to their own far above their heads and only fled at the sight of a clumsily wielded broom. Moths that chewed and licked and fucked in their linen closets. Strangely, Vivian felt as though he wouldn't be closer to his magic outside of the city. It was here, in basements and attics, that his magic grew. These were the animals that he felt the closest kinship to.
Would Azunath approve? He wasn't sure. The god liked changing forms and shifting. Insects and worms were the masters of that. What other animal could dissolve itself and emerge from a cocoon of silk and saliva into beauty? Who else could transport soft flesh and venomous spines into scaled wings with patterns any seamstress envied? Insects were change itself. They changed great corpses into soil and soil into mountains. They made cities to rival any mortal. They mated and preyed and lived and died.
Vivian ruminated on these thoughts as he finished his tasks, and washed up in the bathroom. He was allowed a bath a day after chores, to be presentable for the mistress, but he didn't get to use Degare's bathroom any longer. He smirked; was that toilet still on the fritz? He'd broken it his first day in the house. Vivian scrubbed himself clean, rinsed, and dried. He curled up in his room with his dinner, eating potatoes and chicken while he turned page after page in his Malformity text. He had read about the first mages of Malformity, how they were parts of ancient tribes that pledged affinity to a god named Azunath. Azunath, god of change and madness, of losing oneself.
In a way, he was the god of primal nature. The rending of flesh, hunting, breathing and struggling to survive. The supreme madness that was the wheel of fate in all living beings. Vivian liked him. He'd felt madness for so long, and he had done nothing but struggle. It was only now in this house that he felt he could relax and finally learn what he needed to.
Vivian turned the page. Aside from Azunath, there were basic philosophical tenets. It was almost like a religion as much as it was a magic. Malformists didn't want to rise above the world they lived in, but seek to understand it. A Malformist didn't judge an animal. A Malformist understood why it was the animal did what it did and why. The ideal Malformist wouldn't judge a maggot for crawling in decaying flesh but rather admire its riches and will to persevere. Vivian found himself less...ashamed of the forms he had chosen. In a way he had been adhering to what the text preached the entire time. He was the one studying the unloved and misunderstood. He was the one picking up insects people deemed disgusting or dangerous. He tried to understand them, and found them beautiful even when they made others turn away in disgust.
He smiled at the page, and leaned his head in his hand. He felt like absolute garbage, but the book was soothing his rumpled feelings. Understanding. If only humans could be the same way. Humans thrived on avarice and judgement, but as a Malformist he needed to cling to understanding. That didn't mean he couldn't gain wealth or property or happiness, it just meant when confronted with something he needed to ask why. Just like with Degare. The man had been so cold and closed off because he was protecting his true feelings. He had been so ashamed to feel he had spurned it in exchange for thinking.
The more Vivian thought about it, the more he realized that even if Degare had stayed, even if he wasn't gone, even if he had read the books a hundred times over...he never would have survived the intiation. Degare had wanted Malformity for the power it could give him. He had wanted to turn into great, evil, eldritch beings that would smash and destroy his enemies. He wouldn't have lowered himself to understand bugs or rats, just like he had sought to use Vivian and not understand him. He had just wanted another layer of armor on top of the ones he already had. Even when Vivian had reached out to him to get him to understand and be empathetic, all Degare had thought to do was offer a poor imitation. He wouldn't have survived the wasp. He would have grasped, hungry and needy at the power, and it would have shrank from him. He would have burrowed into the minds of any animal he touched and ripped their power from them, applying it to himself.
Degare would have become one of the shambling Malformists of the Badlands, screaming masses of tangled limbs and animals crawling along the earth and blindly sucking up anything that could give them nutrients. Vivian turned the page to a depiction of such a monster, captured by the author of the book. It had arms, twisted above its head like the poised claws of a mantis, and a great yawning head that was half crocodile. Eyes had sprouted along its throat, and only a single breast and what looked like female genitalia scattered amongst the chaos told the observer it had been a female Malformist.
Vivian felt as though the author were taking him by the hand and sitting him in front of the creature. This was the price of men and women who tried to take without understanding. This was the price of those who wanted the power of an animal or an amalgamation of animals without understanding them. Azunath would curse them with madness, decay and eventual death. By trying to take Degare's eyes, Vivian had tried to take without understanding. Now he was paying the price. It was but a slap now. If he did it again, there would be more severe consequences.
Vivian shut the book, and hugged it to his chest. "Never again." he muttered under his breath.
