A Poor Ending for a Poor Story [PK]

[ChillDemonLad 170]

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

He was supposed to get power, he was supposed to be able to fight for himself.

 

Yet here he was, calling to Hetsu like a child. His voice had long since gone horse, the pain of his shoulder and side overwhelming him. He could feel the blade as it went square through his foot, the magical steel cursing him. Each breath panicked and ragged as he stared up at the woman, kicking the blade to the side.

A punch to the head.

He could feel his nose break under the weight.

 

Another.

He thought back to when he met Anne. The two of them, so young, so innocent. Playing together in Ravenmire, the hatred of her father an unknown fact to the boy. He still carries the bird she gave him, Azerdel and Coi holding it tight to his body even as She reprimands them for being so careless to form connections.

Another.

He thought back to his cursing, a time where his mind once again split. He could feel it, the wretched being born from the split, trying to crawl its way to the surface. Yet still Coi forced himself to be the front, for he was the one who was designed to suffer, not it. Never it, for it was a being. A creature of instincts, hardly able to be called human. Azerdel was asleep, with Her watching over him. Both Her and Coi knew where this was going to lead, and so, she comforted the small child in his sleep. Weeping as she did so.

 

Another.

He thought back to the first time he had met Tsuru. His body, so small, so malnourished. Staring up at the woman as if she was a god. Perhaps, if he had met someone different, his life would have been better. He would be an elf, a canonist, a good person. Yet here he was, in a coven of wickedness with horns and a tail. Coi couldn’t bring himself to regret meeting her.

 

Another.

 

His arms dropped to his side.

 

Another. 

 

Each breath was harder than the last.

 

Another.

He couldn’t think any more.

And then, the assault stopped. Only for a moment, a hand going to his halo, holy horns to drag him to the front of his own home. He saw the glint of the dagger, he knew what was coming. Even as he watched it enter his stomach over and over again, entrails pouring out, he could not feel it. Perhaps, if he knew the fate of blessed children, he would have fought harder.

A quiet breath, too silent for the attacker to hear.

 

A desperate plea for his mother. 

 

And then, all of them were gone. Their entrails splayed on the home of their doorstep. What a pitiful and meaningless life.

Spoiler

Thank you for the rp I got on this dude. I know it wasn't how his story was meant to end, but it was. Let us hope whoever finds the body has the decency to clean up Tsuru's steps, too. Thank you for giving me an interesting death at least!

 

Edited February 21, 2025 by ChillDemonLad

[ProcaPro 559]

The guts spilled across her front steps hadn't been ignored, by Tsuru. Something was wrong. It was in the taste of the air, and the whispering in the dirt. Something was wrong. The letter she'd gotten about gifts in front of her house, she knew who it was from of course, didn't comfort her.

When she returned a time later the spillage was gone, and she'd carried herself up to a familiar tavern, stopping to interrogate the gaggle inside about the bloody mess at her house before one of them had spoken.

"Azerdel is dead."

Tsuru paused, considered. Something odd welled up in her chest, something foreign and unidentifiable. 

"I buried him," the taverngoer had said.

"Then exhume him," she'd replied.

"What does exhume mean?" The idiot taverngoer pondered, then.

"Unbury him." Tsuru snapped, harsher than intended.

And so, she'd followed just past the village, past smatterings of blood on odd stone shapes. Azerdel, her son, her lamb had been dug up as freshly dead as he certainly was. Being usually reasonable, of course she knew he was dead. She wasn't stupid. But it was easier for Tsuru to pretend her boy was sick, to draw his body close and pull out a medical kit and stitch his emptied gut back together. It was easier to hoist the corpse onto her back and carry it home, and tuck it in, and make it soup. Make him, soup. She knew, of course. She knew. And then she didn't. He was just sick, now. He was just refusing to eat, refusing to get better. It was only an illness. When Azerdel wouldn't eat at home she hauled the boy back up, and carried him away from the village with a cloak draped over his body.

"You need new air, Lamb," She'd reasoned, consumed entirely by some great delusion that the corpse on her back was only a sleeping man, her child sick from being in the dirt too long. "New air and a better bed. I'll write to a doctor, for you." And she did. She'd employed a friend to help her drag the body to his new upstairs bed, in a new place. She wrote a letter asking for a miracle worker she knew would come, she watched the ghost of her child grow frustrated with the door while his shell slept upstairs. That's all it was, a shell, like the doctor that had come said. He only molted, and Tsuru believed it. She knew he'd need help growing a new shell, one that could touch the world.

When the doctor asked to take the molt away, Tsuru had agreed. She hadn't even closed its eyes. She didn't need to. It was only husk, and her boy was here. That was all that mattered, now.