Lizard Gizzards

"Oh, you are quite the charlatan. Your parents bequeathing you Charles was a very faultless choice!"

"You flatter me, my good chap. The honor belongs all to you, it's through your grace that I, along with likeminded and similar kindred can afford to partake in the libations so gratuitously."

"Ha, libations indeed, Charles! We are gods walking upon this tainted land, yet we still live in divine luxury. What would we be, if not gods indeed?"

A day in the Gheckla tribe started out like any other. The sounds of flesh being smacked by whips, and the cries of pain tinging the very air around them. The agony was like music to the ears of the gecko headed gheckla, the lacerations on their more humanoid kin a work of art to be appreciated and laughed at.

It was a cruel life the human headed gheckla lived, it was a life rife with struggles each and every day. From birth, a gheckla baby would be fixed with a collar that would accommodate them for the rest of their lives. It assured the free gheckla that the captives would never rebel, it ensured the enslaved gheckla would never escape.

Many a question would be asked about the collars, and many would be left unanswered. Only the gheckla knew what horror the collars allowed to transpire, the prisoners even went so far as to act for the other tribes at their festivals. All of it was so the could avoid the...consequences that would follow at their disobedience.

You see, any disobedience or outright rebellion would be quickly stamped out by the gecko headed ghecklas, who simply referred to themselves as ghecks. How did the ghecks do this at all? The detainees were much more fit than the ghecks who led lives of decadence, their bodies becoming round and bulbous with the passing of time. So just how did they keep all their prisoners in line? The answer lay in the collars that tightly bound onto their human-like necks.

The collars are, to put it simply, bombs. Smart bombs that could be activated on a whim with no warning or fanfare at all. No matter how high the vitality gheckla slave, no matter how fiercely they held on for life...once the bomb was activated death was the only option left for them.

The reason why dying and resurrecting wasn't possible for the gheckla was because they were cursed. No one knew how it started, but one of their forefathers must've outraged a powerful god, one who was strong enough to interfere with the rules of Nightmare itself and make the gheckla one of the only races with the inability to revive. There were plenty of other rumors about their curse, but this was the most comprehensive account they had.

The race of gheckla should've died out then and there, but a crazy genius had arrived with a solution. The gheckla were a race that were naturally born with variations, one having the physiology of a human and only the tail and claws of a gecko. The other were much the same, except they had a gecko head, a gizzard, and widened toe pads. They were scrawnier as well, though none of the more humanoid ones pointed this out. The humanoid gheckla simply tried their best to defend their tribe, each having varying reasons to do so but united all the same.

But the sight of those made the now classified as gheck genius insecure. He couldn't stand their dainty looking faces, their privileged bodies that bore musculature he could never experience. So he devised a way to take what was theirs for himself.

He tried potions, he tried magic. He arrived at the answer he had so desperately been searching for when he accidentally spilled a potion all over a metal collar he just made, hoping the weight would at least refine his neck muscles. The collar slipped off, however, unable to find purchase on his slippery nape. It fell down and smashed against the potion bottles on the floor, and that's when it happened.

The collar had exploded with a boom so powerful, it almost brought down the genius gheck's entire house. Shivering in fear and excitement, he experimented until he had refined a satisfactory copy. He coined it the Gizzard Clipper, named after the small cut it had left on his gizzard before the collar fell. He then proceeded to kidnap a human headed gheckla, luring them in a secluded area with cries of help.

The collar had fit just right. It clamped down upon their neck, before the genius activated a certain code through a spell he had devised as well. The collar exploded, and the genius had his magnum opus. The Gizzard Clipper was quickly mass produced and used to enslave the human headed gheckla, who now were constantly in a situation similar to a cornered animal. With the looming prospect of a single and final death sitting just above their shoulders if one ever refused, they vehemently defended the scrawny ghecks to the best of their lives. The race lived that day and would continue from now on, but to their prisoners the gheckla were already long dead and gone.

The dirty deed did not stop at that, as the ghecks had gotten used to their humanoid counterparts waiting on them hand and foot. A lot of them felt a perverse enjoyment from dominating their protectors, though some protested fervidly. They were quickly silenced, and all children of the ghecks were taught that their lifestyle was only right. That it was normal.

Years after years later, the abuse did not stop. It became worse and worse, the degradation becoming harsher and harsher. The muscles that the average human headed gheckla was proud of were now reduced to tattered rags. The gashes all over their body became scars that would carry from themselves down to their children, and to their children's children. It was a never-ending cycle of cruelty and depravity. The ghecks soon likened themselves to the very gods they had "despised" before the collar's invention.

On a day like any other, a young man had had enough. No longer would he be a toy for the ghecks to play with, no longer would he suffer brutal beatings every day. He was not made to amuse the disgusting and pompous tyrants that held his kin—their own kin, captive.

The boy knew that what he would be doing would spell instant death. He was okay with that. Anything was better than the fresh hell he had to experience day in and day out, the blood of his fellow prisoners painting the originally brown grass a fresh and lively green. He wouldn't confide in anyone, he couldn't bring the others down with him. He only hoped that the friends he held close and dear to his heart would survive well without him.

He stood up amongst the switches and whips that were beating him down. The pain was excruciating, but the gheck's obese bodies couldn't fully suppress the muscular young lad. The boy proudly stood up, his head staring at the red skies above him. The moon looked so pretty tonight.

"Would you like your life to be cut short, you insubordinate knave? You are rather young, I think we could get a lot more use out of you if you were alive. I'll forgive you if you kneel back down, maybe you can lick my boots a bit."

Sophisticated jeers and insults ran down upon the young man, but his gaze never left the sky. The voice clicked it's tongue, before sending out the mana signal that would detonate the boy's collar.

As the world before the adolescent's eyes turned white, he heard a familiar voice screaming in anguish. He felt bad that he had to leave his childhood friends, but he simply couldn't take the abuse any longer.

"Lat!! No-"

That was all before the white light consumed him. As Lat's body descended towards the ground, it disappeared. Much like the precursor to a monster's revival...

Lat's eyes opened once again, his eyes viewing a rocky terrain around him. The air felt thin, and looking around a bit, he noticed the village of Nimrod far off in the distance.

"Heaven sure looks weird."