Chapter 8: Incalescent Firebox #1
Across all of Trammel nobles and peasants, the honorable and the deceptive, the saints and the sinners; they all alike found themselves hovering around small boxes displaying a faded color light. Large crowds composed of whole villages gathered around these small boxes of wonder. When the static warping across the dark surface of those boxes subsided to reveal Poetaster and Liederkranz standing upon a stage—the day star somehow only illuminating those two as if it too had been captured by the act—In that moment: Trammel fell silent.
Not a word was uttered as the world en-masse for the first time bore witness to The Tournament. Soon, the stunned awe abated, and the continent erupted into an exalted hysteria. Maladroit cheered as her teacher, Liederkranz, pushed the initiative of the battle. Pinna grimaced as Poetaster was continuously struck by their opponent's baton. The whole world froze as Poetaster revealed its capacity for teleportation, and captain Rem couldn't help but to flinch with every hit that his apprentice Liederkranz brandished. And then, finally, nearing the end of the match, the audience was drawing to its limit.
For so many, this showing was an overstimulating indulgence. That building of suspense, that unfiltered violence too foreign for so many, a tangible tension continuously grew within the enraptured audience. There was an unpursued emotion winding within the stomachs of the audience, a painful containment of expression that with the continuously shifting tide of battle was incapable of release. And then: with a final climactic strike, a magically synthetic voice echoed out the announcement of Liederkranz's victory to the world and in an unpracticed harmony of unbinding restlessness, the world detonated to an electric celebration!
Incapable of processing the shear overwhelming stimulus of the battle, the audience could only cheer. With a vibrating energy, the Tournament had begun and for the next week it was all anyone could think of. Farmer's minds wandered as they plowed their fields, accountants doodled their idle dreamings on the margins of their works, and wizards once more were revitalized towards the once abandoned research of teleportation. Artisans would craft dolls and figurines to sell to eager youngsters who childishly reanimated the match in their own stop motion creativity.
A week would pass all too slowly but the time did come and once again the world found itself quieting eagerly around those small boxes of magic. This time everyone was ready for the fight to start, the blinding novelty had ended with the prior combat's conclusion, and now the people were ready to properly absorb every aspect of the battle. The mind-bending expedience of the Topiary's opening strike did not disappoint and once more that excitement began to coil in the hearts of the audience. That excited tension immediately shattered when the Topiary's strike stopped dead without even gracing its target.
From there, the audience was introduced to perhaps the strangest most cerebral moment of their lives. Many ill-educated peasants struggled and failed to keep pace with the strategizing twists and turns of combat. Much to their embarrassment, so too did many wizards find themselves befuddled by the unnatural convolutions of what ought to be right.
Hands wrung through hair at the bewildering burgeoning of a titanic flora. They thought it was over then, that by showing such impossible prowess there was no way for the Game to recuperate. Surprise waved over the country as a burst of purple water ruptured from the tree, and from the jaws of defeat the battle resumed. A second tree appeared, and the fight rose high off to the sky, nearly imperceptible to the audience who watched from a camera stationed on the ground. As quickly as it had appeared, one of the trees just as suddenly disappeared, dropping the Game to the floor and concluding the second fight. Everyone found themselves stunned again, unsure how to manifest the broiling emotions within themselves.Another week passed where bars filled as much with pen and paper as they did ale, groups of inebriated fools tried to draw out a coherent logic to the previously viewed fight.
After a far too long wait, the audience gathered around for the third climactic showing. Somewhere upon the border of Aegis, Ignis the Ghost hovered over a couch joined by Vow the Child and Sanguine the Ardent, eagerly gazing upon a firebox in wait of her beloved Basal to appear. The awes inspired by her pet from the in-video crowd and her fellow Tournament contestants gave her a proudful giggle. There was an undeniable warmth she felt in being able to see her precious Basal so happily trot about the arena basking in the love of the masses. To everyone else, Basal may be the Animal; but to Ignis, Basal was her animal.Ignis too, was just as gob smacked as the rest of the world upon having the new Mogwai Khan suddenly revealed. She was so shocked by that revelation that she failed to notice the silent encouragements from Vow next to her. When the fight began, she too laughed with the audience in confused entertainment seeing the frightful mogwai leader chase about Basal who for some reason demanded that his behind always faced his opponent.
The chase suddenly stopped and Ignis found a growing concern form in the pit of her stomach as that mogwai began speaking to Basal. Though she could hear the conversation of the two opponents clearly, it all came as some indecipherable mess of nonsense to her. Ignis thought that perhaps the mogwai was referencing her at times, and Ignis couldn't help but pout as she felt the things that the mogwai had to say about her were less than flattering. Ignis's worst fears came to light as that frightful mogwai approached her precious Basal and grabbed on to some imperceivable something just above Basal's injured eye. That mogwai enemy then yanked upon the seemingly empty air and Basal simply vanished.
Ignis let out a curdling cry upon witnessing the death of her long beloved pet. Through her phantasmal tears, Ignis could hardly see Vow the Child cover her ears against the painful wailing, nor could she discern the attempted comforts that Vow was trying to give her. She could tell that Vow was trying to defend this wretched mogwai, she was trying to explain how Basal somehow wasn't dead in the way that Ignis thought of it. But how could she possibly accept any of those words when she had so obviously witnessed such a horrendous sight. Ignis was beginning to feel sick, without physical form, her body had no means to wretch out her aching stomach's contents. Her mind was swimming, the terror that invaded her was debilitating.
Through her addled agony, Ignis was beginning to feel that this horrendous pain was more than just a mental decomposition of herself. She was starting to feel an honest biological tearing of her form. The sensation was as unimaginably painful as it was strange, the very concept of a self-biology was such an ill remembered concept to her—having lived so long without one. Regardless of this fact, Ignis did begin to feel her body again. Her cries contorted from sadness to sheer physical torment as this strange non present bodyness ripped at her nerves. She felt as if her body was trying to grow back inside out from out of her spirit, but she was missing the correct parts. She felt her mouth grow from her spiritual head, but its biotic lips were too long and its teeth too many.
Vow and Sanguine hurriedly leapt off the couch and backed away from Ignis, petrified by whatever ghastly torture they were watching. Ignis's body contorted and screamed in the floating air as legs grafted to her arms, she felt her nonexistent hands being crushed and compressed, squeezing into a shape far too small for them. She had no bones, yet her imagination was able to fill in the sound of crunching for her. Her ghostly form was being robbed from her! Her body was being compressed into some incompatible shape and her soul being invaded by some colossal invader. She could barely keep her self-identity as this spiritual onslaught threatened to fully replace her existence. The attacking soul was so much grander than she it brought upon her a nihilistic numinous.
Just as Ignis wondered if this was now her eternity, if she was doomed to an unending descent to ever more grotesque defilement, she heard the faint echo of a familiar yip and the pain instantly stopped. Her soul rejected this foreign form and expelled it out of herself. A soft thud could be heard and the three people in the room looked down on the couch below Ignis. Where once was the soft red cushions of an empty seat now laid the lifeless corpse of Basal completely undamaged and perfectly preserved.Ignis was too shocked to react, too exhausted from her seemingly random trial in torment to react to this new question. She turned up to face her roommates only to see that they were not staring at the sudden dead fox in the room, but at her.
"What?" she tried to speak, but instead only a cute little yip escaped her throat. The surprising sound immediately put Ignis on alert and she shot her hands up to her mouth, only to painfully prematurely smack her hands against a snout. From deep within her now convoluted soul, she heard an apologetic yip. Well, she less so heard more so than she felt; and despite the monosyllabic expression, she found she could understand it perfectly. Herself was no longer her own.Just as her new realization came, four new eyes opened, granting her a never before realized view of the world. The dim gates of the soul sea shined with a near blinding grace, and she was nearly overwhelmed by the plethora of soul strings flowing through the walls and out of her roommates. Her newly formed eyesight even let her gaze upon her own spiritual form. She was no longer Ignis, though she had not been fully taken over by the invading soul that she now identified as Basal. She was a congruence of the two.
Long ago there was a splitting, an unfinished death, and now the two halves had reunited. This new being, this ghostly humanoid fox, neither Ignis nor Basal, yet somehow both, breathed in relief. She was now whole again. She had spent an arduous fifty-three years trapped in two different entities, but now she was alive, truly alive. The ghostly fox creature smiled giddily. It was now time for these two souls to reacquaint each other with their intimate connection.
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For those not present to the events which had occurred outside of the arena half a continent away, upon the conclusion of the third fight it would have simply appeared like they had just witnessed the announcement of one of humanities greatest enemies, and then that enemy subsequently obliterated a cute little animal. The wretched stigma festered for too long before the educated few could pass on the knowledge of the mercy at play in that fight. Newsletters were written and open house lectures were performed explaining how the Curio could have easily murdered the Animal but instead granted its wish and reunited its body and mind to its unbound soul. Sadly, the societal disgrace had already been too deeply rooted and the majority of humanity only felt confirmed in the villainy that was the mogwai.
The week pressed on and the tensions between human and mogwai was only revitalized; much to the excitement of Dionysus. It only meant that this bounding hate desperately needed an outlet, and what better way to release that emotion than to have the ultimate battle between human and mogwai recorded live for the first time. Dionysus was excited for the final show.
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It had been three hours since the fight between the Vampire and the Apprentice had ended and Belabor was still sat on her seat in the audience pews. The crowd had long since left with the show now over. Belabor left her purchased popcorn unfinished next to her while she stared blankly at the arena in front of her. Currently, she was watching the employees of the Tournament Corporation mount a lifeless corpse onto a gurney. The two burly men fumbling slightly at the awkward handling of the limp body.
The corpse had a large hole on the left side of its chest. In fact, Belabor was also watching another group of Tournament employees approach a pile of splattered flesh on the floor: that connecting puzzle piece that explained where upon the filling to that chest hole went. The employees approached the bloody floor with bags, mops, and thick gloves.
Belabor mindlessly watched as the corpse was carried away and the staff so coldly went about cleaning what was nothing more than a mere mess. One of the staff members approached the partly eaten heart that laid away some ways from the rest of the mess. The pound of flesh was deflated and dark, without any blood it was nothing more than muscle tissue appearing like a rotten fruit. The smell had quickly found a pungent grotesqueness with the day star having been heavily beating down upon it for the past three hours. Some flayed sinew had started to bake into the crevices of the stonework under it.
One of the Tournament staff gulped apprehensively and went to pick up the organ when Belabor suddenly shouted, "Don't touch him!" the unexpected yell surprised the employee who stopped cold in their tracks.
Belabor spoke again, this time with such a sorrowed hesitation that it was little more than a whimper, "Just leave his heart please." Belabor's plea was so quiet that the staff member could only hear her plea thanks to the echo brought by the empty amphitheater. Though confused by the strange request, the staff member obliged regardless simply happy to be given an excuse to ignore this macabre task.
Belabor sat there and watched the cleaning crew finish their duty, upon completion having left no reminder to any tragedy passed save for a lone, sad, deflated heart. She didn't know why she demand they not touch that part. Her cry brought upon by a spontaneous spur within a clouded malaise. It just seemed to her that for some strange reason that heart was somehow him, somehow it was more Picayune than the rest of the lifeless corpse which was strewn about. They could take that mess of bloody biology away, but she wouldn't dare let them treat her Picayune so apathetically. His care at least deserved more respect than that of a dirty floor.
Belabor sat alone in the Tournament stands. It had been five hours now and she was well alone, her only accompaniment left being Picayune. He was so much smaller now than earlier today, so much less talkative. She was so used to him always having a quip primed for the ready, or some obscure nerdy fact to bore her with; he didn't seem keen on sharing any of that currently. For some odd reason she found herself wondering what was to happen with his incomplete schoolwork now.
Belabor felt a light pressure against her shoulder, she ever so slowly turned over to look at the source hoping that maybe if she moved slowly enough, she would find Picayune there. Instead, in that place she only saw the worried concern of Liederkranz, "Bela sweetie , If you stay out too much longer you'll get a cold."
Belabor didn't respond right away. She stared at Liederkranz's brows which furrowed in concern in a way which reminded her of how Picayune often would, it looked absolutely nothing alike, but yet it still reminded her of him. For a solid minute she just stared, and then she turned to face the arena proper again, "I can't just leave Picayune alone."
Liederkranz turned to see where Belabor was looking and grimaced with pity.Liederkranz took a few minutes allowing Belabor's melancholy to settle while she thought of a way to comfort her. Finally, Liederkranz begrudgingly spoke. "You can bring Picayune with you."
Belabor didn't answer, she simply nodded in acceptance. Liederkranz took Belabor by the hand and guided her towards the arena. It was a long walk made even longer by the tiny dragging of Belabor's feet. With barely the will to lift her steps, the two ever slowly inched there way to the arena.Eventually they arrived at their destination, two small women bristling against a harsh evening wind. Belabor found herself next to Picayune. She picked up her weak fragile boyfriend and cradled him with the utmost care as if even the faintest of aggrieved chills brought by that wind could take him away. Liederkranz began guiding Belabor inside but was halted when Belabor refused to move.
Belabor was staring down at what was held in her arms, the past day tumbling through her mind. What was she doing? Why was she here? Why was she holding a severed heart as if that somehow meant something? Picayune was dead. That final thought, for the first time, she let it run through her head uncontested. Belabor dropped the lifeless heart and began to cry.