Post by Ladon on Sept 5, 2015 22:16:36 GMT -5
A shaky hand clawed at the mud, struggling desperately to reach the surface. His talons wrapped themselves around a wooden beam and with a single hoist he dragged himself from the shallow grave and into the trenches. A single blue eye drifted down to examine the chaos that was his body. A mess of steel and wire clung to his stump, the last vestige of his once glorious prosthetic arm. The hole where the king has stabbed him still throbbed with agony, yet he wore it like an old scar rather than a fresh wound. His skin had sunk down into the chasm and healed over as though it were always a part of his being, as though this was how his body was meant to be.
He heard it before he felt it; a deafening shriek from the heaven that shook him to his core. The sky was screaming in agony and the world trembled in response. Then came the water, an endless cascading torrent of ice and cold. It washed over Robert like a barrage of gunfire, shattering bones and tearing flesh. He kicked and clawed and thrashed, trying with all his might to resist the torrent that claimed him, but it was no use.
The current swept him up as it flooded the world. With each second it rose higher and higher, until the world itself was swallowed by the sea. The icy fluid forced its way down his throat and filled his lungs as he clawed helplessly at his chest. Eons passed in that endless sea, helpless and alone. The burning that filled his being as every cell streamed for oxygen didn’t bother him, nor did the infinite cold of his watery prison. There was something deeper wrong, he could feel it swelling in his heart like a tumor with each passing second.
A dull rasping echoed through the water, garbled words that failed to reach his worn ears, yet with them came a sudden swelling. The darkness that had bubbled inside him burst out like pus from a ruptured cyst. White tendrils crept out of the cavity in his chest, spreading themselves over every inch of his skin like a coat of paint before marching up over his face. They wriggled like maggots as they twisted and morphed into a hideous bone white mask. Their work complete, the tendrils disconnected from the hole in Robert’s chest, leaving it vacant as it swelled and expanded into a flawless round gap where his heart used to be.
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He snapped up with a violent gasp, hand clawing at a mask that wasn’t there. Silk sheets parted at his sudden thrashing, allowing a patch of cold air to sneak its way underneath his blankets. His eye snapped down to his chest, searching desperately for a hole that wasn’t there. The gaping hole left behind in the king’s last attack was gone without a trace, leaving nothing but bandaged skin in its wake. It almost felt like a dream, a distant nightmare he could shake off and pretend never existed. The thought was comforting; a safe, warm delusion he would hide away in, if only he could. Yet as tempting as it was, the intense burning in his left eye afforded him no such delusion.
”So, not dead yet. Wasn’t expecting that.” He muttered to himself, the words barely breaking above a whisper.
Of all the places he had expected to wake up, this was not one. A gaol, with its hard iron bars and cold stone certainly seemed appropriate, or his own bed, with its soft comforts and warm delusions. Instead, he found himself in a living contradiction; a room that was both regal and squalid. The wall opposite him sat in ruins, granting a clear view of the Hueco Mundo desertscape, yet upon what remained of the walls hung pre-Raphaelite watercolors. In the middle of it all, sat an unimposing figure in an elegant chair; The Arrancar from the throne room. His ‘savior’, or so it would seem, yet in the dim moonlight she looked more like his warden.
“Is that ‘The Lady of Shalott’?” He remarked casually, his hand drifting up to point at one of her paintings. “Good choice. I hope it’s the original.”
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