Emyuil: Chasing a Broken Dream, Part 3: "Scars and Fire"

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Sat, 02/13/2016 - 09:48

Recommended Listening: "Tessa" from the soundtrack to Transformers: Age of Extinction by Steve Jablonsky. (I listened to it while writing most of this. ;)

Warning: The following backstory fic is quite dark--darker than I intended possibly--and may upset some readers. Don't say I didn't warn you. Anyhow, if you're not put off, read on.

The last of the slain vermin fell into the dust, bleeding in five places. Emyuil's savage, reckless attacks had left each of the band brutally hacked apart. Slowly, the red mist retreated from around the edges of the mouse's vision, and he collapsed against the side of a tree, bleeding from several lacerations. His sword, still coated in blood and gore, lay across his lap, the crimson staining his tunic and trousers a rusty red-brown hue, the color of stale death and dismemberment. The coppery tang of it reached his nostrils and suddenly he was on his knees, retching, vomiting...His vision faded for a time, and he knew no more.

He dreamed.

He dreamed of Lily, of a picnic on the plains, huddled together on a rough, homespun blanket. Their grandmother, Angela was there...his older brothers...DoraRose, his mother, his father...and, of course, Lily, giggling and laughing as she and Emyuil threw bits of grass and wildflowers at each other. They laid on their backs, the whole family, as the blue sky faded to indigo, indigo to purple, purple to black. The stars and moon ascended, and Ferrer, his father, pointed out different constellations to his children, showing them the celestial forms of legends and heroes, telling them the stories behind each one, Angela occasionally chiming in to correct him.

Emyuil was happy.

Then came the wind.

The wind was foul, stale, tainted with the reek of fresh gore and new death. Emyuil heard the laughter of the fox carried on it, and he was filled with a fiery rage, a rage that burned through him like matchwood, leaving him broken and smoldering within.

A war-drum sounded, and only after several beats did he realize that it was his own heartbeat, blood roaring in his ears.

He screamed--or tried to--but there was no sound. he watched as the night sky turned a decayed brown, fog and smoke shrouding the surrounding hills from view.

And then the stars went out.

Emyuil was afraid now. "What do you want from me?" he whispered hoarsely.

There was no answer.

"Who are you?" he screamed. He was answered by a hiss.

"You know who I am."

Emyuil's eyes widened, then hardened. "Stormfeather," he growled. "But of course," came the mocking answer. Everything...shifted...before Emyuil could say anything else.

Suddenly Angela was gone, the sound of rattling chains leaving a hint as to where she went. Ferrer and Lydia were dying, shriveling, coughing blood and weakening. Emyuil cried out their names, reached out to them, but couldn't move, couldn't speak or even close his eyes.

There was nothing left but mummified flesh and wasted bone, sinking into the earth. DoraRose disappeared in a fading, violet light. Then, finally, he turned, against his will, to Lily. She was lying on her back, in a serene, slumbering posture that was horribly familiar, her paws folded on her chest and blood flecking her clothes. He knelt beside her, cradling her head in his paws. He wept, and though she was breathing her last, she looked at him, and smiled, coughing a little. "Emmy...don't cry," she whispered hoarsely. "I'm...gonna...be 'kay." She whimpered softly and Emyuil, inside his head, was screaming, begging to take her place, to bleed instead of her, to die instead of her, to take this pain away from her and into himself. "Thanks tho'," she finished, her eyes slowly closing as he sobbed for her to stay with him, to live, to be okay...and as her eyes closed, they stopped, and though they were half-open, Emyuil could see...contentment. The utter assurance that everything was going to be all right.

And for a moment, he believed it.

Then, her breathing slowed, and with a whisper of, "I love you," LilyMoore died, and faded, leaving Emyuil's paws empty, and a black void in his heart. There were no words, at the end. He screamed, howled like a gutted animal. And then he was somewhere else, a burning house that he recognized all to well.

He was inside the house on Tuscani's plains as it burned. He'd lost his sword and he had to find it. The silken laughter of Stormfeather surrounded him--the fox was everywhere. He spotted a gleam through the smoke that he choked on--the hilt of his blade! He siezed it, and hefted it up over his head, just as the smoke overcame his battered young body and his vision faded.

Welcome to Hell, laughed Stormfeather. All of us are here, and you are too. Become one of them, the legion, the defiled dead. For you cannot find me. Everything you love will die before your very eyes, young murderer, and you will be powerless to stop me.

Emyuil awoke, tears running tainted rivers through the dried blood that matted his fur. He nearly screamed, then his other self spoke. Silence, fool! Would you abandon your quest and die here, slain casually, opportunistically by some roving scum? Emyuil wiped his tears from his face, hardly daring to breathe. He clutched the hilt of Nevermore in one paw, the other forming a fist of its own accord. Voices drew near.

"Oy, Rotgut sez Blighty was suppos'd t'be ovah heah' when we last sawr 'em. Dey ain't been 'eard from since."

Emyuil--or whoever he was becoming--counted down.

"Bloody 'ell, 'tis a masacree!" Sounds of retching reached the young mouse's ears and a horrible smile split the crusted blood on Emyuil's face. "Who did dis?" one of the vermin demanded. "Dunno, but thay're gone now, yar? Shut up 'n loot."

There was the sound of a blow. "Yowch! Goddit, boss."

There was the sound of clinking and rattling as the bandits looted and scavenged from the corpses of their comrades' victims--and those of their comrades. Disgust and hatred burned through the mouse, and he gripped the hilt of his black sword with white knuckles. It took an extreme effort to keep his paws from shaking. Any moment now, the voice told him, full of grim anticipation.

Just then, a weasel leaned over him, scars and other disfigurements marring possibly once-roguish features. A gold tooth gleamed in place of one fang, and one eye socket was empty, covered with a band of cheap cloth.

"Dat's a nice sword," breathed the weasel. Emyuil held his silence. The weasel leaned closer, until he could smell the stink of grog on the bandit's breath as the weasel leaned down and tugged at the crosshilt of the black sword. Emyuil did not allow it to budge. The beast's brow furrowed, and he tugged again. "Bloody 'ell, leggo of the sword ya numbskull," he snarled. "You're dead ain't ya?"

"Is that so," Emyuil remarked, opening his eyes to take in the weasel's shock as the words fell like ice from his lips.

"Holy--"

The vermin never had a chance to finish his last oath. Emyuil was upon him, ripping at him with the edge of his paw-and-a-half sword as the weasel screamed, going for his dagger before the nightmarish figure of the blood-crazed mouse stomped down on the offending limb's wrist, snapping it. The bandit howled, a cry that quickly became a choked gurgle as Emyuil knelt on his chest and slashed his throat. The mouse stood after a moment. The weasel, meanwhile, would never move again. The other vermin had surrounded him by this point, weapons drawn. "Drop the sword, cully," drawled one. "An' we'll make it quick, but not quite painless," added a sneering stoat. "No," Emyuil said, loudly, clearly. "Awright, den," the stoat said, spitting casually to one side, taking his eyes off Emyuil for half a moment to do so--

--and then he was on the ground and Emyuil was ripping Nevermore out of a bleeding gash in the bandit's chest. He parried the next stoat's wild cutlass swing and responded with a kick in the fork of the leg that sent the beast sprawling with a wail of agony. Emyuil whirled around, intercepting a ferret's vertical cut and pushing the blade aside as it locked against the crosshilt of his own sword. He kicked out--the ferret dodged swiftly but was forced to withdraw his blade in order to do so. The mouse, meanwhile, followed through and swung downward, was parried again, then lashed out suddenly with a low kick that relieved the vermin of his footing. Before he could deliver a killing blow, stars danced in front of his eyes and he cried out as he was backhanded savagely across the back of his skull by a buckler. He stumbled, fell, tried his best to rise but was pinned under a seabooted footpaw. A cruel, nasty laugh echoed around him, filling the semiconscious young mouse with hatred and humiliation, a laugh that reminded him of Stormfeather. Suddenly he had the strength and will to stand, forcing the would-be killer from his perch atop his back. Emyuil rolled, slashed quickly as he rose, nicked the beast's leg, but found that his sword paw was now pinned much as the rest of his body had been.

Quickly recalling a fighting technique his father had taught him, he hooked one footpaw behind his assailant's lower leg and drove the other leg viciously into the beast's knee, hyper-extending it with a sickening--yet pleasing--crack. The bandit cried out, lost his footing, and Emyuil slashed his guts out across his lap. Two beasts remained, a rat and the ferret he'd fought before he was knocked down and nearly slain. The ferret was still clutching himself in pain, while the rat was drawing a dagger. Emyuil struck out with his gleaming, dripping blade and the rat parried it, whipping out a second knife in his other paw and trying to sink it into Emyuil's chest--the mouse fed the thirsting blade the outer edge of his left bicep, a coldly burning line searing into his flesh and blood welling up quickly. However, the rat's clumsy follow-through left his torso exposed; the mouse couldn't free his sword in time to exploit this, so instead he threw a punch with his injured arm, winding the rat.

The vermin wheezed, tried to get his breath back, but too late--Emyuil leaned in, and, his sword still locked with the dagger, bit down on the rat's shoulder, biting deep through gristle and flesh, down to the bone as the bandit screamed in pain and terror, tearing a gash in his own shoulder as he pulled away from the vengeful mouse. Emyuil released him, then freed his sword and slammed it through the rat's heart, pulling it free and advancing on the ferret, who had yet to rise, sobs of terror escaping his lips as he beheld this monster, this teenaged mouse covered in blood--both his own and that of the slaughtered bandits, a glistening, pitch-black sword in one paw and blood running from the corners of his mouth. Laughter, crazed, wild laughter escaped unbidden from Emyuil's throat as he beheld the vermin's despair, his unmasked terror at the sight of the spectral killer. "'e's mad," choked the ferret, "'e must be 'alf-rat!"

"Perhaps I am," agreed the mouse calmly as he brought down his sword.

This task finished, his mad strength and assurance left him, and he just managed to crawl from the glade into the cover of some boulders before he collapsed from delayed shock and blood loss. The last thing in his mind was a whisper.

Half-Rat...

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