W a n d e r l u s t [private]

Somewhere beyond the boundaries of this tenebrous place, forces well beyond Vonuxsan’s imagination clashed. In the hinterlands which he had taken as a refuge of sorts, there was not but silence and stillness. The eternal nature of that place was what held so much allure for this stoic. In its foliage, in its trees and their creeping branches, and in its lack of conventional wildlife… There was an eerie serenity.

The constant conflicts of life were lost here, swept away when nature turned her lively gaze from that spot. Now death thrived among those trunks, accompanied by the smooth cloak of mist which swirled a foot above the parched, darkening earth. The thick and chilling tide washed over the world as far as the eye could see in that clearing, swallowing up the smaller vegetation which had no chance of growing to adulthood in such a harsh environment. The trees had long since seen their days of lush glory sundered by the barren forces of the world. Frost, an unfortunate absence of light and a waning population of inhabitants necessary to maintain the longevity of the biome were all contributing factors to the grand, withering trees and their malnourished children.

There Vonuxsan rested, his back pressed into the cushion of the throne he was perched upon. His long legs were stretched out before him and spread apart a few inches beyond shoulder width. Presently, his head was resting on his left hand, the knuckles of his fingers pressed against his temple. Greying eyes peered into the fog which twisted and turned around his inordinate footwear. The talons that capped his boots appeared to dig into the sterile soil, though one could not be certain through the obstruction collecting above them. When otherwise the mists were towed along by the wind, here their chaotic pattern was cast into greater chaos.

The observation aroused a concise piece of philosophy; peace was an illusion. Kin in that regard to truth and time, peace was a thing of no physical merit. Patterns truly existed in so few things beyond the delusions of man. In this universe, imagination was likely the only thing that separated sentience from insanity. So the silence which he perceived… Was it another illusion? He wondered if his home was but an elaborate weave of dreams that he had designed for himself. Vonuxsan inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring with the comfortable effort, before releasing the contents of his lungs. The heat of his breath added to the fog that was his only company, rising up and into the night sky above.
The boy’s lids slid away and revealed the peeking ornaments of the heavens to his conscious mind. At this point in his life, the distance between his lesser known refuge and the entities punctuating the night sky was incredibly short. To a being who traversed realms at will and found himself so at home within that mode of transit, a jump from one galaxy to the next seemed so… Minute. Even gazing into that vast vacuum, Vonuxsan was aware of something far more colossal.

A looming leviathan of virulent energy burned in a place impossibly distant. Whether or not he wanted to feel that disturbance battering his senses was irrelevant, for a sensitive creature such as himself was doomed to notice an aberration so impressive. It was as if reality was falling apart, he realized with a sigh, as battles raged and brewed at that very moment. With his brethren, Vonuxsan still pursued the illusive wraith that was what remained of Cedric Tokai. As if that wasn’t enough to churn the waters, now two gargantuan entities opposed each other.

Corporeal, they were but men enveloped by the surging powers they commanded, but the will of each being was a towering, imposing thing which reached out and corrupted too much space to be ignored. For many agonizing days, Vonuxsan had been plagued with not only the sensation of that brutal confrontation but by knowledge of it as well. Both combatants were known to him, as he had spent time in each God’s presence. He would be prideful to say that he had taken many things away from each encounter, but in truth not even he was up to the task of fully comprehended the words of immortals of their significance.

Vonuxsan still picked through some of his conversations with the pair even now, as he listened to the soundless torture of their energies. It was likely that their personal war had migrated beyond the borders of the universe he currently resided in. For all the upheaval their actions evoked in him, there was no physical thing that they disturbed. The clearing was still silent, dark and still. The wind whispered through the skeletal fingers of the rotting trees, speaking of a calm retreat from the fevered thoughts that assailed the wayward young man. Vonuxsan drew in another deep breath, filling his lungs with clean, moist air. A moment passed before another contraction forced the warmed air from his breast.
Dark clouds were blowing in from the north, the flashing tendrils which streaked across their bleak bulk telling of the coming storm. From some great distance, thunder erupted. The winds hastened through the dying trees, pitching the trees southward with much creaking protest from the stiff lumber. Vonuxsan observed lightning lash the earth in the distance, that destructive facet of weather whipping the planet in a brief flash. Odin’s hammer continued to strike at random intervals, once again demonstrating a theme of universal chaos in its irregularity.

The flash of that lightning shattered the darkness that had once shielded the brooding young man in its featurelessness. Now, his pale skin shone in the ephemeral lighting. His grey eyes were housed in a visage of smooth, blemish less flesh. The face of the young man bore a strong but slightly narrow jaw and was crowned by a short mop of black hair that stood in simple contrast to his light skin. His lips were thin and pressed into a hard line as he stared at what that lightning revealed.

In another transient moment of illumination, a grim scene was displayed. The featureless expression of Vonuxsan – shadows on his face deepened by the intense, directional light – and the hanging corpse of a man appearing to be a few years his elder. The corpse was also heavily shadowed, but even through the distortion the identity of the man would be obvious to any who had known him. It was the leader of the Black Mist Society and son of Cedric, Damien Tokai. The deathblow which Vonuxsan had dealt to the Seeker prodigy had roughly bisected the male and severed him into two lifeless halves.

Now, hanging from the tree nearest the thrones, the corpse had been bound together at several points with various lengths of rope to try and preserve the appearance of the victim. The aim of that intrusion was achieved, for the attire, stature and mutilated face conveyed the message quite well. Damien did not stand as a trophy, but as a sign.
Something was changing in the flow of time. With that thought in mind, Vonuxsan submitted to the wanderlust exhibited by his mind. His thoughts drifted from his anxieties and his hardships. Rest was necessary, and recalling his most recent efforts with the Triumvirate did nothing to relax the adolescent. As the approaching storm paused to rest, so did the lone observer. Silence crept back into the clearing and it was a silence of many parts.

The first part was the silence born of solitude. Though Vonuxsan breathed and moved in his seat, these sounds were muted by the loneliness that engulfed him. This is not to be mistaken, for loneliness is a word warped by its application to social creatures. In this sense, loneliness is but the absence of others, of company, not the desire for it. The lack of conversation, of the noises produced by the congregation of numerous conscious minds, composed the first silence.

Reaching below the surface, we find the second part. If one stops to listen – to stray from the hum of deliberation and reverie – they may hear the world on which they stand. This is a gestalt of a kind. For the world’s silence cannot be described by the summation of its parts, to quote the proper definition for the term. It was in the hushed sounds of life, in the shift of the land and the muted hiss of the winds, chaotically flowing through the atmosphere. Vonuxsan could feel that silence in his own chest as his heart pumped blood through his veins.

The final silence which he found in his meditation was the silence of death. So close to him, branches groaned under the weight of the man he had slain. The cold vessel was silent in its bindings. Its blood did not flow and its lungs did not pump air into his chest. Still, something stirred within that remnant. It was as if echoes of the consciousness once ordered into that shell still emanated from the flesh it had ruled. Vonuxsan knew that he had destroyed Damien’s consciousness – his soul – but he could still not shake the tidings of regret which reached his own mind.

The God had been corrupt and needed to be dealt with, - this was true - but even still… No matter how many times Vonuxsan ended life he would always feel the pangs of guilt. Hardened as he was, he was confronted constantly by the morals that the harsh truths of existence forced him to abandon. It was in this realization that Vonuxsan could finally name the third and last silence.

It was the silence that bred in the wake of destruction. After such violence everything paused and the universe held its breath, waiting to see if it was finally over. It was the silence in the eye of the storm…

The wayward wandering of unfamiliar creatures scarcely ever escaped Vonuxsan so near to the clearing he so rarely inhabited. This evening, however, he was too consumed in the maelstrom of confusion hounding his every waking hour. On top of internal dilemma, the boy was overly susceptible to the energies colliding in their fathomless arena. Being directly connected to the infinite Void, the reverberations of that power struck him like powerful waves. It was all he could do to fix his roving, grey eyes on the hound when it broke from the thick forest.

His distraught senses painfully revealed themselves in the difficulty that he had experienced in the undertaking of that small task, and that outrageous weakness sobered his fevered mind. A shiver shook his lean form, a chill permeating the many regions of his body and waking him up from his trance. The boy’s thumb brushed the side of his face and the sensation was sluggishly transported up to his brain by a series of innumerable, yawning synapses. Just as swiftly, he was animated again. A rapid and succinct inventory was taken of the surrounding elements – especially those that presented themselves as out of the ordinary.

About this time, Vonuxsan’s lavishly enriched senses were functioning at full capacity and a woman was coming from the woods. Faintly, the sound of her shouting echoed in his mind. While in some distant recess of his mind, he had heard her utter the mastiff’s name in something between anxiety and frustration. Brom reached the lounging prodigy with his impressive strides and began to eagerly sniff around the foot of the throne.

Contempt, amusement and curiosity sprang into Vonuxsan’s perceptions, but each and every such inkling of emotion was strangled by a cold resolve. Grey eyes slid from the dog – which was showing itself to mean no violence – to the approaching woman. Hundreds of different measurements assailed him as his vigilant eyes rather abrasively sized her up. In his current state, where his senses felt raw, he was not inclined to common courtesy. What would usually be a more subtle examination had become a blatant, invasive thing.

With so much of his facial expression hidden, those seeking his intentions would be forced to look to his eyes. They transmitted an interest strictly clinical, as a doctor giving thought to a wound. Those eyes – with their scarce traces of a long-since departed, lively blue – flitted to Damien’s corpse. The body’s many wounds were currently suppurating, evidence of the extended stay of Damien’s life force. Vonuxsan’s best prognosis simply offered that the lingering energy of that god was causing the ravaged cadaver to drag out its dying stages. Anatomic knowledge generally suggested that such would be nigh impossible, but there it was.

So now he stood watch over the God he had slain, endlessly plagued by fears born from his doubts. He was so uncertain that the potent being could truly be gone. There were so many things that could come of that passing thought, and they had come with much haste. Marching on his battered consciousness like an army ready to besiege him. The siege, Vonuxsan ventured, was likely still underway.

The pause had afforded Vonuxsan another problem; his lack of attention had drawn her once coy gaze to the lifeless vessel hanging from the equally lifeless tree to his right. Vonuxsan’s mind reeled for a moment as he released a sigh. The young man stood from his chair, erecting his back and standing at his full height of six feet and two inches. Beneath layers of black cloth and scorched metal, Vonuxsan’s attractive form may very well have become moreso. The motion would reveal the twitch of his abdomen, which was sheathed in tight, pale skin beneath a thin shirt which did no more than continue the theme of his monochrome gear.

His shoulders were visibly broad, even beneath the pauldrons which guarded his major tendons. The medium length, jet black hair shifted back towards the center. His awareness increased due to the severity of the portrait his situation had painted, his eyes now seemed bright. There was an intelligence and wisdom behind them that far outnumbered his physical years. The blue in those greying eyes was accentuated now, more apparent in the silvery light from the moon above.

“You may not want to do that with the storm blowing in,” the boy spoke softly. For a man now supposed to be a very violent being, his approach was surprisingly gentle and not hastened at all by some foreign urgency. “The body there…” He paused, as if feeling for a way to proceed, “It did not belong to a good man. Nor a man at all, for that matter.” Von’s intent eyes peered at the corpse once more, a look of suspicion betraying him for but a moment before he returned his gaze to her. Grey irises and wide pupils spoke of an apology.

Vonuxsan’s expression perked up at that, a bemused grin tugging at the corners of his concealed lips. “Let us turn our attention to Gods, then…” The young man trailed off as his long, measured strides brought him around to view the gruesome, makeshift scarecrow. Experienced eyes grated across the grim shape for a moment, as if considering something. “Objects of power often find themselves lacking in many places akin to humility. There’s no understanding between Gods and men, no mutual field of play, if you think about it.”
Von hazily realized that he was musing aloud, but the concept did not perturb him any more than discussing murder with a stranger. “His kin thrive on ambition, on power. It’s a sick thing, the way I see it. This one killed many without remorse, found his fun in killing and shedding blood in general. Whether or not right and wrong – good and evil – are utterly dependent on opinion is irrelevant in his case, I’d say. Only a beast kills without feeling, though they say it gets easier.” Vonuxsan turned away from the deep shadows that hid the eyes of the deathly visage now at his back.

“I’m not sure that such is a good thing.” For a few moments, there was a somber look in his usually stoic eyes. The boy’s brows were knitted together in some new contemplation. When the time passed, the indifference crept back into his gaze; standing as the shield between his thoughts and the outside world. Her introductions had reached him before he began on his monologue, and he would soon return to that topic. After all, it was a less tender issue.

A vast majority of his mind wished that he could simply do away with the corpse in that instant, as it was not helping him reign in the sprawling situation. The fact that she hadn’t turned and ran upon sighting the grizzly scene remained surprising to him. He was not sure if it was because she was desperate or because she felt like a deer in the headlights – frozen with fear. A slender, gloved hand reached up to pull the cloth down and away from Vonuxsan’s young face, revealing another host of facial features.

Straight, white teeth and thin lips composed his mouth, which was currently resting in a slight frown. The corners of his mouth arched down just barely, presenting not an appearance of sadness but a sense of disapproval with the position at hand. Otherwise, there was but one extraordinary thing to be seen; a bruise on the left cheek. The mark was a mixture of black and purple, three gashes hiding somewhere within that marring patch.

This long after the battle which had won him those wounds, no blood came from the open slashes. There was one dried rivulet dark red tracing down to the young man’s chin. Despite the fact that betraying more of his hostile activities may cause tensions to rise, it was only proper to reveal his full countenance when meeting someone.

“I am Vonuxsan,” he said, offering a friendly grin that was more difficult for him than it should have been in the presence of a woman. “You’re likely wondering as to your whereabouts. In short, you’ve wandered quite a ways off the beaten path. This clearing seldom sees much activity, and that is why a good number of us chose it. The seclusion is pleasant, moreso now when we are surrounded by such…” His eyes once again strayed to view the lifeless shell which so haunted him, “Turmoil.”