DISINTEGRATION
Completed October 8, 2021 (♎︎︎)
Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2021 for prompt No. 7: My Spidey Sense is Tingling (Helplessness, Numbness, Blindness).
Content Warning: There's no explicit sex, but there is a lot of gore and most of the unpleasantness is described through tactile details.
Zalbag came back to himself in darkness, and the battle was suddenly far away from him.
His limbs were numb, his body unmoving. When his vision finally came back by dull degrees he recognized that he was no longer at Igros. Human shapes floated over him. He felt his throat go through the motions of a gasp, but no breath moved through him.
"So this is Adrammelech's parting gift? I would not think he'd have wanted this wreck as a thrall."
"That wreck is the Hokuten general. I imagine we could keep the earth watered in blood a while with him were we so inclined."
"Our Lord will come with a flood, Cletienne."
Zalbag tried to speak, but there seemed a weight on his tongue that his words could not move around. He tried to move, but his limbs did not obey. In the dim light of whatever room held him, he could just make out the features of a dark-haired man, bending over him. His expression was not kind.
"He's something of a curiosity to me, Rofel. The others have moved themselves as men living."
"They gave themselves willingly."
"And you have no appetite for understanding the mechanism?"
There was a silence then, and Zalbag was stuck by a sudden and terrible fear of something that lay beyond the range of his limited vision. When he heard a new voice speak, he tried and failed again to move. He tried and failed again to shout.
"If it pleases you to undertake some study or sport, I will not hinder you. Just do not let it delay us. We have an appointment to keep in Mullonde.
The scene receded from him as he heard the sound of a door shut. The face looking down upon him smiled.
Zalbag came back to himself in darkness, and the battle was suddenly far away from him. He could not quite feel his skin, but he could feel the cold air upon it and the trace of hands—hot as fire—gently probing at where it had been cut.
"You would not remember me, but I saw you once at Gariland."
There was the waver of candlelight; the scent of stone dust. He could move his eyes to see the shapes of lights and shadows as they bled together into something like a room. As he recognized the shape and substance of his own body, lying supine on the floor, he felt suddenly the burning emptiness of everywhere it lay open.
"I thought you were very impressive then," the voice continued. Hands kept probing at him, tracing the contours of his ribs without any flesh to cover them over.
Something cried out then, and it took Zalbag a few moments to recognize the strangled animal sound as having come from his own lips. The man—whomever he was—seemed unmoved. He felt nothing but pressure and heat as he reached back inside of him, caressing the weight of dead flesh that lay at the center of his chest and squeezing it once or twice as if to bid it beat again.
"I will let you speak soon, and you must not waste my time with re-introductions."
Zalbag came back to himself in darkness. The battle was far away from him.
"Have you determined anything that old scripture could not tell you better?" somebody said. "You seem uncommonly taken with this poor shadow.
"I have determined it hears things in its lapses sometimes."
"As might any man if robbed of motion and sight. Prisoners have seen parades of faeries and foxfire in the dark."
"I'm working on its vision, by the by—"
Zalbag felt the impulse to flinch but he could not. There was a hot hand upon his chin, the taste of old rotted blood on his tongue. When the needle met with his eye, it was painless; the inability to recoil was the greater agony.
"The humors naturally cloud for some reason. It's not so with those who willingly partake."
There was the cold sensation of fluid moving, of something falling on his face like thickened tears. Just as the shadows of men came back to him, they distorted and melted. A word he did not know was spoken, and it gave him to relief of screaming.
"Does it need its eyes?"
"Not with the right command."
Zalbag was screaming still when he felt the cold burn of magic flooding back into him. He was screaming when he heard the echo of footsteps. By the time whatever had been done to him was over, he had seemed to scream for days.
There was a face then—sharp-angled and hungry—leaning over him. He felt his limbs follow some order he had not given them as he pushed himself upright to greet it.
Zalbag came back to himself in darkness. The battle was gone.
There were fingers wrenched in the back of his hair. His face was pressed fast against hot flesh; his cheeks and chin slick with blood. He could feel the warm trickle of more in his throat. Somebody sighed as he swallowed.
"Is that enough to mend you?"
Zalbag moved his mouth as if to speak, but all he could do was continue. He kept drinking—gasping in starts when it seemed he might choke on it. He was filled with a strange dread as he realized how peculiar it felt to be warm.
His face was wrenched away, and he was pulled upright in a slow, controlled motion. He stood and the image of a man—forearm stained red, dark hair slicked back—appeared before him.
"I fear we shall be out of one another's company soon."
"Who... are you?"
Zalbag paused as something like a memory flashed over him: a phantom pain that seemed to sting at the edges of injuries not present.
"Another prodigy like yourself." The man grinned. "A scholar of magic—magic and nature's absurdities."
Zalbag flinched when next he touched him, and he felt it was a strange luxury to flinch.
Zalbag came back to himself in darkness, and there were fingers in the cords and veins of his throat. He came back to himself and there was the hard splintering of broken bones dragging against one another. His eyes, his lungs, the coil of his entrails: all these things were subject to invasion. All elements of him were rent apart, held close, reassembled.
"You never recall, but I saw you once at Gariland."
There were lips at the ragged edges of some injury—a tongue probing the fibers of the underlying muscle. When they parted, Zalbag wished there could be some pain to mark the kiss of the cold air that replaced them.
"The soul of Ivalice on birdback—the image of heroism triumphant."
Zalbag cried out as he was pushed to the floor. He had no power to catch himself—nor all the parts to do so.
"What a keen pleasure to break an ideal like that down to animal matter."
His body seemed to burn bright with some unknown fire as the voice laughed; if he had any impulse to resist what was to come, it fled him.
Zalbag heard the sound of whispers and weeping, and he tried to recall who should utter them. There was wind now. There was the spray of sea water and the scent of salt upon it.
"What have you done to him?"
He felt his throat go through the motions of a gasp, but no breath moved through him. The voice—hollow and thin—was his sister's.
"Nothing that he will recall with any pain, good lady."
There was a long silence. As his vision unclouded, Zalbag saw the great mass of grey and blue upon which they all floated.
He made no effort to look elsewhere.
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