Exalted: Out Of The Eater

You live in your own head. You've always lived in your own head. In quiet, meandering corridors of shadowy memory and half-imagined sensation. Carefully tending to your own private fantasies, your own little dreams. Fragile things that would wither and die by daylight but here, in the hush, in the quiet dark, might live if only for awhile. What is it you want? It's no great, grand thing: strong arms to hold you. Warm bodies beside you. Hands pressed to your legs, your chest, your arms; hands cradling your jaw, an unseen thumb brushing your cheek. You've had a taste of it before, but just a taste, only a taste and you-

You can't really win, can you? Hah. You finally get it now. You finally understand, a little at least.

You build a fortress in your mind and raise a seat in the center. A throne where you sit and peer out from behind your own eyes and watch the world turn. But those same layered curtain walls that protect you, that guard that last shred of self you have, steadily choke you. Smother you. Ensuring that you endure, that your existence persists. That you don't fully feel blows that split skin and water the drought-parched earth with your blood. That you don't entirely hear the things they say to you, the words the soldiers spit. That when you tilt your head up and look to the sky you don't see the monster that looms over you, the beast that's been there all your life, watching and waiting and licking gore-soaked lips; that you don't fully comprehend all that's happened to you, all that's going to happen. That you don't do the only rational thing anyone could do, the only sane thing, and scream and scream and scream until your throat tears and your voice goes slack.

And what kind of man can cross that gulf? What kind of man can scale those walls, meant to keep all of Creation at bay? This is the gift of Exaltation, it's given you the self-awareness, the vocabulary you need to describe what the City did. What it made you do to yourself. To understand that, if you could have, you would have made yourself an unthinking, unfeeling tool and been glad for it. That you would have murdered your own sapience, your own mind, to keep it safe from them forever. To finally be beyond the pain, beyond the two-fold hurt of your circumstances.

That all you wanted to be was meat.

Yes.

Yes. That's the best way to make sense of it. On some level your body was always just a thing to you. Just an armature of muscle and bone, pliable in some ways, pleasing in others: useful and of service (and oh you can still taste the City's words on your tongue, "of service", the highest praise Lookshy can bestow upon anything). The helot-who-sold-his-name made himself into an ambulatory castle; legs serving solely to carry the throne from place to place, arms to bring things before it. There was nothing especially romantic or sacred about any of it, there's no real regard to the way you treated it. The way you used it. And it's not that you've cruel or even unkind in that regard, it's just what connection is to you, intimacy and sex are to you. What they've always been. A way to feel something like tenderness, something like affection, something like wanted and make even one other person feel the same. Even if you don't even know their name; even as part of your brain scratches and scrambles, a panicked rat trying to chew its way out of a cage of bone because something inside you can't bear being touched even as you all but starve for it. All of it -all of it in service to your own survival, your own sanity; ensuring that you live, but that you do so fundamentally alone.

And you...you are so tired of being alone, aren't you?

You want to be wanted. You want to be needed. You crave something more than flickering, half-kindled scraps of desire, of passion, of satisfaction that never last. Can never last. Something more than connections that stretch out and suddenly snap, curling back upon themselves in mindless coils; the automatic contraction of cephalopod limbs, the sucker-baring curl of severed tentacles.

The figure is just standing over there. They could be a friend. They could care about you. They could even be something else. But you won't know if you just stay here beneath the limbs of the tree, feeling the rain strike your shoulders, droplets dripping from crystalline leaves. You should go talk to them, go do anything instead of-

Staring. Instead of staring. Which is what you're doing, all you're doing.

...It's somewhat rude you suppose, but admittedly they did do that smug here-all-along thing to get a rise out of you, so you can't honestly feel too bad when their plan implodes because you have the social skills of a rock. Really, you have to wonder what their plan was in the first place. They're standing over there tending to a potted plant in the middle of the night and pretending they don't know you're here and it's clearly some kind of multifaceted thing where you go approach them with curiosity and trepidation, maybe it escalates, turning into dramatic confrontation where they can show off. Make a first impression with that initial introduction right? Instead of this where you're just watching, wondering who decides to water plants in a rainstorm.

Oh, it probably has some nutrient solution dissolved in it, that would make sense.

The seconds drag on, the cowled figure's head twitching towards you discretely once or twice, still humming along to whatever song is stuck in their head. First cautious, a little unsure then exasperated when they realize you haven't actually moved. Quickly pretending they were doing no such thing and you find that, actually, you're enjoying this quite a bit. Moments into minutes, once-casual motion gradually slowing, slowing until it stops altogether and they seem to just...wilt.

"Are you really going to just sit there?" They ask. Their voice light, caught on the edge of perpetually amused, their accent almost lyrical ask, more put out than really annoyed. You consider the question.

"Yes."

"Oh...that's a shame."

"You seem disappointed."

"Well. I was hoping I could do the 'mysterious ally' thing for a little longer than not at all you know?" They reply, rolling their hand. "It was great fun with Nerius and he thought it was a good idea so here I was going 'yes you should really give it a try Renartus! Who knows, you might go two for two on baiting out monsters Mother Immaculate told you not to poke'."

You consider it. "What if I just ate you on reflex?"

"Well then that'd be something else you had in common with Nerius."

"...Ah."

The thought bothers you in some inchoate way. Some emotion you can't quite seize, you can't quite hold, like an eel writhing in the mud. You're not flustered, no, there's no heat rising in your cheeks, no secondhand shame just an irrational kind of discomfort. A vague sort of irritation.

Annoying.

The conversation wavers, fades and dies; whatever sparks of amiability there were slowly drowned, snuffed out one by one in little puffs of silver-grey smoke until only the quiet remains. You close your eyes, turning your face up to the empty, ember-colored sky. Feeling cold rain soak spiky, colorless hair against your scalp. Relishing the new and novel sensation that is the absence of pain, of fear. The way your body, revenant that you are, doesn't even seem to be bothered by such mundane things as "immanent pneumonia". You could walk barefoot in a snowstorm and not feel a thing.

"Oh. That's unfortunate isn't it? I was doing so well and now- well, now everything about this is uncomfortable," they say at last, "Hit a nerve huh?"

"Mhm."

A soft sigh, "Room on that bench for one more?"

You wordlessly shift a few inches to the side, gesturing at the space next to you. A rustle of fabric and they take their seat, putting their hood back.

Long triangular ears -a fox's ears- edged in pale yellow-grey fur; in washed out, wan shades of gold. A face that's all delicate features and razor-sharp lines, like a gently smiling porcelain mask styled into careful androgyny with a deft brush and applied cosmetics. A body shaped from cut glass and steel threads, lean and long-limbed without an inch of give, a modicum of yield. Every ounce of fat, every dram of softness on that frame long since cannibalized, given over to fuel the growth of flash-formed muscle. And you can see it can't you? The ink-bloated veins forking beneath skin so pallid the outer layers are all but translucent. The glossy-dark scars where flesh split and healed and split again to accommodate the new strength below. They wear sleeves made from some silken material, deep cerulean-black rolled up to the bicep, terminating in lustrous bands. A vest molded to the chest and stomach below in a brighter, sapphire shade. A flowing waistwrap in silvery-white. Their body half-bared, framed with the kind of ostensible disregard that only comes from immense effort and accented with enough gold to put a minor Dragonblooded to shame. They look as if the second they stepped into a working field or, worse, a warzone everything they were wearing would tear and shred, instantly stained beyond all repair but you know better, you know better.

You can see how sharp their teeth are. How pointed their nails. You can see the way their shadow looms too large beneath their feet, billowing out below them in defiance of the bars of amber light that cross-slat the garden. And you can taste the necrotic essence that wells up from within, a clear-running spring seeping through the cracks of the world. Like calling to like.

The Dead know their own, don't they?

And you wonder, you wonder: how many dead must this blood-drinker have within them?

"Nerius says you're an Anathema," they -Renartus, you think- say.

"I am."

"Which means you're also an Exalted," they continue.

"An Exalted is a Dragon Blooded." You reply automatically (but are you sure that's the distinction? You're not anymore are you? The definitions are blurred in your head, you can't even tell when the boundaries became porous, when the two words began to melt and distort and bleed into each other).

"And you're definitely a helot," they press on, finger lifted and smiling wide, the kind of vulpine grin that scrunches the eyes all but shut, "Because- well just listen to yourself. It's like every word is getting pried out of your mouth with rusty pliers and you won't even speak above a whisper just in case there's an overseer hiding behind the Wolf-King's rose bushes. Plus oh those scars, don't I know those. So! How'd it happen?"

"How'd what happen?" You ask, your voice a flat monotone.

"How did you die?"

You wait for the reflexive outrage, the sudden flood of unbearable emotion, for the barrier to break. You wait for the sudden swell of bile and bitter anger, the surge of pitch black hatred, not even directed at Renartus just...at everyone. At everything. At the City, at Creation, at the whole wide world and whatever it is that lays sleeping beneath its skin.

Your brain answers you with silence. Grab a sturdy stick, poke the meat of your mind a few times like it's some fat, lazy dog. See if it'll stir. The punchline is you can't even feel surprised when it doesn't. All there is in you is a kind of exhausted emptiness, your mind a match for the heavens above. Like you used the last flash of energy in the throne room, to light a tall tallow candle, and now that taper's gone, burned to ash and leaving nothing behind. Nothing but a vague appreciation for pretty trees and pretty flowers and pretty fox-eared people with a flair for the dramatic.

"The army was supposed to garrison the Triadic River Ministry, we were there to raise defenses and prepare the city for siege. But he- Wolf-King moved faster than the General expected. We were stranded," bony shoulders rise and fall in a small shrug, "With the City's soldiers at risk of being overrun the officers moved to liquidate the workforce."

The smile doesn't fade. There's a small intake of air, a soft hiss, but it's less pity or horror or worse, a well-intentioned lack of comprehension than it is a kind of sympathetic pain. "You know," they say as they look out over the garden, at the storm-scorpions in the far distance, "Considering you can get Dead Exalted on top of everything Lookshy's really putting the hours in huh? But I suppose it fits their way of thinking. They're not some backwater Satrapy hoping for a lucky training accident, or a really tragic suicide. They're going to earn it."

That gets a laugh, dry, wry, a mildly amused exhale if you're going to be honest but it's still a laugh. They chuckle alongside you, black nails reaching up to rub the back of their neck, drifting down to tug and adjust the sit of a sleeve at the wrist. "Not to say you aren't a treat but I think I was pretty lucky with how I turned out mm? Do you remember- oh it must have been in '65. Not so long ago, dear Nerius was just getting his start. Was all splendid and silver but not quite the terror he is now."

"The drought?" You remember, you remember the heat so intense it was like your breath was being squeezed from your chest even in Autumn. You remember the fields of dead, bone dry grass and the dancing tongues of orange flame on the horizon. You remember licking your lips, trying to work something like moisture back into torn tips, tender tissue half-chewed to tatters, so dry it couldn't help but split and peel, as you tried to pull a woman into the sparse scrap of shade. Black flies and gnats swarming around her head, already drinking from gummy, bleary lioness eyes.

There have been worse seasons (and oh isn't that a truth all it's own, there's always something worse waiting beneath the paving stones) but still- that one you can't help but recall.

Thoughts catch, something clicks and your eyes flick sideways; evaluating the ghost-blooded again. Your expression neutral. "Ah," you say, "I see. You too then."

"Oh not like you, not all the way from what our -well my- king said. But still: one can't help but get thirsty in such conditions," they reply, lazy and idle. If they're self-conscious they don't show it but, really, why would they be? Or, you suppose, should they be?


It's not like you can judge.

"Your name is Renartus," you ask, it's only half a question. "Is that it?"

"Renartus of Xauma," they say, "It's a good as any and, honestly, who can even remember their family name? It suits me well, for what I am and what I do."

"And what is it you do?"

Their grin works its way a little wider, baring those pretty, pointed pearly whites. Gold irised gaze trailing over you slowly, indulgently. "Technically the title is 'primus lictor', but really it's a little of everything. I write letters, I stand behind our great and gaudy king and look very official, I tend the gardens when I can and play host to strangers who come at strange hours. I also," they say, tongue tracing a slow circuit of their chops, "Ah, 'clean up certain messes'? I think that's the euphemism I'm supposed to use."

The shadow at their feet ripples, silently heaving, crashing and spreading; oil on the surface of the ocean, tree boughs caught in an invisible gale.

"Oh don't worry," they laugh, waving the look you give them off, "they're almost always Lookshyan. By definition they deserve it. But! Fair's fair isn't it? I have a question for you, if only because I'm involved in all the party planning and oh aren't you a thing to have dropped on my plate at the last minute."

You tilt your head, motion for them to go on.

"Dawn's in a few hours and there's a truly wonderful feast and festival they hold here for Calibration's end called the Elagabaline Rite. I'm sure the Listeners preach such exciting things about it back home but, alas, if there's an orgy tomorrow nobody invited me either; and as far as the bestiality goes the only way I know of to get an army out of rampant dogfuckery is to have a cousin in the Archontic Conclave but!-" they say as they clap their hands, pressing the palms together, making you start a little (just a little) "You! This is your big debut for the people of Xauma. And even if there's even odds you're descended from a sun-eating demon-king public perception really does count for a lot. So where do you want me to put you?"

You slowly blink, realization coming at a snail's crawl.

Ah.

Ah...

[ ] You want them to put you at Nerius's side, or close to it. He can present you, unveil you, however he likes, you're sure he's got the silver -hah- tongue for it. But they'll see you then, won't they? They'll all see you as you are. For what you are. You don't know if you're ready for that, not by the light of day.
[ ] You want to stay at a remove. A step behind, maybe two, maybe more. There'll be rumors you...think, people will talk (won't they?) but you'll still be mysterious. A mostly-unknown. You'll still have some control over how you're seen, and some comfortable distance between you and the greedy eyes.