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randomwriteronline · 3 months ago

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His bad leg hurt like hell. Perditus clenched his teeth hard enough for his hairs to begin standing on their ends as he pulled himself out of the wreckage of his Thornatus.

Such a mighty vehicle, reduced to a pile of scraps.

Ain't that the way things go.

He looked down: like some sort of badly cut bread, chunks of fake meat parted to reveal that blasted prosthetic bone he was bound to until his flesh would at last be rotting off of him, scratched and bent and still half melted in places - a cheeky last parting gift from Death after he'd paid the rest of his life to evade it.

The ground beneath him was hard, and rocky, and uncomfortable to crawl upon on all fours. He had no other choice, so the stone kept digging into the heels of his palms and he kept biting back groans.

Then he came.

He made no light, no sound, no nothing, but he had a wire pinned to Perditus's neck, a mental link that grew slack or taut like a puppet's string: and he felt it pull suddenly, and a splendid smile came to into his thoughts before he even turned to see it.

Velika stood. He was tall, like this, unburdened by the broken body he'd forcibly fit himself within for centuries. His back was straight, his hair was long; his eyes had a shine to them, almost mischievous, almost genial, a bright intelligence that made his gaze so innocent, as though he could not hurt even the most insignificant of ants.

Velika stood, like he'd stood before him on that horrible day, identical in every way down to the very clothes he wore, down to his very expression: he stood like'd stood back then, looking every bit divine.

Numb uncaring nihilism squirmed within Perditus.

It fought, it thrashed, it rebelled, it clawed and gnawed and punched and kicked, but its adversary was too great: his last shield was torn apart from within, its guts spilled across oval pupils.

"NO!"

Velika stood, smile dropped.

"NO!" Perditus barked again, scrambling away, pain suddenly an afterthought in the wake of animalistic fear: "NO! NO! NO!"

Velika stood, with eyes wide and still from the surprise.

"NO! NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!"

His hand searched for purchase. It found only a sharp descent which teared into it, ripping its wet flesh apart, and then a long void.

Velika stood frozen and unblinking as the frightened eyes capsized, disappeared from sight, when the body was dragged down the ravine by gravity as the Glatorian still screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and then did not scream anymore.

Perditus laid at the bottom of the cliff, curled up in a strange and ugly pose, at the end of the long intermittent trail of his blood.

He gazed into the rock with the same impossible terror.

Velika stood, staring at his bent neck from so high above him with only a blank expression. Then he simply left, as suddenly as he'd come: with no light, no sound, no nothing.

Gelu walked in: "Perditus is dead," he said gravely.

No reply came.

Then softly, very softly, Atakus spoke.

He said something, something indeed, but nobody understood it: his voice was too low, his breaths were too loud. He grasped his chest as he stumbled right into the wall - grasped at his frantically beating heart threatening to break his ribcage and rupture his lungs.

He walked out of the walls that had been his prison unhindered as no Agori nor Glatorian made any move to stop him. The Toa turned to look at them, confused by their paralysis, unsure what to do.

The Potori's escape was not a long one: his trembling limbs gave in as he fell on the sands, mere bio away from where he'd started.

A sound came out of his mouth.

And it rose, and it rose, and it rose, until it became a piercing wail.

From inside the small building, the others watched him. They watched him tear his armor off to beat his chest like a fury; they watched him grab at his wool and pull, pull, pull until it was torn off of him; they watched him fold in on himself, howling like a fox doomed to die in a forgotten rusted trap, as he he slammed his head into the ground over and over.

Raanu shot out an arm to block the Toa trying to reach the screaming thing: "Leave him," he murmured. "He'll be done soon."

"He's hurting himself," the artificial being replied, still puzzled, incapable of understanding, brilliant crystal eyes traveling between the elder and the sorry spectacle so close and yet so far from them, "He's hitting himself - what is happening? What is he doing?"

"He's mourning."

Atakus wailed.

He spoke his mother tongue, his old stone dialect, calling helplessly for many things at once - a mother, a brother, a cousin, a lover, a friend, a healer, a patron, a slave, a warrior, a saint... What could he do? What could he do? There was no wail for a gambler, no wail for a beggar. No wail for someone he could not define, and so his grief-stricken mind cobbled together everything, everything, every form and code he could remember.

A voice reached him eventually, after his chest was battered with bruises and his nails had half shaven his head: the words entered his ears and made a nest within, forgotten immediately - except for one.

He turned his head with wrathful crazed eyes and teeth bared: "FRIEND!" he repeated spitefully: "We were no friends!"

He stood fulminously once more with his dagger in hand, unable and unwilling to recognize who he was talking to, unfocused vision incapable of distinguishing materials or colors or armor designs from one another from within the spiraling throes of his madness.

"If we'd met in the War he would have blown my head open!" he shrieked. "He would have run me over until my bones were fine mist, and I would have done the same to him!"

Just as quickly as his rage had come, it submitted to invincible pain: Atakus shivered harshly, losing his grip on his weapon and twisting his face into a horrible grimace, and clutched again his chest with a horrid strangled cry.

"Oh Perditus, oh Perditus..." he sobbed softly between heaving breaths. He panted as he tried desperately to suck in as much air as he could while sinking to his knees; his teeth gnashed together once more, with his horizontal pupils turned upwards towards his spooked interlocutor lit by a frightening fire and his voice pitched high into a garbled growl: "You have no idea what it means...! To be a debtor for life...! To have each new breathing second be an inescapable fee...! To have every moment of your life stolen from your hands, because that is how you paid your survival...!"

A groan left him, foam building in his mouth, trickling from his lips. He sunk blunt nails into his chest before slamming his fists into the hole his faulty heart called home until it adhered to the rhythm of his furious beating, until this body that stifled him like a too warm blanket followed his orders and kept functioning without needing the appearance that blasted loaner of a god, without forcing him to renew that contract he'd signed so young and foolish and close to an anguishing death.

"You don't understand!" he wailed, "You will never understand!"

Something struck him. Something rattled along the drumming of his infernal organ and sparked a wrong connection in his nerves, setting them on fire, devouring part of his brain.

Uncomprehending eyes watched him grab at the air behind his nape with crazed purpose, bringing it to his mouth where his dull straight teeth bit down on it as though it were a wire: he thrashed around it, pulling with his hands and jerking his head back repeatedly, violently, snarling like a rabid beast and desperately trying to cut something that wasn't there.

"BESTIAL THING!" he growled and spat and hissed, "BLASTED GREEDY BASTARD! HORRIBLE, DIGUSTING, DAMNED--"

With a horrid shriek he jolted again: his jaw snapped open, his fists parted with a sudden motion, and he stumbled back panting as if he'd just lifted the sky back into place.

"I DEFY YOU!" he howled into the nothingness. "I DESERT YOU!"

He laughed, horrid and mirthless, for only a moment.

Then he crumbled upon himself, clutching his chest again with both hands, whimpering in anguish.

"Perditus, Perditus, oh, Perditus..." they heard him sob under his breath like a prayer when they approached him, to bring him back in so that his sputtering heart could rest: "Oh Perditus, giatí me áphēses, giatí me áphēses? Ḗmastan oi mónoi pou mporoúsame na kataláboume, oi mónoi… Oh, Perditus, giatí me áphēses, giatí me áphēses móno se autón ton tromaktikó kósmo?"

"Perditus has died to evade me," Velika said with a blank expression.

Pohatu felt his heart stop for a moment.

"Do you think he's made a good choice?"

"What?"

"Do you think he's made a good choice?"

He stared into the Great Being's unmoving eyes.

"What sort of question is that?" he asked, appalled.

"Do you think he's made a good choice?"

"He's dead," the once Toa ignored him. He held his disgustingly soft face in his hands, still shocked. He would not pretend he'd liked the man for what little he'd known of him, not after his trap had almost gotten Kiina and Kopaka injured and was the reason he'd accepted to be stuck amongst these infuriating gods to keep them from trying to kill his siblings and friends; but he had still been a sapient living being like the rest of them, and the way his end was spoken of made his flesh seize within him until his mouth tasted nauseous and his vision was swimming. "He's dead - Mata Nui... What happened to him?"

"He's died to evade me." Velika repeated once more, empty tone unchanged. "Do you think he's made a good choice?"

Patience depleted, Pohatu snapped: "What does that even mean?"

"Would you consider death a viable path to escape your situation?"

Their brown eyes mirrored each other as they both stared.

"How are you this crosswired when you have no wires to cross?" the once Toa asked back.

Velika's mouth opened: "Ah ah," he said without intention. The sound fell from his parted lips like change from a broken vending machine. "Would you consider death a viable path to escape your situation?"

He stood across him, blocking the door completely with his silhouette: his back was straight, his head held still.

Pohatu bolted further away from him, suddenly terribly frightened, hitting his spine hard against the wall: "What is wrong with you!" he cried out.

Velika remained perfectly still, a pillar of salt unmoved by any and all passions: "Would you consider death a viable-"

His hand startled.

The words died on Velika's tongue, and he widened his eyes. He looked down to his palm: his ring finger stood out, dislocated, as if it had been yanked or bent with great force.

A strange hissed whine left him.

His eyes (not as blank as before, alight with pain and something close to fear) settled back on the Toa with a snapping movement as he hurriedly held his injured appendix in its twin: "You'll answer later." he decided for him.

His clothes rustled like leaves caught in a temperamental wind as he walked away at a quick pace, relieving the doorframe of his terrifying presence - abandoning only the vague shape of his own afterimage there, like a large spot of darkened static lingering in the vision of one who has looked into the sun too long.

Pohatu waited, and waited, until the sound of his steps disappeared.

"There's something wrong with him," he murmured.

"I noticed," Takanuva tried to joke from his hiding spot as his armor slowly reflected the light in the room in a way that colored it white and gold once more.

But his older brother did not laugh, gazing past the door, still fearing the return of that unnatural empty voice, those unnatural empty eyes: "I mean it," he whispered, dead serious, thinking of Bohrok: "There's something wrong with him."

shout-out to The End Of Hope by @bread-into-toast, which grabbed me by the fucking throat this evening and is the sole reason any of this got written. wonderful zine. delightfully unsettling. go read it.

#bionicle #perditus #velika #atakus #pohatu #random writing #car accident tw #death tw #blood tw #injury tw #suicide mention #part of my fukingggg organic'd au. yuppi. ahrygh #can mostly be read without checking out the rest of it tbh so dont worry. theres like a mention of pohatu being made of flesh but thats it #(vomits various ideas n hcs all at once) there they go #the stone dialect is conveyed by greek bc ive had bara magna glatorian use latin as their dialect but the skrall are from elsewhere #the translation of what atakus says is more or less this:#why did you leave me? why did you leave me? we were the only ones who could have understood; the only ones...#why did you leave me; why did you leave me alone in this terrible world?

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