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 Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:30 pm
The night air was crisp. The kind of crisp where your breath seems to hover around you if you stand still; making a kind of aura about your personage that seemed almost holy.
Finding this rather ironic, Ciro had snorted at it before deciding it was time to stop hiding; any appointments he may have had that day had long since faded away with the sun. The night air was refreshing, in the type of way that makes kids want to be mischievous. These urges felt no need to leave Ciro alone, even despite his maturity.
But what was there to do? He wondered as he kicked a can across the street only to find it clang against a trash can; the noise was not something easy to miss, and rather a dangerous mistake for the young godling to make. Even despite it being night, if someone was to come to the source of the sound to find a crazy boy with horns, it did not spell good results. Rather than draw more attention to himself by running, however, he simply jammed his hands into his pockets and started on a brisk walk. Once he had gotten somewhere out of range he’d find something new to occupy his shrinking attention span.
Maybe he’d find some old bag ladies to talk to or something.
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:44 pm
It was cold, crisp nights like these when Anubis missed the Nile Delta. Even with a light jacket wrapped around his muscular frame he felt the chill right down to his core. He had taken this miserable human form in this pitiful dying city in order that others could play games with the future.
Anubis had never liked playing games. He'd always been more of a judge. So he had thought that Shamash dropping in to his Uppers apartment (rented for an obscenely high amount of money from an obscenely rich building owner) was going to be a pleasant visit. He'd been wrong, of course. The elder god had looked like he was in a hurry and said something about Persy and that Anubis should locate a boy with horns like Shamash's before dropping a pounded gold arm cuff into the Jackal God's hands and hurrying out.
After spending an afternoon searching, he felt he was closing in. He had a sense for this sort of thing. The boy was close.
A can clattered against a trash can, and Anubis's long Jackal ears pricked towards the sound. There was a child standing on the other side of the street, he observed, his features obscured by the street lamp behind him, but he did appear to have horns.
This had to be the kid, thought Anubis, moving closer.
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:34 pm
s**t. s**t s**t s**t. Someone had heard him. Someone was coming. He didn’t have a hood. s**t. Someone was going to see him. Thoughts poured into his brain like water down a drain until his brain got a huge dose of epinephrine. Thank god for his adrenal glands, he quickly and foolishly though to himself as he prepared for the oncoming rendezvous.
In a flight or fight situation, Ciro would always choose fight. Always. Even if the odds were horribly against him, it was his sworn will that drove him on to scrape on like a wounded beast regardless of what wounds he may suffer.
That was, until he caught a glimpse of his visitor; a sharp pain shot through his mind, causing him to wince slightly, but make an effort not to show it. Somewhere in what he assumed was his conscious, he felt he ought not to attack this man.
What the hell!? Since when did his conscience tell him not to attack him!? He must be suddenly going insane...
Oh, wait. He was already insane. Maybe his sanity was suddenly returning?
Wait wait, when a stranger is walking up to you at night, that is not the time to question your sanity regarding if you should stab that man or not. That is the time to prepare for whatever squirmish would ensue and not go into philosophical debates with your own mind.
Right, he had to focus. His hand slowly retraced into his over sized sleeve, feeling around to make sure his pocketknife would be well in toe for any unexpected needs.
“Can I help you?”
His words were biting, almost dripping in sarcasm and disrespect. While he generally tolerated the people he met at night, he was always sure to be weary before getting too relaxed around them.
This was the case where he was fairly certain he ought to be on guard. No one looking so… well, he didn’t really have a word for it. Refined? No. That wasn’t it. Regal? Close, but that wasn’t it either.
s**t! Why was his mind wandering as if somehow he knew this man? He was a stranger, a stranger, not someone to be so carefree around.
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:43 pm
Anubis raised an eyebrow, not used be being sassed, but decided to brush it off. "Ciro?" he asked, calling the boy's name uncertainly to mind. He didn't show the uncertainty, of course, just felt it, but still, it seemed strange, saying the c as an s like that.
He dipped a clawed hand into his pocket and fished out the arm cuff.
"Someone who has been waiting for you a very long time asked me to give you this."
Did he just say that? Anubis flinched a little. Whoever had designed Game protocol was an idiot. He decided he'd find a way to personalize the worlds later and held the piece of jewlery out towards the boy, waiting for him to take it, waiting for Shamash to establish the connection. He'd been warned it could get messy from here, depending on if the boy fought back.
Anubis was determined not to mess up. This was, after all, his job lately.
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:51 pm
Even despite being more than a little concerned over this stranger knowing his name, Ciro tilted back his head and looked down his nose at the piece of jewelry. It seemed to glitter in the streetlights, almost begging to be given a proper home. It seemed simple enough. The thing was probably worth a ton, anyway. He could sell it later and get something useful like a new videogame.
“And how,” his voice was still showing arrogance and contempt despite his growing worry about who this man was. A façade seemed the safest way to escape this completely unharmed. Scare him more than he can scare you. “Do I know that this is safe?”
“It could be stolen.” That didn’t matter, he’d be selling it anyway,
“It could be covered in poison.” That didn’t seem to matter either; death was not a foe to the godling,
“Or it could be a trap to kidnap me.” That too was something Ciro was more than confident he could handle. He was armed; this man did not appear to be so.
“So give me a reason to trust you, and then we’ll talk about this ‘someone who has been waiting’.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:09 pm
"For one thing," replied Anubis, getting annoyed with the boy's attitude, "I know who marked you with those magnificent horns of yours."
He crouched down to Ciro's level, looking him in the eye. He was sure that would do the trick. After all, Anubis was rather fond of his eyes. They were emerald green and lined in thick kohl stripes, like some old tomb painting, and it was his personal opinion that they were rather easy to trust.
"And I know why. And if you take this, you'll know, too."
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:50 pm
His eyes were nearly slits when he heard his horns labeled as “magnificent”. They were nothing close to being admirable. Grotesque, monstrous, gothic, ludicrous, outlandish… He had many names for his horns, and ‘magnificent’ certainly wasn’t one of them.
But to know who had branded him with such horrible growths… To know who had chose to make his life a living hell. To finally have the name of the demon that made him the way he was: It was too perfect.
If his childhood teacher was right… He’d be soon meeting the devil himself. In any case… This was certainly an opportunity he would not regret taking.
“I’ll take you up on that offer…. But if you’re wrong…”
Well, Ciro didn’t even know what would happen. Right now, he didn’t care. He just wanted to know just what had made him the freak of nature that he was.
And so he took his chance. His hand made contact just instantaneously with the shimmering gold before the boy’s normally fierce eyes lost their bite. His entire body went limp, crumpling to a heap onto the cold concrete. Almost like a sleeping child holding onto a treasured toy, Ciro was clinging to the armband as if worried someone would take it from him.
What greeted him was very different from the cold artificial light of the street. It was warm, inviting. The kind of thing that convinced the boy that he really had died. With a scoff he looked about in the yellow smoke, wondering why the hell death was so boring.
That was, until the smoke cleared enough for him to see something rising ahead… It was a… pyramid? No. Pyramids had smooth sides. This was stepped, as if a four sided staircase leading up to something. Well… Maybe the smoke would clear in the less dense air up higher… Ciro would just need to climb; and anything had to be better than just masses of warm smoke.
It took quite a bit of effort to get to the top. Effort that seemed to take hours, if not days of climbing. Yet somehow, he never seemed to tire. He would get bored, yes, extraordinarily bored, but somehow he could still find the energy to take one more step and keep going.
And when he reached the top, a smaller ziggurat thrown similar to the one they now stood on.
The man on the thrown was huge. A head taller than Ciro when he was sitting, if he would have stood up, the boy would be lost under the masses of flowing clothe draped over this god’s left shoulder. The man himself was radiant: a horned headdress in many tiers, beams of sun reaching to his form, and a rod and ring of authority. Clearly, he must be the head honcho.
“Hammurabi… Or rather, a descendant of the great king…”
The man’s voice seemed to be a loud boom and yet a familiar whisper in the boy’s ear. It was as if he had known this giant for his entire life, as if they were as close as two people could possibly be….
“I invite you to the honor of being my servant… You, who can carry the will of the gods. You, who can see all and punish any. You, who have the power of light behind you.”
“Go, my servitor, and bring forth redemption on those fools who wish to sin and sully my name! It is your duty, nay, your desire to bring forth my redemption and cast death upon those who resist my might!”
And with the boom of the last words, Ciro felt the light and warmth rapidly melt away into a dark and freezing wold. Despair seemed to wash all over his body, shame stinging his face and eyes, disgust biting at his throat as he tried to protest to the demands of the giant man…
When he finally gathered the courage to acknowledge that his warm world was gone, he realized that he was not in hell. No, he was back on the street, dazed on the cold cement with an even colder mass of metal in his hands… And, with his last effort, he realized that now on top of his apparently multiple personality disorder…. He was having hallucinations, too. He really must be insane.
And with that horrible realization, the lapping of sleep on his weary mind took advantage and washed over the boy, causing him to faint once more onto the unforgiving streets of the city.
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Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 3:34 am
When the boy fell, Anubis had gone into a protective crouch beside him. He'd thought that maybe something like this would happen. Ciro's mind would be far away now, clearly. It mad sense now, that Shamash's hasty departure was to set up his end of the contact, like rushing home to wait for a phone call.
And when the boy fainted a second time, not into a vision, but into sleep, Anubis had no other choice but to pick him up and begin the trip back to his expensive apartment, no matter how odd that would seem when Ciro woke up. Shamash wouldn't forgive him if anything happened to the boy now.
It was a long walk home. Once Anubis finally got back to his unit and struggled with his key, he entered the lavish main room and set Ciro down on the couch. No doubt, the boy was cold, he thought, and set a fire in the hearth.
And then, nothing better to do, he sat and waiting for him to wake up again.
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Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:37 pm
It took several minutes of defrosting before consciousness finally returned to the Godling. He was more than certain that he must be in yet another hallucination; there was no way that such a lush place would house such a horrible creature as himself.
Hell, though, hallucinations that were rich were okay by him. He needed to learn to stop complaining and just go with it.
Only when he spotted the man from before he passed out did Ciro realize that he was actually back in reality. His mind was far from relaxed now, though he made no outward signs of being afraid.
“So… uhm..”
Alright, maybe a few signs.
“What just happened?”
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Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:06 pm
"You fell asleep," replied Anubis calmly. He knew he'd made Shamash happy, looking after the boy, even briefly. "I don't want you to tell me what you saw, or what He said to you. I trust you met Shamash?"
He sat back in his chair and propped up his feet. "You're part of The Game now, and you'd better hope that you never have to see me again, because if you do, it will mean you've lost. There are others like you, others who are touched by the gods of old. Some of them will be your allies, and some of them will be your enemies. You want to prove you are the best, and to bring glory to Shamash, because if you win, the world is yours for the taking."
He sighed, his jackal ears drooping. "And if you lose, who can say what will happen to you."
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Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:52 pm
“Mine for the taking…. Or his?”
Ciro was calmly and seriously staring at the strange man, his mind wandering over the words he had just heard. He was called a servant, a slave; why would the world be his if he was so low on the chain? In reality… He was going to be a pawn, a pawn so that that giant man, apparently called Shamash, could have his way.
“I really see no real perks of fighting for a world that won’t truly be mine. This seems far too bothersome… Is there any way I can just say ‘No, but thanks anyway’ and get out of the whole situation? Because really, if I have to deal with the pompous grandeur I just saw on a regular basis… I sincerely trust that I would kill myself.”
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Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 7:35 pm
Anubis shook his head. "You can't do that anymore. I'm the referee for the Game. Only I can decide when players are out for good. So, you killing yourself would do you no good, because you would only return immediately."
Perhaps he should have given the boy more of a chance to know what he was getting into, but, then again...
"You were marked from birth for this purpose. It's your destiny. There is no other point for you on this earth than to play the Game and fight for glory."
"Shamash and I are old friends," he added. "I'm sure you'll come to like him with time."
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:25 pm
Ciro tilted up his head, trying to see if maybe there was some flaw to his story… Some sort of slip up that would unravel it all…. Well, not verbally at least… but the idea of actually not being able to die…. That seemed more than a little ridiculous. The question was, of course, what means he was willing to go through to prove it wrong. Clearly it was fallacy; there was no way he could evade death.
“Now, let me get this strait. I’ve been ostracized my entire life, tormented, beat, harassed, molested, and utterly tortured. I’ve no purpose to live, nothing to gain from life nor give to it, and I’m pretty much worthless if I don’t play a game that I won’t even get rewarded for. I cannot refuse, and I cannot even escape to death in order to get out of it. “
His eyes closed as he mulled over all of this information.
“And yet even despite all of this, I’m supposed to come to like it in time? What kind of bull is that?!”
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:38 pm
"Technically, it's not any sort of bull. I'm a jackal," smiled Anubis. After taking a second to laugh at his own joke, he continued. "Have you ever heard of Abraham? Muhammad? Jesus? Last time we played the game, it took much longer. They worked for the last one of Us who won, and they were all handsomely rewarded for it. So, if you win, you will be rewarded, but, if you lose, you may suffer a fate worse than death."
"No one will dare beat you ever again if you win. Instead, they'll be bowing to you. You will be as a god on earth."
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Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:13 am
“Wasn’t it the disciples of Abraham, Muhammad, and Jesus that caused this world to be so… well, quite frankly, screwed? “
He was trying to make a point: The world was screwed up and the games would do nothing but screw it up further the moment they got the chance. Having been jolted from one viewpoint to the next, it was easy for Ciro to realize that religion did nothing more than simply mess things up; and a God’s creation of the universe was generally seen as quite a mistake.
“And anyway… What is there to reign over? Look around you; nothing here is worth it. There’s no utopia, no equality, no freedom. There is no justice! Everyone is a nihilist and no one stops to think about what repercussions their actions may have on others. Who would want to reign over people like that?”
But then an idea flashed into his mind; one that had been seeded their since his birth and marking from Shamash.
“Do I have to be entirely moral and godlike…? Or could I purge the world of the idiots and create my own--Our own—Utopia?”
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