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I'LL ORGANIZE AND CODE THIS LATER

IM A LAZI d**k THAT WILL CODE THIS PRETTAY LATER. MORE ELOQUENT TOO.

uhhh elly goes kill some chickuns. and meets lulu. and verbally harasses ppl yeee!!!

what a spoiled brat elly is

MANG I SHOULD CODE THESE PRETTI EH I'LL DO IT LATER.

PERSONAL CHALLENGE WITH KICK ADDED AT THE END! still editing but for the most part doneish


Employment kept him busy during the day hours. With every tedious task, and every newfound challenge addressed to him from Mr. Darling, Elly became more and more distanced from consciousness, and thus pain. This was good, he supposed dully inbetween the categorization of books, and the tending towards stock and other such nonsense. It was good that he had money now and his heart didn’t hurt as much. The pain was still there, yes, and it came out if he slipped just an iota. But he became even better at composing himself and that indifferent maintenance acted as a sort of cold and tasteless anesthetic.

When the day waned, and the sun became but an orange sliver in the distance, it was alcohol's turn to keep Elly's mind at bay. By about 8, the man would have used half his day's earnings on whiskey and gin, drunk himself up to the very brink of dead, and in a hot, and blurry haze stumbled down the streets and eventually back somehow to his ghostship of a home. In the threshold, he would take his time and climb up all those stairs (or maybe not, it depended on how many drinks he had managed to down), and then he would find Edwin, and then he would curl up with the wooden doll under all his sheets and pass out without even changing.

And then this would repeat. He had mechanized the system, and Elly expected that things would be exactly this way for until he died alone of old age, or of alcohol poisoning and surrounded by a crowd of pub strangers. He banked on the latter, really. He always really liked the sound of people talking (though not to him).

It was presently nine twenty-two on the 15th as the man settled into bed, and the buzz had warmed his cheeks and ears just so. But, then there was something unfamiliar he sensed—a crick in the mechanization. He got up, and looked left, met the stuffed bear. He shrugged and then he looked right. Nothing, save for the same clutter, same mess. And then he looked straight ahead and into a shadow at his open window and, there it was. The thing was bird shaped, and blacker than even the overcast night behind it. Elly scowled and made to find something throw at it (he hated animals), but before he could it flew forward, and landed squarely atop his stuffed bear. The avian lowered its head offered to him a parchment, and though he wasn’t sure why, he dropped his hands, then reached for it.

“Grimm...” By reflex he pulled back, those words akin to charcoal on his bare fingers. The piece fell uselessly on the floor. “What... The ********, who is doing this? What’s going on—“

"Ellison West,”

He stopped.

““How pitiful. You must be such a miserable human being; not a wife to love nor a child to take her place as the object of your affections. Completely alone you are, with nothing but an empty husk to keep you company. Would you like us to take it from you? Just say the word and we will remove it from your sight.

Though, unless you do as we say, that will happen regardless. The only difference is whether you meet your wife in death sooner rather than later."

Before he could even register the message, he felt a thump in his chest. It was as if his heart understood before his brain... and, it understood with the utmost clarity.

He shook, and clenched his fists, the nails forming small red crescents into his palms. He laxed, then clenched again in confusion, nearly shouted “Wait!” before he realized embarrassedly that he would’ve called out into the empty night.

How did you know?

-------

Elly wasn’t sure when he had fallen asleep, so when he felt the sunlight hit his eyelids, he awakened in a jolt of spasmed limbs. He assumed at first that it had all been a dream, and that someone had mayhap slip something into his drink. But, just as he took a breath to calm his nerves, he found his eyes had trailed downward, and on the ground atop a porcelain piglet he saw a delicate pile of black ribbon.

A cadence sounded in his ear.

He reached down, and very slowly, very gingerly took the silky mess into his hands, and let it tangle into his palms, registered its very existence. When he was done, and the stuff had frayed into string, he shook, and held his chest, the scar reopened and driven in salt water. Everything is so much vivid today he thought, attempting, but failing to stop his face from contorting all over again,

Ugh

UPDATE 2: (THE SAME DAY;; FOR THE KICK;; WILL EDIT, BUT FOR THE MOST PART DONE)

Elly wearily stepped outside, and found to his surprise that he was, for the most part alone on these gravel-covered streets. He searched for his shadow in the sand and turned northward, just as Avery once taught him how, and calculated the hour. It was between 4 and 5 in the morning, he deduced. Though he had slept little and it was probably ungodly o’clock, the man wasn’t at all tired. The sun was still low in the pinkish sky, and he almost appreciated the hue through the panicky, claustrophobic fluttering in his gut.

The reclamation of misery had made his mind alert he realized. He paced faster, not knowing exactly what to do now that he could think all over again, and feel. No pubs were open at this hour, work didn’t start for another five or four hours. He was alone and without any more of that precious aforementioned anesthetic, forced to fully consider the message from last night.

This made him terribly unhappy.

“An empty husk...” he muttered pulling his coat closed. “Edwin?” Bloody hell I’d give that stupid thing up.

There was a rustle in the boxus bush nearby, that Elly barely noticed.

---

He ended up at the park, which was but three blocks away from work. The place smelled of wet grass and hay, of ghosts of horses and horse dung and people. It wasn’t a very good park, Elly had told Avery once. There weren’t enough clean grass patches to sit and picnic in, and metal benches were far inferior to wooden ones. Avery agreed of course. His hand flexed a little at his side uncomfortably knowing that here weight wasn’t there.

He shook that hand, as if cleansing it of something, then through his hair, and walked...

One round took approximately 20 minutes. Two round. Six rounds. With each round he made, Elly noticed there were some odd cawing sounds echoing about him. Of course, he expected that there would be birds, but not in this growing multitude and colour—or lack thereof. Rather than the regular pheasants and pigeons, the whole place now seemed to be littered in inky black feathers and beaks. It was as if it was his doing that they got here.

Perhaps it was.

He paced after a crow and made to grab at it, but just as he closed in, it dropped a parchment and flittered away. The paper disintegrated into ribbon much like the one from last night... Though, no words accompanied. Elly tried for another crow, and the same exact thing transpired.

He frowned after the next crow, and wondered what this could’ve possibly meant. He wasn’t by all means scared—that was far too unmasculine. Elly didn’t do fear. What he did, however, was incensed curiosity and fascination. He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.

He realized though looking once more for his shadow that it was nearly nine. Though he had waken far too early, he had managed to once again be quite late.

( He wanted answers now, but would have to figure things out after work.)

Husk

Elly gets taken up by the imperial guard WAO.

Her

And then brain damage happens.

ELLIES HUFFS AND GOES ******** YOU GUYS I AM HOMEBOUND.

And then he tries to throw himself into a river yes

also mission request fill PART. ONE OF THREE PLANNED. (i might go over, but three for now)

IMPERIAL GUARD PROMPT:

• He found the letter wedged in the space formed by the front door and the ground and marked it with his fingers. The envelope was plain and holding his candle close, he saw it was a pretty creme-white-- stationary much too high in quality to be bought at any store or marketplace. As such, Ellison broke the red wax seal carefully, minding the way it smeared and stuck at the paper.
  
  He would become a soldier, but he was her boy, and a collector of everything nice and good at heart.
  
  ----
  
  At the moment, Elly wore his nightshirt which was the same material as his makeshift blanket, soft and brown, and made of beat flaxen and cotton. He made his way through the ruined and rotted wood floor board ground and up the flights of stairs, settled the candle at the chair next to the mattress, and tucked away the envelope and his blanket then pulled forth the contents.
  
  All the while, the orb of yellow-orange ember painted his face with a menacing mask of light and shadow, and in the background a new, smaller deer head stared with glowing dead eyes. A recently stolen cuckoo’s clock chirruped in-time with the beat of his heart and the passing seconds.
  
  "Earlier this year," the curled writing told him, "The Panymese Press suffered a hard blow for including slander about the Emperor in their writings"
  
  'Politics' Elly snorted, readjusting his a** on the mattress. Edwin bounced from off to the side, in pseudo-agreement.
  
  His narrowed his eyes, catching every odd word "Press", "ally", "Council", sometimes wondering why these political-types so often endeavored in verbose pleasantries. It simply meant less free paper for him to store. In other words, Wasteful. He also held the handwriting in itself with contempt for being too big here, too little there (Elly had perfect handwriting...), and puzzled over whether certain letters were "a's or u's", "e's or l's" Until, at last he finally came upon his name ("Mr. West") and paused.
  
  "You endeavor to join our ranks, here is where you can prove yourself. Currently, you are still among the peasantry. Yours is a voice some of them could come to trust, unaffiliated with the Council, The Press, or -- officially -- the Imperial Guard. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated in this matter. In particular, within Gadu, there have been violent pocket riots that have risen and fallen sporadically. It is our request that you attempt to end these riots using whatever means necessary, though it is our hope that they can be ended non-violently. Good luck, Mr. West. You'll be needing it."
  
  Elly found himself angrier than he wanted and muttering a number of curses and damnations; 'I'm not a peasant' 'Non-violently? Bloody...' 'Political scum' and '******** this sorry earth' before calming himself, and allowing the flush in his cheeks to dissipate beneath the skin. Then Elly stood, though his posture remained a little slouched, as if an invisible weighted backpack has been placed on his shoulders. The mattress groaned in relief.
  
  ----
  Before he had been fired from Mr. Darling's shop, Mr. West had taken with him a religious book that had taken the guise of a leather-bound adventurer's story (of course, it'd be in his collection, Elly thought with an eye roll; he should've known). Just a year ago, this Mr. West might have left it at a park bench, or in the fireplace or up Mr. Darling's...
  
  But, that was a foreign Mr. West now-- one who had known love and therefore did not need to read. The grey and dark abyss had always been filled by her and sometimes even overflowing with her and now that she was gone-- for forever-- some nights had become numbingly lonely.
  
  Bit by bit, he read the story.
  
  It began simply.
  
  There was a boy and his name was Isa.
  
  He was a small boy who lived fruitlessly and without Faith. He stood at the middle point of his class neither the best nor the worst of his peers. He ran slowly and cried easily. But, while he lived as one who had been condemned to limbo-- without pain nor pleasure; sorrow nor happiness-- in his dreams he eventually came to lead armies. When he slept, Isa learned to accept His name into his Heart and brandishing a golden sword, vanquished Nightmarish demons headed by the General Adversary himself.
  
  An unimpressive shell, masking valour and a head for justice. Preachy, Elly thought. And horrifically so. Still, with the turn of each page a thought wormed its way into his too-thick skull: the inkling of a possibility. It was fact that Avery was in heaven now. Grandfather Death had carted her to a higher plane because she was the perfect.
  
  Moving on his own merits, however, things suddenly seemed grim. He stole, he drank, and he swore.
  
  He thought himself a good person really but would this goodness be any match for Avery's and Isa's? What if, when his time came, he would be pulled to the side of the Adversary whilst his Avery stood with the angels opposite stage?
  
  As stupid as this sounded, he would later suppose the story in conjunction with that abyss had gotten the best of him. As a companion, the story had left because it ended. He hadn’t any other books, he had been fired. What else could he do, but become the likeness of a strong and pure warrior just like Isa?
  ---
  
  Elly knelt as if to say a prayer and unearthed a small tin and removed from it a lower quality paper scrap, a quill pen, and some ink. On this scrap he began a plan and a speech.
  
  “To the rioters of Gadu...”