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something both dead and not
Word Count: 537
Backdated to September 13th.

How strange the wonders cats preserve with their own misunderstood technology. How human they are about opening those mysteries. The youma captain watched the heap of crystal and vermeil in his palm, gathered up like so many limbs of an octopus, waiting for its turn to meet a chest after a thousand years. But more was amiss about this fixed object than its routine fittings by felines — enveloped in years of weather, tear and tarnish was a history so steeped and convoluted that the captain could not but want for it.

The gilt jewelry, now completed, sported several Rift crystals fastened by his own hand and others'. It hummed with a vociferous energy, teething for a chance to be used, nearly sucking the memories from his own palm. This, he knew, was their magic — all sharp edges and bones and teeth and claw and flame. It was the same energy brimming within him, just beyond the pipes in his back — a feral magic, barely changed by the haunts of reason. And it was with that unsteady hand, that near loss of control, that he would explore this strange new device and all the instructions heralded in the thousand years prior.

As he donned it, he wondered: a thousand years. Was it really so long of a stint? Could he fathom it? Could this arrangement of brass and gem peel away so many years of history as to expose these old souls? These other selves? And could he use it to annihilate the man that he once was? Did he want to shatter those old thoughts or become them? Would he follow the prince's hand?

Faustite would waste little time on such thoughts. Schörl, Tourmaline, Enya, Lace, Reven, and even Tiberius each contributed time and thought to resurrecting this item from long-dead memory, to wrench such a gem from enemy hands and use. He was not Kholat Syakhl. He would not become Kholat Syakhl. To do so would be to spite each agent who dutifully spent their resources in acquiring the bracelet. But the thought lingered, ever present, ever promising so long as he recalled those few snatches of life at the Academy, where interpersonal connections blossomed and spread.

Faustite exited into a cavern where mirrored, hewn rock cut cicatrices of violet across the floor. He stepped into each of these lacerations of light, shining across metal, and strode past them with purpose in mind. He would test this poached artifact. He would pilfer the skull of one he knew who had a dozen violent delights locked away to the Negaverse by years of officer loss — by his own departure. And when those memories found their way back into Negaverse hands, Faustite would know the boon of this item. And if anything befell the brain to whom those memories once belonged, then Faustite would know the price his bracelet demanded for every lick of truth wrenched from imminently-empty heads. The stairs consented to his exit and he to his whim.

Ever your protege, Schörl. What a sentence that I follow your gaoler's step. The lines of his jaw tightened with his own displeasure, a geometry of regret arranged impeccably.