A new beginning, or an old end?

[Kit Estenial]

Kit was stirring around the snow-laden sidewalks of Drachma, passing between dreary buildings and exhausted looking people. Kit might have been out of touch to several happenings in the world, but the expansion of the RIOTE he had watched closely, in order to know where it was safe to travel. The RIOTE: an oddity to most of Kit's mind. He understood most of their motives, their reasons to exist, especially one. He held a recruitment pamplet in his hand, his mind wandering to several years ago as he walked on....

It was dank and dark amongst the shadows of the basement, his hands and feet completely numb beyond the tight restrictions of his iron shackles. His ears and tail had lost all will to move, his whole body had lost the will to move. At the earlier point of his isolation, his screams, his cries were all that filled the basement in terms of sound, but now the drips of several IVs struck into his back and arms and his shallow breaths were the only sound. His thoughts were like his prison: Dark, depraved, and sickening. A voice, a lone voice, mumbled in his mind of horrid things, terrible acts, yet...they all appealed to him. It lit a spark in what little strength he had as his emaciated hands slipped out of the braces and he flopped onto the floor, tearing at the IVs to get them out, the multicolored liquids pouring onto the floor. One of them looked crimson, and he struggled to it, licking the floor in desperation. He didn't know what he mistook it for, but he thought it would fill him. It tasted acidic as he spit it out. He barely remembered him getting out of his foot restraints, but what happened next...

Kit shook himself out of his thoughts as he stared at the requirements on the pamplet. One was bolded, one that was at the top. "You must strive to destroy alchemy". Kit pondered it. He knew several good people that were alchemists, but...the image of his father outweighed them. The man was twisted, cruel. His appearance now was just a punishment to his wife, and because of him, he never could've had a normal childhood. The pamplet was crushed in hand, his fangs gritted against his other teeth. If he could get rid of men like him, he'd join up in a minute. All he had to do was find a way. The authority, the power....Kit shook his head a second time, he shouldn't think like that. But he couldn't help it, for he wasn't the only one in his mind that thought it. His drive for power, his want, his hunger for the vile things in his mind wasn't his fault. Or was it?

Kit needed to clear his thoughts, quickly. His pearl colored hands reached into the jet black pocket of his pants and pulled out his small ocarina and held the cold, clay flute to his lips, blowing a few scales into it to get it warm. Then he stood at the corner of his sidewalk, loudly sliding out a melody of a Stazov piece, something many here would still hopefully remember. Usually when he played music, his path would carve its way, all he had to do was follow it. But lately, that wasn't the case, his mind was clouded for several weeks. He'd soon have to rely on himself, a prospect that scared him to no end.

[Aurelius Schwartz]

A brief taste of fresh air frequently sates the uneasy exhaustion building between the man's eyes. However, nearly getting run over by blaring horns and vehicles going much faster than he's accustomed, quickly thwarts that small ounce of pleasure. New place. New time. Crunching footsteps among other footprints, black boots flattened the snow heavily against Moscow's paved sidewalk. Blurs of people streamed passed about their business, talking, chatting mindless words that hardly mattered--hardly effected the world in any way. This was Drachma: isolated, enforced, cold. Among them now, he was unsure what exactly to think--how to pick up again. Nearly relearning how to breathe, he felt miscast and out of reach, listing along the edges of the shadows wrought by slants of towering monochrome under white sunlight. So that's who I was. He was someone he hardly knew, entering into a life he only half lived, missing time in between. That's who I have to fit. Brushing a hand along the frigid glass of a barber shop, he left a wet trail of melted frost. Dark, hollow, his mind was mulling through the blurred reflection of the outside world behind him, following him, entrusting him.

A boy knowing nothing but a prediction--a boy guessing--a boy whose origins he hardly understood himself. The whirlwind of snowflakes landing on his hair, seeping into his clothes as they melted, became the flurry of his thoughts. He had made Philosopher stones--indirectly killed. Blood was on his hands, but they were clean. Hild was dead, but they were clean. There were people he was supposed to know, whose names he didn't even recognize. Faces--each face that passed was unfamiliar, launching him further into a frenzy of confusion, fervently trying to take a grip on the future and finally perceive it as the present. It felt like the snow, lightly trailing frozen fingers down his spine, stunting his path if only enough to make him notice. Being not a people person, Aurel came across this discovery apathetically, licking the water from his digits and turning a corner to an entirely new landscape. Painted like a fresh canvas, he walked into the isle, whipping his black Kashmir scarf tighter around his neck against the wind. Ebony hair, sheered at the tips, thrashed viciously against the dampened eyelashes covering mismatched hues of red and blue. He looked sideways, scanning the scenery as if he were in a museum. Arms now crossed, he appeared to be looking for someone--someone specific that he would recognize. Despite his inner discrepancies, he could not afford to falter in the slightest, moving forward nearly blind.

Bearers: his own creation thrown together on a whim. Willing to take a chance, experimenting on himself, he invented this being. As a result, he stood before everyone, planning to create another for the first time since Hild. Deceased. It was hard to believe that in 2012 she had passed. His mind, still unaccepting of many things, he learned, was slowly beginning to sift through everything, taking in pieces at a time. Hild was a large chunk to swallow. Like a brief sister to him, her existence was one that had at one time paralleled his own. It was hard to understand. Even for him, the prospect of existing in two entities was baffling. With so much accomplished, he felt he could hardly take the credit. Regardless, he currently resided as a mortal living among monsters. Homunculi: Father's creation expelled from himself on a whim. Sins abandoned to initiate a perfect being that failed in every way. Pure evil resonated in his self-enthused direction, grasping the fabric of the magical world, and tearing down the seams of balance. That was why...the reason why he stood here today was because of Father--for Father--to restore that required leitmotif of good and evil. Without it, The World would have destroyed the existence of alchemy, thus preventing the very continued longevity of life itself. Humans, already fighting, would have eradicated themselves, mass extinction wrecking havoc, dancing in rows among the tombstones. It would be the end. Peace...peace would never come from a world too white.

Soft singing alerted the chupacabra chimera of random cheer. His first reaction aside from confusion was disgust. As much as he supported joy, he felt disinclined to encounter it regardless. Eyes downcast, he attempted to look away, but the sudden flash of image glued itself into the confines of his mind. Him. His eyes raised completely, feet slushing to a refined halt. This was the man he sought. Right now, they were missing a sin, bridging on danger and preventing RIOTE from further creation of Bearers. Eyeing him up and down, his conviction was reaffirmed despite the enthusiastic music aflow. A slight pause. His arms dropped to his sides, the stalk starting slowly. He approached, coming up at a safe distance with a callus look scoffed into his eyes. "Tell me, would you be interested in a proposition?"

[Kit Estenial]

It was truly amazing that even through the howling winds of the arctic temperature and how it battered in notes into the flute he had, but he had soon brought together a small congregation of music lovers, some walking up to him with a bank note or coins, putting them into his open duffle bag. One man walked by, an old shriveled man, with hair that matched the frozen surroundings. He looked as if he'd seen his share of happy and gruesome sights, face sullen yet eyes that were kind and his smile was genuine. He was accompanied by a rather strapping young man, most likely his son, perhaps grandson, who looked like he was trying to stop his elder. But what was he doing? The old man tapped his way on his old oaken walking cane, a large forest green jacket sliding off his hunched shoulders, into his splotched, wrinkled hands into the bag. Kit immediately stopped, his ears twitching inquisitively. His eyebrow arched, a look of concern on his face. Kit had become somewhat used to the cold, even if all he had was a tattered blanket besides his only set of clothes. He made sizable money as a designer, but he didn't need it usually, so he often gave it to those who he knew who needed it.

The young man, broad shouldered, pale skinned, and cropped hair removed his own jacket and swung it over the old man's shoulders, which he nodded in reply. They both waved to the chimera good-bye as they slowly strolled off into the howling wind, devoid of the melody that once filled the corner. A man he hardly knew...giving a possession to someone he hardly knew, then leaving without a word. Kit had never experienced such a nicety brought to him. It was enough to make him really notice the solitude of this city. How deafening winds could create tangible walls around him tightly as they did. With everyone around him gone now, most likely busy with their day and the show of kindness must've been longer than they would like to have waited, but he felt alone. More alone than he'd felt in an excruciatingly long time. He refused to acknowledge the warm droplet on his skin, or perhaps the cold had made the feeling in his face go numb. He returned the ocarina to his pocket and took up the coat. It was the same hue of his bag, with a large lapel and a fur rimmed hood that draped the back of his neck, which he then draped his waist length hair over it. He neglected to cut his hair, then again he had more important things to worry about.

Haunting words. Kit's ears rotated to their source, only to be met with one of the worst feelings he had ever felt. His body utterly shivered in response to the voice, from a man who stood a rather...precautious distance away from the chimera. Kit stood, staring with his pale green serpentine eyes burrowing into the man with a confused yet horrified gaze. He pondered the question. His inner thoughts told him something, to run. To escape, but from what? His curiosity, as well as his fear, was peaked as his head shifted towards him, stepping forward. "I'm interested. Continue, though I'd like to know your name, if you intend to offer me business" Barely. Just barely could he contain his fear.

[Aurelius Schwartz]

The human in him had to answer to curiosity. Compromised, he could see the seams pulling out of the chimera--separate souls combined yipping for release from the magic. His eyes scrutinized this, witnessing the muted yowls of instinct baying into the breeze. Aurelius remained stationary for that express purpose, harmless...for the time being. It seemed it was his voice--perhaps his choice of words that had set his animal instincts raring. Softer--coming off more humane would turn out as a wise decision for first encounters in the future. Shooting the question before introducing himself made the exchange seem somewhat disrupted, tearing down an aspect of his short-lived plan. That is, if he did not remedy the situation immediately. Though at the same time, he was told that he often received reactions of these sort. Fear. Undeterred, fresh fear. It was intriguing--something to play with--something to use without effort. A hand withdrew from the pocket of his trench coat, fingers clasped delicately around a clear, red stone. Perfectly round, it resembled a child's toy, glistening in fractured light. It's weight pulled at gravity, slipping steadily from his grasp and into the open duffle bag. Faded at the edges, chump change scattered about, something new was added to the equation.

"Aurelius Carston Schwartz." His full name, for what was a name without a precise response? He brushed bangs out of his range of sight, honing in completely on the chimera's reaction. A name had value, but his own carried with it a weight he himself wasn't sure he could carry at times. People flocked and people ran; he was no longer meshed into the populace--no longer a fleeting passerby. All his life he was stagnant--brought into this world as an experiment on the cutting block, chained to the ideals wrought by power-hungry men with microscopes. Now--now, he had a place--a place he was thrown into by a vortex of nothing. Off balance and adjusting even to the meaning his own name bared, he was taken aback by the submersion of fear lingering in the chimera's expression. But how ever convenient it was, especially at the present time. "I wouldn't necessarily deem it business," he added sardonically, eyes fixed on the stone settling into one of the duffle bag's corners. "Perhaps, we should call it...a gamble." Dangerously, his eyes flashed, the trapped souls in him squirming for release. Some never made it. He knew that not from experience, but from fact. Homunculi were the bane of the world--Father's impurities that, in short, were actually the tiny inklings of what made him human. Thrown away like nothing, Aurel could relate. Especially now. His past life (literally past) felt like a dream--a nightmare he finally awakened from in a cold sweat. Standing in the snow of a country he had never been to until a few weeks ago, the sweat was freezing over the layer of mortal skin, making him feel like someone he wasn't.

"I'll give you that," he continued, meeting the chimera's visage of scales, green and fearful, yet daunting in his own way. "You may already recognize what this is," he paused, "and if my predictions are correct, you'll take it...Gluttony. I am sure you have heard of RIOTE. Already, I have gathered sins to assist me with creating a balance that ensures the prosperity of true peace. However, the question remains: will you help us build upon this irony?"

[Kit Estenial]

Kit could not believe his flittering ears. The King of Drachma...in public without any guard, that he could see anyway, quite possibly there were marksmen in the buildings around them. This man had yet to make a move, had not made any attempt other than to speak, but Kit was feeling an intense burning all throughout his bodies, as if someone laced his scars with kerosene and had thrown a match at him, even his recent gashes in his hands felt like kindling. His instrument was down, dropped into his bag and replaced with a stone, gleaming, gel-like, rose red gem. Like a pulse, the gem moved and waved like an encased ocean. The voice came back in a roaring thunderclap, making Kit stagger with a hand laced into his snow white hair, and even with the fire raging across his skin, the return of the voice turned his blood to strawberry colored slush.

"Oh, Kit, you shouldn't have~ You feel it, don't you? That power! You know you haven't eaten like this in an incredibly long time, you remember this feeling don't you?! The night we met?! The delicious taste of your first sin on your tongue? This little bauble is enough to send you to a hellish paradise, give it to me!"

There it was. No more veil, just pure emotion. The voice had blatantly just let loose what he'd been leading Kit to all this time. Power, a deep hunger for sin. Using Kit as a medium. Kit's hand clenched into a fist around that tiny trinket, his face in a fiery outrage as he screamed at nothing, a voice no one heard, an evil no one lived with but him, his fist burning brighter, hotter, bleeding.

"Like hell I will! If I choose anything, it will be with my own thoughts, my will! I refuse to listen to you, this is my body, MINE!" With that, Kit turned in a flourish, snow and slush flying of his skin and clothes and he cocked his closed hand back, desperate to get rid of this demonic stone. He threw as hard as he could, but there was no glint of crimson, nothing. He looked to his bleeding hand as rivlets of blood cascaded down his arm into the snow. The stone...the last glints of it...were soaking into his cuts. If it wasn't for the glass...the following could have been avoided. The voice knew this all two well, and in conjunction with the loudening screams of damned souls, it whispered in the darkest corner of his mind.

"Too late, little kitten~"

The pulsing began slow. The liquefied gem coursed its way up his arm, his veins popping out to look as if they were rivers on a map, it rolled its way into his mind, wrapping around it slowly as more of it slipped into the chamber of his heart. An unwholesome thing wormed its way into his mind, into his heart, his soul, his very being. Every vein in him was standing, like he was trying to reject it. He himself was trying to reject the power, but with this stone came a longing. A longing he was starting to understand, a longing for power, a hunger his alter ego thirsted for. He was thrown into a grand darkness of even thought. He knew what this was. A choice: to reject and die, or accept and gain a power, but to most likely lose his own morality.

His outer turmoil was much more simplified; a writhing body in the snow, his belongings spilling from his overturned bag. His mouth tried to scream, but it was silent, red static sparking from his body jumping from limb to limb. Then he went limp as his eyes cast upward towards the snowing sky. The cold was soothing to his everburning body. A single tear of crimson rolled from his eye towards the ground has he exhaled slowly into the falling snow. To his father he most likely would be going, to join him in a burning eternity...





No.

Kit had never felt better in his life now. Like hell he'd see his father again. He understood the voice now. The hunger it spoke of growled within his stomach harshly, like a demonic beast chasing its prey. Kit picked himself up slowly, his body's convulsing had stopped now. He picked his things up one at a time, shaking snow from them before depositing them back into his bag. He slung it over his shoulder and walked heavy footed towards the man. His expression was blank until he was merely inches from contact with him, in which his lips curled into a small smile. He opened his mouth to speak, and in the inky blackness of his maw, the smallest flit of dark red appeared on his tongue, a dragon it seemed. The tattoo of Ouroboros.

"I accept your gamble, King. But before more is said of the matter, perhaps some nourishment? It feels as if I haven't eaten in days." Kit didn't know what to make of it. He was acting to strange for his liking, but the inevitable had happened. His body gave itself to the hunger, the true glutton he was, for what he could not assume. He was, no...IS.


Gluttony.

[Aurelius Schwartz]

Throw it away. He was waiting like the footsteps--long prints leading into nowhere. The tireless gaze of eyes into an abyss of papers stamped by quivering, uncertain hands, stained with the ink of the bickering press. He was a ghost bathed in black, standing among the white as if he belonged. Laughter. Oh, the shrewd laughter beckoning. The irony of the fall. None would win had the stone actually been cast. Where a mismatched gaze would follow its path, lay open snows carelessly placed, settled in its natural state. It was not cast away as his old body had been, lying dead now on Amestrian concrete, no; Kit Estenial's flesh itself desired raw power in form, absorbing it before his mind could let go. Fingers dangling to air, Aurel's sightly breath dispersed into frigid wind. The chimera's body toppled, struggling to hold onto the few reasons why to remain mortal. Conscience in dirt, blood in wrinkles, the hand reached fervently into the mind for release. Choice. He had made it the moment he touched it--the moment an emotional response was incited. It was already too late for him, but Aurel had chosen wisely: holding such power--holding so many lives utilized like gasoline to alchemy. Fatal-safe. Under the panned sunlight, he smirked.

Thrashing, prostrated, silenced screams, he looked on at the creation of something he had never before witnessed. Snow, cold, veiled sight blurring under the onslaught of power streaking through the air. A pulling dragged from deep within him, speaking in the qualms of the dead. He ignored it, for now, he turned away, staring up at the buildings rising around him in cold degree. Something about their perfection irked him. No suffering there, only height and clear cut boundaries, already reaching up to the sky for clearance into the beyond. Something rather unfathomable, personifying what had no thought. He looked away quickly, hearing the effects of joints bending, teeth slamming, bones vying against the control. He'd die. Or he'd live as another one of Father's playthings balancing the world as it should be. The defining humanity, standing inhuman. Sin. What of the opposite? Without evil there is no good. What then were they--what then was RIOTE? Something not yet made--the contents festering in a petri dish before realization. The results themselves would have no name. Something new--something entirely new.

Things--mortal things--were removed from snow, dusted off by gravity, and taken up by the rancorous claws of a homunculus. Blue and red beheld Kit steadily, shifting ever so slightly with his movements as he approached. Alone, solitary, the roads were devoid of a once present populace, closed off from an onlooker's curiosity. He stifled his breath, cautiously in wait. A stroke of the ouroboros flicked beyond the glutton's lips, voice strange against the contrast of what defined him. "I accept your gamble, King. But before more is said of the matter, perhaps some nourishment? It feels as if I haven't eaten in days."

"King?" Aurelius mused, expression alight with intrigue. Perhaps that was what others thought of him? It was a faint echo of the truth, but leading such a vast force, certainly it was possible to be such, yes? "Hm, I should bring you clarity before this continues further: in joining me for nourishment, you also join RIOTE." He paused, a dangerous look glimmering from beneath wild strands of raven bangs. "If you wish, I will welcome you. If not, you are free."

[EXIT THREAD]

[Kit Estenial]

"Ahhhh....This is rather refreshing." That certainly was the understatement of the year; after years of torture under his alter ego, it was gone. Of course, it was the cost of his own innocence, but everything had a price. His body felt new, hand-made, revitalized and his mind was full of delectable ideas. Morals had been all but tossed; an extreme change taken in as little as ten minutes and he seemed to be adjusting well. He didn't know WHAT exactly he had become or what he was getting himself into, but he didn't care now. He was a new man, a clean state ready for defiling of the most heinous kind. This man reeked of tragedy and was "kind" enough to suck him into this mess and Kit didn't seem to mind. In fact, upon retrospect, he did have some semblance of morals in his memory. Kit was not one to leave a debt unpaid and he knew that he had this new power because of that trinket. So it was obvious that he could do whatever to repay him. But how, he thought.

"Hm, I should bring you clarity before this continues further: in joining me for nourishment, you also join RIOTE." What a coincidence! First the pamphlet now this. Kit's left side of his mouth curled upward in a smirk, all to pleased to see where this could lead. He had this hunger, not just physical though. A hunger for power. He had been powerless as a child, but no more. He had barely tapped into the power of the stone, who knows what kind of power he could acquire? He wouldn't let anything stand in his way and what better way to advance his goals but by joining the winning team.

"I couldn't ignore a free meal, now could I? A king needs knights, so I gladly accept. Just tell me what it is we're having, sir." Kit swished his tail upward, back and forth. A metronome to the beat of destruction his stomach dictates. Kit walked onwards, wisply stepping through the snow. "I heard there's a cafe not too far from here..."

[EXIT THREAD]

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