Ivan's Introspection

              Ivan stumbles in, tipsy, but not quite drunk. He wipes the red mess of wine and blood off of his mouth. It had been quite the meal. The bride to be seemed willing to indulge him quite a lot more than he would have thought, and the celebration had been something else.

             Of course, he knew she was hungry for something else. She was tired, weak… she needed Eidolon flesh.

             Eidolon…

             Ivan rummaged around in the darkness till he found an old burnished bronze mirror, imported from some other realm no doubt.

             He pulled out his razor.

             He had sworn he’d never do this again. Promised himself he would move on. He thought he had.

             He had only been alive for a handful of rebirths back then. A mere child, eight births old. And he had seem him… Tagandesh. This was, of course, before Tagandesh had risen to his position as the Satan of the Trifective, back when he was still just a Demon (first class) and one of the most famed and deadly conquerors in the Hellistic League, and of the whole Chaos Consortium. He was also not the strange darkness shrouded figure that was so removed and hidden from the world he had become. In those days he stood twenty feet tall, his eyes were black, he smelt of meat and wine, and his heart… his anima heart burned with great red heat. They said it was like the flames of long lost Hell… of the home that Ivan had never known. That none of them had.

             Tagandesh had strode through town, his soldiers in full armor and parade, a display of enemy heads and raided goods and women. Another realm for the Consortium. Taken by force, in that brutish way that demons did. And Ivan, for all the hate of demons his upbringing had given him, knew that that display was power, personal and otherwise. That’s what being an Eidolon was, it was power.

             And it was what he wanted, there and then, more than anything else in the Empyrean.

             He had done this then, and almost killed himself doing it.

             Now, here he stood, about to do it again.

             He started with cutting the extra flesh off, he didn’t need the corpses there. He flicked his tongue… lot of ends.

             Whole lot.

             He breathed in deep, holding the razor tight.

             When he had awoken in the care of the sage, he had been smacked upside the head quite a lot. He had learnt his place then.

             He was in the hospital for another rebirth.

<p class="MsoNormal">             He had gotten out with the resolve to leave such silliness behind him, to move on. He spent his life trying to prove that he didn’t need powers, that he could rise through the ranks, that he could do his job without being an Eidolon, that he could…

<p class="MsoNormal">             Sixteen births along the line, and here he was, standing in the mirror, about to do what he wouldn’t.

<p class="MsoNormal">             He raised the razor.

<p class="MsoNormal">             He was not anywhere near drunk enough to do this.

<p class="MsoNormal">             He plunged the blade into his chest, straight between the ribs, and twisted it round, pulling and prying and making the wound wider.

<p class="MsoNormal">             It hurt.

<p class="MsoNormal">             Oh, blessed fuck, it hurt.

<p class="MsoNormal">             But he kept prying and tearing and digging, until he could see it.

<p class="MsoNormal">             His heart.

<p class="MsoNormal">             Except, it didn’t look like it did last time, that paltry little bloody mass of pounding flesh.

<p class="MsoNormal">             This heart was black.

<p class="MsoNormal">             Dark as a shadow. Hidden, obscured… silent.

<p class="MsoNormal">             Ivan smiles.

<p class="MsoNormal">             The last time he did this he screamed from the pain and cried for the revelation.

<p class="MsoNormal">             This time he only cries.