@rookappreciationweek Rook Appreciation Week: Nightmare
Day 6: The Boy’s Nightmare
I will give a warning for this one, this does talk about death, and it does talk about physical abuse and experimentation of a child. As well as a death after giving birth. Details are for the most part vague but it is implied. Needles are also mentioned so if you choose to read please do keep this in mind.
Once again just bringing this fact up, Stein is a villain and he does do awful things. Thank you for those who continue to read the worst villain I’ve ever created.
Stein, only 22 years old but his mind was too advanced for him to keep acting like he wasn’t already above most people his age. He was a genius needless to say, but the mourn watch didn’t understand the extent of his genius. So he took matters into his own hands, his research however stretched out beyond basic magic, no mortal would be able to understand his genius turning to blood magic. It was a practice more people should learn but their fear and pride stunted them. Useless cowards, but that left him to discover more, left him to make the world a perfect place. A place where everyone would be up to his standards, to live in his world he would craft.
He pressed a needle into a woman, a woman who was carrying his child. Stein didn’t need a woman, or unnecessary emotions such as love or any parental feelings, this was another part of his experimentation. To find the perfect way to create a child that fit into his world. Easily controllable with his magic. The needle was filled with a blight modded and morphed into a mixture of his blood and the blight, not only would the child be his but the blood from father to son, already creating a stronger bond with them. He just needed them to live.
The woman’s screams echoed in his lab, one he carefully had chosen deep within Nevarra Far from the city. A middle of no west building previously abandoned, no one would hear the screams, see the veins of blight along her body. Then stein forced her to drink from a cup, one in similar respects to those the wardens used. This time he would succeed with such a replica. But the woman convulsed, trembling, shaking in the table.
Stein shook his head, “No, NO! You will not take this from me! You will not take my subject!” In a fight to preserve the work he had put into this, Stein forcibly delivered the child and his mother, unfortunately passing.
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“Boy, Approach.” Stein waved his hand for his spawn to come toward him, 10 years and the child the woman had given him had grown.
The boy curled his hands into a fist, holding onto tattered clothes. He didn’t make an attempt to move. Stein turned his head towards the boy, his eyes matching the boys, the proof of their bond. Though steins only grew more intense as the boy defied him, “Do you need a bit of persuasion, boy?” Stein pressed a blade into his hand, the magic already stirring as the boy’s eyes went black, walking in an unsteady motion towards him, the defiance in him instantly vanishing into a puppet for the master.
“That’s better. Now, let us continue our training. Arm out, boy.”
Though the boy did not wish to obey, his arm was held straight out. Do as I say, be a perfect pawn, be useful. Always be useful. Filthy, useless, little boy. Pawn, Puppet, Boy. The whispers filled his mind, the ones of his fathers, thoughts and feelings that weren’t his pulling at the blood and blight within himself. His body is no longer his, who even was he?
“You are turning out to be a perfect subject.” The needle into the boy's arm, more blight into his system, that concoction that tied him down to the man. Who was the man to him? They had similar eyes and yet the man held no familiarity to him besides his tormentor. His fingers turned dark, the side effect of his body, they ached and hardened with tough skin. A Side effect of the blight, but this blight was ever changing. The boy had heard all about the blight, how it was something that struck the earth and brought in the darkspawn. His tormentor often chattered about his studies, because he knew the boy would never tell.
The boy was his perfect subject, the blight did not affect him in ways it would someone normally would. But one thing was certain, people with the blight in them tend to live shorter lives. He wondered how long it would be till he finally was no longer of use, expired to his tormentor.
Stein noted down the effects of the blight on the boys body, and the boy remained stilled, unmoving left with thoughts he’d rather not think. Once stein had finished doing as he wished, poking the boy as if he wasn’t a boy at all, there was finally a pause in their day. Stein pointed to the door, his magic loosening the control he had over the boy. “You know what to do, get out of my sight.” He waved the boy off.
The boy nodded leaving the lab to go to the attic of the place, it was his only safe place. He had been there as long as he could remember. The man often told him this was where his mother rested, the man didn’t often speak of her and when he did he would insult her, saying things like he was born from someone low born, weak, and pitiful, that she would spend her days rotting in the attic, that she regretted being pregnant with him. That man always said she had never wanted him. That’s why the boy was here with the man.
The boy hid his face in his knees rocking back and forth on the cold wooden floor of the attic. It was dusty and bare, only a bed and a blanket. The boy stood up going to the bed he sat down but didn’t want to be found. He would make the man work to see him next time. The boy crawled under the bed hiding but something about the floor board creaked in an unusual way. The boy pressed the board and it was uneven- enough to lift up. He lifted it up sliding it away. A journal was left in place. The boy pulled it out reading over the words on the page. The man had taught him not to be entirely useless, reading and writing so the boy would have some other uses like taking notes while the man experimented on the boy or being able to read instructions when stein was away working for the mourn watch. The first few lines in the journals page,
There was only one other person who had lived in this attic, his bottom lip trembled and eyes watered threatening to drop. The boy almost couldn’t handle reading it. But he had to.
‘To my darling child I leave behind,
I will not make it and if you are reading this then I have already parted from this world. But dear child, mother is always with you. And mother loved you. Your father, I owed him a debt and in doing so I gave a life. Your life. But after realizing what I was doing I was fearful so I write this to leave you behind something.
My child, run. Run from your father. Don’t let him succeed. I was charmed and it was too late for me, but you have no ties to that man besides that of a father. I do not believe he will treat you as his child. So if he does not, my child, you must run. In these pages are a map. My home in Rivian. There is a town that will shelter you, a family there waiting for you. Your father does not know. When your father found me I was merely a slave to a noble in a different city, he will not find you there. You will be safe.
I always thought of the person you would come to be. I had always thought about you. And I should have ran. But I was too weak already. I do not regret you. You are my greatest love. If you are a girl, I wanted to name you magnolia and if you see a boy, I wanted to name you enyo.
The boy's tears fell onto the page, quickly wiping it so I didn’t smudge the page. He closed the journal holding it tight to his chest, he quietly sobbed under that bed. He had thought all this time he was unwanted and that he deserved this, that he deserved to have this life because he was a bad kid and unwanted one just like that man, his father, had told him. The grip on the book tightened. Enyo. That’s his name. He had longed for one. A name that could suit this broken boy, and now he had one, give. To him by his mother. “Enyo.” The boy whispered, testing his name on his lips. More tears fell but his will to survive grew with the words his mother had left.
Enyo dried his eyes and opened the journal again, opening to a page with a map in it and a second one of a passage way within the building, his mother had thought of running away and never did, but she shared that with him. Enyo felt bittersweet about it. Wondering if his mother had just ran would they be there together. He shook the feeling, he was getting out that night. He would just wait, wait for the dark to settle before he made his move. Enyo wouldn’t waste anymore time here, he would not make the same mistake his mother did.
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The night sky finally arrived and the building had gone quiet. The man rested around this time, it was the only time Enyo found peace. The only time the earth went still for him, and this time, he wouldn’t dread the next morning. He would be gone.
Following the path through the building that his mother drew up, following the way exactly as she described it he managed to avoid the room the man was in careful about the floor and the creeks it made testing each board before he stepped eventually finding the hidden path and running, he ran fast so fast until he reached a dead end, at least that’s what he had thought. A cloth covered the wall which he pulled and found a latter, he climbed it up to a hatch, lifting it with all his might, he crawled out. His breath hitching as the cold air hit him. This was his first breath, his first breath taking In the outside world and it was the best breath he could take in. The freshest one he ever had. It was- amazing.
Enyo looked back in the distance to the building he assumed he came from since no others were near by. In fact, it was much the middle of no where, but Enyo didn’t care. This time he was able to breath, the man no where in sight, freedom in his grasp. He made an oath to himself, one day he would come back and when that day arrived, he would put an end to this all, and end to stein, an end to this
