storytime!!!!
Deviation Actions
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It was time. I un-clicked my collar and prepared for the worst.
I needed the money to live but I hated violence. It was the one thing I could always count on to make rent and have enough money for food.
Reluctantly I set foot in the ring stirring up a little dust with each step. My bare footed 6 foot frame was titanic in size compared my 5 foot tall opponent. It seemed this would be an easy match. As I met him in the center to touch fists the crowd began to chant, “fight fight fight”. I was ignoring them. Only watching my opponent for the slightest sign of movement, getting ready to dodge. As we back away I mutter, ”Don’t make me kill you, I don’t want too much of a fight.”
He snickers and says “Yeah right”, as he spits at my feet.
He begins to flank me as I swiftly move out of his reach, he comes at me swiping with claws drawn out. For as big and muscular as he was for a tiger he should have been much faster. But I guess that could have been because I have a secret.
That collar that I took off earlier, the black one with the dual pin locks? Yeah that’s to suppress my inner monster. My father was full pure bred demon, and my mother was the pack leader of the largest wolf pack on America. They were both ruthless and cunning. But then industrialization came to our world and more jobs were opened thus my need to find one to be able to live.
But I took this job of fighting to make a little more for rent in my tiny single bed and bath apartment on the shadiest side of town.
Back to the fight.
My opponent was a nobody looking to take home the title of defeating me. He was a five foot-ish tall, a very muscular tiger with a notch in his left ear and a scar on his right thigh. He had a very smug look on his face while he was on the offensive. But when I turned the tables and started running at him, his face just went blank. I no longer had control of myself. I could not stop until this deed was done and I had defeated the task at hand. As I lost control my claws grew loner and shinier, sharpening as they grew. My mane got much longer and muscles started bulging as my demon blood awakened. My red and black coat grew longer as well as my left eye becoming pearlescent in the dim light that shown on the arena .
My full demon form was now exposed and all the lights blew out. A deep harmonic howl that sounded not of this world bellowed from my gullet and all was dead silent. All that I can remember from there was waking up with blood on my now normal body I lay there very sore on the pit floor. Officials around making sure that only one of us survived. As I was declared the victor they helped me on my feet. New lights had been brought out and I now see the mess I had made. I had slashed the tigers chest badly and there was a large pool of blood around him.
He had also been dismembered leaving only his torso intact. Man, id done it again.
As I went to pick up my collar I was stopped in my tracks as I sensed a new presence behind me. I dropped my collar and quickly turned around ready for anything. It was just my boss.
“Good work son, you make this place proud.”
I say, “What with killing or the underground fighting?”
He says, “With the money making”
I say, “There’s no honor in killing for money. Now if you excuse me I have to go work my 16 hour shift at the steel mill”
As I pick up my collar and put it back on, he hands me the cash that he promised.
I walk out to the lockers to grab my things and I get dressed, then leave to go to work.
The steel mill isn’t my favorite place in town but it’s always warm in the winter and up here in the arctic it’s the most coveted place to work.
As I’m walking there I hear a rabble nearby with the same hooligans picking on yet another elderly person who helps the city council.
I call out, “Are you okay miss”?
The hooligans take a one look at me and book it.
She says, “I’m fine, thank you for coming along Warzone, I don’t care what people say about you, you have a heart of gold”.
Blushingly I thank her. And we part ways, probably to see each other again soon so I can pay my rent.
As I walk in to work and clock in. It’s the usual fuck ups around the plant who can’t seem to grasp how to properly treat the equipment. Being the only maintenance man on my floor has its perks, I get to be left alone, and I can do my work in peace without being yelled at or criticized. I get to work on the two forklifts first. They needed new steering and lift components which only takes a few hours to complete and I drive them back to the main floor. Next is the drills and hydraulics, maintenance is only lightly required but there were so many that it took me another ten hours.
For the last hour of the day I spent it eating my dinner that I made the previous night. It was only a small steak and a mug of coffee. I finish the day at the mill with deliveries of all the parts I had serviced. After that I go home. Same thing. Every. Day. No substitutes, no days off, no holidays, no birthdays.
I go home to my apartment only to read the news paper and to sleep.
I head off to sleep and it envelops me. It’s the one thing in this place that I love, my dreams used to foretell the future but things have become stagnant. The concrete walls of this home offer no safety from the turmoil in my head. I cannot escape this repetitive rut I’ve become stuck in. It’s become my only means of survival. Fight, then work, then eat and sleep. No change. I don’t like it anymore. It makes me sick that I can escape this reality of killing to live.
When I was a boy, I never imagined that mom or dad would die.
I never learned much past the age of fourteen when the assassins came; they slaughtered my mother and father before I could reach the house. I should have known something was up when they sent me to the river for nothing. When I heard their screams I ran back but I was too late, the assassins were all dead and my mother and father had mortal wounds. Before they died they said “Keep honor in your name son”. I had to bury my own mother and father in our field. It took me a full day to dig their graves, twenty feet in the ground. I never wanted them to be found so only I would know where they were. I built a huge ten foot high stone marker on top of their graves so I would never forget.
When I came across this town I had forgotten what I was in search of and so malnourished that I passed out at a food vendor’s stall. He took me home with him that night and raised me for a few years until I could get a job. I paid him in full this last week for raising me those last four years. I’m 35 now and I see him at least once a month at his stall. He often gives me food for a few days or so. He was always very kind but very firm. He was very disappointed when he found out about my parents and how I was half demon. He set to work making a collar to restrain that side of me so I wouldn’t go berserk unless it was absolutely needed. I now proudly wear it as his last tinker project.
He went blind a few years ago, but has been coping well. I never have to introduce my presence he can sense it. I‘ve learned much about fighting from him, judging from the way he taught me, he used to be a trainer. But I only use his style when the collar is on and for defense. Otherwise I don’t control the other side.
Finally drifting off to sleep now, its pitch black, it’s nothingness. No thinking, no movement. Just rest.
For the first time in years I sense a dream coming. The images flash by, too quick to make sense. But then it stops on a single picture, a fine young lass, same fur markings as me but different colors, with a notch in her right ear just like dad. She was staring at me in a crowd. All other figures blank. It was the arena. She just stared at me with her arms crossed and I tried to walk forward but I couldn’t move. The blood on the floor was pooling up to my ankles, coagulating, I struggled but it only got worse. Hard as concrete it rose to my waist. Worriedly I looked at her begging with my eyes for her to help. I couldn’t form words now, I could barely move my body. The blood was up to my neck now, asphyxiating me, it was all I could do to breathe, and all other figures around her moved away and quickly left. It was only me and her now. She just kept staring intently, as if she was waiting for something. Then the blood rose up above my head. I couldn’t breathe or move now. I was going to die here wasn’t I?
I awaken to the sound of my alarm clock sheets tangle around me. It felt like I was covered in blood so I panicked and sliced them off of me faster than light. In a fury I also destroyed my alarm clock and put deep scratches on the wall next to my bed. It was another foreboding.
As I start my usual day I go eat breakfast, this time at the old man’s place.
It was quiet as usual but something was up in the town, we both could sense it. I headed to the warehouse where the arena was. It was still dark out so I couldn’t see anything, then the lights came on instantly when I entered the building. And there were about a hundred fellow townsmen waiting for me. All of them had weapons, but no guns.
Then the three hooligans spoke up, “That’s him boss, that’s the one who keeps pushing us around on our turf”.
“Is that so? Well mister what do you call yourself?” He asks
Silently I drop the hood on my cloak, “You mean you don’t know me at all”?
“Ah, warzone, how could I forget, after all I’m your bosses boss. Well I’m sorry about this but you have to go, you see, you’ve tried too heavily one too many time in our turf here. Get him boys”.
As they all rush me I release my collar, before it can hit the ground I’d lost control, this was no different than a fight. It was life or death.
Through my eyes and ears I could only see red and hear screams. The clanging of steel versus my claws and the sound it made when they sliced the tools that had swung at me and the cries for mercy until I had claimed the life that called out for it. The boss had run off when the carnage started.
His minions were no match for me and he still left like a coward. My blood had finally calmed enough for me to control my body slightly as I struggled with it to put the collar back on. As I put it on a black silhouette appeared in the doorway, just before I blacked out.
The next thing I know is that I’m back in my house on my couch, everything hurts and I can’t sit up yet. Worriedly I panic again, afraid of what I’d done or who was there, adrenaline in my veins now nothing hurts, collar still on I draw out my claws ready to attack. I search my house for the intruder but find nothing. I turn around to go to bed and see a large trail of blood. Looking to where it leads I find it’s my right arm. It had a severe laceration from the shoulder to the elbow. Now seeing it, bleed through the bandages I clutch it in pain. And go to lie down. I hear the floor outside my door creak and dash over silently to get ready for the intruder. As the door opens a smaller figure than I walks in and shuts the door behind it, I grab it by the neck and pin it against the wall.
“WHO ARE YOU!?” I exclaim.
Coughing it replies, “I dragged you back to your house”, in a feminine voice
“You are a she wolf”?
Coughing she said, “Yes now can you put me down?”
I release her and turn on the lights, she was magnificent, beautiful, and best of all I had seen her in the dream.
I get down on one knee and apologize to her; also I got down on one knee because I could no longer stand on my own due to blood loss.
“It’s ok; I would have done the same thing if I were you.”
“C’mon let’s get back to the couch, it looks like you tore the stitches”
She helps me up and we walk to the couch, my bandage now soaked in my own blood.
“Now how did you defeat all those men by yourself?”
I proceed to tell her the story of my life so she would get the whole picture of how I got to this point.
“Wow”, she says, “I had no idea that your mother was Eilita”
“Wait you knew my mom?” I said
“I’d met her at a clans meet just a few years before you guys were attacked”
“Yeah she said it would be her last one and she’d retire until I was able to handle myself”
“So who was your father?”
“If memory serves his name was daemon Eizaffel”
She gasped and opened her eyes wider, she also scooted away from me and slightly trembled
“So y-y-you’re the annihilators s-son?”
“Yes I am, and he was married to my mom twelve years before they had me.”
“Well, no wonder you have no problem fighting to live or at all for that matter” she said shakily, nervously she moved back closer”
