Avali Smythe | Rakdos Cult
Monsters danced in the shadows of the raging fire. As the flames flickered and cracked, their shapes shifted and moved in the forest trees, but stayed a respectful distance from the real monsters that gathered around the fire. They were demons that roared of laughter and rolled in the dusty patches of the clearing. After a long day of breaking their backs hauling sheets of metal and trunks of trees, now was a time for the tension to ebb away from their muscles, from their minds.
The giant, Avali, was among them.
However, he stayed behind the rest, resting on the border between the night and the light their fire provided. The shadows tugged at his back and called for him to join them, melting into his massive jet black wings that hugged his shoulders when he folded them over. He wondered if it would be easier to join them.
There was not much struggle in the choice before the possibility was wiped from his mind. In the end, he continued to sit with his legs tucked into his chest, shielded from the biting cold by his leather wings. It was better this way, sticking around but hanging back -- staying invisible.
Raising his head ever so slightly, he cast the gaze of his demonic, red eyes to the fire and the rest of his pack gathered around it. Beer bottles were scattered all around their feet, emptied he assumed as the demons erupted into laughter from just an ember straying from the fire. When one dared to stand, their legs would wobble and sway, their balance numbed by the alcohol.
Avali stared in disgust at the bottle beside his tail. The tip of it flickered dangerously close to the glass as the agitation pulsed through him. His imagination flared, listening to the crack of the bottle as his tail barreled into it, then watching to brown liquid spill out onto the ground. Surely it would be satisfying. Then there was the afterthought of the poison leaking into the plants around his feet.
His attention once again turned to the other monsters around the fire, watching a reptilian monster shove a much smaller lynx demon. She shrieked a string of playful curses and bared her fangs at him. In the background, other demons chanted a slur of words that hardly resembled a demand for a tussle, a fight, a brawl. But the meaning was clear enough.
With an expected suddenness, the lynx leapt onto her aggressor and sunk her teeth in the crevices between his scales. He let out a raspy shriek that slid from his tongue into the air, the spectators drinking in the sound to add to their wall of cheers. The slight skirmish turned to a brawl when the reptile's bulky claws sunk into his opponent's soft flesh and she yowled, forced to release him.
They broke apart, crushing and spilling the bottles that circled the fire. Their dark liquid ran under their feet and paws, so streams making it as far as the fire. The flames absorbed the alcohol and flared up behind them, creating a wave of red and orange intermingling. Only a second of mutual hesitation passed between their dulled minds before the reptile flung himself at his challenger.
Avali blinked away the extra light flooding his eyes, turning his head away from the scene. His tail twitched again and he let out a long sigh. As if responding to him, the trees swayed and their leaves rustled from an oncoming burst of wind.
He didn't much understand his companion's fascination with fighting for worth, fighting for fun, fighting. In general. His arms ached, his legs throbbed, his mind burned with the memories. Avali fought too. He knew how; it was the only "how" he knew, but he did not fight without reason. Not like the shameless battle that unfolded in front of him, prodded on for the entertainment of those around, for the loss of the warriors.
Because surely one would not walk away alive. That was the law of these demons.
Before his gaze wandered back to the noises of the gathered monsters (cheers, screams, and roars that created a pit in his stomach), another wave of wind threw itself against Avali's shield of his wings. Still, the bitter cold managed to slip in and prick at his bare skin, sinking its teeth into his flesh until it went numb.
The rest of his body jerked into action, with his tail thumping against the ground and knocking over the bottle beside it. His wings rose from their resting position over his shoulder enough to knock away the branches beside him. Their uplifting force pulled his legs under him, and his large hoof smashed the bottle with a splintering crack. The shards of glass clinked against his the metal of his horse shoes.
The sets of horns on his head pushed aside any branches that strayed from the safety of the forest and into the clearing, especially as he moved his head up to gaze at the clearing. At last, he noticed the commotion had entirely stopped.
Even the fire, which had poured out its life in light mere seconds before, was entirely extinguished. The two brawlers no longer embraced one another, instead watching Avali. As all the others did. Or perhaps they watched the movement in front of Avali.
His eyes flickered downward, their deep red gaze intensifying. His muscles tensed and it took most of his will power for his hands to not fly to his blade.
The blade would have done no good, he soon realized – most night-gaunts didn’t appreciate the metal passing through the mass-less shape of their bodies. The night-gaunt that stood before him was not even half his size, though it floated at the level of his eyes, one arm of claws out stretched with a note between them that flopped in the breeze.
Avali took it without hesitation, turning the yellow paper up so that the moon would light up the words. He was suddenly so absorbed in gathering all the information from the sheet that he could that he hardly notice the ghost vanish, nor the fire light up and the conversations resume between the other demons.
By the time he finished making out the letters of his name and struggling through the cursive print of the paper, he felt oddly… numb. In fact, there was not much feeling at all.
Should he have felt dread? Or perhaps honor or flattery for being chosen for such a task? Whatever it was, he dropped the paper onto the ground as it burst into flames in his hands. All he knew for sure was that he was going into the Maze.
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