Fading- Story of Tano Slau (aka Pico for those who know him)

Fading


"Leave me alone!" Tano sat in the corner of his straw bed, huddled against the freezing mud wall. His patience was gone with the voice that continued to echo through his head. For a week now he's been in that hut up in the Celestial Mountain range, hidden from any civilization.


Since the final battle with the Ranvian forces, he's been hiding. Isolating himself, terrified of what he might do to those he once called his people, his friends, his family. He couldn't return to his home in Alesia. No, not after what he had done. A crime, a despicable crime against humanity, against the Goddess. He knew though he wouldn't go back once he started digging into the forbidden arts.

"Tano, Tano, Tano..." The voice continued, nagging at him, grinding at his nerves.

Tano jumped up out of his bed, thin and tired face twisted in anger. The tattoo that seemed to grow distorted with the folded skin. His grey hair was thinning out exposing his scalp and the ever growing tattoo reaching across like fingers. His legs were weak and threatened to buckle when he stood. His body was a skeletal structure with a loose sheet of skin anymore. He knew it was the starvation or the dehydration or even the lack of sleep. The dark arts had distorted him. He was over a hundred years, but he had looked in his thirties. It was the Elvesian blood that flowed through his veins, though that was changing. His eyes were sunken with black rims. He was looking like a corpse.

He paced around the small mud hut nude, though at this point there wasn't much to look at. If anything, anyone who walked in would scream and run, and probably for the cliff. Which he knew from experience was a long drop. He had originally attempted to kill himself, but being cut by a blade didn't work, nor the thousand foot drop onto stone. He was just stiff when he awoke. No poisoning, and now not even dehydration or starvation. He should've died by now, at least by the constant cramps that seemed to want to tear him apart.

"Tano, Tano, Tano..." The voice continued, unrelenting.

"Shut the fuck up!"

Tano stopped and began chanting a spell. A series of words familiar to the Mages of Alesia and a few of the Angels. Light formed in his hand, then flame engulfed him. Tano let out a cry of pain as he felt his body boil. But nothing happened. The flame extinguished and he fell to his knees bringing up a sharp pain as one of his knees landed on a stone sticking out of the ground.

"Goddamnit!"

He fell to his side, holding his knee. "Just fucking kill me already!"

"Why would I do that?" The voice replied to him.

"I can't take this anymore." Tears rolled down his face as his body cramped up in pain from lack of water and food.

"Then eat. Do what you know you have to to regain your strength and youth and stop this pain."

Tano shook his head. "No! I can't. I refuse!"

"Come on. You already had a taste. You've already folded once. Didn't it taste good? Weren't you happy?"

The voice was right. During the siege of Alesia, his act protected the city, but damned him. He had watched as the army fed on one another. Watched as they performed acts that made anyone sane cringe and turn. But instead he watched them. He watched them with morbid fascination as they tore flesh from one another and ate. He watched as brave men coward before their friends. He watched as corpses were ravaged. They were barbaric. He watched as his own art forced family members to torture one another, to rape the children. This was what he had to revert to in order to save the city. Otherwise the city would've fallen.

He knew his cost for this. The scar on his chest from his ritual to imbue his body with the evil energies wouldn't let him forget it. He knew he would be tainted by evil, though how much, at the time he didn't know. Now he realized, the evil that happened on that field flowed into him. The the final stand. Him and six Elvesian soldiers who had nothing left, stood again fifty thousand soldiers on the way to finish the job. The scene repeated. The feeding of flesh, the ravaging of corpses, children, and adults, except this time he had joined them. He had participated in the grotesque display. What made it worst was he had created a throne of bones in the middle of the horror and sat their like a king. He enjoyed it. He loved it. He was sick, he was twisted.

"You know it made you happy. And what's wrong with being happy?"

Tano sat up, the pain fading. He leaned against the wall, defeat and surrender etched on his face.

"I can't do it. I can't do that to them."

"You did your job. The Great Tano Slau, sacrificed himself for the safety of the greatest city in existence. Now that you finished your job, why not live in happiness instead of pain?"

The voice was making more and more sense. Why did he have to punish himself? He was the hero of Alesia. He did a good thing for these people. He felt his skin crawl. The tattoo was spreading. The tattoo of symbols that defined the very essence of evil. Complex signs that were created by demons to channel the black energy, or "evil" energy. The tattoos finished growing as a grin creeped over his face.

"You're right, I don't need to punish myself. If I have to leave all eternity, why not at least enjoy it." Tano stood and looked down at his withered body. "This won't do at all." He grabbed his tattered cloths and slipped them on. "Now it's time to show these people my reward."