Tears Of Scarlet, Tears Of Gold

Sect every time I see your writing it makes me want to start writing, but I always end up giving up.
That and I typically like gruesome gory scenes of war and angst.

By the way, I hope you guys don't mind, but this is going to be a very short portion.

And Vin, that's all I really write about, just let the pen go. Trust me.

Day 119:

Negotiations were very, very rough.

I feel as though my life has become a series of ticking clocks. It is just as it was a few months prior, upon my days in the East. The feeling that I am on the edge of madness and sanity.

The voices in my head, they will not cease.

I have wronged them; wronged them greatly.

It is a funny thing to be aware of your own soul. It is something I may never get used to, even now with what can essentially be thought of as access to my soul at whim.

The ability to send myself into a sort of trance and lose this world. Am I crazy, or am I just literally between two realms?

It is late now, and I must file down what happened in negotiations soon, so that if I lose myself again that at least there will be some record of what has happened. Sometimes, I feel like these writings may be the only thing that may give me some chance, however slight, of the world understanding the monster I have become, and maybe forgiving the things that I have done in my life.

Is it forgiveness, or acceptance? I'm honestly not quite sure myself. I think I've come to terms now that the rest of my life is to be spent alone.

No, not alone.

That's what the voice in my head says, and I suppose it's right. At least I've got Maje.

He is a demon, but perhaps I was wrong about demons this whole time. I suppose as with anything, the more you get to know and understand, the better it seems to be.

It's so fickle, how we behave.

But that is not to say that the demons were not our enemies; no, it's easy to see that they tried to destroy us far too many times to forget. I think what it boils down to is that a creature can only be judged on the basis of who that particular creature is.

As demons go, Maje really isn't so bad. He had observed the humans with a careful eye, and from what he says, he only terrorized because that is simply what demons do.

But he also says that now that he's gotten to know me, he wouldn't kill me.

The demons and the five races, they share a lot when you think about it.

They are proud as the Elvaan; they are as cunning as the Mithra; they are as intelligent as the Tarus; they are as wise as the Galka; they are as ambitious as the Humes. And they are as arrogant, apathetic, cowardly, envious, and full of rage as the lot of them.

It's a little bit funny, truly, how similar we all are.

Did we not hate them on the basis of them being demons?

Day 119 -- Continued:

Imagine, if you will, the composition of a piece of pie.

You've got your Rolanberry pie filling, a good size one; we'll say it's in a massive bowl, just chilling out while I make the pie crust.

That's my soul.

Now imagine if you accidentally slammed a cabinet door and you sent a huge bowl of nuts tumbling off a shelf and it falls right into the pie. Okay, it's still salvageable, and it's functional. It's a Rolanberry pie filling, with nuts in it now. You stir it all together so that your friends think you made some crazy new invention and hope that it's good. But still, it's not the same. You can't get it out. It's like the shrapnel I hear that Cid had tested one day.

You just can never get all the nuts out. They were ground and roasted, too. Tiny. They become incongruous with the original filling.

That's Maje.

And then it becomes a disaster. Your Chocobo sticks its head in the window and knocks some a cup of Buburimu Grapes into the window.

Meh, it can still work.

That's the Galka. But he's kind of lumped off to one side, because there weren't too many grapes, you know?

Then one of your annoying Taru assistants trips and some bubble chocolate gets tossed in.

You're cursing now, and you know that there's no way in hell you're getting this Rolanberry Pie done, so you may as well just roll with the punches.

Those are the Mamools that I took the soul from.

At this point, the pie has changed colors, because those new ingredients are dyeing it. It's now blue.

You set your counter girl to stir the filling even as you go out for a breather to get away from the disaster. Alright, you see it; it's blue, but as it smooths out, you feel like it'll turn out alright. It's a nice blue; a thousand shades of it. Maybe it's still salvageable.

Yeah, right; the next thing that happens is that you come in and get pissed off at something, and you toss some spice in willingly. That cinnamon? Those are the Elvaans I broke.

But you can still manage.

And then just as you pour it into the pie crust and quickly run to the bathroom, you come back to see that one of your assistants put it in the oven for you to get it out of sight. You're thankful for a moment, and then you take it out of the oven a little while later when it should be done.

And you see that your oven was dripping oil and it ruined the whole pie. You've got a tar-colored mess now.

That's Crim. That's what he did to me.

That's what's happened to my soul.

But there's still yet magic in this world.

Interesting way to describe it all, this really brings you back to remember what you used to be before the whole story began. I like it.

Day 119 -- Continued:

By this point in my life, I've done a lot of horrible things within the last hundred and nineteen days.

So we've got this oil stained pie. Okay, now what?

As I said, this is a world of magic.

Maje and I managed to win the fight for control of the body temporarily a few times, long enough to scare him, and that's what let us bring him back inside to talk.

That soul, still, while stained, was still primarily Maje and I.

And so when he came inside to talk, I let Maje do the negotiations.

I have so many souls stuck inside of me now that I fear sometimes I may go mad. Where are they? How are they tethered to me?

That much, I do not truly understand, but ultimately, I'm the one in charge; I suppose, as the chef and maker of the Rolanberry filling base, but whatever dark magic this is, I'm just a tad bit more powerful than the lot of them. Perhaps because I've been tethered to this body longest, or perhaps because maybe it all doesn't work like I think. Either way, I know that ultimately, I can wield them in some way.

I could silence them before, I could break them; hell, the act that I could extract them was proof enough.

And so when he entered the area that which we may all meet, the false reality in my heart, I had Maje do the talking as I prepared.

Maje, under the guise of being the one in control, made the negotiations ferociously, and they argued it out and beat their demands into the ground and what they were willing to give up.

Ultimately, though, the final act would have to come from either Maje or I; that's simply how this soul works now, somehow.

And so finally they reached some term or another, and we began to get ready for the tribulations that allowed for the repartitioning of the soul. I suppose that Maje and I underwent a sort of trial by fire the first time, now that I think about it; it was a little different.

But each time after I took a soul, there was some mutual understanding, a mutual pact.

I'll keep you in here, for the time, and I may use your memories and your powers and your ideas, but you stay with me.

And Maje and I, in the depths of my soul where Crim did not seem to be able to come, had planned around this policy.

As master of this false reality, this soul, ultimately I supposed that I could be the one to end the pacts and violate them.

And so as Maje and Crim became ready to split control over me, he glanced at me and I struck.

Imagine if every other soul that I have detailed in all my journals as having taken was suddenly brought to the table.

With one lightning paced motion, I lunged at Crim as Maje grabbed him and forced forth all the other souls.

The rules are a little different inside a soul. You can sometimes play around.

Like how I was essentially possessing the Galka, The Elvaans, the Mamools, all of them at once... and grabbing at Crim. Maje, too. Myself, too.

Our goal was to overpower him, and split him up between the lot of us.

And that's exactly what we did.

But now all the souls inside of me are howling in pain.

It's bought us some time, but not enough.

Day 120:

But at least, mostly, it's Maje and I.

I can shut the voices out for a little while, but even Maje and I have a little bit of Crim in us now.

When we took our body back, we found ourselves--and my Chocobo, thank Altana--in Jugner, on the road towards Davoi.

It seemed as though the Orcs played some sort of important roll in this. I'll go investigate that now, while I still can.

Maje and I at least can tell one thing: I'm a ticking time bomb now. Next time Crim breaks through, that may be the last time. Unless I keep claiming souls and splitting him up inside of me.

I truly wonder if I will be alive for much longer.

I don't know how much more this body can take.

So is this the final chapter of your epic tale?

Day 121:

Sleep is not coming so easily anymore.

I was up all night, but I'm not terribly tired. It's hard to explain.

I snuck into Davoi and prepared for the worst, and was met with essentially just that. Demons and Orcs were there; it seemed to be a station for them.

Used to be.

I'm becoming entirely used to sneaking into enemy strongholds and destroying creatures, it seems.

It was simpler this time.

Maje translated for me, and I was able to sneak pretty far in before having to kill the first few Orcs. We made it into their inner sanctum, the Monastic Cavern, and killed some more.

It was good to go tentacular for a bit. My sword was also getting thirsty.

I've relied too much on my tentacles though, and not so much on my own abilities. So I spat some fire, swung my sword like crazy, and soon enough I had found Overlord Bakgodek himself.

I'm sure you know what my interrogations are like by now, so I'll spare you any detail. Just know that the Orcs had a very large hand in the initiation of this plague.

Punish them dearly.

Any that I didn't kill that night.

:D:D:D:D

Tears will be completed this week. It's just a short one.

I totally just got killed by a raptor while I was reading this because my Garuda was killing a crab and I wasn't paying ANY attention to anything but this story.

I love to write. I wrote a story once for my journals in high school and my teacher told me not to copy novels. I didn't copy a novel, I wrote it myself =) I haven't touched a pencil since though.

This story is awesome, can't wait for the rest!

Day 127:

I have taken to wandering, unsure of what to do for now.

It was on this morning that I learned that my warning had been in vain.

I had thought that with the note I left in the ashes of Jeuno, it would be known that I was serious.

Don't follow me.

But they did not listen.

I was found by Ludo and Selim. They say they have been search the whole month for any sign of me and were only able to find me by following the scent of Orc blood that was littered across me.

They begged me to come back, or at least allow them to stay with me.

But Maje and I both knew that that was a bad idea.

I explained it to them, profusely, and I ultimately I simply mounted my Chocobo and left them.

I'm not to be trusted.

They could have been hallucinations for all I know, but I doubt it.

They say that the entirety of the populus had been safely moved to Altepa, very quickly. Wolfgang had lost most of his respect from the people, and now they answered only to Cid.

I couldn't say I was surprised in the least. Arrogance made Wolfgang impragmatic; ingenuity made Cid the logical choice to follow.

They say that there is currently a system being built to bring water from the underground streams that created Korroloka. I'm happy for them. Cid will be able to see to it that a stronghold is made, if no one else can.

Especially with the strength of the Gigases by their side.

Apparently they made record time by the Gigases offering to pull giant chariots of sort. They were simply able to jog for an hour, pulling a cart together in groups of two to three, take a break, and continue. They said that it only took three days to make it into the desert.

For now, I'm just fleeing. I see a fire in the distance; I'm in the Valkurm Dunes. I hear some tamborines, or something.

I can only pray that nothing comes of this.

But by Altana, I'm scared of myself at this point, because I'm hungry. That type of hungry.

And Crim, the little part of him in me, is hungry too.

Day 128:

It was a nomadic group that's been surviving as their own little gypsy circle.

They say that some of them came from Norg, and others had been trying to get back to the Far East when Norg was fleeing, so they ended up on the same ships inwards.

They had heard that the situation here was diffusing, and so it was the more logical choice for survival. I can't say that I fault them.

For now, I'm going to stick with them for a few days because we're both heading North. I suppose that it may be time for me to investigate the icy prisons.

There is a particular female there, and it seems like I just attract all the characters. She's wearing lots of yellow garments and has this long red hair that absolutely radiates a perpetual desire for mating. She immediately came over to find out more about me.

Apparently, she's had her share of adventures, too. I told her a little bit about my last hundred thirty days or so. I've become more cold, more stoic, more icy, I suppose. I felt like there wasn't much to say. But she had a lot to say, and I had nothing better to do than listen. There was an old man with an eye patch eyeing me speculatively throughout, but she went over to talk to him and seemed to assure him that I was safe.

Which is funny, because I'm really not.

But still. She's alright. She's kind of cute, too. That's always good.

But still, nothing will come of that. My heart, if such a thing exists, is in Aht Urhgan. And it shall stay there, I hope.

I hope.

They watch me as I write in this book, not understanding much about me and my albino bird. We're stopped for now, probably for some food.

I don't eat very much anymore, or drink. I know what I want.

It's not very safe for these people, but I have no strong emotional attachment to them. Meh.

Awww, don't kill the gypsies =( lol

Great so far!!

Sounds like you bumped into Lion and Gilgamesh.

Mhm

Aw don't kill Lion. She's been through enough already lol

Oh, fine, I'll write update before y'all have heart attacks.

Dude, we're addicts. lol

I swear, i check this thread at least 3-4 times a day looking for the next post.

When I finish calc HW (16 more questions oh my god Im dying) I'll post an update. I promise

*Tosses you a calculator!* Go go go!

I was up till 5 doing it lmfao.

Updates later today @.@

10 refreshes every 30mins for the last...5hrs... I NEEDS MAH CRACK MAN!!!!

I just finished Friday's Calc HW so I don't have last night's problem again! I'M WORKING ON IT GDI!

lmao XP ok ok the lolpup will go sit in the corner now.

Day 130:

Her name is Lion. I suppose it's fitting, really; she's got the mane to match the name. I wonder if it's a nickname.

We've been traveling back northwards now. They say that they make rounds to and fro, not staying in one place too long for fear that if they do, the Turned will find them.

I remain mostly silent. It's really not the Turned they have to worry about. It's rare to see a group larger than a cluster of them now.

But the people fear them, all the same. I suppose they see how badly the population was devastated. When I was staying in Delkfutt I estimated less than two thousand people had made it there. Jeuno, by itself, had housed no fewer than five thousand people. Windurst's population seemed the most stable. The Humes? The Elvaans?

Only Altana knows. I heard talk that San d'Oria had fallen, for the most part and was decimated; there were rumors, however, that there may yet be a considerable population that had taken to their catacombs and mysteriously dissapeared. I had also heard that a decent portion of Bastok's people may, in fact, have fled before the whole thing even began. To where? Who knows.

The main land, while not safe, is no longer as deadly as it was in the first few weeks where it was suicide to leave safety.

While we moved, and we moved slowly, mind you, northwards, I spoke of such things with Lion because she liked to talk so much and because, maybe, I could offer them the insight needed to settle down somewhere safe. I've learned enough though to know now that people just don't seem to listen to the good advice. Myself included.

Maje's laughing at that one. How true, he muses, but it's a flaw that's shared among even Demons.

And it will probably be their downfall.

She's very interested in me because I'm new; she said so herself. She keeps asking questions, but I offer up very little.

I don't want to get too attached to anyone, ever again.

gonna start stalking your house for updates, k? <3

Also note that the pdf has been updated.

Please don't, I would much more appreciate fan mail in my PO Box ;P