The Water Screams in Protest

Heinous Claws

During all this time the Roaring King was looking for Leonard. The Roaring King was the embodiment of lines, of metaphorical lines, but not in the same way Leonard was. He was enraged at Leo for escaping. He was also enraged at him for plotting to help other slaves, who couldn't, of course, escape on their own but are beautiful souls deserving free lives, to escape.

Now Leonard was going around town trying to land apprenticeships but he hadn't landed anyand his stuff was running out. In his desperation he went to the estate of a slaveowning family to see if they had any jobs for him. He was scared of them and uncomfortable in his interactions with them but took comfort in knowing he was a free man as far as anyone knew. There was a dark, unsettling, corrupted, and almost infectious atmosphere over the estate. The manor house was huge, and towering, and the ladies were in very frilly dresses with frilly umbrellas. They said they didn't have any work for him and Leonard left a bit sad.

But mostly he had a feeling of something dark watching him.

What happened next was a nightmare. The author doesn't quite know how to write it down. There was a man behind Leonard. Not a man, a thing. A grotesque, disgusting, horrific thing. But as frightening as it was to look at what was ten times more frightening was his vast, deafening aura. The immense feeling that rode with him like an outstretched peacock tail of a thousand snakes. The being had long, rough, white hair, and sunken dark eyes embedded in what seemed like an ocean of wrinkles. His face seemed to be a wrinkled, saggy, loose, pale gray mass of skin loosely draped over a fat, deformed skull. His body was fat and pale and wrinkly. But the feeling he carried, like an immense, deafening, rabid, raging, grating, yet silent scream, was beyond proper explanation.

Leonard beleived in magic now. Whatever that thing was, it could not possibly be human, it had to be a dark, powerful force.

It rode behind him, sometimes on a black horse with red eyes and sharp teeth and sometimes on a motorcycle, which was an alien device to Leonard. Hacombe galloped fast but could not get away.

The aura of the inhuman rider was all-encompassing, all around Leo. It was smothering and oppressive, grasping to reach him and hold him down and suffocate him. It was roaring and screeching and powerful and corrupted, and  inspired terror and disgust. It was angry and raging and furious. It fell over him, all around him, and blared through his mind. It was strong and proud and tangible. It was choking him.

He tried so hard to escape the rider. But the rider was gaining momentum. Leonard was terrified and, as the rider came up to him, the last thing he saw before passing out was Hacombe galloping away, and he was at least happy the horse escaped.

He woke up and the dreadful rider was standing over him. He felt a cold, weary sense of dread. The rider had a gruff voice. It said it was going to hurt Leonard. It introduced itself as the God of Lines, as the god of lines society said were not supposed to be crossed, of the social structures, behaviours, lifestyles, and attitudes that the status quo said must be maintained.

Leonard was scared because it was going to hurt him, but he also couldn't help but feel a sense of connection to the beeing's affinity with lines. He recognized the magic in himself and that a big part of him is to see the lines set by society and to analyze why they're there and what they're for and what they're about and then he crossed those lines and broke those social codes. Lines, and specifically crossing them was intrinsically a part of him, was tied to him, and was the constantly burning star within him.

Now, he saw he was on the ground beside a tend and in the tent was a dark-haired teenaged girl strapped to the bed. He knew the girl was there even though the tent was closed and he couldn't see into it. He was scared for this mysterious lady just as he was scared for himself.

The dark rider, who was, in fact the Roaring King, knew he would torture and kill Leonard for being an escaped slave and therefore challenging the status quo of slavery, which no-one had done before. But he saw the fear and tentative, confused respect Leonard helps him with and thought he could use that to control him into aiding the King with something. He told Leonard to go inside the tent and hold his daughter down and attach a drip containing the King's blood into the girl.

So Leonard learned from that that the girl inside the tent was this mysterious entity's daughter, and probably he was trying to somehow hurt her. This confused him. Shouldn't magic things, especially family-related magic things, get along? Well, he didn't know too much about magic. He could tell though that having the dreadful rider's blood but into her would corrupt her and weaken her, and having the corrupting, corrosive, locust-ridden force in her would really hurt her.

He didn't want to do it. But the suffocating, oppresssive, corrosive, scary force in the air was still around him and choking his mind and forcing I'm forwards. But as he got closer to the tent he felt a different force. A kindly free, comforting, warm, airy feeling that made his mind feel free.

He took that power and inspiration and used that power and inspiration to escape. To get out of there. He thought he was free from the dark rider, that he could live free and the way he's wanted to as long as he stayed out of that rider's way. He knew though that were were forces at work within him and within the world that he had not known before.