Blood, Steel and Ego

ARC 0: Family Troubles

The most powerful force known to mankind is their desire, an unhindered, unrestrainable urge to invoke their will upon the world. Humanity is, of course, not the only thing with desire of such calibre, but of the many denizens of the expansive Earth, they alone stand at the pinnacle of grasping it. Id: the unconscious and unquenchable base desires of the psyche. Id is like fire. It burns with fuel, and those with the most desire may put that fire to good use. It strikes the soul, protects the body and enhances the wielder.

Silas Arnoket tread heavily on the subtle glowing stones of his family's private prison. The sun saw none of these inner walls, and the only lights within were dim, glowing bulbs powered by cables that ran across the floor like anachronistic snakes. They didn't fit at all, this was supposed to be a dungeon, a place where abhorrent cryptids, spirits and criminals were left in the dark to be forgotten about, but as modern times came and granted its benefits, the scum and villains kept underground benefited as well.

The sound of his armoured boots clinked on the ground and bounced off the walls as he strode past the cells, most were empty, but he passed by enough heavily tattooed cultists, silent gargoyles, and limb-bound nymphs, that he knew the quiet was born of tension, not peace.

"Wha- Silas, think about this!" a man in a suit pleaded, scant wrinkles of his brow drenched in sweat "I- I know it must hurt, but really, if you just-"

"I'm not going to entertain the notion, Henry. They want me to choose? I'll choose."

"Y- but this is suicide Silas!" Henry grabbed him by his rerebrace, stopping his march in progress "Listen to me for once, I swear to the Angels... It might seem disrespectful, but what they're offering is real, tangible. And if you don't take it, then you're playing right into the game they want you to,"

"I'm not." He spat back

"Oh? You think it's a coincidence that refusing their kindness locks you in a cage with a murderous spirit?"

"You!-"

Henry shut his eyes tight and scrunched up his face. He'd never been hit before, but he believed that Silas was about to spin him. To his disbelief, when he opened his eyes, several seconds later, all he saw was the man he'd watched grow up looking off into a nearby cell, one fist balled at his side, and the other, tightly gripping the hilt of his sword.

"You think I don't know that?..." He continued, then stared him down and swiped a signed piece of paper from Henry's hand "You think I care?"

The suit was stunned into silence and broke contact by looking at his shoes. Silas was uncanny. Staring into his soul felt to the eyes like the shearing of metal, and caused an inner pain like cracking a tooth at the back of one's mouth. His right eye was human enough, if only a bright shade of blue, but his other, crossed by one of several stretched birthmarks, was filled with blood from the moment he was born. There was no supernatural explanation, it was a minor and harmless haemorrhage of blood vessels that didn't impact his ability to see. Science would vindicate this perspective, but everyone who met him had something else to say.

'Silas Arnoket had one of the devil's eyes,'

Those birthmarks of his scraped over his face like a mean set of claws, leaving him in a perpetual state of scowling. As he turned around to leave Henry, the servant narrowed his eyes and spoke in full confidence for the first time in years "They don't want to kill you Silas, but if you're too stubborn to back down, I'm sure I'd be the only one in mourning"

The knight ruined his way to the end of the line, past cells and past selves passing him by as he went. There wasn't a world where he didn't do this, there wasn't a Silas that allowed himself to be swayed by threats his family made. That's just not the kind of man he was.