The Devil That You Know [Day 30: JOKER-- Demons]
After the defeat of the Romanovs, Bartok’s master Rasputin went missing. This was made all the more strange by the fact that he’d left behind his precious reliquary. Bartok saw it lying on a frozen lake and figured that Rasputin would want it kept safe, so he attempted to pick it up. However, the reliquary was hilariously large for a bat of Bartok’s size to lift, and try as he might, he couldn’t make the thing budge.
“Hokay, reliquary, you listen here! You’re coming with me until Master gets back. He wouldn’t want you rolling around outside like this, what with the snowing and the melting and the wind. So why don’t you be a good glowing tube of evil and come with me.” He wrapped his entire body around the mysterious vessel and tried to lift it to no avail. “Oh c’mon, please? I’m just one bat, a little help here?” He yanked with all his might, and suddenly the reliquary was glowing and letting him fly it away. He saw green wings below him as he guided it to his favourite haunt: behind a picture frame in the grand hall of the Old Palace. Once safely in his nook, he stood the reliquary up next to him and took a nap, exhausted from the effort.
His dreams were colourful and frightening. Visions of murder, of riots and plots and fire surrounded him. And everywhere he looked, green wings brought these evils across Russia. He awoke in a sweat, then chuckled at himself. “I tell you what, that reliquary is no joke. Maybe I shouldn’t sleep so close to it.”
As years passed, Bartok got increasingly lonely. He was far from his family in the forests of Czechoslovakia, and the Russian bats around him had no interest in his antics. He would talk to himself, or rather to the reliquary, though there was rarely a difference between the two situations. The reliquary never did anything while he was awake. Surely Rasputin was dead by now, his mission to end the Romanov line complete. Thus for now it was simply a gold-wrapped vial with green liquid in it, waiting menacingly for its next master. However, in Bartok’s dreams it was anything but dormant. Each night he was visited by one of its green minions. He called himself Smert. When Bartok would go on his mind’s fantasy adventures, Smert became his constant companion, providing ill advice that while soundly helping Bartok defeat his foes, wreaked havoc upon the world. He would find himself rejoicing with Smert in the chaos they created, and upon awaking he shivered in fear at the darkness in his mind. These were not things he would even consider in real life; he was a peace-loving bat, for Pete’s sake! He was only with Rasputin in the first place because he was in the sorcerer’s debt for saving him from a hunter’s stray bullet. No, the things he did in his dreams were not him, and it was this conviction that time and again made him consider ditching his creepy nookmate.
But it was his memory of their nightly celebrations that still kept him under Smert’s sway. They would fly through the burning sky and weave air streams around each other, trying to wrap themselves in cushions of wind to the point of being physically entwined. Bartok found himself craving intimacy with Smert, wanting his body and Smert’s to be one, no borders delineating where he ended and where his evil companion began. The things Smert would do to Bartok gave him uncontrollable spasms of ecstasy. The press of a warm chest, the musk of his breath, the urgency with which Smert thrust himself into the very core of the living bat; these were the things that kept Bartok tied to the reliquary for ten years. Smert was his best friend, his confidante, his lover.
In his dreams, he may have been a paragon of evil, but at least he wasn’t alone.
After a decade together, Bartok had finally accepted that the reliquary wasn’t going anywhere. He felt like it really understood him, could communicate with him. This only encouraged him to talk to the thing more. He took to polishing it daily. He would sing to it as he cared for it. He liked to think it made Smert just the tiniest bit nicer.
He had become so used to this macabre game of house when a commotion began in the palace. It seemed that the two humans that lived in the abandoned building had found a girl willing to play Anastasia.
“Anastasia, yeah, just one problem there, fella. Anastasia’s dead. All the Romanovs are dead!”
The reliquary seemed to have a different opinion when it dragged Bartok to their master. The time had come for them to take a voyage of evil in the light of day.
“I need to ditch this thing,” he thought ruefully as it dragged him down.