Metallic Gold #9, Tyrian Purple #11
Name: kay_brooke
Story: The Myrrosta
Colors: Metallic Gold #9 (method), Tyrian Purple #11 (Pandora's Box)
Styles/Supplies: Canvas, Charcoal
Word Count: 2,645
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; implied torture of a person
Summary: Lindjer is curious what his father keeps in the underground room.
Notes: Another piece about a villain as a kid. Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM.
In Lindjer's ancestral home, there were many rooms. From the spacious front entryway one could turn left into the women's wing, and then the schoolroom for lessons and the nursery for babies. To the right from the entryway lay the men's wing. The doors at the back of the entryway went to a sitting room, which in turn led to the main dining room that was opened only for guests. Off to the side one would find the kitchens and the smaller dining room, for family. On the other side was Lindjer's father's study, a place Lindjer and his brother were rarely allowed.
The whole house had only a single story above the desert floor, to help keep it cool in the summer. The ground was generally too unstable to build below-ground floors like Lindjer knew they did in Sarachnia (he had been there once with his father, which at that point in his life was the greatest treat he had ever known), but there was one room, and only one, that went below the earth. The door leading to it was attached to the back of the kitchen, and the room itself wasn't underneath any part of the house proper. Instead, from what Lindjer could determine the few times he had managed to sneak a peek past the ominous-looking wooden door, at the bottom of the earthen steps that led down into the room was a corridor that led away from the house. Lindjer didn't know how long this corridor was, and he figured he would never find out because they were all forbidden to go into the room. They weren't even allowed to touch the door. Whatever was down there was to remain a secret always.
But of course it didn't.
Lindjer was a second son; his brother Laraj was only a year older, and they were so alike in appearance that had one not known better one would have thought they were twins. This was starting to change, however, as Laraj approached his thirteenth year. In the past several months he had suddenly grown, so that he was now several tics taller than Lindjer. His voice had started to deepen, alternating between a childish alto and a deeper tenor. Lindjer was of course jealous because he knew his brother and closest confidant was leaving him behind for adulthood, but he took solace in the fact that he was surely soon to follow.
There were other changes, too, like changes in the way Lindjer's father looked at Laraj. And how one day, not long after Laraj's thirteenth birthday, their father asked him to join him in the forbidden underground room that night.
"May I come as well?" Lindjer had asked politely, because that was the only way his father was to be spoken to.
"No," his father said immediately.
"Why not?" Still polite, and a little nervous from his daring but hoping his calm tone would curb the effect the small rebellion would have on his father.
It didn't. "Do not talk back to me," his father growled. "Do you want to be confined to the stables tonight?"
"No, please," said Lindjer, emphatically shaking his head. He bent back over the book he had been studying, hoping his father wouldn't say anything more.
"Someday," his father suddenly said after a short silence. Lindjer looked up, surprised. He hadn't expected that.
"Someday?" he repeated.
"You see your brother?" said his father, pointing at Laraj, who looked smugger than anything that he was going to finally see the mysterious room they had wondered about their entire lives. Wondered about, but been too frightened to sneak into. "He's soon a man. You're still a child."
Lindjer looked back at the book again, grinding his teeth in frustration. There wasn't that much difference between him and his brother. Just because Laraj was starting to grow tiny bits of fuzz on his face didn't mean he was any kind of man at all.
There was no question that Laraj would be told to keep what he saw secret, and Laraj had gotten smug and arrogant enough in the last year that Lindjer knew he would keep his word on that, because it was yet another mystery of adulthood he could mockingly hold over Lindjer's head.
Close all their lives, but Lindjer had hated his brother a lot recently.
It wasn't long before their father left his sons' study room, reminding Laraj on the way out that he was to meet him in the kitchen at a certain time. As soon as he was gone, Lindjer turned to his brother.
"You'll tell me what you see."
"I'll not," said Laraj, just as Lindjer had expected.
"Please? It won't matter. I'll see it for myself soon enough."
"Then you can wait until then," said Laraj, sticking his nose in the air. "You heard Father. You're still a child."
"So are you!" Lindjer snapped.
"I'm not," said Laraj. "I'm only a year away from beginning military training."
Lindjer was sick of hearing about military training. As sons of landed nobility they were spared the years of boarding that poorer boys had to endure before they could be allowed to begin military training, but Laraj had begun short lessons in weapon work so that he would be prepared for the rigorous exercises he would have to do in less than a year's time. Lindjer longed to hold a short sword, even if it was just to swing it at a dummy stuffed with straw. He always watched his brother's lessons enviously, but he was also calculating, studying the moves and listening closely to what his brother's instructor said. Sometimes, when he was feeling very daring, he would sneak to the edge of the estate, beyond the crop fields, and practice those same moves with a long stick. He knew it wasn't the same, but he was determined to be even better than his brother once he was allowed to begin practicing.
Laraj sniffed in Lindjer's direction and left the study room. He went right instead of left, heading toward the new, larger room that he had gained once he turned thirteen. It was a bedroom for older boys, with its own desk and bookcases. Laraj didn't even need to come to the study room anymore, but Lindjer suspected he did just to rub his new adult status in Lindjer's face.
Lindjer's own room was small, consisting of only a bed and a table for his candle. A horizontal pole was installed along the side of the room, running from the front wall to the back wall, from which Lindjer's clothing was hung. He laid in bed that night, his thoughts whirling and spinning, trying to imagine what his brother was going to see down in that room. The more he thought about it the less tired he felt, until he was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, cursing his insomnia and his brother in equal measure.
Then he heard it: the slow creak of his brother opening his own bedroom door, then a soft click as it closed again. Lindjer could hear Laraj quietly making his way down the corridor, passing by Lindjer's door and continuing until he reached the front entryway. Lindjer shut his eyes tight against the sound, willing himself to think about other things, but his curiosity burned too brightly.
He sat up and slipped on a pair of boots sitting beside his bed and wound a belt around his sleeping tunic. This, he thought as he crept toward his door, was all his brother's fault. If Laraj hadn't been so obnoxious Lindjer wouldn't have felt the need to disobey his father's orders.
He knew his father would never accept that excuse, and also that if he was caught he would certainly be beaten, but that didn't stop him from stepping out into the corridor and making his way toward the front of the house. There was a faster back way to the kitchen, but his brother had gone this way and Lindjer didn't want to accidentally get there before him.
When he reached the front entryway he started hurrying a little bit, because as much as he didn't want his brother to see him, he feared missing his chance to slip through the door behind him even more. The door to the kitchen was open slightly-probably his brother's fault; Laraj was bad about leaving doors open-and Lindjer peeked into the room through the crack. He could just make out the edge of his brother, talking in low tones to their father. Lindjer couldn't make out what they were saying, but he didn't move even an eyelash and barely dared to breathe until he heard the rattle of his father's big iron keys and the scrape of a heavy door being opened. His heart started to pound: this was it. He didn't know if his father or his brother would close or lock the door behind them. He hoped not.
The door, disappointingly, scraped shut then, and Laraj and his father were gone. Lindjer let out the breath he had been holding and slid into the kitchen, keeping to the shadows as much as possible even though there was no one else in the room. He stepped up to the door and stared at it for a moment before putting his hand against it. He turned his head and pressed his ear against the old wood, but he heard nothing. The door was too thick. He wondered if he should risk it, if they would be able to hear the door opening from the room.
Lindjer grasped the iron handle and pulled gently. The door stuck fast. He pulled a little harder and the door moved with a loud groan. Lindjer's breath caught in his throat and he nearly ran as fast as he could back to his own bed, but the door was open now, just a crack, and he couldn't hear anyone coming. He put his eye up to the crack to peer through, but there was only darkness. The room must be a way off, because there was no hint of the torches his brother and father had been carrying.
He gripped the door through the crack and pulled, hard enough to force it open, but slowly and cautiously enough to make as little sound as possible. There were no more groans from the door, though it made a constant and irritating grinding sound as it slid across the stone floor. He only worked on widening the crack until it was just large enough for him to slip through. He was thin, so it didn't take much.
Inside there was only blackness. He gripped the wall and shuffled his feet forward slowly, tic by tic, because he knew the steps began soon and he didn't want to fall to his death. When one foot hit empty air he held on to the wall as tightly as he could and gingerly stepped down. He almost turned back. There was a tiny bit of light shining through the crack in the door, but it was black in front of him and he didn't know how many stairs there were.
If Laraj saw you now he would call you a baby, and he would be right, Lindjer told himself fiercely. He wasn't a baby and he wasn't a coward. Thinking of babies, he hit upon an idea. He sat down on the step and slowly started scooting himself from one stair to the next, like a small child who isn't sure enough in his balance to navigate stairs while on two feet. It worked; he felt less like he was going to fall into a bottomless blackness, and he got past the stairs quickly.
When he reached flat ground he stood up and cautiously began making his way forward again, still holding on to the wall and taking tiny steps just in case there were more stairs. The corridor went on for what seemed like forever and he almost got too scared to continue again. What if the corridor split off? What if there were several corridors? He could be wandering around, blind and helpless, forever. He should have brought even just a small source of light.
But just as he was about to decide to turn around and go back, he came to a corner. He slid his way around it, relieved to realize that he could now see light, just a little bit, illuminating the way in front of him. He could make out that it was shining through the edges of a closed door. Should he risk approaching and trying to open it? Was the room beyond that door, or was it just more corridor?
He was about to move toward the door when suddenly it opened a crack. Lindjer took a step back toward the corner, and he was able to throw himself behind it and out of sight just as the door was thrown all the way open, flooding the corridor with light. He had no time to worry if he had been seen; his thoughts froze in horror as a scream, more full of terror and pain than anything Lindjer had ever heard in his life, echoed down the corridor and buried itself into his ears.
His breath became ragged gasps of fear as the screaming continued, louder and longer than any human being could possibly scream without tearing their throat. Then, over the screams, came a voice he recognized as his father's.
"Shut her up!" he snarled, his deep voice a counterpoint to the high-pitched screams that Lindjer told himself must belong to some kind of animal because no person could make such a horrifying sound. "Drake, I need more oil from the kitchen."
"Baron," said a voice Lindjer recognized as belonging to his father's personal servant.
The screams were suddenly muffled, and through the ringing in his ears Lindjer could hear the heavy, purposeful footsteps of someone moving toward him down the corridor. Blind with panic, curiosity gone, Lindjer ran as fast as he dared back toward the kitchen, hitting the bottom of the steps hard when he came to them and falling. His chin hit one of the steps with a nasty cracking sound. Pain bloomed from the injury, bringing tears to Lindjer's eyes, but he kept running, scrambling up the steps on all fours and squeezing himself through the doorway. He had sprinted halfway across the kitchen before he realized the door was still open, and even though all he wanted to do was run to his bed, he went back to the door and shoved it until it clicked shut, mindless of the noise it made.
He fled the kitchen and took the shorter back way to his bedroom, where he shut the door and sank into his bed, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around his ankles as tears fell down his face and he let out frightened sobs.
What was his father doing in there? What had those sounds been? Lindjer thought he would stay in this position all night, too scared to fall asleep. But as his panic drifted away and no one came to beat him (so they must not have realized), it was replaced with a deep exhaustion. He eventually fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep, full of nightmares.
The next morning, when his father asked him where the large purple bruise on his chin had come from, Lindjer muttered something about slipping on the wet stones in the bath house that morning. He never glanced up from his book, determined to ignore Laraj, who was behaving even more smugly than usual. And he didn't dare look his father in the eye as the lie slipped from his lips.
Story: The Myrrosta
Colors: Metallic Gold #9 (method), Tyrian Purple #11 (Pandora's Box)
Styles/Supplies: Canvas, Charcoal
Word Count: 2,645
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; implied torture of a person
Summary: Lindjer is curious what his father keeps in the underground room.
Notes: Another piece about a villain as a kid. Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM.
In Lindjer's ancestral home, there were many rooms. From the spacious front entryway one could turn left into the women's wing, and then the schoolroom for lessons and the nursery for babies. To the right from the entryway lay the men's wing. The doors at the back of the entryway went to a sitting room, which in turn led to the main dining room that was opened only for guests. Off to the side one would find the kitchens and the smaller dining room, for family. On the other side was Lindjer's father's study, a place Lindjer and his brother were rarely allowed.
The whole house had only a single story above the desert floor, to help keep it cool in the summer. The ground was generally too unstable to build below-ground floors like Lindjer knew they did in Sarachnia (he had been there once with his father, which at that point in his life was the greatest treat he had ever known), but there was one room, and only one, that went below the earth. The door leading to it was attached to the back of the kitchen, and the room itself wasn't underneath any part of the house proper. Instead, from what Lindjer could determine the few times he had managed to sneak a peek past the ominous-looking wooden door, at the bottom of the earthen steps that led down into the room was a corridor that led away from the house. Lindjer didn't know how long this corridor was, and he figured he would never find out because they were all forbidden to go into the room. They weren't even allowed to touch the door. Whatever was down there was to remain a secret always.
But of course it didn't.
Lindjer was a second son; his brother Laraj was only a year older, and they were so alike in appearance that had one not known better one would have thought they were twins. This was starting to change, however, as Laraj approached his thirteenth year. In the past several months he had suddenly grown, so that he was now several tics taller than Lindjer. His voice had started to deepen, alternating between a childish alto and a deeper tenor. Lindjer was of course jealous because he knew his brother and closest confidant was leaving him behind for adulthood, but he took solace in the fact that he was surely soon to follow.
There were other changes, too, like changes in the way Lindjer's father looked at Laraj. And how one day, not long after Laraj's thirteenth birthday, their father asked him to join him in the forbidden underground room that night.
"May I come as well?" Lindjer had asked politely, because that was the only way his father was to be spoken to.
"No," his father said immediately.
"Why not?" Still polite, and a little nervous from his daring but hoping his calm tone would curb the effect the small rebellion would have on his father.
It didn't. "Do not talk back to me," his father growled. "Do you want to be confined to the stables tonight?"
"No, please," said Lindjer, emphatically shaking his head. He bent back over the book he had been studying, hoping his father wouldn't say anything more.
"Someday," his father suddenly said after a short silence. Lindjer looked up, surprised. He hadn't expected that.
"Someday?" he repeated.
"You see your brother?" said his father, pointing at Laraj, who looked smugger than anything that he was going to finally see the mysterious room they had wondered about their entire lives. Wondered about, but been too frightened to sneak into. "He's soon a man. You're still a child."
Lindjer looked back at the book again, grinding his teeth in frustration. There wasn't that much difference between him and his brother. Just because Laraj was starting to grow tiny bits of fuzz on his face didn't mean he was any kind of man at all.
There was no question that Laraj would be told to keep what he saw secret, and Laraj had gotten smug and arrogant enough in the last year that Lindjer knew he would keep his word on that, because it was yet another mystery of adulthood he could mockingly hold over Lindjer's head.
Close all their lives, but Lindjer had hated his brother a lot recently.
It wasn't long before their father left his sons' study room, reminding Laraj on the way out that he was to meet him in the kitchen at a certain time. As soon as he was gone, Lindjer turned to his brother.
"You'll tell me what you see."
"I'll not," said Laraj, just as Lindjer had expected.
"Please? It won't matter. I'll see it for myself soon enough."
"Then you can wait until then," said Laraj, sticking his nose in the air. "You heard Father. You're still a child."
"So are you!" Lindjer snapped.
"I'm not," said Laraj. "I'm only a year away from beginning military training."
Lindjer was sick of hearing about military training. As sons of landed nobility they were spared the years of boarding that poorer boys had to endure before they could be allowed to begin military training, but Laraj had begun short lessons in weapon work so that he would be prepared for the rigorous exercises he would have to do in less than a year's time. Lindjer longed to hold a short sword, even if it was just to swing it at a dummy stuffed with straw. He always watched his brother's lessons enviously, but he was also calculating, studying the moves and listening closely to what his brother's instructor said. Sometimes, when he was feeling very daring, he would sneak to the edge of the estate, beyond the crop fields, and practice those same moves with a long stick. He knew it wasn't the same, but he was determined to be even better than his brother once he was allowed to begin practicing.
Laraj sniffed in Lindjer's direction and left the study room. He went right instead of left, heading toward the new, larger room that he had gained once he turned thirteen. It was a bedroom for older boys, with its own desk and bookcases. Laraj didn't even need to come to the study room anymore, but Lindjer suspected he did just to rub his new adult status in Lindjer's face.
Lindjer's own room was small, consisting of only a bed and a table for his candle. A horizontal pole was installed along the side of the room, running from the front wall to the back wall, from which Lindjer's clothing was hung. He laid in bed that night, his thoughts whirling and spinning, trying to imagine what his brother was going to see down in that room. The more he thought about it the less tired he felt, until he was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, cursing his insomnia and his brother in equal measure.
Then he heard it: the slow creak of his brother opening his own bedroom door, then a soft click as it closed again. Lindjer could hear Laraj quietly making his way down the corridor, passing by Lindjer's door and continuing until he reached the front entryway. Lindjer shut his eyes tight against the sound, willing himself to think about other things, but his curiosity burned too brightly.
He sat up and slipped on a pair of boots sitting beside his bed and wound a belt around his sleeping tunic. This, he thought as he crept toward his door, was all his brother's fault. If Laraj hadn't been so obnoxious Lindjer wouldn't have felt the need to disobey his father's orders.
He knew his father would never accept that excuse, and also that if he was caught he would certainly be beaten, but that didn't stop him from stepping out into the corridor and making his way toward the front of the house. There was a faster back way to the kitchen, but his brother had gone this way and Lindjer didn't want to accidentally get there before him.
When he reached the front entryway he started hurrying a little bit, because as much as he didn't want his brother to see him, he feared missing his chance to slip through the door behind him even more. The door to the kitchen was open slightly-probably his brother's fault; Laraj was bad about leaving doors open-and Lindjer peeked into the room through the crack. He could just make out the edge of his brother, talking in low tones to their father. Lindjer couldn't make out what they were saying, but he didn't move even an eyelash and barely dared to breathe until he heard the rattle of his father's big iron keys and the scrape of a heavy door being opened. His heart started to pound: this was it. He didn't know if his father or his brother would close or lock the door behind them. He hoped not.
The door, disappointingly, scraped shut then, and Laraj and his father were gone. Lindjer let out the breath he had been holding and slid into the kitchen, keeping to the shadows as much as possible even though there was no one else in the room. He stepped up to the door and stared at it for a moment before putting his hand against it. He turned his head and pressed his ear against the old wood, but he heard nothing. The door was too thick. He wondered if he should risk it, if they would be able to hear the door opening from the room.
Lindjer grasped the iron handle and pulled gently. The door stuck fast. He pulled a little harder and the door moved with a loud groan. Lindjer's breath caught in his throat and he nearly ran as fast as he could back to his own bed, but the door was open now, just a crack, and he couldn't hear anyone coming. He put his eye up to the crack to peer through, but there was only darkness. The room must be a way off, because there was no hint of the torches his brother and father had been carrying.
He gripped the door through the crack and pulled, hard enough to force it open, but slowly and cautiously enough to make as little sound as possible. There were no more groans from the door, though it made a constant and irritating grinding sound as it slid across the stone floor. He only worked on widening the crack until it was just large enough for him to slip through. He was thin, so it didn't take much.
Inside there was only blackness. He gripped the wall and shuffled his feet forward slowly, tic by tic, because he knew the steps began soon and he didn't want to fall to his death. When one foot hit empty air he held on to the wall as tightly as he could and gingerly stepped down. He almost turned back. There was a tiny bit of light shining through the crack in the door, but it was black in front of him and he didn't know how many stairs there were.
If Laraj saw you now he would call you a baby, and he would be right, Lindjer told himself fiercely. He wasn't a baby and he wasn't a coward. Thinking of babies, he hit upon an idea. He sat down on the step and slowly started scooting himself from one stair to the next, like a small child who isn't sure enough in his balance to navigate stairs while on two feet. It worked; he felt less like he was going to fall into a bottomless blackness, and he got past the stairs quickly.
When he reached flat ground he stood up and cautiously began making his way forward again, still holding on to the wall and taking tiny steps just in case there were more stairs. The corridor went on for what seemed like forever and he almost got too scared to continue again. What if the corridor split off? What if there were several corridors? He could be wandering around, blind and helpless, forever. He should have brought even just a small source of light.
But just as he was about to decide to turn around and go back, he came to a corner. He slid his way around it, relieved to realize that he could now see light, just a little bit, illuminating the way in front of him. He could make out that it was shining through the edges of a closed door. Should he risk approaching and trying to open it? Was the room beyond that door, or was it just more corridor?
He was about to move toward the door when suddenly it opened a crack. Lindjer took a step back toward the corner, and he was able to throw himself behind it and out of sight just as the door was thrown all the way open, flooding the corridor with light. He had no time to worry if he had been seen; his thoughts froze in horror as a scream, more full of terror and pain than anything Lindjer had ever heard in his life, echoed down the corridor and buried itself into his ears.
His breath became ragged gasps of fear as the screaming continued, louder and longer than any human being could possibly scream without tearing their throat. Then, over the screams, came a voice he recognized as his father's.
"Shut her up!" he snarled, his deep voice a counterpoint to the high-pitched screams that Lindjer told himself must belong to some kind of animal because no person could make such a horrifying sound. "Drake, I need more oil from the kitchen."
"Baron," said a voice Lindjer recognized as belonging to his father's personal servant.
The screams were suddenly muffled, and through the ringing in his ears Lindjer could hear the heavy, purposeful footsteps of someone moving toward him down the corridor. Blind with panic, curiosity gone, Lindjer ran as fast as he dared back toward the kitchen, hitting the bottom of the steps hard when he came to them and falling. His chin hit one of the steps with a nasty cracking sound. Pain bloomed from the injury, bringing tears to Lindjer's eyes, but he kept running, scrambling up the steps on all fours and squeezing himself through the doorway. He had sprinted halfway across the kitchen before he realized the door was still open, and even though all he wanted to do was run to his bed, he went back to the door and shoved it until it clicked shut, mindless of the noise it made.
He fled the kitchen and took the shorter back way to his bedroom, where he shut the door and sank into his bed, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around his ankles as tears fell down his face and he let out frightened sobs.
What was his father doing in there? What had those sounds been? Lindjer thought he would stay in this position all night, too scared to fall asleep. But as his panic drifted away and no one came to beat him (so they must not have realized), it was replaced with a deep exhaustion. He eventually fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep, full of nightmares.
The next morning, when his father asked him where the large purple bruise on his chin had come from, Lindjer muttered something about slipping on the wet stones in the bath house that morning. He never glanced up from his book, determined to ignore Laraj, who was behaving even more smugly than usual. And he didn't dare look his father in the eye as the lie slipped from his lips.