The First Law

[Horizon]

Do you still talk to God?

The question still hung in the air like that of the cigaras that filled the room. She always wondered what he told him before they departed. Thumbing the ring of the glass, Gabriel winced as he looked inside circle of the slowly shrinking ice. Eaten away by that dark mixture of of liquids that seemed to sit so heavy and swelled.

The back of this lone man's black dyed leather jacket said it all.

These things happen.

Maybe he had given up the way she had given up. A sweet resignation from the thing from whence they came. Could you let go of the past and look to something better? Was it a question of whether it could be better in general? Or did all those phantoms truly carry on with you wherever you walked?

Gabriel took another deep swig, the warmth of the drink now prominent as it rushed over his gums. His eyes resting on the reflection before him beyond the bar. The grease in his hair ever prominent with its slicked back design.

The glass returned to the stained wood along with the rest of his now forgotten drinks.

Each one another thought that was to mulled over time and time again.

The beast wanted more. It wanted to rest. It wanted sweet silence. The disarray that only a stiff drink could provide.

But there was something it craved more. It had tasted its sweet liquor long ago and nothing would ever quite taste like it. A sweet red wine that soiled the uniforms of men and covered the faces of those that truly knew how to bask in the nature of war.

The mirror held not the reflection he saw earlier. But of the bone-white mask he wore so well.

 

[Toska]

In these godless wakes, where stale cigarette smoke filtered through queasy, trembling fans, blood ran saccharine through Salvatore's veins. Slicked in loose silks, cupping a deep glass that shimmered grotesquely from within, he cast off the day's rot. Tilted his chin, looked around at those few who sat nearest to him. Listened in on the nigh silent conversation bubbling in the quiet decor.

Plated cedar lacquer added weight, bequeathed a comfortable scent to the acrid spill of wheat and liquor. Fermented, broken down, each glass, bottle, mug oiled with the walks of decay; decadence that stood thick at the cusp of raucous laughter. Chuckles that settled betwixt the calm of hands folded over in a fiat of resplendence. Chits danced between men, credits tossed languidly with the promise of returns.

Those sounds which penetrated the sangfroid caught his eye. The eyes which sightlessly bore into the calm, parted conversation's brine to slip into the eaves. Waiting, listening as was his wont.

Drinking of the bitter swells, lapping at the shoals that broke waves and turned heads to watch, Salvatore's gaze wandered to a baked black jacket, and the man whose presence proclaimed an air of urgent melancholy. A parse that refused to be parted. He lifted his cup in camaraderie.

"You've something on your mind," he said. "Makes for fairer sport than silence."

 

[Horizon]

"Silence isn't so bad."

Another swig to the lips and the glass was finished. A finale to his night of drinking and one without flair.

"But I'll take a good conversation against this practically smog filled room. This is as good as it gets, y'know?"

Gabriel lifted his right hand, sleeve sliding down with the motion to reveal an antique. A dated watch that was covered in a golden finish a semi-squared finish to the face that depicted digital numbers. The glass itself that protected the face was cracked, a single point of of trauma that had impacted the surface long ago. The leather backed man pointed his index finger about the room. Nothing in particular, just everything it might seem to his fellow patron that sat next to him.

"This is our end game as a society. Having enough time to sit around and chug down poison. To what end? Perhaps this is the epitome of not having to struggle anymore against nature and ourselves. The time to be allowed to rot in peace."

Pulling a small pack from the pocket of his jacket, Gabriel held a cigarette between his fingers before bringing a gleaming silver lighter to the end. With a deep pull, the flames bent to his will and began to singe the end. The smoke rushed down his lungs like a waterfall in its own way. Another poison to allow him to comfortable rot in peace while the rest of the galaxy moved on without notice.

 

[Toska]

Peace save for the befoulment it wretched over the sanctity of Salvatore's drink. Cupping the lip of his glass, eschewing the smoke, the translucent wisps that crawled along the tapering of his garments, he appraised his companion from the high arch of a brow. Appraised the loose cigarette, the sense of wealth evoked from the silver decor, the tragic image wrought forth in melancholic eyes.

It captured his gaze, drew him from the ancient accord adorning the man's wrist. The broken watch whose face bore a lopsided grin, cracked through the crystal teeth to belie age, use. To convey a fervent desperation for status, imagery. The man before him sat with all the weight of ideals. An amorphous thing, propped up by twisted sneers and sighs off the slip of a whisky tumbler.

But the raw discourse that man pursued. Talk of peace, of rot. Decaying civilization fresh from war's womb...

Salvatore answered unconsciously, "Only those content with inaction rot." The lifted brow swung around, fell from its perch as he polished the lip of his glass. Imbibed the murky waters, the sanguine mixture so rife with contrast to the elements of peace; as if for all the galaxy he downed a goblet of blood. For all his worth.

"No one is stopping you," he said. "Go to your nature. Throw sticks at bantha, carve the meat from their bones. If this society of ours is the root of your discontent, abandon it."

 

[Horizon]

"You speak so freely, Salvatore. Yet you remain waist deep in their excrement."

The leather cladded rebel took hold of his empty glass once more. The glass shattered beneath his iron grip, causing shards to burst and explode so forth around him. Much of it digging deep into his own palm. His torn flesh welcomed the broken glass in a rapturous moment of sobriety. Satisfaction gripped his lips as they turned and curled at their corners. Gabriel began to delicately remove the larger pieces, sliding them out with an audible slithering of the glass from whence his flesh allowed. One by one he laid them before his opportunity. Each a broken reflection of his whimsical friend that was rather distorted in its own right.

A broken image covered in crimson tides.

"Now, you may be wondering as to how I might know who you are. To spare you all the boring details, I present you a choice of words. The wolves seek those gentle flames in the inky blackness of the night for one reason above all. Curiosity. As to what they find is a different story entirely."

Gabriel took his uninjured hand and quietly overlapped the other, closing his eyes for a brief moment before returning it to the table. The smaller shards that his touch could not reach were now hovering effortlessly in direct light of the lamp that hung low overhead. The light casted these shards in a shimmering display of beauty. The bulb of the lamp began to waver, flickering in and out of power as a gust of wind began to circle the bar. The trails of smoke thrashing about as the lights themselves faded into blackness.

"I haven't been honest with you. Your perception of all this to be exact."

 

[Toska]

"Curiosity?" Rapture strove for his lips, a sneer that tore at satisfaction, crept nearer the boundary between wicked wine and pooling blood; coagulating, red, a sheen that caught in the waning fixtures and blue glow of holographic lighting. Smoke took a liking to the substance, curling around in little wisps until it hovered off the concave tip, settling and breathing out, away, dancing in translucent tendrils that waited for a kiss of life.

"You've piqued mine." Salvatore set aside his glass. Left it there on the bar, his gaze affixed to that bloodied hand. Watching each shard leave flesh, bit by broken bit, resting his cheek on thumb and knuckle. He sat to observe, to mull over the words in turn. Phrases that hung thick in the air. Wolves, curiosity, flame. That manner of speech, so antiquated, rough, it had him listening from the arch of a brow.

Had his attention in raspy coughs, bouts that fluctuated between patience and the hanging lisp of a tongue coiled to strike. Serpentine, slithering over choice of word, waiting. Perched.

He gestured, a rolling thing that beckoned the man's continuance; "Go on," he said, "avail my perception."

 

[Horizon]

As Salvatore's final word left his lips, the world shuddered and collapsed. Washing over like the tides, eliminating all color to the world they could see. Next came the rumbling. Shaking and vibrations that went straight to their cores. Gabriel's face seemed to crack and break away like ice.. Or maybe rock. Piece by piece. They say time rots everything, but time is just something man created. And with the blink of an eye, the world came clear into focus. The whirling of of turbines resonating through the hull, radio chatter filling what space was left in between. Salvatore was somewhere entirely new.

"You're the only one of us who can sleep up to our arrival."

The voice sounded as if it was filtered, robotic in one way, but still belonging to what was beneath the organic exterior coupled with cybernetics. A face came into view, practically rotten, but bound together by parts. The eyes had wasted away and had become pale. Yet a glistening sliver of something yet remained. The frame of this stranger was bulked with muscles sculpted by the gods down to his elbows where mankind's brilliance had shown itself. The cybernetics mimicked what was above, but was coursing with wires, rivets and other man-made parts. This robotic ghoul that sat before Salvatore began tinkering with a small device across his arms, ejecting small sparks with every activation before returning it to the seat and clutching a fist in the air. Electricity arced and jumped around, encapsulating the now electrified gauntlet.

"Y'know, this all seemed like a bad idea when we got there, Gabe. Couldn't really believe it when they told me I was dead to the world. More literal than the rest of us. You got the easier side of things."

 

[Toska]

The thing called Gabriel wore a face, spoke against the raspy wheeze of vocal chords congealing in the eaves of a throat. His voice was smoke, old leather split in a lattice woven smile, features splayed in vessicles that popped along the contours of flesh; it rotted. In the clutches of decay, falling into the macrocosm of obscurity that came before, arms outstretched, spread, it opened palms to the cracking exterior that formed reality. Lavish in the lay of jacket, folding the taut lines of fabric into place, the thing called Gabriel recalled himself in a shuttered breath.

Nostrils expanded, stole the scents that once housed the sensation of bar, of rigid freedom sleeping at the onset of infinity. His stool creaked out under the weight of his life, tracing the rivulets dug into hands and wrists. Scarred on the slits that drizzled blood along bone. Skeletal in its approach, reaching up in utmost silence. It breathed affect. Took to the name that clung to his lips: Salvatore.

A man whose existence bent to the whims of dreams. Hazy, catching against the counter top, that thing assembled itself from amorphous foam. Shadows, oily and slick as the liquor drenching his coat, congealed to the script etched into prior spires. His placid visage kissed out a sneer, contorted in a way that spoke before the words began to form.

Callous, a glance subsumed space. Twisted the time that took a blink from tear-dried eyes, staining salt into flesh and packing it white. Dense to the licking lines of pale that lapped at crow's feet hovering beneath the lids.

"You've never lived," he spat. The tumbling chorus of phrase parsed his tongue in heavy wakes. Trembled, infantile before finding its shape. The thing called Gabriel answered from a throat so distinct to its own.