《Soul's Curtain》Chapter 2 - Muscle

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After being freed by the voice he had been plagued with, the first thing Illias did was listen to himself. Or rather the buzzing in his chest, his truesoul. It simply vibrated a bit and provided a warm feeling in his chest but it provided him with feelings of comfort and safety, however as he turned eastwards after exiting the abandoned prison and coming to face with The Great Curtain, his chest throbbed and he felt the almost tangible excitement towards the prospect of heading towards it. Illias decided to reavaluate what he knew before heading off in that direction, the pilgrimage to the great curtain wasn't a long one but it'd make him sufficiently tired.

Illias listed the things he knew about his circumstances, he was almost certain that he was one of the rumoured Called, one of the few people allowed to pass The Great Curtain during it's Triannual reverse wave. These Called, as far as he heard were spoken to by the Curtain to enter it and no one survived refusing though it was generally agreed that if one could enter they would and should.

The Great Curtain as he knew it was one of the two so called 'borders of the mortal realm', The curtain stretched tall, into the azure sky, and was delicate in appearance. It seemed to be made of crystal, ever-shifting like the great lakes in both shape and colour - seamlessly shifting between most colours with the exception of white, black and grey. The second 'border' was the truer of the two in relation to it's nickname, for it was called the Abyss. It is said that at the edge of the mortal realm all land just ceases and descends to an infinite darkness, it would be called the truer of the two due to no record of anyone entering surviving. While not actually having seen it himself, Illias had deemed it a place worth exploring, but he would never really go out of his way to go there because of the sinister connotations surrounding it.

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As Illias made haste across the scorched fields of Dunlock, he thought about his time in prison. It'd been horrible obviously but what he really meant was when the calls began. At first it really wasn't that bad, if not bad including being incapacitated convulsing on the floor or vomiting up what you had eaten three dinners ago, but then it had gotten bad really quickly. Illias had to get special medical attention each time, he thought it was likely that each time they saw him produce enough blood from each of his holes that they'd get the memo around this time of the year that something wasn't quite right, that he was one of the Called. When the rumbling began was the first time in his life that Illias had ever felt so vulnerable, it was like the fabric of his world was collapsing around him leaving him alone, and once the guards stopped coming in at his screams it had gotten worse. He was glad in a way that the prison ended abandoned because of the War between Dunlock and Valsiek, because when he screamed he knew that there was no one left to ignore him.

Honestly Illias would be glad to put this saga of his life behind on his journey to the so-called 'Land of Immortality', but what really really irked him was the reasons that he was left in prison for. It was a well-known fact that if the Called didn't recieve their call that they'd die. Or rather that they'd turn into a rampaging beast beyond control. He was annoyed that they didn't kill him, or at least let him go - many thousands of people were held in the now-abandoned Dunlock Prison. He found it was weird that he was annoyed that the people which brutally imprisoned him didn't kill him but he was irked nonetheless.

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The threat of death didn't feel like much to Illias, he never felt much about himself in general but the threat of others dying because of him really made his blood boil.

Illias made it to the curtain but the buzzing didn't feel right, which annoyed him a bit. He could only think 'Why hadn't you pointed me in the direction I had to go right in the first place' but he supposed that without being in close enough proximity to the Curtain he would never find his way to the entrance. From the intensity of the buzzing in his chest he expected that it was still a day or so from his time to enter the curtain, and that he still had a ways to go - he was tired but he had to go so he moved along the curtain.

Feeling exhausted from his trek southbound, but satisfied from the heat in his chest subsiding to the point of near-non-existence, Illias approached the group of people camped outside the curtain. They had obviously seen his approach as did he see their encampment in the tree-less, hill-less lands surrounding the curtain because as he neared the encampment so they sent a figure to meet him midway.

"State your intentions" the muscl-(Illias barely stopped himself from blurting that out) man said, he was a tall man - probably the tallest that Illias had ever seen - but it was an understatement to call this beast a man, the way he was built made him seem more muscle than person. He donned leather armour, no shirt below, and appropriate matching legwear. The man wore no shoes, and his muscles seemed to shape the armour itself with it contorting around his body perfectly even when he was moving.

Illias naturally said the truth;

"I have been Called." He said, Illias felt that as all the called originated from the mortal world that they should stay together, or he at least thought that it wouldn't be good to be openly anatagonistic to one another thus he simply said the truth.

The muscle cocked his eyebrow at this, bringing Illias's eyes to the shining blad head that he'd somehow managed to look past, probably because his pecks were larger that the mans head. Muscle then reached behind to the satchel held to his left side, pulling out a rhombahedrical crystal, not perfectly shaped but crooked with scrapes and indentations. The crystal glowed like The Great Curtain and shared its colour - which led to the obvious conclusion that it was a piece of The Great Curtain removed in some fashion and clearly it was a struggle to get it off.

As muscle moved the crystal towards Illias, he reached for it and as his hand neared the crystal its colour shifted abruptly before settling on a jade-like colour and even texture.

"Welcome aboard" Muscle laughed, which sounded more like a battlecry, before patting Illias on the back nearly flattening him. He raised his eyebrow conspiciously again but continued laugh uproariously. Muscle led Illias back to the camp to meet the others that had gathered.

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