Art of Domination Thread 04

Kill.

Courage: You traitor!

Intruder: Am I really a traitor if I was never on your side to start with?

Courage: Your meddling will be the death of us all, whatever your real name is!

Intruder: We both know when you said 'us all', you just meant the ones in your Circle.

Courage: Have you no sympathy for us?

Intruder: No. Pity, maybe, but not sympathy.

Courage: Then at the very least, let me go home. Let me leave this smaller form behind, and I won't come bac-

Intruder: No.

Intruder tears out Courage’s heart, a ball of pure obsidian. Intruder holds it in the hand of a corpse he has hijacked earlier…



…and crushes it. Courage’s body spasms and dissolves into a sludge of organic waste. The stench is almost unbearable.

You: Is he- ugh, dead?

Intruder: Yeah. You die in saramis form, you die for real. It's the trade-off for the disguise.

You: I still don't understand your motive.

Intruder: I already explained it, you simpleton. I am jealous of the ones working on the 'Magnum Opus' and I want to do something no Author has ever done before.

You: I'm doubting that jealousy and pride are the only reasons. There's something more important at stake, isn't there?

Intruder: No, Lagan. I really am that petty.

You: Fine, if you won't tell me-

Intruder abruptly speaks with a different voice. It sounds a lot softer now. Not quieter, but more pleasant to hear to your own eardrums.

Intruder: Did you know Authors have bullies too, Lagan? We are all tasked to do essentially the same thing, and we're all made from the same parts, but some of us do it better than others. The elites. The over-achievers. And they never stop reminding everyone else that they're the best. Anyone they don't like becomes a pariah forever.

You: You were one of those pariahs, huh.

Intruder: I don't have any friends, Lagan. At least, not ones from my kind. For you, it looks like I'm causing trouble just for jealousy and malice. For me, it's my only way out now. When an Author is deemed unlikeable, they will never have anything sent to the Redactors and the Auditors ever again. Pariahs like me keep making stories, but as soon as an Elite sees it, they'll just erase it before it ever makes it to the next phase. Eventually comes death by starvation, because no one gives you any reward because they assume you did no work. A life of misery and a slow painful death.

You: You're dying?

Intruder: You could put it that way. Look at me, the ancient cliché portrait of the lost soul that desperately wants to do something spectacularly dangerous so they won't die a nobody.

You: All right, Intruder. I understand. So, Courage is dead, but we still haven't found the Cosmic Organ.

Intruder: Actually, we have, and it's trying to talk to you.

You: What?

Intruder: It recognizes you, I think. You should feel proud, it isn’t often that the universe itself bothers to pay attention to any specific person.

Without your permission, Intruder grabs your hand and you feel like you’re being pulled to someplace far away…

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(Working on next update, should be done before mid-August 2016)