The first curse

Straight from figthing Lasswell into a nearly nuclear explosion practically destroying the White Tower.

With the numerous missing wings of the building, and nothing to really do for now, Noctis found himself passing by Gorandis- they'd never truly had the chance to meet, let alone know each other's names. Why not take this moment of respite to meet and greet?

Dark winds carried a ghostly whisper into the hooded man's ears, making up for the man's missing tongue.

"I don't think we've been introduced, I am Noctis."

Halting in front of Gorandis, he held out a hand covered in occultic runes with smaller markings that indicated a wind attunement lining etched into the base occultic runewriting.
(Noctis)

Everything felt so... thin. He was so brittle now, his chest throbbed at the slightest use of power. Both runes working in tandem to weaken and strengthen him both. Like a cup that pours out its contents to refill itself. It was draining and above all else annoying. The constant shifting. He only really felt at ease when his hand grasped his prize.

More power... more... stability. It was good, it felt good. I made him feel alive. All that power just sitting in the palm of his hand. But no, not yet... he had plans, plans that would require him to gather more. Much more, more power, more demons, more... everything. His mind gleamed under the dark thoughts that stormed the surface.

But, the future could wait. Now was time for Loranthis. He had been neglecting the city since it changed hands. After all, with his work here done there was not much he needed to be here for. The air still reeked of his meddling and on the other side he could feel the scars left by his power. It was delightfully fitting. And even if there were few who could ever tell, it was good.

But his own reverie was cut short. A new face... not really new, he could perhaps recall it but he had seen many faces recently, not many of them being alive. The hand was glared at. Obviously such an invitation would be ignored and downright refused. "You should not give out your name so easily Noctis. You never know if the next person you meet it looking for you..."

He shifted, pushing himself off of the fence he was leaning on, the faint clinking of distant chains could be heard as he moved his own arms. It came out and smartly batted aside Noctis' hand. "And don't think yourself in a high enough position to think I would ever touch such a crass creature as you with any sort of politeness nor familiarity."
(Gorandis)

His hand was slapped aside. It was expected, there was no respect for him within these streets. He was weak, yet sought recognition among the strong like an unwanted child.

"What do you know about runewriting, stranger?"

With Venom's absence his amibitions were halted, no longer was he likely welcome within the walls of Alliance territory, nor would he like to test his luck with such. It was a vicious cycle of self degredation to eventually gain self improvement. And it broke him thoroughly nearly a year ago now.

His hand lowered down, and his eyes did not meet with Gorandis' own, he knew this man was far stronger than him, likely even moreso than Lasswell was. He could live with the disrespect.

Putting his pride aside he stepped back from the man, likely for his own safety rather than in respect, and waited for either an answer or a cold remark to send him away.
(Noctis)

"I know a great deal on the subject... in certain areas. Body runes, ones to enhance one's own being. I know them, I have used them and I still use them now." He held his right arm out and rolled up the sleeve, his forearm was covered in an intricate network of blistered scarring. Harsh electrical edges mark the end of runic words and circles.

Pulling his sleeve down he spoke once more. "But I ask you, why do you ask strangers so brazenly? Why do you lead with such questions? It would jest allow your enemies to see your goals and objectives. What's to stop me from describing a body rune to you that would kill you once applied? It would be ever so simple to have you remove yourself."

"You trust too much." His words echoed ones spoken to him, ones taken to his black heart. "And I trust very little. I only offer help if something greater can be offered to me. I do not work for equal trade nor do I work for charity. If you seek my aid you will owe me. And what you owe will be far greater than anything you could ever afford."

He gripped the purple crystal in his pocket, holding it up for Noctis to see. It pulsed depravity, almost as much to rival the aura that surrounded Gorandis himself. "For your very spirit shall be mine once you perish."
(Gorandis)

So, the man was skilled, or he at least thought he was. Though the comments of his naivety did annoy him, he shrugged it aside like he did the rest of the belittlement he received on a daily basis. After all, Noctis had nothing to lose. If he didn't die.

He shrugged, "It's a deal."

..What?

He knew very well he had nothing to offer Gorandis besides such a thing, so why beat around the bush only to return back to the current offer? He was making a deal with someone more powerful than himself. He didn't set the price. Gorandis did.

His armored coat was removed, revealing his body to be absolutely covered in occultic runes akin to the ones that were briefly visible when he attempted to receive a handshake from the man. They eerily emitted a dark purple glow, and were written along the length of his entire mana circuit, similarly to that of an Oscuri's rieka lines. But not green, and not giving him any special angelic mana.

"I've nothing to lose, after all."
(Noctis)

"You have everything to lose. And while you have no bargaining position it is disgraceful and disgusting that you would give up as easily as you did.." He held out his left hand to join his right and crimson lightning pooled in each palm. Clasping his hands to form a link he sent out a wide circle to surround Noctis, lowering slowly over his head and no doubt shocking him as it came down.

When the energy hit the floor it sparked violently and began to char the ground. Arcs shot out between the man's feet and began to carve runes lightly into the surface of the floor. Gorandis moved to unbutton his own robes, letting them lie open across his torso revealing his own set of runes. The top set, sat in the centre of his pectoral muscles burned brightly.

It was deep red and in the shape of a head of a goat. Wisps of mana seeped down from it and highlighted the far more intricate network lying below. The runes connected up all around Gorandis' body but they all centred here. And they began to glow a deep purple. Slowly a thick smog formed just above the surface and the shape of a hand began to snake out.

It cloyed and groped at the air, as if sensing it's way. The red lightning finished its carving and winked out as the hand dived forth, impaling Noctis. There would be no initial comfort. But the runes at his feet would begin to glow the same sickly purple. And Noctis would feel a tug at the very centre of his being. As if the hand was trying to dislodge his very soul.
(Gorandis)

Not actually expecting this to happen right here in the street, his eyebrow raised in confusion as the man revealed his own different set of body-runes, but when the coarsing lightning went through his body before altering the ground beneath him, the searing pain made him realize exactly how strong this man truly was compared to him. He was playing with things way over his head.

The specter hand plunged into his chest and the ground beneath him emitted the purple glow, it donned on him. This was real, and he couldn't stop it. Was he going to simply kill him and take his soul now? It was like a genie granting a wish in an overly literal manner.

His very essence was yanked at, a coursing, dull pain that started within his chest and pulsed through the rest of his body- his soul was being toyed with. And he had no way of stopping it.
(Noctis)

The hand continued to... rummage. Twisting and pulling at his spirit, letting Noctis know his place. Let him know where he stood here.He was the lesser creature, the toy to be messed around with. He was far beneath Gorandis. And the revelation made his skin shudder in delight. A worm, squirming beneath his foot, getting ready for the approaching boot.

But no, not yet. No need to snuff out a life in the making. The spirit needed more time to grow and develop. He is not yet ripe. Not yet ready for harvest. The purple appendage detached itself from Gorandis, plunging deep within Noctis and settling there. He would feel it shuffle and squirm like some ethereal internal creature until it finally quietened down.

But from now on Noctis would feel a light squeeze at his core. A gentle hand around his neck letting him know his very eventual fate. His spirit was being held. Almost held hostage at this point. The circle winked out, the deep purple fading as the circle burned violently, destroying its shape in the floor into nothing but a black spot of char.

"And now you are mine... eventually. You will make a decent addition to my collection when the time comes. But you have paid your price. Now you may ask me your questions on the subject. Perhaps I may even tell you my name... perhaps."
(Gorandis)

Noctis was made to bend to Gorandis' every whim- he almost felt like he had made a mistake, but then again, how much longer would he have lived anyways?

He now looked into the man's eyes as the hand detached itself, embedding deep into his very being, taking grip of his soul and starting the countdown to his now much more immenent death. So he'd make the best of what time he had left.

"I want to use organic runewriting to fuse with the magic I wield on a level beyond human capacity- I don't care what the risks are."

The guy was actually crazy.
(Noctis)

"So you wish to go beyond human?" Gorandis stepped forwards and began to pace around Noctis, around the black circle scorched into the cobblestone. "Do you know what that even means? To go into inhumanity, to let go of all of your human bondage... You could never do such a thing, you are not nearly monstrous enough. Not nearly at all..."

"Your body cannot follow where your mind refuses to go. You cannot obtain and inhuman power if you lack the will to go beyond inhuman ideals. People are nothing, you are nothing. Your own life does not matter to you, you at least have that. But you still act far too pleasant. You even tried to shake my hand... Inhumanity requires something far greater than you."

He stopped, just behind Noctis and he began to shift his arm. The clinking of chains grew louder as the very air began to burn. A deep black orb of fiery abyss. And surrounding it were crimson chains that sparked against the bound form. The shape unfurled and pooled across the ground, a shapeless form, but it still oozed power... and Gorandis' own.

"This is something already beyond human. A demon. A creature more vile and more villainous than you could possibly be. And it doesn't even have a face. Not even a voice. And yet you can feel it can't you? THat deep chill down your spine. That cold, wet shiver as your body tries to comprehend what it can feel... Despair, pure and primal."

"This is inhumanity."
(Gorandis)

"So you think I lack what it takes to go beyond my body's limit? To ascend? You can't be so blind."

He turned around to face Gorandis and whatever entity he was manifesting- his face was hardly one of someone who understood fear or morality. The man had recently killed a child that hadn't even reached it's double digits in age. He oozed his own depravity, not through any sinful means, or occultic potency, but from sheer immorality and vileness.

He had no artifacts to supplement the defiance of the lifestream he caused with but his presence alone. It took far more than simply opening a rift or raising the dead to emit this kind of depravity- it was chilling in it's own right. Like a frigid breeze on a deathly cold day in the norhern most parts of the world.

"I will do anything"

A malicious grin foolishy crept across his visage after he spoke, he didn't pay any heed to Gorandis' evaluation of him. Not at all, almost disrespecfully so.
(Noctis)

"You will die before you ever reach your goal." The statement was simple and direct and Gorandis spoke it as if it were fact. "You lack too much. And you hold on to far much more. You are too human. No matter how immoral you think you are, your actions betray you. You do not act enough, you do not focus enough and you do not understand enough."

"To go beyond what you are will require you to discard what you are. You are not human, you cannot be human and be as strong as you wish. You do not have it in you. If you wish to go beyond then you must prove yourself capable of doing so. Prove yourself able to discard yourself and become something new and something different."

"If you wish to be reforged you must first be broken." The final word rolled deeply in his throat as he pulled on Noctis' spirit. THe demon lingering behind Gorandis faded as the chains shifted, snaking round and beginning to claw their way towards the man. "And you would not survive the process." The chains reached his legs and began to climb.

"Show me your inhumanity, before I save you the struggle of yourself."
(Gorandis)

Runed hands lunged superhumanly fast towards the demonologist, clutching girmly onto his robings and bringing them close to gether, foreheads nearly touching.

He whispered something, and Gorandis would notice the lack of a tongue within the man's mouth- he'd torn that out himself nearly a month ago now.

Something happened when Gorandis beckoned forth what inhumanity Noctis stated he had. The wind grew dead in nature, it would become very uncomfortable for Gorandis and anyone else around to merely breath. The winds became so violent that it began to peel at the man's own flesh, the imbued bits not being scratched, but fascia and inner epidermis being exposed as he practically flayed himself.

His eyes had grown almost entirely dark purple, and the runes that adorned his figure flashed a deep purple too, blackish-red ichor-like blood dripping from his recently self-inflicted wounds.

His mouth opened, and when he exhaled, dark fog plumed from his mouth and nostrils, his hands crew ice cold- he was changing, giving in to what he wanted to be.
(Noctis)

Noctis whispers: I killed myself a long, long time ago.

"You do not scare me, boy." Gorandis' own rumble came out to meet levelly with Noctis' whisper. A crack in the air around him left rolling thunder ripple between them. The very air cowering before Gorandis' power. "You do not know power, you are an idiot clutching at the barest bits of strength." The ethereal hand gave a hard squeeze. To Noctis it would be as if his very heart had been engulfed.

"And you were foolish enough to give yourself to me." The hand tightened for just a moment before releasing it's grip ever so slightly. it would always be a firmer grasp than it once was but now it wasn't threatening to kill him. "It takes more than words written on your body and 'the will to change.' What even is your goal? How do you even wish to achieve it?"

"Without this how could I ever help? You wish to grow in power by going beyond human capabilities. How? In what way do you wish to proceed? You must know this before you start along the path. The man who wanders without knowing his destination with find himself lost along the path and left to deal with those that prey on the wanderers."

"Your changes are only surface deep, everything is just a facade, you are not different, you just pretend you are. how do you truly wish to change? And how do you wish to get there?"
(Gorandis)

The grip was released as lightning parted the two from each other, and Noctis hissed as he reeled back.Gorandis was right, he couldn't help him unless his ambitions were revealed- as he was no mind reader.

He lurched as the demonic hand within him practically grasped upon his heart, his teeth grit in response before he let out a series of coughs in order to regain his composure. Something felt different, but he couldn't quite place a finger on what had changed. After all, he was no expert on demonic soul ripping hand parasites.

"I will become what I was always meant to be. A wraith of dark winds- a Mournegale Elemental."

He furrowed his brow as he spoke. He was in fact this man's doll, if he wanted it to be so, he could die this very second. Such was the price the weak had to pay to unshackle themselves from such mundane fleshy bindings.
(Noctis)

Gorandis laughed. It was cruel, guttural and above all else filthy. "You wish to become a mere elemental? A simple construct of power, raw magic given simple form and function. You would be bound by the very first occultist who finds you. You will be their pet... that is if they could ever remove the leash you already have around you."

"You think far too small. You seek power, don't just be an aspect of what you want, become much more. Become primal, altering your body will get you nowhere with this. It is too frail, too weak to withstand such energies. You must leave yourself and yet keep yourself bound to this plane. More than a spirit, more than an undead. More than a demon."

"But you will never get there. Because you have already signed away your only path. You are my plaything now and you will not reach such lofty heights unless I deign you worthy of reaching them." His gloved hand came out and gripped Noctis' shoulder, crushing it sharply but not to the point of damaging it. "You are tethered to your decrepit form."

"One you have already set a premature expiration date for. You meddled without knowing and now the unknown will pull back to reveal your errors... but it will be far more interesting to watch you discover them on your own." He chuckled again, letting the thick voice roll away. "But, I did make a deal with you and so I will give you some knowledge for now."

"I will give you a path to follow. Do not seek to be an elemental, it is unbefitting. Seek power elsewhere, you have already ruined your body, you might as well worsen it. Your lifetime is only gong to get shorter after all. Your body and spirit are dying. So use that. If you have little time then spend what you have to make now all the better."

"Take away your own future to enforce the now. Life for power." His words echoed the demon's own. "You will have to destroy yourself to even come close to what you wish."
(Gorandis)

"And what if I simply destroyed this pathetic body?"

He stared, he made little of what Noctis thought was grand. Was he truly so naive?..

It infuriated him, how he revealed that his goal was now unreachable if the man deemed it to be. Like his grip upon his essence was undeniable, untestable. Nothing was eternal or absolute, not even the powers of those such as Kraus. Necromancy was proof of such.

"What makes you think my will is so lacking? I will perform anything, no matter how impossible, no matter how painful or dangerous. I am not afraid of you even now, and I will never be. You're nothing to me more than a stepping stone to greater heights."

He seemed to go off on a tangent of hatred fueled insults, glaring into the distance blankly.
(Noctis)

"Aha, I'm the stepping stone am I? And yet you are the one who signed your very existence over for the barest potential, the barest scrap of power. You didn't even bother to find out if I could help you. If you destroy your own body then your spirit will be freed of its shackles and it will become mine. You will throw away yourself and simply become another crystal on a shelf."

"You signed away everything to me without even getting anything in return. A deal with a devil some might say. But I am far worse than that. If you do not wish to fear me now then there is ample time for you to learn. If you wish you can try to fight me for your freedom, fight me to return your spirit to you. It is within my power to do so after all."

"Or you can continue to make empty threats and false bravado. If you really think yourself so great then simply fight off my spell yourself. remove your mortal coil and become what you want to be. Nothing more to it is there?" His tone dripped sarcasm as he spoke. "Perhaps in time you can earn your own spirit back. Perhaps you can free yourself and earn your own place."

"But until you can contest me you are mine."
(Gorandis)

The fury that clouded his judgement in defeat subsided- Gorandis was in fact correct in the end. He was powerless against him for now. That much was obvious. So he'd have to conspire and risk everything at all times now to become what he was meant to exist as. His body would have to be shed like a molted skin without causing deathm his spirit and mana circuit remaining together outside his own body.

It was time to seek out things of otherwordly origin, and perhaps an idea would peak Gorandis' interest.

"Then what if we experiment? I will need your help no matter what, in the end. I know that much when I remain reasonable."

He paused, gauging how interested Gorandis was.

"What if he seperate my mana circuit from my mortal body, and the spirit remained with it through some manner of binding? Surely such a thing is possible?"
(Noctis)

"Your spirit and your mana circuits are one in the same. An extension of your soul, it's window into this world. You cannot separate one from the other. Destroy the spirit, destroy the circuits and vice versa. Trying to separate the two would kill you, tear you apart. And it would damage my prize. we would do no such thing. Not when I have need of what's left of you."

"No, you are mine. And I will not risk breaking my toys. Experiment on yourself all you want. But when you inevitably die you will be mine, even if you are just the barest shreds in the end there will be no escape from my grasp." He clenched his right hand, digging his fingers into Noctis' shoulders before finally removing it, the tips of which were glowing the same sickly purple.

Gorandis walked past him, towards the tower. Only stopping a few feet away to speak again. "You would do better to mind what you offer to strangers. If you wish to get stronger then you will have to do it on your own. Your runes are.. fine. They could do with improvements. You are wasting your energy with them, taking too much to power them."

"Go simpler and more direct, channel more for less. That is the first step I will allow you to have. Improve yourself so that you make a finer prize." Upon saying that he would attempt to carry on walking, content with himself.
(Gorandis)

Noctis: I am no runewrite.
Gorandis: I can tell.
Noctis: . . .

"But how?"

His frustration was apparent. It was true that his mind was feeble, but his goals were admirable- Noctis was never one for being vastly intelligent or anything of that sort. However he had been through too much for it to all end in such a lame manner.

He'd find a way to get what he wanted.

".. Perhaps.. what if we searched for an entity that is what I wish to a become? A demon of mournegale, primal, as you say I have to become, and bound it to me?"

He paused, choosing his next words carefully to regain the man's interest, after all, Gorandis was the only lead he had now- nothing else mattered.

"Surely that would greatly empower me for 'harvest' later, yes?"
(Noctis)

"To bind a creature to you? That would taint-- no, it would empower what I take. A second spirit for the taking..." Gorandis was hooked. "But there is no we there is only you. You are my toy, not my pet, I do not have to care for you nor groom you. It is up to you to succeed for now. And if you fail then you are mine. If you succeed then you will know power greater than you can imagine."

"But that is only if you succeed. My name is Gorandis. Remember it well, Noctis. Because it shall be your end." He gave him one final baleful glance before striding off into the keep. Noctis was free to follow of course, but he would be met with a less than warm welcome. The last thin thread of an already frayed and brittle patience.

But, before he entered, Gorandis stopped, turning his head skyward and locking eyes on the creature standing there. "Dumuzid..." The words were muttered but his deep voice caused them to carry, perhaps to the imperfect's ears. That was another gate with which Gorandis had to smash his way through. Another milestone of power to grasp at.

"One day..."
(Gorandis)