➵ BASICS
NAME: Elian Maxwell GOES BY: Eli, Elian. AGE / D.O.B: January 31st, 1758. [377 yo ] GENDER & SEXUALITY: Cis-Male, Bi. OCCUPATION: Employed @ The Ghouliard SPECIES: Merfolk
➵ TRAITS
POSITIVE: Loyal, Focused, Unrelenting, Determined. NEGATIVE: Abrasive, Violent, Apathetic, Impulsive.
➵ BIOGRAPHY
[ tw for: imprisonment, torture, abuse, inferred mutilation ]
It was only minutes that separated them; brothers born into a school of expectation. A father that pledged unyielding allegiance to the longstanding monarchy. Curious boys that knew their place, and what might become of them, as men. Josiah was quiet, where Elian was tirelessly inquisitive; challenging, some might say. Why, why why? Slower to understanding a purpose than his brother, but inseparably loyal to his twin. In evenings where it were just them, Elian would ask his brother all those questions he was never given answers to.
What he never asked, where their father dismissed him, and focused on the quieter brother; the perfect listener; the calculated, well-spoken, well-thought-out, meticulous planner was the most obvious question of all.
How many right hand's did one queen need?
Elian wandered the halls of a palace with less grace when he'd figured it out. He did not learn discipline so easily. A brother that made every attempt to goad a brother into mayhem; to paint the palace walls a different shade. Loyalty to each other was stronger than an oath to the Queen. Eli thought so.
He doesn't remember all the details of being torn from his bed in the dead of night. He doesn't know how creatures with legs had found their way in, either. A boy's memory is still developing at that age. Not a babe, but no man yet. No sword in reach to fend off his captors, and nothing but darkness to be the home he does remember.
Elian can recall the dark. The tunnels. The feeling of emptiness within oneself and the sensation of the flesh torn roughly from every part of his being. If he dared speak ill of the demons that had stolen him from everything he'd known, he would understand things so much worse. In whispers, between iron bars and captivity, he'd learned that approaching the next great war, the demons had made deals to gain entry to the palace; they'd planned to remove the advisor from the Queen's side. Not Elian. Just someone who looked a little too like him.
So he'd pretend. He'd be Josiah, until he could find an escape.
It never comes. No opportunity; no chance to speak to a fae who might trade with him for legs. Nothing but torment from demons who believe themselves victorious; plucking merfolk out of their homes, and dismantling the hierarchy beneath the waves, one by one. As long as it is not his brother, Eli no longer remembers to care; time has stolen more from him than just his empathy.
They take his scales; tearing them from his tail, time and time again; a currency that rejuvenates, given enough of a chance to recover. Elian spends time listening to demons; their quick-wit, and silver tongue. The way they bend every mortal to their whim. If he could do this, he could find a way out of the cage and the tunnels of the demon's hellhole. But it is no longer anything but ancient fire in his mind, screaming his protests at him at how he is merely a pawn for demon-kind.
A century goes by. His mind fractures, and he does not remember his father's face, nor does he picture the Queen's. He begins to mimic the apathy of the demons, because they are all he has seen in the hundred years of darkness. He has forgotten what the light is and what the waters feel like when he is submerged. He only knows the occasional bucket poured over him, when he steals moments of sleep.
Elian is forgotten about by the second century.
But he is no longer a caged thing, not when he barely recalls what he is, who he was. Demon fire, and torture leave him a husk. It makes him hungry; it leaves him offering his servitude as the only thing they cannot take forcefully from him. A trade in the echo of a demon's language; Elian's compliance, for his freedom.
Some would see it as a fool's gambit. But what was the difference to being returned here, when he knows what torment is under their soulless hands? They owned every piece of him up to then, anyway. His bloodied hands upon his death, handed over like a key, meant he would see the surface again. It meant he would be the demon's arm; their sword; their infiltrator who could access the waters like they could not. They have no Queen to bend to. And he would serve his captors, until the last breathe of immortality came for him.
When he meets the first light of day after two centuries of the dark, it burns. Like demon fire had, the same way de-scaling had. He barters with a fae, for legs; he finds his footing in a world changed by wars he's missed.
He hears about the demise of Queen and King of the Forgotten. He hears there's a new monarchy, with a new hand; a name that he knows, somewhere in the erasure of memories, and scorching holes of what he knows. And he has his life back, in half-measures to do what he wishes with it. He bows to the demon that freed him, meets their demands; works under their violence, in order to keep his new life surface side. The demons want to see the Merfolk rot, then Elian will obey their command, as he spends the next few years navigating the new world.
Peace, as offered out by the Forgotten Queen, has never been so thinly held.
➵ CONNECTIONS
JOSIAH MAXWELL / Twin brother. NAJELON / Soulstealer; demon he serves.
➵ ADDITIONAL
Elian has issues with his memory, and cannot retain new information well. He has little recollection of his life before demon imprisonment, or becoming a weapon under their command. Specifically, the demon that commands him.
He is brandished with a hellfire mark that Najelon left him with at the base of his spine, as a way to make sure he does not disobey or fail to satisfy him. He is employed at the Ghouliard in Demon territory, and rarely escapes to the water unless he is following a command. Elian delivers mortals, and those with souls to Najelon at his request; he has a quota to fill. If he does not complete it, Elian will be cursed to eternal servitude of Najelon.
Due to his imprisonment, most of the last two hundred years he has only interacted with demons; his personable qualities leave much to be desired, and he often behaves like a demon, convincing wayward souls to lure them back to Najelon. Elian works at the Ghouliard, and this is a common return point for him to be called upon by Naj, or for when he is delivering souls to his feet.
He spends more time on the surface, than he does in the waters and he is often bartering for legs with the Fae in the East. When he visits the forgotten, it is usually following a demon's order to procure something from there; Elian has greater power under the water, than a demon does and this greatly benefits them. Though, Elian would be seen as a traitor to the kingdom, if he were ever discovered to be allied with the demons, no matter the peace accords.
➵ WANTED CONNECTIONS
SOULSTEALER [1/1] NAJELON - The demon that set Elian free, in exchange for his servitude upon whatever death he meets. Part of their deal would be that he carries out demon command in the understanding that Elian gets to be 'free' on the surface without his life being ripped from him, following the agreement. Elian understands that if he fails to satisfy the demon or meet the quota for souls delivered, then he would be snuffed out and left without opportunity to live a life stolen.
THE FLAME THAT BURNS BLACK [0/1] - A creature, or mortal that Elian has/would meet, that offers him a world that he has missed. To remember what desire, and lust is beyond the demon's comprehension of it; a flame of a person that makes a cold heart burn in a way he's never felt before. A reason that has him questioning everything and whether he made the right choice trading his life away, to escape the demon's thrall. A good influence on him, where his is all bad.
