Puck walked lethargically on healing, bandaged feet that came to sting each time his weight was placed upon them. Though his body sported bruises and crudely self-stitched gashes that threatened to unravel and open at too abrupt a small motion, his demeanor was not quite reflective of the burdens his body now bore. Though the rapidly darkening black eye was all but unnoticeable, there was one thing that would stand out at lengths. Held taught and unrelenting against his back -- carried with a general uneasiness and seeping breath of shame -- were two great obsidian wings. They were not black wings as a bat would possess -- but perhaps wings comparitive to that of a raven. The wings were larger than a raven's, however, with a span of what Puck approximated to be around seven feet, fully stretched in all of their new dark glory.
Puck's steps were almost obscene -- how careful they were; given what they were making their way across. Ember, ash, rubble, and sharded glass and rock gave a chilling crunch no matter how carefully their path was travelled. A harsh smell of smoldering desperation and grief danced across the scene, that Puck would admit he was now accustomed to. The devastation's ending black smoke convoluded his vision until the weight of the scene was too heavy to rest on his shoulders. In almost rote mannerism, he sank to his knees and slowly accepted that his home was no more.
There were survivors of course -- Puck was not a killer... Save a few of the ones that had been caught amidst the fight, or those who had quite simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A spark of gratitude for theh new limbs on his back lit, and piqued as he realized how good of an enclosing mechanism they were. He stretched them out to their full extent, and then quickly used them to cover himself tightly and entirely upon realizing that he could very easily be mistaken for the embodiment of -- death.
It was edging on severe doubt, however, that it would be a mistake -- rather than truth in it's most pure form. A distraught body at that curled into fetal position in all of that black smoke and demolition, and weary eyes closed against their owner's will. Sometimes, when eyes close in the middle of such tragedy, what is shown behind them is worse. But Puck could not manage to pry them open any longer, so he succumbed against every fiber of his body to memories so unwanted.
It seemed as if the world around him slowly drifted away, until consciousness seemed something like a myth.
Until
there was
n o t h i n g.
As much as Puck would've liked to believe that nothing was truly not a thing, it slowly came to fruition in his mind that nothing was the absolute worst thing. And soon, just as consciousness had become foreign, so did that awful nothingness.
Now, images of the past days, weeks, months -- Puck wasn't sure -- flared in his mind. It had seemed like an eternal night where Puck had been kept, having nothing to view but darkness and the unwanted, forced watching of his past since the first time in the arena, constantly. He did not yet have wings to keep warm, and many times he felt himself unable to move his limbs due to sheer cold. More than once, he imagined his skin had long ago turned sickly purples and blues that so often signified hypothermia to the extreme.
Around his neck there had been -- and still was -- a metal collar necklace that did a goregeous job at making his oxygen intake thin and gasp-like. Screaming red fingernail marks of his own work surrounded it in desperate, failing attempt to get the damn thing off.
Oberon had underestimated Puck, though. His unusual lack of movement of any sort was his last defence mechanism -- one that allowed him to center and compile all of his power and enerhgy to his very core.
In a burst of ethereal power one -- evening, he soon discovered -- Puck had managed to break unrelenting biting shackles. Fueled by his own rage, he was sure that this was to be his last stand and last greeting to any place outside his godforsaken cell.
Then, he -- it was blurred. The next set of memories flashed quick and abrupt in his mind.
1. Manifestation of a bladethat was still being clutched tightly in the conscious world.
2. Statues, vases, glasses, and ridiculous showcases of riches and jewlery combusting in loud explosive bangs as Puck passed them, walking down the hall and towards the unnecessarily extravagant chambers of whome Puck was finished serving long ago.
3. Shouts and shrieks of those he passed -- seemingly disembodied voices who's owners Puck did not care to ever encounter.
4. Arrival at Oberon's chamber, and incredulous stares and murmured jokes of Puck's, "absurd attempts at sponteniety."
5. The first of Puck's kills.
6. Light knocks from Puck's fist to Oberon's door, and the corrupt king's emergence and bafflement as to how the hell Puck managed to escape the deepest and most dismal imprisonment.
7. Puck raising his hand to Oberon and an answering growl escaping his throat.
8. Flame. Battle of such great intensity that the sky turned dark, thunder roared and lightening struck -- the Earth shook and the tides rose.
9. Excrutiating pain coursing through every cell in Puck's body. Blind lashing of all power he could muster -- all directed at the k i n g.
10. A dying curse.
Then came the end of the storm. The blinding infuriation that had encompassed Puck dissipated and he had destroyed more than could ever be forgiven or repaired. For a few moments, it seemed not to be a big stretch that perhaps Puck himself had been the evil in everything.
An intense soreness and weight were -- his back.
There were --
Puck jolted back awake from his dreamlike state and sat up with his unfamiliar wings splaying out messily, as his head tipped back with eyes queezed shut. He sat like that in silence as long as he could bear, before a lurch in the depths of his heart prompted such a bloodcurdling scream that not only did it make his ears ring afterwards, but it seemed to rip through his throat so violently that it would actually surprise him if something hadn't started to bleed.
Following that, silence once more overtook the abysmal scene -- whether it be because his voice was lost in the painful aftermat of the rapture of emotion, or -- he didn't -- he just didn't know. An immeasurable amount of time passed before Puck's eyes slowly opened once more, and he glanced around teh destruction that had flown freely from his fingertips.
One
last
g o o d b y e.
And with ruffled wings, he returned to the last place there was for him to really return to.