[center][h1]Plot Post[/h1][/center]

Mentioned: [@Jamesyco]

[hr]
[hider]Xrylos followed the others through the twisting corridor’s of the Ru’Tev manor. This manor had served as his base of operations for nearly a year now. Ever since he was instructed by the Hekkru-Natjier to orchestrate the breakout the year prior. It hadn’t been too difficult. His ability to see the inner workings of someone’s mind and rework it made subterfuge a thing of ease. 

Starting out, finding a way into the prison’s operations had been a lengthy process. Rewiring a person’s brain takes time and patience, particularly when you are trying to do it without the other person realizing. However, once he got his foot in the door, the prison’s security measures quickly toppled. All it took was one single person, subservient to his wishes, and then that person brought in the others.

Xyrlos smiled. There was a sort of pleasure to be found in the reforging of a person’s mind. The pushing and swapping of tiny behaviors that bit by bit accumulated into a personality far more pliable. The thrill and rush that came from seeing those behavior changes gradually materialize. The satisfaction that came after molding a mind into the final product. 

Crazed. Perhaps compared to the rest of society, the term suited him quite nicely. He had alway been this way even before the symptoms influenced his mind. The insanity only made him bolder. Perhaps, some would even say they made his experimentations more depraved. But they never really understood the art in all of it. To strip a person of individuality? To turn a fiery personality into a docile and submissive slave? That took talent! What he did was not only an art, but also a science!

He pushed the bounds of the human mind. Tested to see how much could be taken away from a person’s normal thinking pattern to get them to do something horrendous. 

Could he get a person to break their own fingers one by one just by rewiring two, four or six nodes of the brain? Why yes. Yes he could. Could he get a person to hunt down, kidnap, torture and then murder every one of their own family members, all while making them horrifically aware yet still gaining some sort of pleasurable rush from it? Yes! It might have taken a month of trial and error, but he could do that as well!

Xyrlos had learned much of the human mind. In fact, his knowledge had reached a point where the familiar experiments no longer provided the satisfaction they once did. He had experienced it all before. Performed the same mind manipulations multiple times over. It had begun to get predictable. Boring even. 

He sighed, thinking back to those first few years. Back when he had infiltrated the Order of Candor, the Nation of Hearing’s group of monks who sought to control their own senses. It was a time before he had met the Hekkru-Natjier and had his own madness calmed. Those were nostalgic days. When the mind was still an empty canvas just waiting to be explored. 

Back then, the world had not yet realized he was Crazed. He had been able to disguise himself as one of their greatest teachers in the Order. Numerous ‘pupils’ went through his doors and into his lab; their minds forever altered. Master their senses they did, but at the cost of their ability to say no to him. 

In the end, as his madness progressed, the boldness and depravity of his experiments increased. It wasn’t long before they discovered what he was, but not before he had a large enough following to create a sort of ‘civil war’ within the Order. 

Xyrlos smirked. That had been fun. Even despite his faction losing said war. The order had him imprisoned. Fortunately though, Xyrlos had been smart enough to plant sleeper agents long ago in the Order. That foresight alone had been enough to save him.

He had ultimately escaped his imprisonment. Met the Hekkru. Calmed his madness. Got in the Hekkru’s good graces... And now? 

Xyrlos smiled as he flicked the strange tool in his hand. The tool shifted and warped. It was a knife… Or at least it was now to those who looked upon it. A stray thought thrust upon the minds of all those near it. An inescapable idea, despite the tool’s ability to shift and warp. 

However, to those who knew what the tool was… To those who know what it did… for them, it had a different identity entirely.

The Cuterware. Powerful ‘Stray Thoughts’ that made up a set of five. Artifacts lost to time. Largely wiped from any notable scholarly tools. Artifacts, now barely even referenced in children’s tales, though even those didn’t have the facts straight on what exactly they were or what they could do.

Yes, the mind had become predictable to Xyrlos, but now… Now, he had found a new toy to play with. And oh what a wondrous toy this Culterware had proven itself to be! It changed the game. Opened up a new world of possibilities with its three forms; the knife, the fork and the spoon. 

He had only required a few experiments to understand the first two forms. Those forms were straight forward. The knife cut, or at least something similar to cutting. It seemed to cut the very fabric of reality. Cutting away the very concept of what an object had been before. 

The fork was similarly straight forward. It was a tool that pierced objects with its two prongs and somehow made them into one. Again, like with the knife, it seemed to be more complex than that. The things the fork fused together seemed to force a perception that the objects had always been fused together. Those concepts were thrust upon the viewer, creating a conflicting sense of wrongness and normalcy. 

The mind seemed to instinctively fight these invasive notions, but that was a fight he had learned the mind couldn’t win. Continuing to fight it would only shatter one’s sanity. To avoid that, one had to learn to accept the invasive ideas. To ignore them and not pay them a second thought. Even for a master of the mind, like Xyrlos, this train of thought had taken him months to master.

Xyrlos flicked his wrist again and this time watched as the Cutlerware settled into its spoon form. He felt his perception of the Cutlerware shift. It was a spoon.

One of the Crazed leading Xyrlos, seemed to shift uncomfortably. He eyed the tool, his body shivering in the process. Xyrlos smiled softly. He liked how uneasy the Cutlerware made the people around him. He liked giving off the impression that he alone appeared unphased by the discomfort it caused. There was a sense of power to that feeling. A power he feasted upon hungrily.

Xyrlos shifted his own gaze downward and stared deep into the ever shifting metallic appearance of the Cutlerware’s spoon form. The form that he had yet to fully understand.

While he still felt like he had only scratched the surface in understanding the other two forms, the spoon nearly eluded him. It seemed to change the flow of things. To shift them, bend them, rework how they function. 

He could put the spoon in flowing liquid, and could easily change the normal flow to go uphill. Use it against a moving object, and he could redirect its motion. Those were the obvious capabilities of the spoon, but there appeared to be more to it than that. 

If he used it on an object, it often wouldn’t do anything obvious. Other times, it would cause the object to melt or even make it burst into a cloud of gas. It seemed he could use it on other things too. Things that seemed more like conceptual attributes rather than physical attributes.

Though he had experimented much with this form, he still wasn’t quite sure what he had learned. Most experiments ended up turning the subject into something unrecognizable, often even killing them. More recent experiments, however, had proved somewhat more useful. Experiments that made things move within only solids. Creations that would absorb the living tissues of others…

And then… then there was Peytr. The one experimentation that he had been asked to toy around with. The Unspoken Pact. He still wasn’t quite sure what this Unspoken Pact was, the Hekkru-Natjier had been scarce on the details. However, the experimentation, though a failure, had taught him so much! The Cutlerware was capable of interacting with the workings of magic! 

So much untapped potential lay in that single revelation. Could he use the Cutlerware to make Crazed sane again? Could he turn another person into a Crazed? Could he use it to make an existing Crazed go insane in different ways?

A sadistic smile slowly spread across his lips as he observed the culterware’s sheen undulate, swirl and shift between a mottled, reflective and then shiny look. Lost in the mesmerizing play of light, he was abruptly snapped from his contemplation. They had arrived.

Up ahead, Xyrlos could make out a dimly lit chamber resonating with the low hum of whispered deliberations. There,  a congregation of Crazed huddled together.

A perplexed expression shadowed Xyrlos's face. Why had their onslaught against the Normies ceased? He advanced cautiously into the room, eavesdropping on their ongoing discourse. In the midst of the assembly, a singular figure took charge, guiding the unfolding conversation. Ludar Ru’Tev. Crazed brother of the real lord of the town, Adain Ru’Tev. Back when the breakout had occurred, Ludar had taken Adain’s place as lord and locked Adain up in the same prison that Ludar had stayed in for all those years.

“We cannot afford to lose the prison.” Ludar was saying. “If we do, we lose a source of new recruits for the upcoming revolution. We have to redirect the focus of our attacks.”

Xyrlos drew his lips in a line and flicked the Cutlerware into its fork form. Lose the prison? Refocus their attacks? What exactly had happened since they started their ambush?

“If we be letting them Empire folks live, word be getting out to Empire’s Army. We be needing to kill them. They are main priority.” Said a Crazed with orange-tan skin, silvery hair and a heavy accent. One of the Hekkru-Natjier’s Nhatkelese men who the Hekkru had sent along with Xyrlos. He suspected that the man was mostly sent to keep an eye on Xyrlos.

Ludar slammed his fist on the table. “This is my home! My namesake! I will not allow this intrusion to go unchallenged!”

The Nhatkelese man laughed “Home? Namesake? You stupid Freshlanders.” He said with a shake of his head. “You be Crazed. In Freshlands, that mean death. This act you doing, as ‘real’ Lord Ru’Tev, never was to be forever. Never could be forever. It over. Bigger threat need be our focus.”

Ludar opened his mouth as if to fire a retort, however Xyrlos took that moment to step in. His presence silencing the group.

[color=gray]“We lost the prison?”[/color] Xyrlos said coolly. He flicked his wrist. The Culterware was a knife. [color=gray]“And how did you manage that Ludar?”[/color] He eyed the man, giving him a dangerous look that made Ludar shrink back.

“We- we’re not sure. A force somehow snuck in and-”

[color=gray]“Snuck in?”[/color] Xyrlos interrupted. [color=gray]“There are only two entrances. Four if you count the sky bridge connecting to the manor, and the roof access. All of these are guarded heavily aside from the roof access which, as I said, is a roof access.”[/color]

It was a small show of emotion from Xyrlos, but any show of emotion was rare for him. The interruption made Ludar stiffen, though he worked hard to hide it. His worried gaze quickly flicked towards the Cutlerware and back.

“We don’t know Xyrlos. It doesn’t appear like they came through any of those entrances. We thought at first that they might be with the Princess and the Empire’s soldiers… but… well…”

He looked to the Nhatkelese man who he had been arguing with before. The man eyed Xyrlos and spoke. “They Nhatkelese.” He said “Skin, hair same as me. Smelling like Nashep-Natjier work. Kharu-Natjier be too cowardly.”

The Nashep-Natjier? He had heard mentions made of that one. Supposedly She and the Hekkru had opposing objectives. Though, by the sounds of what he had heard, all the Natjiers were.

Xyrlos, pointedly decided that it was best not to test his mettle against another Natjier. Particularly if that Natjier had brought with them an opposing force. At that moment, Xyrlos made his decision. They would have to abandon this post, but they wouldn’t be able to do so if all of the Crazed left at once. It would leave a trail too easy to follow.

Xyrlos eyed the Nhatkelese man and gave him a subtle nod. They would need to leave without the others. Though not before killing the Empire’s men, and -regrettably- the princess.

[color=gray]“Both forces are a problem.”[/color] Xyrlos said to Ludar. [color=gray]“But he’s right. The Empire’s soldiers must die.”[/color]

“So… you have a plan, I take it? Something other than splitting up our forces?” Ludar asked hesitantly.

[color=gray]“I do.”[/color] He said with a cool smile. [color=gray]“And they happen to be locked away in a couple of cages down below.”[/color]

Ludar shuddered at the suggestion. Xyrlos, however, returned a malicious grin.[/hider]