[hider=Flashback; Sola 29th, Dawn. Warning for gore] [color=silver] A loud snap echoed through the air. Callum awoke cold and shuddering. Hands stuck to dirt and coated in a tacky film. His eyes fluttered open and found only darkness. Only a faint trail of light whispered in from far away. A weary pain had sunk into every muscle, his ribs cried out with each breath. Cal vaguely recognized this feeling, waking up the next morning after a fight. After a beating. He didn’t remember a fight, then again… [color=00F8FE][i]Right,[/i][/color] Cal realized. [color=00F8FE][i]Guess I wouldn’t remember.[/i][/color] Another snap echoed from within the darkness. Something crunched in an almost rhythmic way. But Callum hardly noticed the sounds. It was the scent that stole his immediate attention. Sharp…metallic…[i]sickening[/i]. He knew exactly what caused the dirt to cling to him as he peeled himself from the ground and sat upright. His back rested against something solid, craggy, and cool. He tried to wipe his hands off on his shirt. It was so damp with sweat, it almost helped. [color=00F8FE][i]Where am I?[/i][/color] His head pounded and his hands moved to his face to try and wipe away the dirt that stuck to him. He only succeeded in smearing blood and sweat from his hands around with the dirt and sweat on his face. [color=black][i][/i][/color] Another, louder, snap. The crunching noise picked back up again. It sounded wet. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Everything snapped into focus. A patchy red trail led from the pool of blood he’d been lying in to a dead man a few feet away. He was covered in blood, his hands were red with it. Cal felt what he did as keenly as he felt his broken ribs. [color=00F8FE][i]No,[/i][/color] He reminded himself. [color=00F8FE][i]Not what [b]I[/b] did, just what this body did. When Clarence had control. What my hands…[/i][/color] He tried to stand up and let the pain end that thought as he sank back down to the ground. What the spirit had done. The one he’d brought into the world after agreeing to its demands. [h3][i]Snap![/i][/h3] Clarence broke one of the dead man’s hands off, bones snapping like twigs and skin tearing without resistance. Teeth tore through flesh and bone as the monkey’s mouth opened unnaturally wide. Bone crunched as it chewed and its lips smacked against flesh and blood. [color=00F8FE][i]You never said you planned on eating people.[/i][/color] [color=black][i][/i][/color] Clarence’s attention never left the body as, piece by piece, the monkey continued to devour it. [color=00F8FE][i]This doesn’t help me. It’s not what I wanted. Not what I asked for.[/i][/color] [color=black][b][/b][/color] Its voice clamoured around in Callum’s head, hot and angry. [color=black][b][/b][/color] [i]Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.[/i] An entire arm, from fingers to shoulder joint, was now gone. It had joined the body’s missing leg in the bottomless carven that was the familiar’s stomach. [color=black][i][/i][/color] The voice that probed his thoughts laughed as Cal realized he’d been foolish to think he could limit what Clarence took. He summoned this creature with blood; of course, it would not be satisfied with merely feeding on emotions or indulging in mortal pleasures. It craved blood, it wanted lives. It would always want more. [color=black][i][/i][/color] It offered as its fingers plunged into either side of the body’s torso. In one swift motion the monkey's arms swung and tore apart the chest. The cracking of bone echoed through the cave. [color=00F8FE][i]What do you mean?[/i][/color] He asked. [color=black][i][/i][/color] Organs, ones Callum couldn’t even begin to try and identify, were ripped out and devoured with greedy intensity. [color=00F8FE][i]But I have to do the killing?[/i][/color] A disturbingly long list of names immediately popped into his head. Nobles who abused their power without consequence; that would be justice. Witch Hunters that now littered the kingdom; ending any one of them was basically self-defense. There were plenty in Sorian who deserved death. [i]Could[/i] he do that? Kill someone just so his familiar could eat them? Was that the right move here? A way to make sure only people who deserved it got hurt from now on? And what did that make him? If he killed to feed a hungry spirit just keep ahold of the bit of power he’d finally gotten his hands on? [color=black][i][/i][/color] [color=00F8FE][i]I could banish you.[/i][/color] His threat was a breeze of a thought. [color=black][i][/i][/color] A shin snapped in half, but the monkey momentarily paused his feast. [color=black][i][/i][/color] It laughed as it returned to its feast, savoring each bite. [color=black][i][/i][/color] Callum knew the answer to that. He knew he couldn’t expect others to do all his dirty work for him. Revolutions got violent. People wouldn’t give up power easily. Eventually, he’d have to kill for his dreams to become reality. Why not be proactive? Kill two birds with one monkey. [color=00F8FE][i]How many? How often?[/i][/color] [color=black][i][/i][/color] Callum could only sit, watch, and listen. Slow, rhythmic crunching. Snapping of bones. A body disappearing bite by bite as time stretched on. Clarence filled his head with images as it ate. Every misstep, reckless action, and outright failure was replayed in vivid detail in his mind. There was no looking away from it. No possible way to ignore it. He watched himself fight his siblings in desperate attempts to make them hate him as much as his parents did. But they never did, even as he slung cruel words like stones, they inevitably gave him the kind of forgiveness he didn’t deserve. The hurt in Ana’s eyes on that day he’d accused her of betraying Marek lingered in his memory. Ana, who was maybe the only Danrose that had never once hurt him. He watched as he and Ana tried so desperately to help Darryn. Even together they had no power. They couldn’t even own the blame for their mistakes. And only Wulfric’s intervention changed anything. Not that it had saved Darryn. He’d never be able to think about Darryn without picturing him beaten, tortured, and barely able to stand as Alibeth called for his death. The rhythmic crunching of bones returned broken up only by short pauses and occasionally snaps. Cal saw every servant with hopeless eyes and a beaten down posture that wandered the halls of his home. The countless times he’d failed Riona. An entire life that was nothing but failure after failure with stretches of uselessness in between. He resaw things that hadn’t happened. All those magically induced nightmares and visions, spliced in with memories. All the people he’d ever cared about; wailing from pyres. Despite knowing it hadn’t happened, it had felt like a vision from the future. One so close that it was written in stone. That he could never hope to stop it from becoming real. And it still felt that way. Covered in blood, dirt, and a cold sweat that wouldn’t stop, Callum saw all the things he’d imagined so often they could’ve been real. He watched all the way he imagined he would die. A ghost of a man, drunk in an alleyway, slipping away, unnoticed. His wrists unzipped in the throne room for one final tantrum. His neck rested on wood while his cousin swung a blade. Screaming on a pyre while Edin laughed and Alibeth watched with cold satisfaction. Edin gutted him like an animal at the dinner table. Through all of it, the one singular truth reared its ugly head; without Clarence all he’d ever be is exactly the same Callum he’d always been. Useless. Failure. Disappointment. Clarence was his only shot at being anything more than that. The cave snapped back into focus as the monkey held up a head, it was all that was left of the body now. Its mouth stretched impossibly wide and a vast empty darkness rested behind its teeth. In one bite the head was engulfed. Clarence crunched away. [color=black][i][/i][/color] There was nothing left of the body but a trail of blood. The evidence mostly devoured. [color=00F8FE][i]Someone had to have seen. I’ll end up jailed. Or executed. What use would I be to you then?[/i][/color] He argued. A bloody grin displayed Clarence’s approval of this thought. [color=black][i][/i][/color] The familiar shared a memory. [color=708090][i]Familiar surroundings. He led a man away from a tavern. They talked of opium. Magic flared and illusion made the forest look like city streets. They walked on, cloaked in shadow. They ended up in a cave. The fight was brutal. He toyed with the man. Rage and fear tasted like spiced meat. Savory and rich, left a burn in his mouth. He devoured the emotion that radiated off the man. It fueled the spirit, strength like he’d never felt before. It surged through him as his hands ripped through flesh. He gripped something warm and slippery…[/i][/color] Clarence kept the memory playing far longer than what was necessary to prove its point. It ensured that Callum felt guts slide around his fingers. Saw himself licking the blood from his fingers. He watched smoke billow from his mouth and then his perspective shifted. [color=708090][i]It stretched and freed itself from the vessel. Its vessel dropped to the ground. Teeth tore away at spilled viscera, warm and sharp…[/i][/color] [color=black][i][/i][/color] It’s voice almost sought to reassure. [color=black][i][/i][/color] It suggested. He had no other choice. He summoned this spirit with blood. Of course it needed more. That was how power worked; always hungry, never satisfied. This was always going to leave his hands bloodied. [/color] [/hider] [hider=TL;DR] Callum wakes up in a cave the morning after the banquet. He is no longer possessed by Clarence but discovers his familiar is eating the body of a rando they lured to a cave and killed the night before. Clarence offers to let Callum kill for him next time he wants a human sacrifice. Cal kinda thinks that might be his best option as he needs the monkey to help him grind away at his goals.[/hider]