I'm Actually Quite Selfish

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh left the simultaneously burnt and vibrant arbors of the garden he had landed in behind, trudging ever onwards towards some conclusion that he himself was not aware of. The strange garden had given away to a desert of black volcanic sand that shifted and writhed uncomfortably, as if it were alive. It glittered malevolently under the pervasive glare of the Underverse's blighted sky. Every so often, a bone white outcropping of stone would jut out of the loping graphite landscape; the only breaks in the ceaseless monotony. It was odd; Nealaphh blended in almost perfectly with the black desert, being totally silent and devoid of any light. He absentmindedly reached up and touched the jagged scar that ran along his face, a fractured mockery of a mouth. Nealaphh still did not fully understand what had happened inside of him to cause this physical reaction, but then again, there was much about his body that he did not understand.

Indeed, Nealaphh's entire plight could be summarized by a lack of understanding of himself. Despite being forcefully reunited with the human emotions he had struggled to block out, he still could not fully connect with the memories of what he had been before becoming an Enigma. Tearen Wover...the name was familiar, but held no ontological value, despite once being the title he had gone by. He remembered when The Master had first come to him, inside that hospital room on Caprica. One Faustian pact later and he was standing side by side with other dissidents of humanity, eager to cast off their mortal shackles for the sheer promise of relevance. Nealaphh remembered his wife and daughter, and how he had given them up to become an entity purely of the mind, hidden and secret from the rest of reality, and at the same time, awakened and perceptive. Nealaphh didn't even remember if he had given up on his mortal life that easily or not. Being in a coma of awareness was pure hell; raw blackness without end, and only muted, half speech to guide his mind away from the swirling purple-red light of madness. How then, could the Underverse be worse than that?

...

"So woddya think, Klicka?"

Klicka didn't respond.

"Oi, Klicka. We got us a live'un."

The mound of sand that Klicka was buried under suddenly shifted, accompanied with a groan that indicated the demon had been sleeping. Well...Imp, anyway. They hadn't been promoted to full demon, despite having trudged alongside Diablo's hordes since the Lord of Horror had first summoned them up. Come to think of it, they probably deserved a lot better, but the Underverse wasn't really a place where one's hopes and dreams were fufilled.

"Wot're you jawin' on, mate?" Klicka grumbled, his glinting orange eyes shining out from the ruddy tarp that covered him.

"Jus' lookit." Usshot said, pointing a stubby, clawed finger at the wandering figure in the distance. The poor sod looked naked and black as pitch. Frankly Usshot wasn't entirely sure the lone figure wasn't one of Diablo's own horde...they all looked pretty different, and the trudging figure did sort of fit in to the general environment. Klicka's burning eyes flicked over to Usshot's quarry and back to his fellow imp.

"Well wotcha wan' do 'bout it?" the drowsy imp muttered.

"Not wunna ours, I fink. Looks like he came outta dat fancy garden place over dere." Usshot said, jerking his en robed, half buried head in the direction that Nealaphh had been traveling from.

"Nrngh. Could be wunna Lord Diablo's fancy ones." Klicka said, grinding his fangs together. The action created Klicka's trade mark click-clackaclack noise.

"I know it! But what if 'e's a Prime wot fell from good grace? He don't seem too put together as of the moment." Usshot hissed back. Klicka hesitated for a moment before finally responding.

"You wanna bash 'n dash 'im, or maul 'n haul 'im?"

Usshot grumbled in consternation for a moment.

"Fuggit."

With that, Usshot shot from his concealed position beneath the sand to reveal his true mass. Yes, he was only an Imp in rank, but physically, he was a hulking red bruiser with long, shaggy black hair, obsidian tusks and ridges of spines down his arms and back. He broke towards Nealaphh with a blood thirsty scream, with Klicka following soon after. Klicka was a bit of an odd sort: he, for all sakes and purposes, looked like a giant bipedal cockroach with a thousand glinting fangs. The stooped imp scuttled across the sand with a quick, four legged gait, a jagged spear clutched in his two forearms. Nealaphh turned towards the pair lazily before getting clotheslined by Usshot into the glinting sand. Klicka immediately pounced on top of Nealaphh, jabbing the point of the spear at where a face should have been.

"Oi! He looks even weirder up close!" Klicka said, slapping Nealaphh's head around with the flat of the spear's blade to get a better look at the featureless face.

"Gotta be a Prime den, right?" Usshot said, stomping back to their captured quarry. It was odd, the supine figure still hadn't made so much as a peep or yelp of protest.

"Eh then, bucko? Youz a Prime? Got yerself banished didja?" Klicka said, jabbing Nealaphh in the chest with the rusty, black iron spear. Glittering, ferrous blood began to leak out of the shallow wounds, but even still, the creature didn't respond. Usshot reached down and plucked the limp Nealaphh out of the sand and held him up by one arm.

"He ain't got ears nor mouth nor eyes! Wot good could 'e possibly be?" Usshot said, spitting a wad of viscous spittle onto Nealaphh's cracked visage. Klicka clicked his teeth again before chuckling mischievously.

"Well, lookit 'im. Looks 'alf starved too! Pah! No point in torturin' dems which can't scream. Blind, deaf and dumb...found yerself a real winner, Usshot." Klicka said, cackling loudly. Usshot muttered something about boiling lobsters. He dropped Nealaphh unceremoniously back in the sand before responding.

"Well, you know what Grooota sez."

Klicka paused for a moment.

"Uh...yer all a buncha idjits and it ain't yer job t'think?"

There was a long pause.

"Yeah. I guess we oughtta bring 'im back to da outpost."

A few minutes later, and the two Imps were on their way back to the Black Desert outpost of the underverse, their captured Prime in tow, even though they didn't know Nealaphh to be such. There was a dark cloud on the horizon; a gathering sandstorm, and they were walking straight into it. Nealaphh didn't care. The events of the physical world did not concern it at the moment...