Thaddeus
Darkshadow
"When I see the paper, I see poison and arithmetic. I see called demons and splitting flesh. I see more in the paper than thee, because by the time I have read it, your eyes will be shut in death."~~Thaddeus Matthew Darkshadow~~
I hate him. Even to this day, the face of my father Jarred de la Shadou brings a sneer of disgust to my lips. I recall the nights I spent watching him lace his fist into the head of my mother Talience. My mother I loved, that cannot be denied. I worshipped her. She was my queen, and I carry her soft voice with me everywhere I go.
Perhaps I watched too much. Or perhaps my young face never quite showed the desired amount of fear when my father caught me watching him. Watching him bore himself into her dryness, or remind her of his presence with his magic-coated fingers. Whatever the reason is irrelevant, for I only remember the hate I felt for him, and the envy I felt for my siblings when my father nearly caved my head in with his ramming fists, right before he sold me -his own son- to a wealthy merchant from the city of Broosh.
My owner was a simple man, a man that hardly earned his ascent from laborer to ship-owner, for his father had left him his vessel, and all the riches. Yes, I hated him as well. It was not because of the ardurous scrubbings, and paintings of his decks, nor even the lashings my back bore when I did not work as he wished. No, I hated him for the many times he forced me to swallow his manhood out of his simplitic idiocies. I could bear nothing more of the man, and not even the memories of my sisters and their consoling soothings in my bed of my old home could curb the taste that foul bastard choked me with. Resolve boiled within me, and I made certain that when we docked near Qolish, that his men would have a hard affair, seaching the bottom of the waters for his eviscerated corpse.
I remember the days I spent on the streets of that city, scrounging for my rat-infested meals, and running missive letters from one noble to another for half the promised payment, with disregard. No indignities could suffer me more than the abyss my father had so kindly provided for me. Those days ended as well, however, when the mage Koma'tir made me his pupil.
I studied so hard under that man. He was a kind, withered old thing, but his daughter caused me tense frustration, day in and day out, promising me the bouquet of her womanly garden, then running through the hedges from me, laughing and calling me her father's filthy dog. But I grew to love the books instead of her, and promised that one day, those books would kill her somehow. Math. Science. Oh, what heaven the old man's forbidden tomes brought unto me! I studiously perfected the mindrake needles of telepathic speech, and the shadowmelt spells. I quickly dove into the theorems of his hypnotic studies, and soon made the man my filthy dog, coercing him to show me the divination of angels and demons, and the bloodspells I so drank in with hungry, young eyes. These books were my purpose.
Then one night, as the two idiots slept, and I pored over a book of elemental summoning, I felt a sharp stab in my gut, my eyes grew wild, and the taste of crimson filled my lips. I brushed my hand across my mouth, and studied the blood that lay upon the digits. I knew immediately my father was dead. It was time for Thaddeus Matthew de la Shadou to return home.
The teacher's walking staff was marvelous. Many times I had seen him strike street ruffian's with it's iron tip, and throttle them away with the explosive charge it emitted. I marvelled no less at it's abilities that night when I struck the old fool with the thing until a mass of pulp writhed in his bedsheets. Oh, but I was far from done. The bloodrush my dear siblings had imbued me with by slaying Jarred brought me to the bedchambers of the daughter, and I threw myself unto her, drinking in her screams as I drove into her with the force my father had my mother so many times. I laughed loudly at her tears when my passage into her garden was flushed not with desire, but the blood from her torn womb walls. I drug the blade of an ivory dagger across her throat so that she would be dead well before I spilled my pent-up seed into her raped body. She did not deserve the seed of Thaddeus Matthew Darkshadow.
I returned home on the winds only to find my beloved family as easily scattered as well. But I could not give up. My mask of calm collectiveness only hid the desire to find my brothers and sisters. So many of them, and so many I still did not know, because of my exile. Soon, my magic trinkets led me to dear, delicious Terezz, and I knew when I found her, I would find the rest.
And so I did.
"I am Thaddeus Matthew Darkshadow. I can dismantle your brain with my eyes and the pages of my books. I have felt the whip, and swallowed indignity. I despise. And today, I proclaim that the kiss of the Darkshadows will be the bittersweet kiss that signals your descent.....Into our world."
