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Darkness… toxic air… the faint pulse of magic which kept him alive… these were the things the Dullahan knew for far too long. The head trapped within the enchanted golden box had long resigned itself to an eternal slumber. The pain of suffication became the norm, the pain of starvation and the pain of dried lips, a tongue like chalk, and cracked eyes long since dried had all become normal to the man as well.
At first he had wished for freedom. The wish for death was next, but with unknown time passing that too faded. It would seem that after some time, the human mind would grow bored of praying for an end. What came next was perhaps the worst phase of all. Crushing, agonizing, endless…. Boredom.
Dullahan was absolutely, undeniably, incurably bored every waking moment of his agonizing life. Once upon a time he would simply count as high as he could, but somewhere in the millions he had actually fallen asleep despite the pain he suffered. Rare was such an occurrence, and even when it came it was brief and unsatisfying. At one point he had attempted to erode the golden plating by licking the nearest wall, though it only resulted in an aching muscle that felt close to crumbling to dust already.
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty…
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty one…
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty two…
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five --the HELL?!”
The box had shifted, slamming the Dullahan’s face into a gold plated surface. The shift was violent enough that the prisoner immediately knew this was not the usual underwater current pushing the box along the seafloor. Not to mention, that occurrence had stopped long ago, supposedly when it had caught on something, or found itself buried. Something else had moved the box.
Sure enough the jolt came again. Once more is all it took before the gold-lined prison felt as if it were drifting along, swaying as it moved in one direction or the other. Dullahan could only assume up, but his sense of direction had long since vanished in his pitch black cage. From through the thick barriers he could hear nothing of the outside world.
At least, until he could. The wooshing of gentle water caressing the box’s stone exterior had left its captive deaf to the sound, but when it was gone the Dullahan could hear his ears ringing. The sound of silence was oppressing, but something eventually broke through. Muffled voices were just barely audible outside the enclosure. Someone had discovered the box!
Safe! I’m saved! Thank the gods, I’m SAVED! The first reaction was an overwhelming sense of joy. This was quickly squashed when he realized two factors. The first; it was this box that kept the disembodied head alive. The second; who was to say his saviors would not immediately end the macabre creature’s life on sight?
CLANG! The reverberating noise brought a new wave of pain to the Dullahan’s ears. Clearly, suffering as long as he did had not render him immune to pain one bit. CLANG! A hiss escaped the severed head - the first sound he had made in ages.
CRACK! The lock fell onto something that sounded vaguely wooden. When the lid of his prison slowly opened, the wave of fresh air almost did more to suffocate the Dullahan than the lack of breathable air. The smell of salt water and shadows dancing above backlit by the blinding sun brought an instant pounding headache as his long since unused senses were overloaded.
When his vision cleared, he saw the horrified wide eyes of a young woman. Sea-green hair, large eyes nearly pitch black, gills like cuts along her neck and webbed fingers trembling as they held open the heavy lid.
Ancient lips, chapped and shriveled, uttered Dullahan's greatest plea. “W-water…” and then his eyes rolled up as a new form of darkness consumed him. Without the magic keeping him in stasis, the headless creature began to truly die.
When Dullahan awoke, it was with a groggy sense of surprise simply at the fact that it woke up at all. When his eyes opened, the first thought was sinking disappointment. Once again, he saw only darkness. A mind already bored with hopes of freedom simply thought it had been put back in the box.
Except the smell of salt water still lingered, and his own breath was not felt heating up his prison. The odd numbness that he felt was almost foreign. When one grows accustomed to a certain breed of pain, what did the absence of it feel like? Well… like this.
His tongue felt moist and his mouth filled with saliva, his lips were still chapped but no longer crackled like shifting gravel. His lungs - metaphorically speaking - did not burn from lack of oxygen. Only his eyes still ached, and this was simply because he had opened them beneath a rough rag that sank with the weight of the cold water soaked in it. As the addled mind of the Dullahan finally processed all of this, and the lack of what it had grown used to, he hissed in pain and shut his eyes tight once again.
His slight motion and the sound were followed immediately by nearby shuffling. Someone was there. Come to think of it, just before he fainted there had been that one woman. Some sort of mermaid, though he had been unable to see if she was naught but a tail beneath the waist.
“H-hello? Is… Is s-someone th...There?” His tongue still felt clumsy. How long had he actually spoken? “I … I won’t… hurt you…”
The shuffling slowly moved closer. A small, rounded and soft pressure touched his cheek, followed almost immediately by something a bit smaller, but pretty identacle otherwise. “Is… that your … f… foot?” the plosive F sound hurt his lips immensely, far more than the scratch his pride suffered from being tested with someone’s dirty toes.
There was a long pause before he heard a reply. “Maybe…” Which of course meant yes… “What are you? Where’s your body?” Had he any experience with socializing that he could remember, Dullahan might have expected this question. “Are you a zombie?”
“Talk… later… P...Painf….Hurts a lot…” It was his lips that ached the most. The moist towel over his eyes helped sooth their burn, but he could feel the sun beat down on his face. The skin nigh mummified did not enjoy the baking sunlight. Only the high humidity actually made it somewhat tolerable.
The unseen woman shuffled closer to the point he could feel the coolness of her shadow cast over him. The new wave of cold that washed over Dullahan came as a brisk shock. For a moment, he felt as if he were drowning as a wave of water seemed to slowly splash over his face. After a brief moment of sputtering and blowing his nose, he realized the pain in his lips felt significantly less.
“Now?”
…. “Yea, I suppose that works.” Dullahan knew immediately that water was not normal. Either she had some sort of magical substance, or she was magical herself. Either way, she had questions. It was in the hope she would not immediately dispose of him once answered that he gave a brief but precise explination;
“I’m Dullahan… a headless corporeal spirit-being.” He answered the first question without using what he had come to know as ‘local folklore’ terms, or mixing in too much of his family history. “I don’t have a body… I sort of summon one, via magic.” She had shown a supernatural power to heal, so he felt she would more easily understand that Poof, Magic! was a thing.
Again, more silence as the woman apparently considered the words. When she spoke, it came with a light pat on the disembodied head’s forehead. “Zalenka. Sea-Witch.” Apparently the head pat was in place of a handshake. “You evil?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“Probably not.”
“Then yes… by my liniage, you would call me a creature of evil.”
The quick back and forth ended with a pause. Apparently, this Zalenka woman was considering the head’s choice of words. “But not you?”
“I don’t think of myself as evil,” Dullahan responded simply and earnestly.
So loose were the Dullahan’s words. More consideration and more silence came before the sea-witch had collected her thoughts. “Do you kill people? I felt your eyes… it was like being stared down by the kraken itself.”
Now it was the Dullahan’s turn to pause. The disembodied head pursed his lips as he contemplate how to best answer. “Once… when someone tried to destroy my head… I have my father’s eyes, I can’t help it. They are why I had to defend myself, and why I was imprisoned in that box.”
“So you’ve killed in self defense?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“No.”
The conversation came to an end abruptly. The sound of shuffling and the burning sun announced his company had walked off. He was left there to simply listen to the waves in the distance, stare into the darkness of the back of his eyelids, and wait for who knows how long.
Not too long, as he heard the woman’s voice in the distance. “Can you eat?”
Food? Had he a stomach it would have growled. “No meat…. Except fish and eggs.” Those were the only two he had found to lack the taste of death. The answer was apparently accepted considering the silence once again fell.
Food…. Water… Fresh air… The head bit his tongue just to remind itself that it was still alive and awake. It was not in an overwhelming sense of joy. He was not just happy to be free, he was questioning his sanity. At this point he was repeating a mantra in his head. He had found a new hope.
Please don’t let this be a psychotic breakdown.
At first he had wished for freedom. The wish for death was next, but with unknown time passing that too faded. It would seem that after some time, the human mind would grow bored of praying for an end. What came next was perhaps the worst phase of all. Crushing, agonizing, endless…. Boredom.
Dullahan was absolutely, undeniably, incurably bored every waking moment of his agonizing life. Once upon a time he would simply count as high as he could, but somewhere in the millions he had actually fallen asleep despite the pain he suffered. Rare was such an occurrence, and even when it came it was brief and unsatisfying. At one point he had attempted to erode the golden plating by licking the nearest wall, though it only resulted in an aching muscle that felt close to crumbling to dust already.
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty…
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty one…
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty two…
“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five --the HELL?!”
The box had shifted, slamming the Dullahan’s face into a gold plated surface. The shift was violent enough that the prisoner immediately knew this was not the usual underwater current pushing the box along the seafloor. Not to mention, that occurrence had stopped long ago, supposedly when it had caught on something, or found itself buried. Something else had moved the box.
Sure enough the jolt came again. Once more is all it took before the gold-lined prison felt as if it were drifting along, swaying as it moved in one direction or the other. Dullahan could only assume up, but his sense of direction had long since vanished in his pitch black cage. From through the thick barriers he could hear nothing of the outside world.
At least, until he could. The wooshing of gentle water caressing the box’s stone exterior had left its captive deaf to the sound, but when it was gone the Dullahan could hear his ears ringing. The sound of silence was oppressing, but something eventually broke through. Muffled voices were just barely audible outside the enclosure. Someone had discovered the box!
Safe! I’m saved! Thank the gods, I’m SAVED! The first reaction was an overwhelming sense of joy. This was quickly squashed when he realized two factors. The first; it was this box that kept the disembodied head alive. The second; who was to say his saviors would not immediately end the macabre creature’s life on sight?
CLANG! The reverberating noise brought a new wave of pain to the Dullahan’s ears. Clearly, suffering as long as he did had not render him immune to pain one bit. CLANG! A hiss escaped the severed head - the first sound he had made in ages.
CRACK! The lock fell onto something that sounded vaguely wooden. When the lid of his prison slowly opened, the wave of fresh air almost did more to suffocate the Dullahan than the lack of breathable air. The smell of salt water and shadows dancing above backlit by the blinding sun brought an instant pounding headache as his long since unused senses were overloaded.
When his vision cleared, he saw the horrified wide eyes of a young woman. Sea-green hair, large eyes nearly pitch black, gills like cuts along her neck and webbed fingers trembling as they held open the heavy lid.
Ancient lips, chapped and shriveled, uttered Dullahan's greatest plea. “W-water…” and then his eyes rolled up as a new form of darkness consumed him. Without the magic keeping him in stasis, the headless creature began to truly die.
* * * * *
When Dullahan awoke, it was with a groggy sense of surprise simply at the fact that it woke up at all. When his eyes opened, the first thought was sinking disappointment. Once again, he saw only darkness. A mind already bored with hopes of freedom simply thought it had been put back in the box.
Except the smell of salt water still lingered, and his own breath was not felt heating up his prison. The odd numbness that he felt was almost foreign. When one grows accustomed to a certain breed of pain, what did the absence of it feel like? Well… like this.
His tongue felt moist and his mouth filled with saliva, his lips were still chapped but no longer crackled like shifting gravel. His lungs - metaphorically speaking - did not burn from lack of oxygen. Only his eyes still ached, and this was simply because he had opened them beneath a rough rag that sank with the weight of the cold water soaked in it. As the addled mind of the Dullahan finally processed all of this, and the lack of what it had grown used to, he hissed in pain and shut his eyes tight once again.
His slight motion and the sound were followed immediately by nearby shuffling. Someone was there. Come to think of it, just before he fainted there had been that one woman. Some sort of mermaid, though he had been unable to see if she was naught but a tail beneath the waist.
“H-hello? Is… Is s-someone th...There?” His tongue still felt clumsy. How long had he actually spoken? “I … I won’t… hurt you…”
The shuffling slowly moved closer. A small, rounded and soft pressure touched his cheek, followed almost immediately by something a bit smaller, but pretty identacle otherwise. “Is… that your … f… foot?” the plosive F sound hurt his lips immensely, far more than the scratch his pride suffered from being tested with someone’s dirty toes.
There was a long pause before he heard a reply. “Maybe…” Which of course meant yes… “What are you? Where’s your body?” Had he any experience with socializing that he could remember, Dullahan might have expected this question. “Are you a zombie?”
“Talk… later… P...Painf….Hurts a lot…” It was his lips that ached the most. The moist towel over his eyes helped sooth their burn, but he could feel the sun beat down on his face. The skin nigh mummified did not enjoy the baking sunlight. Only the high humidity actually made it somewhat tolerable.
The unseen woman shuffled closer to the point he could feel the coolness of her shadow cast over him. The new wave of cold that washed over Dullahan came as a brisk shock. For a moment, he felt as if he were drowning as a wave of water seemed to slowly splash over his face. After a brief moment of sputtering and blowing his nose, he realized the pain in his lips felt significantly less.
“Now?”
…. “Yea, I suppose that works.” Dullahan knew immediately that water was not normal. Either she had some sort of magical substance, or she was magical herself. Either way, she had questions. It was in the hope she would not immediately dispose of him once answered that he gave a brief but precise explination;
“I’m Dullahan… a headless corporeal spirit-being.” He answered the first question without using what he had come to know as ‘local folklore’ terms, or mixing in too much of his family history. “I don’t have a body… I sort of summon one, via magic.” She had shown a supernatural power to heal, so he felt she would more easily understand that Poof, Magic! was a thing.
Again, more silence as the woman apparently considered the words. When she spoke, it came with a light pat on the disembodied head’s forehead. “Zalenka. Sea-Witch.” Apparently the head pat was in place of a handshake. “You evil?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“Probably not.”
“Then yes… by my liniage, you would call me a creature of evil.”
The quick back and forth ended with a pause. Apparently, this Zalenka woman was considering the head’s choice of words. “But not you?”
“I don’t think of myself as evil,” Dullahan responded simply and earnestly.
So loose were the Dullahan’s words. More consideration and more silence came before the sea-witch had collected her thoughts. “Do you kill people? I felt your eyes… it was like being stared down by the kraken itself.”
Now it was the Dullahan’s turn to pause. The disembodied head pursed his lips as he contemplate how to best answer. “Once… when someone tried to destroy my head… I have my father’s eyes, I can’t help it. They are why I had to defend myself, and why I was imprisoned in that box.”
“So you’ve killed in self defense?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“No.”
The conversation came to an end abruptly. The sound of shuffling and the burning sun announced his company had walked off. He was left there to simply listen to the waves in the distance, stare into the darkness of the back of his eyelids, and wait for who knows how long.
Not too long, as he heard the woman’s voice in the distance. “Can you eat?”
Food? Had he a stomach it would have growled. “No meat…. Except fish and eggs.” Those were the only two he had found to lack the taste of death. The answer was apparently accepted considering the silence once again fell.
Food…. Water… Fresh air… The head bit his tongue just to remind itself that it was still alive and awake. It was not in an overwhelming sense of joy. He was not just happy to be free, he was questioning his sanity. At this point he was repeating a mantra in his head. He had found a new hope.
Please don’t let this be a psychotic breakdown.