Collected
Chapter 1
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“Apologies mean nothing. But I apologize.”
Kamali felt her breath hitch. Except she wasn’t breathing.
Outside the alleyway she stood in, the market streets were in disarray. Windows shattered. Carts and merchant stands overturned. Brick and cobble buildings smashed into rubble, and coins of little worth spilled over the roads like foam. Screams barely drowned out the hoots and jeers in Virala Town, the Fervent Indulgent’s cries a vile cacophony. Almost as bad as the cacophony in her head.
Sibling!
Newcomer!
Come with us!
Join us!
Join us.
Join!
Be us.
Her hands covered her ears. Ineffective. The voices yelled as loud as ever, overlapping each other. Kamali stepped back, and felt her foot phase through—
Her body. That was her on the ground, a bleeding mess of a dark-skinned girl. An average face and form for a fourteen year old human, but undeniably her. Her.
“I couldn’t leave you behind, understand? Look at me, child. Look.”
A sweet, gentle voice, but it broke through the cacophony in her head. Kamali swallowed, purely on force of habit, unable to turn away from her body. Unable to forget the claw marks ripped through her clothes, the anguish on her face, the memories. Her body still held tight to a small parcel of salmon — her dinner for the night, and Mother’s.
Mother wouldn’t see her again. Nor vice versa. Had the Fervent Indulgent taken her?
“You are panicking. Look away, child.”
The voice captivated her. She barely refused. She couldn’t. Mustn’t.
“Look.”
A command. Her mind disobeyed her. Kamali turned, and felt herself go stiff at the blasphemous creature before her.
Dark violet energy, like the miasma of spirits bundled up together, made up his towering, lean form, with lights of flickering colors inside. Shrouds of darkened, bloodied fabric were his clothes. Goblin-like ears and shaggy void-like hair poked out of his head, hidden by a crude smiling mask of stone, with intricate patterns etched around the false smile. It was repulsive, yet bizarrely pleasant to look at. Evil made beautiful.
Yet he wasn’t of the Indulgent Fervent. The purple carcasses of two overgrown hounds, mostly mouth and teeth and with only tiny specks for eyes, attested to that. Their giant claws and muscles spasmed still, their necks severed. One was held in the monster’s right hand.
“This unsavory creation of Beastmaster’s killed you,” said the monster. “I returned the favor.”
Kamali didn’t feel favored. Doubly cursed, in fact. Paralysis left her still against the horror she faced, unmoving even as a booming explosion rang somewhere far behind her.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“The Collector,” she dared speak.
The voices babbled louder than ever, Kamali weighed by them. “Did I not say apologies mean nothing?” the monster said.
“You’re him. T-the Collector.”
The Collector slowly turned, facing the abandoned street at the opposite side of the alleyway. Shattered. Partially rubble. Corpses strewn about, both the townspeople’s and the Fervent Indulgent’s. The former’s limbs were often severed, even chewed upon, and a few of the latter had bloodied teeth. One of the purple dogs laid still as well.
A surviving member ran into the alleyway, face obscured, bloodstained dagger in hand and his cloak and garb the same dark colors as his brethren. Then paused at the Collector, gaping. The Collector instantly grabbed him, twisting his neck and ripping his head off with uncanny silence, Kamali startling at the murder.
“Avrom. I prefer it.” The Collector seemed to inhale the body for a brief moment, before spitting. He obscured the headless corpse behind a dumpster. “You’ll hardly ever feel pain again, child. Cathartic, isn’t it?”
The command binding her slackened. Kamali instantly looked down, her ghostly lower half a wispy, translucent shade of purple. Her hands, her legs, her clothes, it was all purple. No skin, no bone nor muscles — she couldn’t feel herself, period. A spirit was all she was. Her body had been killed, and so she had no body.
“You collected me,” she whispered.
“Please don’t make this harder for us both,” the Collector muttered. He half-turned back to her, somehow looking concerned for her. “Maybe this isn’t what you wanted. Then again, dying isn’t what you wanted either, but here we are. Best you’ll ever get at a second chance is with me.”
A woman howled in the background, pained. Another howled, gleeful.
“I know what they tell you. Not all of it’s true.” The Collector began to step forward. “We’ve stuck around long enough. Best to go now.”
No place here.
Leave! Leave!
Home?
Danger all around us.
The voices made Kamali’s lack of a skull throb. Her thoughts spun, processing her tragic situation. Processing the monster who had taken her very soul. The Collector was an infamous being, a Calamity Walker who feasted on the dead and stole their Rules, turning their powers into his. A sadistic killer, a tormentor, a bogeyman who carved the bones of his victims and spared no remorse for his trapped spirits.
So why wasn’t he exactly like that?
The Collector moved, and Kamali felt him move. She felt his body in general — distantly, like a little buzz in the back of her head. Her captor moved a few more steps, and suddenly she felt her torso get yanked alongside him. Kamali sputtered and yelped, her spirit ignoring gravity as she floated off without her permission.
She somehow fell face-first, against upturned pebbles next to a rubble pile. No pain, no scrapes — just a little phasing through the pebbles, and a smooth, cushioned smack against solid ground. But the unfamiliarity still broke her. “N-no!” she said, facing the Collector, the horror in her voice mixed with indignance. A need to refuse her bindings. “Release me! I can’t do this, I won’t! I’d rather be dead!”
Almost rather, she belatedly realized — her cockroach instincts for survival held fast as ever. But she shook that thought out. The Collector hummed, his tune a worn-out one, the kind made by someone who had relayed a piece of bad news too many times.
“There is one truth to what they say, however,” he said. “The Collector holds you—”
For life.
Forever.
Ever.
For life.
The voices echoed over and over, whispering their cruelties and worming them through Kamali’s ears. She began to quiver.
“But please,” the Collector consoled her. “We are family, child. I will care for you. They will too. We are all of the same cloth now.” He raised his hand in a warm gesture. “My friends inside me will keep you company. You will be delighted to meet them, I am certain. They will work with you, stand with you, be with you, for anything and everything.”
A chuckle. “We are legion, and we are legend. Each of us, a tapestry of stories weaved together into a new, immortal fable. You like hearing stories, child? You should know, us dead men tell the best kinds of tales. Just ask the corpses around us.”
The Collector lightly slapped his knee, as if he’d made a hilariously bad joke. The demeanour he had, the way he spoke, it gave Kamali a fatherly vibe. The thought of it burned her further.
“Now, I could dismiss your spirit right now, but you’re probably not in the best shape for that. You can behave for at least a few minutes, yes? For dear Avrom’s sake?”
Kamali bit down the scream lodged in her throat.