Drakana, the fire breather. That’s what they named it. Drakana the slumbering death. My name is Hillmon and in the temple of the late Scrivener Ansolm, I sit and wait. The plague is outside all around us in waves of horror. My friends are taken by it. As I write it peels there skin and drives them to frenzy. The storm will pass soon, and they will be themselves again. I must stay strong. I want to go out. But I must stay strong.
[Hours pass.]
The storm brews. From a hundred miles away it appears as a large wave of violet with vermilion spray. But we are not far away. We are inside. And the moaning screams are everywhere beyond these four walls. Hillmon strips to the loin cloth and removes his Dirge. A sacred weapon of coiled wired and knots which he hold to his own back and begins to work.
The blood curse has claimed my friends, and poisoned their minds and now, as those waves of torment overcome them, I can only ask for forgiveness.
[Blood curse: working name]
Image of blood dripping to the ground. Down his ankle as he kneels prostrate before the temple sepulchre. Deep shadows. Bright red. Showing pain without showing pain. Wobbling lines make the trembling evident.
The Dirge is not a common weapon these days. It is said to sate the guilt from you like a bandage and I take on that guilt for those who cannot.
Image of Parithash outside, laying on her back, legs spread. Her eyes are wide. Some uncoloured liquid pours from her mouth. Blood? Something else? She’s naked. Bright colours, ultra maximal. Her curves are exquisite, erased and redrawn several times.
I must remain. No matter how much it kills me to hear it all. The whole town, the whole world. Suffering.
Diagonally cut panels. Both Parishath and Hillmon face away from one another, both moan. Connected speech bubble. Their faces are comparable yet diametrically opposed.
How could this happen? How did we get here?
Hillmon looks up at the sepulchre. A burning boy on his knees. And the fires are made of gold. He is wooden. His pain eclipsed only by his dignity.
[Seven years prior]
Joshiin meditates under a large lily while Hillmon and Redgarr fight among the pumpkins. A large mill can be seen with water dripping gracefully down the wheel. Parithash is elsewhere, perhaps the stables. The impression is that all is well. A large silver medallion dangles from the hilt of a curved blade—A triumph. These people are heroes in their own way.
Something on the horizon. Pink. A cloud. No one notices how large it blooms. A villagers runs passed in a moderate dress. Joshiin cocks a cheeky eye to her legs, which are implied to be on display, although this is off panel.
[That was a time of peace and prosperity. Nothing appeared out of place until it was. Until we understood how deep the rot laid its roots. We had just finished up saving a small town from a camp of Ankhrons, and were rewarded with free board and mutton. The best cuts. Redgarr indulged in the ladies of the tavern. But my own eyes were on the cleric Moweena.]
*A memory of Moweena snipping the flowerbed and placing the juices into a small glass container, then placing that container into Hillmon’s hand. Her smile bright, her dress modest. She gleams with radiance.
Garpthissle. Use it for the Ankhron barbs, they will lodge under your skin and pull like sheers under fabric. Be safe.
They kiss outside the the temple, and she flicks him with the water from the lake. His seriousness say that this is normal, although it is not explicitly stated.
I won’t be long. And I trust these people with my life. I have fought Ankhron savages before and I’m still here.
Three slides of their hands loosening grip, then a large page wide panel of his blustering cape on his horse. Angular. Highly stylised. The cape creates long bold fractals in the wind. The speed and power of the horse are evident by its angle and the dust.
Goodbye, my love.
Her smile fades, she is worried. She prays as he rides.
[Moweena…]
[Present day]
Against the window, eyes appear, and a bloody smile against the window. Their minds are gone. Annihilated by the blood curse.
I must not look. I must not think.
The window holds. But obscene sexual violence is implied in shadows beyond. Not enough to get the comic banned, but enough to shock. Lots of blood.
(Note to self: Find out how far you are reasonably allowed to go into perversity, and in what context can you do it?)
Hillmon runs a finger across a long healed scar from an Ankhorn thorn. The pain of memory evidently worse than the bloodletting Dirge.
The doors burst open and the pink smog is held at bay in the vestibule as a small, hooded figure falls through into the hall.
Who… How did you get inside? Banish yourself, before…
Image of Hillmon and his nagamaki in a triangle frame, with the hooded figure as the focus. Small but shrouded. Perhaps some kind of goblin folk. Unease. A tight strung bow around her chest and an axe in her hand.
Who are you?
Three frames of his hand reaching down to the mask, human eyes, large and sleeping. Tear of the mask. Gasp.
A girl. A child!
[To be continued…]