“Find that freak!”The muffled voices of the drunken Akalak search party reverbed through the stone alleys, followed by an eager ovation by the remainder of the group whom devotedly followed their designated leader, the requirements of leadership being the biggest intoxication and loudest mouth which said leader clearly surpassed. Scrambled words made their way towards his ears, the noise of uneven footsteps coming from thick boots silencing with every step Wikus took towards safety. Ironic how even when nobody was dying to diseases he still felt chased by an angry mob, the pitchforks and torches having been replaced with half empty flagons and drunken haze carried by rainbow men whom couldn’t find a woman for yet another night. If only Wikus knew this race of men lived for hundreds of years, the situation would at least take a morbid and somewhat sadistic comedic approach. Instead, the situation proved to be far more desperate, clearly grazing the limit between life and death.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite fix his destination towards a set point even when he already knew which place he wished his feet to take him, yet the city was completely transformed by night. Known and regularly walked streets became alien in his eyes, the light from the lamp posts giving it a different sensation, a different appearance, all new to his eyes as they had only seen the streets bathed in sunlight instead of fire. Of course, there was the aspect of him walking the alleys, places he had avoided as much as he had avoided leaving his inn’s room at night. Today, the fears of encountering the dangerous beasts that roamed the nights had finally become a reality, the beasts assuming the form of colorful piles of muscle that didn’t quite understand his current position.
Peeking to the sides as he reached a small intersection within the alleyway, he held still until both eyes and ears confirmed the lack of blue personnel in the midst, slithering on to the right after a random pick – he was lost, after all – and keeping low as much as his own gigantic stature allowed him. His bare feet moved quickly and quietly through the freezing stone that composed the ground, cold enough to once in a while convince him that his own flesh had been left fixed on the stone after stepping forth. Thankfully, the chase had been enough to warm him and his feet both. Despite his size, he wasn’t a hulk regarding his build, and so he believed to be more of an overgrown gazelle than a bull, unfortunately lacking the agility of the first or the majesty of the second. The hessian sack hanged from his left hand, having been forced to replace the basket full of flowers for the sack full of sawdust under the unfortunate circumstances. A few curves spawned in the alley, bifurcations and dead ends being completely lethal to whatever orientation he still had. How easy it would have been if only those cursed blue men were sleeping at home instead of standing a drunken guard in the Lapis Park… His own room was at Atri’s Place, a location he chose the past season specifically for the proximity to said park, but quoting the owners own words could explain his frustration:
“Damned be the Blue Bull!” Yes! Damned be The Blue Bull and the blue boars that drank inside! Damned be the tavern that stood right next to the inn and hosted those disgustingly colored men! If it only was someplace else, then he would have reached the ponds, he would have bathed, he could have healed whatever it was ill in his body this night, whatever it was that was oozing this substance from his skin, dense as oil and black as tar… Wikus would have gladly asked helped from the inn’s host, yet he knew said owner offered no help. Atri refused to let his donkey stay in his room, Atri went angry when the chairs and bed disappeared as he salvaged the wood into something useful… How could he expect Atri to tolerate him leaking whatever it was he was leaking through the wooden floors? Instead of a bucket of water, he would have only given him a kick in the backside and throw him into the winter cold to freeze like a stray dog. If only he had reached the ponds and not an Akalak gathering, he wouldn’t be out here in this bizarre position, and he wouldn’t fear being identified and kicked out of the city to die in the harsh winter that was outside the city.
Wikus kept lamenting himself as he finally saw an exit of the alleyways. The exit was into one of the big streets apparently, and so the pace must be increased if he was to come out into the open. Many could be walking the street, which meant Wikus couldn’t vacillate not one bit. Taking the turn to the right, he advanced quickly with short steps, trying to inspect the environment as much as possible. His vision wasn’t very clear, quickly proven as he bumped into something – a living something, he thought, that turned out to be nothing but a post he had failed to see.
The bare naked Wikus stood at 6’5, a giant amongst his people, with a sack in his hand and another on his head. With a sense of urgency, before checking on what he bumped or before his instinct of running away was ignited, the first thing he did was introduce a hand into the sack full of sawdust and rubbing it on his chest, as said point was the one affected the most by the pole's contact. It had already began to pool out the black ooze above the previously applied sawdust, proving his flesh was going to secrete whatever this was whenever touched. The sawdust in his hand covered the ‘wound’, absorbing the substance and gluing itself onto his flesh just like the black-spotted layer that covered his entire body – a stark naked man covered entirely in sawdust and a sack on his head, from which only two badly made holes allowed him to see.
Where the flesh of his chest touched his hand, new black bleeding would occur. Despite said secretion being painless, it did ignite Wikus’ cowardly instinct of pulling away, which he did with a couple of hops back, his hand flying back into the sack to retrieve another handful of sawdust and prepare it for launch if whatever it was that touched him wished to attempt a capture.
“No! No” he said, slowly pulling back as he readjusted the improvised mask of his head with the free hand. Visibility was extremely bad within the sack, even further as the black substance had created black spots on the hessian itself without Wikus noticing, and possibly causing an unexplainable mess inside.
“You me no see…” He whispered almost as a threat, the adrenaline allowing him to pull some words in common with an uncharacteristic haste in him, his accent still being horrible.
“You me no see…” Quickly he applied another layer of sawdust onto the hand , covering it and halting the black oozing before getting another one ready in case he was attacked. Perhaps if he wasn’t so cheap and bothered to buy another set of clothes, he could have come on out dressed this evening instead of keeping them from getting black stains. If he wasn’t so misinformed, he could have asked for water in the Inn instead of roaming the streets naked. If he wasn’t so paranoid, he wouldn’t have placed a sack on his head to hide his identity. And if said sack wasn’t obstructing his vision as much as it did, he could have found some orientation far quicker. He had to reach Lake Knirin at all cost.
Finally, when no signs of life came from whatever he bumped into, he dared to take the patience and use it to properly adjust his improvised mask, and saw nothing but the immobile post. Disappointed and somewhat ashamed, he sighed and once again regained his fleeing rhythm - inadvertently walking away from a group of women whose problems seemed far more problematic than a post, quickly proven as their speech in the empty streets reached his ears and turned his body around, fortunately finding himself standing far enough to not quite worry about their possibilities of capture.
Would they give him directions if he asked? was his only doubt, the one that halted him from jolting away.
OOCWikus' power revolves around ink, and how he can secrete it. I apologize for his strange antics. Word count: 1423 
