Sala Erosa

Sala Erosa

Biography

Sala Erosa is a former political prisoner on his shard, held for conspiracy to commit regicide and tortured for his deeds on a daily basis. While still alive, he was the plaything of a sadistic prison warden who kept very special guests within his dungeon. When he arrived in Underlight, the pain of his real life was so intense that Sala continued to experience it even through the veil, and reflected it in his avatar which was covered in thin cuts and bruises. This led to an intense interest in the avatar, and specifically how to override his own psyche to change his appearance and rid himself of his pain from the waking world.

He had made considerable progress and was attempting to merge his form with the primordial elements of the focuses at his Anvil in the Edgeward Barrows when he was attacked, resulting in both the stone of the anvil and the elements of the essence bonding directly to Sala's avatar. After this transformation Sala felt no pain, but with it he also lost all sense of touch. With the events at the Anvil also came Sala Erosa's (at the time) acute psychosis. As time went on and his experiences with Bashir grew more intense, that grasp of sanity slipped lower and lower until the day of his death.

The following short story is an account of Sala's death

The blackness was warm and wet at first, enveloping and swelling into the sockets of his mask, pushing beneath the cold stone until it forced itself into his nose and down his throat with his panicked gasps for air. Fear set in, but was quickly averted when he had recalled the nature of the dream. Drowning was relative to a necessity to breathe. When he made that realization he immediately calmed, the darkness still pouring from his deep gashes barely in contrast to the pitch around him. Still, he could see plain enough that it flowed beyond him there, drawn into something infinitely distant and yet close enough that he felt its presence with every bit of his form.

The fall from the black mess startled him more than anything. Beneath that churning, moving sea of black was cavernous nothing, and as his body descended into it feet-first, the symbol of his frailty and vanity-- the white mask of his face- became stuck. Dangling by the neck as if he were hanging at the gallows, the mans eyes at last caught sight of the being he had sought out within the depths. With curiosity at first he had spoken, "Who are you?"

The answer came without words, but instead in a vision. All that is and was and would be swelled within his mind and showed him the joys and the horrors of eternity. The eyes under his mask shot wide and the scream he released was rending to the very core of his soul. All the sins of the world were found in that darkness, and they visited upon Sala Erosa in an instant that took a lifetime to conclude.

The merciful release from this horror came when, unbeknown to the long-time prisoner, his hallucinating walk to the hangman's noose had been completed and his rites in passing had been read. No realization of his end was ever foundered in the waking world, for his last moments were frozen in the deadlock of his mind, in the city of Underlight.

When the floor dropped out, the beaten and tortured body finally found its peace, relieved after years and years of its only existence: the pain. With the story of his life finally coming to a close, Sala Erosa's eyes glassed in relaxation, and with a long exhale of black mess, he fell away from his mask and into that chaos that lurked just beyond the bottom of the black sea.

The soul of the dreamer, eternally left into that dark limbo of Chaos.

Finally at peace. END

The peace was short lived, however. As Sala slipped into the infinite chaos beyond the city, he felt the familiar embrace of his God, and was spared from eternity in death only to become an instrument of Bashir's design. A long span of time passed, but when the Cult was in the midst of civil war Bashir chose to return Sala to a physical form, placing what he had become in Bashir's embrace back into a dreamer's body familiar to him. Once again behind the white mask, Sala Erosa acted as a Harbinger of Bashir's commandment and path, until mysteriously dying in a fire not long after.

Sala Erosa returned without burns, but the effects of his newfound life and waking into Chaos were apparent. The man had lost his mind fully, prone to talking to himself and giggling for no reason, and acting without forethought.

Still, when Bashir chose to remove Anyasha from the ranks of Chosen One and form the Triad, it was Sala Erosa who was chosen to be the Voice, echoing the commandments of Bashir as he heard them in his head, and working to destroy the Echt.

Appearance

Early garb - Sala originally wore a series of long robes and a heavy cowled cloak with a veil of stark red cloth hung across his face to hide his wounds. His skin was a faint olive tone but pale from being removed from sunlight for a long period of time, and his eyes a stark, odd shade of yellow-green.

After the Anvil - Sala took to wearing all black, a sign of contrast to the white stone which now comprised his flesh. A living statue as it were, with a wide black hood over his stone mask. The mask itself was bonded to the flesh that represented his face beneath, though it lacked definition of anything save a pair of eye holes, otherwise appearing to be a vaguely face-shaped slab.

Return From Death - The mask remains, but the garb has changed. The hood is narrower and dips into a number of black and deep grey robes, all tightly bound to his frame with wide leather straps and binds at random spots. His avatar was prone to chipping and cracking under severe stress and exertion, and the form itself now simply a shell holding a nightmare form of Sala Erosa.