BoyBandsDramatisPersonae/ATpt1

Asaimizu's Tale, Part 1

The boy from Sijan bound his long black hair with a pair of delicate paintbrushes, their sable tips still damp with paint. He stared down at the funeral mask he'd made for the Lord Hodexh, an ivory slab covered with the Hodexh family sigils and painted in their red and gray livery. The outside of the mask was cold and featureless, the better to cover the pox-eaten nobleman's face. He'd died in supreme agony over a matter of days, his body visibly swelling and shrinking as the illness ate through his organs. This was not a particularly pleasant illness, but Asaimizu still had duties to attend. He had to create the funeral mask not only for Lord Hodexh, but he also had to paint masks for the entire Hodexh family.

The Hodexh family, like many noble clans, had a bloody and violent history when the matter of succession needed to be resolved. In their land among the Hundred Kingdoms, the families would attend funerals, only to attempt to kill each other once the deceased was burned or buried. The funeral masks that Asaimizu made were not only to hide the tears and snot of the mourners and muffle their sobs, but also to hide the true identities of First Lady Hodexh and her children from the other concubine lineages sired by Hodexh himself. In addition, the relatives of each othe concubines would be unable to discern First Lady Hodexh from the rest, so it would be truly difficult to avoid killing your own family member. It would be a true disgrace to assassinate your sister and her children when you were really trying to kill your brother-in-law's second wife. All two hundred of the masks had to be done by morning. Asaimizu turned Lord Hodexh's mask around in his hands, inspecting for cracks or stresses with his brilliant amber-brown eyes.

"Well, I suppose it will do, but the family will have to give me more money if they want this mask to make him look dignificent," Asaimizu said with a pout. "The Weeping Pox really does make it look like he was crying. But I've never seen anyone cry bright blue tears from their cheekbones before. Maybe that's how they cry in Hodexh lands. Apothecary science is hard."

Asaimizu's erstwhile coworker muttered a curse and slapped her forehead. "We have to finish our dance attire, and you're standing there looking like a fool contemplating the Weeping Pox? It kills people in a nasty way, which is one of the other reasons they've requested your masks. And besides -- wait... how did you say you were going to make Lord Hodexh look?"

"Dignificent," Asaimizu replied in a peppy tone. "He'll be dignficent. So called because it means to honor the mighty Dignif."

Asaimizu's coworker stared at him. "Dignificent... You've been huffing paint again, haven't you?"

"There has to be a Dignif out there, because without him, how could we all look so dignificent in our dance attire tomorrow?" Asaimizu asked with a vapid pout.

Asaimizu's coworker turned toward her sewing bench with a ragged sigh of defeat. "You're a moron of godlike proportions, Asaimizu."

"Oh yeah? Well... well, you're not! You're only a moron of mortal proportions and thus less than a moron of godlike proportions! So there!" Asaimizu shouted.

"Just shut up and finish the masks, moron," his coworker growled, "or Master Saipok will flay that pretty face of yours. Then get over here and make sure all the mourning robes are stitched exactly alike. I don't want someone gettng killed over double-stitching."

"I'm almost done," Asaimizu replied meekly as he reached for another paintbrush. He flipped the mask over to the side that would actually touch the face of the deceased and started to paint it with red characters:

Go to your land of shadows, Creation has no more need of you
Stay in your land of shadows, to return is to bring destruction upon your line

Asaimizu painted that warning on every funeral mask he made, and so far it seemed to work. No one had come back to complain.

Comments

Moved this to its own page and cleaned up an italics tag for ya. -- Toph

Thanks. My Brilliant HTML-Coding Stance apparently lacks a bit more than I remembered.

Nah, it would have been fine on a regular page, the Wiki is just kind of weird sometimes when it comes to tags and where you put them. -- Topher