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I’M BIGGER THAN THIS BODY

i’m colder than this home

Phu Quang Nguyên and Hua Le meet as new Jester’s Den fledglings, Hua the beautiful daughter of an affluent (yet retired) Helios Knight and Phu Quang simply the eldest son of a Sundial merchant. The two fell in love quickly, and were married after only three months of courtship. Phu Quang inherited all his wife’s wealth by traditional value, and she bore him a daughter six months afterwards whom they named Ma Thi Nguyên.
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A year passed and the small, thriving family sat in the lap of luxury as the young couple worked steady missions and quests for their coven as a pair, and their beautiful infant daughter was cared for by the best caretakers and spoiled rotten unashamedly. Though only a year later Hua Le was announced to be pregnant once more, and Hanh Nguyên was born eight months later. Premature but decidedly a strong, capable boy that would ultimately grow into a strong mage, he was small but too proud to die, as his father would often fondly comment. Despite the woes of having a slightly underdeveloped infant in their care, the two never gave up on their son and made it their mission to make sure he had the best treatment. With that, Hanh grew to be a energetic, wild-eye’d boy with a taste for adventure. His older sister was always much more sheltered, poised and elegant even at a young age. Unfortunately with his sudden arrival most attention was taken off of her and onto Hanh, but the two siblings had a very good bond. One of friendship and teasing; and all was well. Their family was a loving one, and their household was a warm one.
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That warmth, unfortunately, does not last forever. One fateful night, it turns into flames.
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Severely burned by the fire the consumed the family manor and took the lives of his parents and elder sister, he was found fatally injured as he lost trying to drag himself out the smoldering door. The last thing he smells is his own burning flesh before he passes out. He doesn’t wake up from his stress–induced coma for three weeks. All the while healers attend to his third–degree burns that spanned all along his body, and a mysterious estranged relative waits patiently for him to awaken.
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“Where would you rather go, boy? Let the government take care of you and force you into a orphanage, or come with me, a man you’ve just met?”
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There is no hesitation when Hanh points to him silently, staring at the balding man with a dark beard with childish wonder. “Who are you?”
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“Your uncle.” He says decisively, rolling his broad shoulders. Although his parents never mentioned any outside relatives, Hanh was forced to agree with him. “You can call me Nzuyen.”
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So he did.
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He later learns that Nzuyen is indeed his uncle, his mother’s eldest brother. Though the familial value does not take away the fact that even though his burns were not yet properly alleviated, beatings were a common occurrence. Nzuyen comments that pain was the body’s way of taking in strength and manifesting it in the way the limbs would ache, or the skin would break and blood would spill, and once Hanh suffered from a broken wrist after landing on it badly. A bad fracture kept him out of training for two months while it healed.
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Still, he was starved, isolated, caged like an animal that longed desperately to be free. Nzuyen never kept it a secret that he thought his nephew was an ugly, marred brute of a boy — the burned skin pink and inflamed a bright red on the edges of the frayed skin, his mouth crooked and body much too large to contain his bones. The two of them shared a relationship of varying intensity. Hanh grew to hate Nzuyen, but kept a vague sense of respect for his captor. He was getting stronger. He was alive. Without his uncle he would have neither of those things: strength and the power of life.
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Hanh learned the power of the body over the spirit and mind, to push away the sensation of pain or the longing for company to better suit his need and desire for power that his uncle has instilled into him. Nzuyen gave him bloodlust and anger, he taught him how to use a magical affinity he had never heard of, he gave and taught him everything his physical being needed and Hanh took it all with the greediness of a young child.
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Because, in the end, mentally Hanh was still stuck in the past when he body lived in the present–time; puberty hit him mercilessly but his dark eyes still held a clumsy sort of awe at small, insignificant things of lesser value. He watched people interact with one another in the town, he gazed over and over again at pretty daughters of city officials and shopkeepers, he stared at stray dogs and sneezed at hissing cats.
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He longed for freedom. For change. For friendship and unnecessary attachments. He wanted the mundane and simple.
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“You’re a wizard,” Nzuyen repeats sourly, gripping his chin with a calloused, bony hand as his thick fingernails dug into the softer skin of his jawline. Hanh’s jaw tightens by instinct as he stares up at his uncle, now a horrifying elderly man that was bordering the lines of senile and insane. The beard he once felt awe for was white and wispy, his eyes filmed and milky, skin sagged in some places and was stretched tight over dissipating tendon and muscle. “You’re a wizard, aren’t you boy?”
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“Yes.” he nods slowly, or does something similar to the action as his hand constricted his movement.
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He doesn’t want to be.

I’M MEANER THAN MY DEMONS

i’m bigger than these bones

Even after Nzuyen took his last breath, Hanh still felt trapped in the small decrepit house he was forced to call home. Hanh buried his body carefully as if he cared for the man who once filled it, cleaned the house and washed the floorboards. As empty as the house was it felt stifling and full of his uncle’s energy.
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Hanh vomits on the floor immediately after he cleans it, feeling a lot better with an empty stomach.
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Then he burns the house to the ground and vomits once more but nothing comes out, the smell reminding him of home. Of a mother with a kind smile, of a father with strong hands, of a sister with pretty brown eyes. Then, he remembers their burning corpses.
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Hanh turns away from the destroyed hovel and never looks back as he heads for Sundial on foot. He never looks back, for he fears if he did he would begin to regret his actions.
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He never does.
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He joins Silvertongue because nobody wants him. He belongs nowhere, he isn’t important. He’s ugly, scarred, and angry. He’s without proper education and can barely write his own name. He isn’t necessary in the grand scheme of things, and he is nothing but background noise and a body to take up space. Yet he’s here. He’s alive. That makes all the difference.
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He won’t let anyone take it from him.