Toska

Icy winds whispered through the marrow of his bones, reminding him that he was alive and would never die. While he couldn’t find a way to escape the cold, he found no way of dissolving from frostbite or being taken away by the merciful hands of death. Instead, his fleshly parts suffered the wrath of the cold as it endlessly gnawed away at his nerves, at his will. His metallic components naturally couldn’t withstand winter’s cruelty, but didn’t serve to help him much. No matter the way he decorated himself with the pelt of tigers or snow leopards or deer or wolf, he’d only receive the guilt of taking a life capable of joy instead of receiving a sliver of joy himself. Both aspects of his body helped one another to keep him immortal, unperishable, in the devastating coldness of Cyberia. 

Crystals of ice twinkled between his metallic digits, cracking when he finally decided to move them. While he was undying, he couldn’t escape the reality of hunger, being reminded of it every second he went without food. The ache would roar through his skull and tear away the little dark truths he kept in the dark, disintegrating his fortitude like snow. But he couldn’t sleep the hunger away, but only let it consume him as he searched the frigid lands for life to take. Most often, his food wouldn’t come in the shape of life’s beautiful works, but in the same a design similar to him that infested the fields of Cyberia. While he heard them from a distance, he had to scale a height in order to see the horde of chimeric monstrosities marching on a wide frozen field. He unsheathed his sword for the umpteenth time, waiting for the blade of light to appear around the little antenna sticking out of the crossguard before making his way there.  

Thankfully, they didn’t possess the intellect or social capacity to call for reinforcements. The abstract humanoid creatures often walked in groups purely to increase their chances in capturing prey, being too slow to chase after one and too dim to create a trap and catch anything. Their existence was one of the few saving graces or cruel curses in his own existence, depending on his mood during the day. They offered him some amusement and a decent outlet to his intense frustrations, being one step closer to a smile with every hiss of flesh and screech of metal. While the flesh they dragged with them wasn’t the most pleasant, it was enough to satiate his hunger, and the metal components would be useful for enhancing whatever tools he was crafting at the moment. In a field of blood and snow surrounded by bloodstained machinery, all he could hear was the sound of the wind humming with the squelching of flesh and crunching of bone. 

His cloak of snow white wolf-hide, stained with blood once again, shimmered in the ample sun that was present. It was hard to notice any piece of white fur left as it was mostly stained dark from the blood of many killings. He almost got a headache when he tried to count the times he changed his cloak and had to make a new one, unsheathing his sword with a click back in the scabbard to change it again. He was eternally grateful for having found that device on a random occasion, still wondering where it came from. Just the thought of other people existing out there made him nauseous, for he would overflow with the desperate desire to see them and drown in the grotesque reality of Cyberia. 

To rationalize his existence, for that was all he could do, he concluded that anyone who has lived died from the horde of horrors roaming the frozen tundra and that he was the only survivor and the only sentient being left. Unable to deny that reality, the truth of it cut through him deeply, fueling him with the urge to accompany those of the past that would never tire even in the face of his immortality. Unable to know why he had to remain and remain forevermore with the awareness of all the discomfort and agony with no escape, he spent most of his time in the realm of sleep, scavenging whatever dreams he could find to get a taste of something different, something more. 

Another thing that baffled him was the strange visions he would receive from dreams of what he recognizes to be people doing all sorts of things in locations he had never seen in Cyberia before. Through them, he acquired a grasp of language and knowledge of things he wouldn’t have by purely living where he was otherwise. But that is what made his loneliness more lethal than ever, for a language with no one to communicate to but yourself is nothing but a complex torture device. While possessing a language and vocabulary greatly enriched his inner world and gave him the possibility of thinking, imagining, and understanding so many things, it also increased that primeval abyss in the deepest parts of him, shining a myriad of lights on it that it devoured without mercy. The knowledge of the cruelty within with a cruelty without, both of which were beyond his control, engulfed his life with an incandescent melancholy. This emotional truth aroused his imagination to name himself Toska, both as a way of maintaining his sense of self and giving him access to accepting his condition. 

Having nothing else to do but to roam, he explored the vast plains of Cyberia, studying the vast array of life present in the wintery abyss. During his explorations, he’d find himself humming melodies that’d suddenly bloom in his mind like a flower in an endless garden, leaving him to wonder what unique melody can arise from his soul. It was a soothing way to accompany the voice of the wind and smother the silence which screamed his loneliness into being. The artificial speaker in his throat would give the natural vibration in his voice an echo similar to the whispery wind, giving him the amusing idea that it was the wind’s will singing through him and playing his body and soul like an instrument. With every unique sight he saw, from a frozen colossus groaning under snow to groups of eyeball-infested wheel-shaped creatures rolling together in perfect circles with almost rhythmic blinks, he was inspired with a new melody and a new source of intrigue. 

On one of his many journey’s, Toska encountered another wide river of blood that cut through the snow and the forest, untouched by the coldness of the climate. Somewhere in his cybernetic brain, he tried to read the components of the blood, but was never able to find a hint of the origins of such things anywhere in his memory. It was, however, rich with the nutrients, just like the other cybernetic monstrosities of flesh that lurked the land. Borne from insufferable boredom, he edited the components of his scabbard to absorb the energy humming in the blood that flowed through everything there, dipping the tip of the scabbard in the river to refuel his laser sword and the charging port. As he passed alongside it, following the origin of its flow, he couldn’t find a single creature swimming in it, instilling an uncanny feeling within him. All that swam through it was its own crimson secrets humming with the dark life of Cyberia and its nightmarish inhabitants. 

In the distance, beyond the snow-veiled leaves of the forest, he saw a series of mountains with twilight-colored architecture of strange shapes. At first, he blamed his poor artificial vision for warping the image and discoloring it, but when he got out of the forest and onto the open field with the mountains before him, he saw how it was much stranger than he could imagine. Large pillars of what he could only decipher to be made of bone or a fungus twisted in intricate lattice shapes. Each part of the surface cradled an iridescent sheen under the golden sun, towering more and more over him the closer he got to them. More naturally, the mountains also grew in size as he went closer to them, but that was something he was able to calculate. For whatever reason, his cybernetically enhanced mind couldn’t fathom the true size of the strange formations until he got close to it himself. Filled with an ice colder than he had ever encountered, Toska ventured into the valley.