CHARACTER: Cal – my blind, Australian, dead-type weird dude. O__o

OWNER: Moi!

PIC STATUS: Poem/art collaboration comic page with

MEDIUMS: Sakura Micron felt tips (line art), Photoshop CS (colouring, text boxes), Paintshop Pro 5 (tweaking, light effects)

FONT used: ‘Zud Juice’ – download here: [link]

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And now a word from our sponsor!

The Lost Heart and the Suffering Muse

When the night had fallen

And I sat in a strangely cold summer air

My cigarette flared as I inhaled

And the wind spoke to me of words that never were


On the air there approached an omen

A sign of spirits and things to come

Visions of sculpture which ramble about history

And events of the future inevitably tainted by the past


Inhaling the incense which I crave and consume,

A voice stirred inside that I could not ignore

Whispers of mistakes and triumphs, every action

According to Newton, invariably leads to reaction


It was then, upon the final breath of tobacco smoke

I heard the voices of the trees begging me to listen

Their wisdom sharing a truth which had eluded me

“Ghosts will only haunt bodies with desperate souls”

~ Poem written by

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ARTIST THOUGHTS It’s been a long time coming and an even greater rush (well, fast for me ) to get this done by the 7th, but somehow I’ve made the cut! My first collaboration with another deviant, in which I agreed to draw something revolving around a poem written by my pal . When I first read the poem, I was immediately struck by how well it could be applied to my character Cal, and since I’d already been dying for an excuse to draw Cal, that was an added bonus. It took AGES though to realize that the best way to go about this was through a comic page, I was sitting at my desk fretting for a whole afternoon until it hit me and I was like, “Duuuuuhhh, stupid…” As you can see, I only had enough room to work with two stanzas so it wound up being the first and last. Man, I love that end line. Muahaha, and the shinies are back, I told you they’d be! Lastly before the rambling begins, a shout-out to for inadvertently helping to influence Cal’s current design – see, I toldja I’d finally get around to drawing his hair like that!

CHARACTER BIO TIME: Now’s the time to skip to the end of the description if you currently have a headache, are of short patience or prefer not to read endless rambling. You have been warned!

*Waits* Still here? You brave soul. Alright, now the following is a description/background explanation of Cal which I typed up a long time ago. If you want to draw Cal, mildly interested in who he is or are just plain bored, go ahead and read on… at the very least it sorta shows how the poem fits Cal. For the rest of you, I’ll be waiting at the finish line…

CAL: There’re a couple of words which could be used to describe him, but I’ll stick with the three main ones in order of significance – selfish, isolated and… well, dead. O__o *Coff* Actually, ‘dead’ should probably come first, right? *Never mind* Alright, I suppose I should point out how Cal came to be dead, and what that spells… way back in my image description for ‘Bark and Brambles,’ I mentioned Cal has an older sister, Julie-Anne Maria. Well, that was a big fat lie but I meant to lie, since everyone in Cal’s storyline is supposed to be under that impression. Julie-Anne Maria isn’t Cal’s sister, she’s his mother. But why hide the fact? Because not only did Julie-Anne Maria have Cal at the tender age of 14, he was born out of rape. It was a tricky situation since at the time, Julie-Anne Maria was the ruling Prime Neutral of earth’s Balance of Yin and Yang – the first born of any Prime Neutral is automatically the next in line, so there was no option of ending the pregnancy. So in his early years, Cal was always a source of pain for Julie-Anne Maria and her father (or Cal’s grandfather) Keller, even though Keller did manage to exact brutal retribution upon Julie-Anne Maria’s assailant. However, it was during the early years of Cal’s childhood that the danger Cal would pose to The Balance became horribly apparent.

Firstly, I should give a bit of a rundown on what The Balance actually IS before going further! Members of The Balance are distinguished by their hair and eye colour, which reflects the hues of their ‘Wards,’ or souls. The Wards and the members of The Balance (referred to as ‘Vessels’, of which there are officially 6) are responsible for maintaining The Balance, which consists of two other elements besides the stability provided by the 6 Wards and Vessels:

(1) The Mind Mesh, which is an extremely vital system of subconscious linkage, linking the lives of every human on Earth. A very very short description would be that it’s like a gigantic astral net which all humans have a link to. The Mind Mesh is basically like a recorder of existence, harbouring all of the memories of human lives which have ever graced the Earth. Destroy the Mind Mesh and everything is forgotten, since there’d be no one left to remember – no one would have ever existed.

(2) Liu, the Celestial Dragon King. He’s actually a character who carries into this storyline from a separate one… to cut a long story short, the world he originated from (called Harnora) eventually killed itself because the inhabitants could only birth new souls (or offspring, rather) by ‘Merging’ together. Eventually of course, there were only two left, and they Merged to create Liu, who was the last One out of all the beings who ever existed in Harnora. Since the souls of all those had Merged were inside Liu, being The One and all, it was up to him to stay alive for all time in order to remember them all, otherwise Harnora would be completely forgotten and its existence erased. The problem is that no one counted on Liu being incredibly selfish by nature! Unable to bear the thought of living alone with all of his unwanted, inherited thoughts and memories, Liu did the next best thing to killing himself and did a final Merging with the empty world of Harnora. That should’ve been the end of everything, but it actually worked in reverse and triggered a rebirth. This was the point of origin of Earth and the Mind Mesh – Liu technically became one with the shell of Harnora (now known as Earth), while the memories of Harnora branched out of Liu/the world and formed into new life ie. humans. Thus, the memories Liu held inside became increasingly numerous and complicated links which formed the Mind Mesh. The problem is that humans, despite being the product of memories of Harnora, have forgotten the world where they originated from and the inhabitants that once lived there. The only one who remembers is Liu. Big problem, because he’s still just as selfish as the day he chose his own well-being over the lives of Harnora, and there’s nothing he wishes for more than to be freed from his responsibility, but how to escape? His essence resides in Earth, while the Mind Mesh is inextricably connected to Liu right up to the present day of the story, and this is where all the chaos begins…

Cal wasn’t born blind. Heck, he wasn’t even born with white hair – his true eye colour is actually emerald green and his hair red bronze, which reflected the hues of his Ward, Bronze Griffin. That’s only a superficial name though, all Wards have power names which their Vessel addresses them with. In Cal’s case, he referred to his Ward as ‘Ultimata.’ Uh oh! The word ‘Ultimata’ has always been a fixture, from the moment Harnora was first conceived in The Void. It’s been constantly prophesized as a scourge, a dread… and rightly too, since ‘Ultimata’ denotes ‘Divine Death’ or in plain English, the end of the world. Not just physical life as living things know it, but the death of memories which is even worse, since THAT equals the death of a world’s existence. It couldn’t be predicted what form ‘Ultimata’ would take, but Harnora was always aware of the threat of it, especially when the Merging began. Technically, Liu’s job was to avert Ultimata by sticking around and living. He shirked his duty, but still didn’t succeed in dying. However, he may get his wish after all, because Ultimata has finally arrived in the form of Cal and his Ward... Ultimata is the only thing capable of killing Liu, but of course in doing so, it will kill the world as well by dragging down the Mind Mesh which is connected to Liu. (Not that Liu would care. )

Cal was seven when Keller and Julie-Anne Maria (now 21) first overheard him talking to his Ward. They knew perfectly well what Ultimata entailed, since the aim of a Prime Neutral is to maintain The Balance and thus preserve Liu. But what to do, since the only heir to the Prime Neutral line was actually the much feared Divine Death? Keller, having no qualms about using extreme methods to solving problems, hit on a solution – kill Cal. If a Vessel dies, the Ward goes the same way. Bye bye, Ultimata. But to ensure the Prime Neutral line stayed intact, the empty Vessel would have to continue functioning on the over world, instead of just rotting away. Thus, Keller’s other plan was to get Liu to animate Cal’s dead body after Ultimata was destroyed. Gee, what a swell grandpa. O__o But of course, things don’t ever go as smoothly as people would like!

The task was to be carried out one Autumns day, in a large reserve known as Falwyn park. Julie-Anne Maria, carried along numbly by Keller’s cold and brutal thinking, surrendered 7 yr old Cal to Keller and left them alone in a secluded section of the park. The location was important, since one of Liu’s mighty ‘veins’ of Ch’i energy ran beneath the park, and the aim was to infuse this essence into Cal’s empty body to take the place of the Ultimata Ward. The monkey wrench in the plan was actually Julie-Anne Maria, who at the last minute, came to the decision that despite all that Cal was and embodied, she actually did love him as a her flesh and blood son. It was a moment of awakening for her since love was something she’d never associated with Cal, it’d always seemed easier to distance herself from the child who was the product of her violated womanhood. Turning back, Julie-Anne Maria unleashed her own Ward, Sky Horse, upon Keller’s. In that ferocious fight, Julie-Anne Maria emerged victorious but Sky Horse suffered a crippling blow by having its wings cleanly sliced off. The damage was such that Julie-Anne Maria sustained severe physical wounds of her own – since that day, Julie-Anne Maria bears an eternal stigmata upon her shoulder blades, bleeding anew whenever she attempts to connect with Sky Horse in any way.

Julie-Anne Maria’s change of heart had come too late however, for Keller had completed his task even before she killed him. The child she once knew was dead and gone, his essence haven stolen away with the Ultimata Ward which had vanished, leaving an empty husk behind. At this point, Cal became officially blind (since the eyes are windows to the soul, and Ultimata was gone) and his hair bled of all colour. Well, he wasn’t entirely empty – Cal’s dead body was now infused with Liu’s celestial blood, while the body itself was animated by Liu. So technically, Cal is not Cal. Cal is actually Liu! Selfish, death-seeking Liu, who is now blindly groping his way in the physical world in Cal’s body, cheated out of Divine Death and now stuck in an empty Vessel for an indefinite amount of time. Julie-Anne Maria whisked him and herself away to a remote property before the authorities could pin Keller’s death on her, so for 14 years they lived in wretched isolation with only each other for company. Not that Liu/Cal was much company, barely saying more than a few words each week – he’s always treated Julie-Anne Maria with cold, dismissive disdain. After 14 years though, by which point Liu/Cal’s body had matured into a 21 yr old, the Mind Mesh began to resonate with the arrival of the next generation of Yin and Yang Vessels who would tend the Mind Mesh. No biggie, Liu/Cal didn’t care. But wait – there was something else! A faint signature of energy accompanying the arrival of the new Yin and Yang… no way, it couldn’t be. But oh yes, it was true – Ultimata was somewhere out there, rebirthed in a whole new Vessel. Not surprising, because how on earth can you truly kill death? Well, that clinched it. It was time for Liu/Cal to undo Keller’s work and reunite Ultimata with its original vessel, all for the selfish aim of Liu to die with some finality. And somehow, Ultimata had something to do with the Vessels who were taking their places in the Yin and Yang Balance. A bit of a thorny predicament, but of course Liu/Cal is willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy his self-serving desires, even if it comes down to destroying The Balance. Delightful chap.

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Now go rest your eyes, you suicidal person you. With that done, a final thankyou for the poem and the inspiration, this deviation would never have existed without you! Aaaaaand… this is Zen, signing out. *Flees*