i am the vanguard of your destruction

Conviction, and crusades, are like that—brief bonfires that flare in the darkness of the night, burning hot and bright, until they've consumed everything.. and leave you as tired and empty as before, nothing but ashes and faintly glowing embers left on the ground.

And he felt like he had burned up in the furnace of his own emotions, rocketed skywards for a moment, borne by revelation until the air grew too thin and he fell back down again. He hadn't meant for that to happen—he hadn't meant to think about it, to.. admit something to himself. It was the kind of honesty that, once you had consciously allowed yourself to acknowledge it, just wouldn't go away. Rather, by acknowledging it, it grabbed him by the neck and began tossing him about, setting some kind of fire in his veins and burning up his carefully hoarded energy reserves.

"Shit," he spat into the foggy night, something hoarse in his voice. He hadn't meant for it to end up this way, and it.. he wasn't angry with himself, more like, disappointed. Hadn't he known that he would need to control it? To, carefully, hold on to it? Because he knew how it went, fire-bright and hot? He had come so far.. he had come so far out of his pitch-dark hole, carefully climbed the mountain towards the open sky, careful to stop and rest, and then—wham. There he was, lying somewhere on those treacherous slopes, winded and tired and staring at the stars and thinking that, really, it would be nice to just.. topple over the side.. fall back down into the cushioning, soul-sucking darkness.

All because he had been a fool and, somewhere along the road, allowed himself to think a certain thought, and then he had burned up and here he was, straying through the forest near the Edge because he didn't dare go in again. He didn't dare face her, knowing what he knew about himself. Because another reason he hadn't wanted to admit it to himself was that—he was content with what he had, with what they had. He didn't want anything to change.

But by being aware, something had changed, for better or for worse, and he knew nothing and it could.. it could drive them apart.

He felt older than his years, worn, stretched thin, as if someone had pulled him taut and then he'd snapped and now it was all loose ends and fragments, nothing coherent enough to form a whole.

Mauja stopped. Drew a deep breath, fog drawn into his lungs, the water droplets disappearing in the heat of his body—breathed out a cloud of white, for once shaped by something else and not the chill of his magic. Did it have to matter? Did it.. did it matter, at all? Like.. like.. what did he even want? That he already didn't have? Some foolish words, when the truth was spelled out in silent language already?

Or just confirmation—a promise to dodge the pain? To know the he wasn't just fooling himself?

He was moving again, a restless ghost in the fog, whispering "hálfviti," under his breath, and then—

"Engill," the fluid movement slowing, ceasing, until he stood grounded in the mist, just as ethereal as she but less aware of it.

For there, in the thick drapes of the fog, stood a creature with a halo of light above her delicate head.

Angel.

[ you looked lonely <3 @[Maren] ]