Essetia

The Gallant was a glorious creature, even in death. Smoke lingered, smoldering, and tainting the wood with the unmistakable scent of charred flesh. Was it right that he had gone down in fire? It appeared to match his undying fervency… but, what a way to be remembered. Midas had once carried my own wellbeing in his hands and now it was I who remained earthbound, the only one left to protect him from the very flames that had robbed him of his immortal life. If even the Gods were incapable of tending to his wounds, then what made these mortal fools believe that they would ever be enough? What good was fighting or alliances if no one was ever truly awarded forever…? This life was as short as we made it and as long as we could fight for it. What was the use in tricking ourselves into thinking otherwise? There was no point to any of it. Safety was not something bought. It was sheer luck that kept us alive and well… that was it- that tender thread of hoping that everything would simply be okay.

Yet, nothing was okay.

Everything was wrong.

My mind attempted to busy itself behind the tears, and at times I tried to comprehend the fragments of conversation that drifted from one mouth to the next. But, I was too tired, or perhaps too numb, to decipher much else… After all, what was I supposed to think about when one died? I hadn’t been close enough to the Czar for my heart to ache with the loss of affection, but more so… just the loss of feeling. I was surrounded by disappointment and Midas had offered me light- light that had been stolen.

I tried desperately to face my onlookers, but it was impossible to imagine that I was here… crying… in the Basin. I was grappling my lowest peak, hoping to fly, and falling instead. How many times would I be tested until I was considered strong?

I was never strong.

They lied.

Anger and resentment pulsed throughout my chest and my breathing hitched in an attempt to quell the sobbing, but it only enhanced the lingering ache of absolute- was there even a word for such a feeling? I couldn’t imagine hurt or loss or pain as being accurate, because I was beyond those natural thresholds. I’d hit a fever pitch and crossed into a realm still unknown to me.


Now, I was content to drift away, lost to my own subconscious. I was completely and utterly satisfied by my own imaginings, my insanity, my sanity, my ideas-

What? What was Ulrik saying? Was he honestly apologizing for my loss? Did the Gods tell him about my life? Did they share with him my failures and my patchwork childhood? Surely not… Surely this was another of his cruel jokes meant to trick me into feeling some sense of false security.


Didn’t he know that I wasn’t safe anymore? “You are safe Essetia,” Romul whispered insistently. “No,” I bit back harshly. I would never find myself again. Everything I loved or valued or admired had all been taken by death. Perhaps I was its carrier, a parasite that could not protect its victims. Maybe I was a murderer. “Don’t. You can’t be sorry for my loss, because this is not my loss,” I breathed in response to the Engineer. It was true- I had lost nothing, because I’d had nothing to begin with.

It was with these thoughts that I felt especially guilty, because when a young hybrid girl came racing into my company, crying for her father, her blood… I felt as though I’d caused her pain. My mother had died, my father had abandoned me, and now my Czar had been killed in a strange land alongside me. What was the common factor here, you ask? Me.

Essetia.

Dammit. I couldn’t remain here. I couldn’t-

“I’m sorry,” I muttered to the young female with the gold-tipped wings. It was best I left her to mourn because I wasn’t sure I was capable of doing so anymore.