They’d been born from the mountains, where the summits rose into high, rising peaks – mutinous, seditious, spun and spawned from the gathering of refugees struggling to become their own nation, an empire of strength, of durability, of endurance and fortitude. The boy felt less and less like a mighty piece of the snowy towers, flickering apart piece by piece, sliver by sliver, fragment by fragment, because he was without someone he’d always known, always cherished, always beloved – and perhaps things were just too different now. Maybe they’d been crumbling the entire time, driven from great heights and shoved down into the murky undertones without their knowledge until it pierced their gut or slammed into their chest – raw, reel, keen, forceful, and savage. He didn’t know what had truly happened to all of them, whether it was his father’s last breath, the weight of the earth, or just a natural cycle of dying perseverance, when the old flickered into dust and the new merely stood there, stupid and inept, ignorant and bereft. But as his eyes traveled to Rikyn’s, as he glimpsed at the hurt, at the despair, at the agony mired not by rain, but by grief, he understood they were one and the same again, chronicled by passing stars and oeuvre scribes, dictating the melancholy void the princes were to share. “I’m so sorry,” he mustered into the storm, struggling not to stare at the rusted sentinels, one last piece the Engineer had left behind. He’d rarely met Ulrik, but had heard so many stories (the time he wagged his tongue to topple a throne, cast a DarkEmpress into shadows, the moments where he’d twisted the knife back upon the Reaper too, and they’d never forged a friendship again – heartbreaking in a way, and Erebos didn’t want that to happen to them, not ever, brothers by bond and rime). Now both had been thrust into a disintegrating dynasty, the former generation built by power, by prestige, by maliciousness and fervor – and now the latter, stumbling around, incapable of finding their own footing, not quite ready for the hardships, the titles, the mantles, dragged and drawn across their shoulders.
 
The prince lowered his head, an offering of further apologies, for vows and oaths and assurances to a cretin who’d crafted the most intricate and dangerous of machines, whose legacy lived on through Rikyn’s fortified, bold stances and ambitions. He stared at the puddles, at the drops, at the snowflakes hastening their way through the mercurial layers, held his breath for what came next. The scion, blended and blurred by the lines of strength and torment, coiled his crown towards his brethren, turned his gaze solely to the other boy, mustering the last granules of fragility; why he’d been so gloomy, so intertwined between sorrow and madness. “So is mine.” His voice came like a hollowed sound, soulless, like if he uttered it one more time it would just make it all the more true and consuming – the worst sort of condemnation for children who couldn’t follow their sires, left to the hushed depths of foreboding and corruption.

Erebos

i have nothing, but then the have is not as good as the want