All my life I’ve been searching for something

The General seemed to roam endlessly – a wandering embodiment of restlessness, an entity of maneuvering currents and wayfaring change, pulled by mercurial exploits, by wired, wild, savage endurance, savoring satisfaction for the slightest of seconds before craving again. He pushed his frame to the limits on the surface of the lake, straining muscles, unfurling, uncoiling rapacious, unrelenting movements, powering maneuver after maneuver, enduring the roll of fortitude curled through his mind (just one more), rushing at the imaginary enemies Orsino managed to conjure in his wicked haze. It was mindless repetition, slashing his sword, racing towards the heavens, launching, leaping, kicking, screaming, gnashing his teeth, barreling onwards into onslaughts, perils, treachery, and triumph, until something or someone gave in. He’d stop altogether, lower his head, and breathe, staring down into the pool, ignoring the sweat running down his neck, his shoulders, his torso, wondering when he’d be haunted again, when the torture would end, when the cycle would distort – even if he didn’t want to be free. His companions wisely said nothing. Orsino begrudged him with a mere snicker, and Enyo, too young, too determined by mediocre things, only batted at the cattails on the shore, beak trying to clutch at their furry ends.
 
They moved again while the prince walked off his exertion, tying the bounty of his exhaustion together with fumes and defiance, hurtling his own demons off into the mountainside, where they would collide together in the dark, waiting for his dreams to take hold, to shatter and ruin him again. His eyes ran along the mountain trails, searching for one more diversion, one more monumental plunge into something other than agony or anarchy, catching the slightest glow of his father’s charm within the middle of the summit. He stared, waited, wishing, then turned away, rummaging past caverns and pathways, clenching his jaw in the vivid, bewildering silence, only snatching at tethers and lines when a voice caught his attention – ears swiveling, head perked, the bestial length of his crown raised either in alarm or intrigue. The youth recognized Weaver’s outline from a distance, all blacks and ivories, sometimes clashing with the desolate landscape, sometimes molding into its finery like she’d always belonged – but it was along the borders, and so he followed after the slight of her words (didn’t think about trust, didn’t mention the bridge, the noose, snatching over his throat), protective, indulgent, curious all the more. When he arrived she’d already intercepted the newest visitor (and it seemed like so many had ducked beneath the Sentinels’ empty gazes recently, as if they’d heard the Reaper no longer lived and felt inclined to wonder, to ponder, to investigate), and his gaze (all three of them, fox, griffon, and boy), sidled directly onto the stranger – who likely wasn’t a stranger at all.
 
“Hello,” he said on a whim, like it hadn’t been an echo of a boy saluting a raven-girl, one without a name, knowing full well he’d given his own to her before. But he’d changed and altered, and she had too – he’d seen her in the midst of battles, in the middle of melees, the same as all of them, thrust into chaos and bedlam and rippling beside the masses. His head tilted, full of cobwebs, snares, and the unknown, eyes narrowing in a speculative amount, not hardened like his father’s, not softened like his mother’s – all his own, a storm and a tempest brewing, brooding, from the hours, days, and seasons that had carved him. He smiled too, winked at Weaver, bestowed all the charms and necessities borne upon his hide, his soul, pretending he wasn’t empty and immoral, reckless and abandoned. Orsino watched the dragons, Enyo stared from the General’s feet, and Erebos stood there, all strength and deliberation, afraid of being caught, snagged, and snared in the past again. “What brings you to the Basin?” 

(something never comes)

erebos

never leads to nothing—nothing satisfies

but I’m getting close