I watch her cry, and plead. Images flash through my mind, I see myself. Please, just stop. I’ll be good, I’ll do anything just stop please, I blink, and in that moment I realize she is gone. At my feet are a bunch of feathers. I can feel something sliding down my cheek, and then I realize I have been crying. How did a moment of victory shift into a moment of weakness? How did I let the girl go?
A loud scream escapes from my lips as I look up at the sky. “Why can’t I ever win?” I scream to the heavens. “Nothing in this life has ever gone right for me.” I kick up a wave of snow. Then I walk toward the puddles of blood in the snow. An innocent, wounded because of my blinding bloodlust. I know the Sin, and I know that it’s bride wouldn’t be so weak. She wouldn’t plead or beg for mercy. I lay down in the snow, in the puddles, and I bury just stare at what I have done. “I hope you’re happy Nero.” I can still feel the tears slipping down my cheeks. “I stooped to your level. I reached your level of low, I wounded a child.” Violence comes easily to me, I have no restraint in that department, but I swore to myself never to harm an innocent child. I vowed to never inflict what had been inflicted upon me.
Stupid boy, how many times have I told you?
Please, I promise to be good.. I’ll do anything!
I can see that eye staring at me. It’s cold and hollow. “Please, go, just leave me alone.” I whisper, “You can’t torment me anymore, I killed you remember?” My eyes are shut, and I shout. I know my grandfather’s spirit is near. He is laughing at me. When I open my eyes, I don’t see him, but I know he’s there. He’s here, the monster that always lurks in the back of mind, the creature that torments me in my slumber. For a split second, I see him. That dark figure looming over me, and my eyes widen in terror. No! No! NO!
In my ears his heartbeat rings. Louder, louder, and louder, I can stop it. I stand up, and scream loudly. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You’re dead, I killed you. I watched your blood spill onto the ground.”
I close my eyes tightly, and when I open them again, he’s gone. My expression hardens, and I narrow my eyes. I have to leave. I can’t stay her, I can’t let myself remain in the place where my grandfather’s spirit lies. I have to find the Temptress, I have to find Sinners and destroy them.
I walk toward the abandoned feathers, I pick them up and carefully place them in my tail. They will be tossed aside once I leave, but for now I will let them be a reminder. A reminder of how this place is destroying me, it is destroying the Sin Slayer. I glance out at the cold wasteland in front of me, I know I can find my way out of here. I just have to go the way I came, the Threshold. My hooves carry me there, at full speed.
and so by degrees – very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Italics are past Vulture and his Grandfather
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