Master of nothing place, again. “I do not know.” The frustrations swelled, piquant and crowing against the forces of his sword, naught but a hot, restless knife teetering against demonic steel. He couldn’t venture into the confines of his kingdom, his empire, his crown and throne, to see if their world had been turned into dust, if there was naught left for his herd but smoking ashes or stale snow, icy mortality fringing on brimming, molten circumstances. Tied and weighted down like a clustered, cloistered, locked heathen, breathing infernal fire at the gates and waiting for them to melt, to turn over into capsized embers, harpooned fibers, and merely watching as they remained shut, tight, rigid and unyielding. The unattainable faced the impenetrable, irony knotting a horrendous tangle of ruminations against the fortress, the fortitude, of his might – to linger in safety, to unite his troops, or to chisel his way outside, fight Tartarean foes until he lost his way, became one of them again? Selfish, indulgent ploys whispered against his circlet, shield, cutlass, and he sought corruption, lingered in its heady throngs, toyed with the spells and incantations of death, and then the selfless littering of his sovereignty tugged at his burning strings, and he reveled, rebelled, sank into subterfuge and corrosion, became nothing but the endless scythe and consuming doldrums. There was nothing for him here but the mercy of time, and he hated every moment of it, loathed and derided, scorned and sizzled, smothered and yearned for scintillation, annihilation, as his lips cast a ghostly, wanton hymn along her hips, her haunches, her catering to the grave. Implosion and destruction cast a heavy angle along his senses, and her showers, her gales, her droplets and her serenity moored him amongst the shadows, waiting, wanting, to ignite. He pressed closer, inching and sketching a plaintive plea of guidance, of the unknown, of ruminations he’d yet to decipher through the rubble walls and secured ruins. Of things labored and lost, of remnants scuttled and harpooned, of a land beckoning for his gnarled flesh and devouring maelstrom, of calculations and measures he couldn’t examine because of limits he’d placed upon himself (was he suddenly so ineffectual, so inept, that there were borders and boundaries to his malice? Had he truly fallen so far?).

He wanted to bite into her flesh, sink deep into her chasms and storms, unwind in the fanning plumes of her streams, her agonies, her tears, strangle palaces and kings, smother princesses and princes. He wanted to curve his scythe along the jugular of some foreign foe, he wanted to embed his rapier, his brevity, into the chest of an enemy and witness them beg through bloodied, gaping jaws. Instead, his searing mouth sculpted a web of derision, taunting, haunting, over her skin, sin lapping at virtue, swallowing paragons and pedestals, struggling to maintain the fiendish convictions of an eldritch monarch. Vile precision with nowhere to go, nowhere to wander, refusing to adapt to the slides of night alms and arms, caressing immoral strokes into the heart of his existence. Over her incandescent essence he uttered a single, infernal crescendo, beat it in time to the shadows and darkness, allowed it to swindle his power, scathe and scrape at his weakness – for he’d found one, simmering and rasping in his bones, the unknown and the uncertain – and had no weapon to combat it. Only she, Huyana, rain queen, water goddess, was permitted to hear the agony of his torment, of his torture, of the sullen anguish buried and bottled, drunken and infested, intoxicating and rampant. “I despise this ignorance.” Through the gloom, he sought her guidance, closing his puncturing gaze, lids hovering in broad veils, crashing into the cataclysm of their despised purgatory.

i'm not here looking for absolution,

because I found myself an old solution