Continuation from this thread.

Defeat was an abhorrent hue. It wove together with shame, tied around his eyes, his heart, his mind, in a tethered string of black and red, guiding him to a deeper throng of understanding, regret, and rancor. Vicious, vile, and disturbing, they blinded his notions to only cursed thoughts, to poignant claws, to ripping snares, to all the wiles he’d ever consumed, to the weaknesses driven deep into his soul, flayed open and laid there for all the world to see. The pieces, the fragments, the shards, were nettled and thorned, grinding and unwinding, unfurling and distorting, drowning him in the wake of loss – he’d felt it before when he couldn’t save Arwen, when he couldn’t get enough power, when he’d accidentally burned Asch, when nothing he did ever truly seemed to matter. He’d wept then, felt hot, angry tears trail down his cheeks and settle a path of mourning down through his bones; but today he only had his own flaws and defects to lament for – and instead of falling apart at the seams, instead of curling up on the ground, he ground his teeth, he clenched his jaw, and he hated himself. Frustrated, the defiencies haunted the edges of his skull with hardened, emboldened contempt – because how could he ever think to beat down the Colossus when he couldn’t drive away a smaller opponent, how could ever hope to gain influence, power, and supremacy if he couldn’t win? Just when he thought he’d had it all: a blessing from the Sun God, information about his enemy, a shadowy corridor to travel on his wicked, winding road to hell, he’d tripped, stumbled, and fumbled. It would not be the last taste of failure, but the acrid mouthful clawed its way down his throat with such a strong, abominable conviction, that all he could do while the storm receded, while the thunder and lightning waned, was hang his head in remorse.

Not only had he lost, but he'd attempted to destroy their own Haruspex.

What a fool, he murmured to himself, lost in the dregs of pain and misery. What an idiot, he hissed, inaudibly striking across the last few droplets of rain. He was too ashamed, too sore to raise his cranium and stare at the painted stallion, staring at the ground instead, gaze settling on the rippling contortions of puddles and dampened soil. The first apology cluttered and curled along his vocals, distant and waning, and he ceased it altogether until he could drum something better, drenching it with less sighs and more sorrow. “I’m so sorry, Ashamin….” Even that seemed ineffective, but the Haruspex must have required more, so much more, than such a simple declaration, and his breath loosened, tried to give, to offer, what the world required of him now, no matter how much contempt coiled through his stomach. “I thought you were a monster,” the boy’s eyes scanned the terrain for the mask, haunting and aloof and decrepit in the dark, allowing for a child’s mind to become tormented by demons, fiends, and cretins (if he hadn’t been one himself). Only then did he lift his head, and become suddenly swallowed by a horribly, dizzying void, like he was swimming in a ferocious current, battling his way through the tides and the waves (no longer ruling those either?). His stare fought to find the others’, searching for a perilous amount of moments while he swayed drunkenly on his feet, the wounds, the battle, the aches and pains finally taking their toll on his frame. “Did I hurt you badly?” Listless and languid, as if part of someone else’s ridiculous dream, he tried to step forward, and his shoulder refused to recite the same lines; and the scion crumpled right before the anointed creature, waiting for his punishment.

OOC :: 
"speech"

There was no strength in him now, no virility, no brawn, no might, no fortitude. Exhaustion reeled and clawed over his skull, his mind, until his head was filled with nothing but anguish and a strange, floating fog; mulling over what it meant to be weak. He never thought himself delicate, fragile, or vulnerable, never truly immersed himself amidst indignity and disgrace, but it pummeled him so mercilessly now, rasping, tearing, clawing – and he felt the ache of scorn past all the broken parts of his frame, the taste of bitterness slide over his mouth and down his throat – because everything always seemed to amount to nothing. He’d always cherished his resolution, cultivated and triggered and incensed the bloody revolutions screeching amidst his sentiments, but they’d been so callously struck down, so soullessly torn apart, and he didn’t know where they’d gone; vanished and vanquished just as easily as his body. The little beast thought he’d been a part of Hell before, one more demon and infidel taken from the Mephistophelean rites and pedestals, another cretin in the making, another shard intending to break apart his enemies. What a glorious thing to have been: a harpoon, a sword, a cutlass, a rapier, forged in steel and determination, in death and desecration, in unholy frames and venomous, vehement barbs – but the Haruspex had proven to him that he was nothing, no more than a speck of dust, no more than a grain of sand. The truth struck him terribly, digging down into his heart, into his lungs, into his soul and plucking at all those strings of anarchy until they simply died down, became quiet shards and fragments. Perhaps he’d never honor the Sun God and all his wisdom (was this what he’d meant, in those curling veins of fire and sagacity, that the boy would have to be more than just power – because even that faded, even that could be pierced and popped and scalded?). Perhaps he’d never avenge Arwen and all her shy smiles and furtive whims. Perhaps he’d never annihilate his enemies. Perhaps this was Fate’s way of assuring the lad, the youth, the scion, that he no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many miles he wandered, no matter how many schemes he concocted, he’d always amount to naught in the end. The boy who’d built his temple on fires and ferocity, on blazes and barbarity, watched himself, his goals, his aspirations, become ash and soot.

Like a fading ember, he collapsed upon the ground, barely registering Ashamin’s words through the seething cloud hovering through his membrane. His vision swam, flickering, dying images of puddles and ruin, abominations and deceit, the lacquered world where he’d finally tumbled from his pier, until he closed his eyes and listened to the sullen sound of the fading rain. I am fine, some echo said, repeating in an odd, ashamed refrain, as if the voice had anything to be remorseful and penitent about – it’d been the Lilliputian demon and his ambition for greatness, for ichor, for damnation that had caused the entire fray – and Orsino had enough sense to simply remain eerily, utterly silent, laying his head on his bonded’s front hooves. I am sorry, it said through the mist, and Erebos, had he been capable, would have snorted, would have laughed, would have darkly courted some whispering courtyard in hell and buried himself in it. 

But then another’s voice ricocheted, cutting through the dull, throbbing void, the listless, languid din, and all he could do was shield his face from hers, brushing it against the damp, sodden ground, searching for a way to remain hidden from her stare, from her snare. The prince didn’t want anyone else to see the weakened, fragile fool he’d become, shackled and bleeding, defeated and exhausted, nothing, nothing, nothing. He was supposed to be the trickster, the cretin, the gallant, intrepid youth battling storm after storm, assailing foe after foe, cackling at jokes and cajoling others to join his makeshift fray – he was supposed to be abhorrence and vengeance, vehemence and violence, destiny on his shoulders and strength in his muscles; not this broken, pathetic little child. His lips maneuvered in silent prayer, begging her not to see his crumpled frame, his feeble drained figure, hoping she wouldn’t find him in all the darkness, in all the oblivion, turning his head away from her voice, too afraid to search for her in the shrouds, in the veils of his blighted stars. Had he had the power, he might have even fled, running away from the scorn, the stupidity, the idiocy consuming the strained, taut moments. Please don’t see me like this, he pleaded through the throng; but he felt Orsino shake his head against his leg, and her melody billowed thereafter; too late. Ashamin’s companion had summoned her, had known the picture of loss and defeat, had called her to see what had become of her fellow mischief maker, and some part of him knew he’d never be the same again in her eyes.

He still couldn’t look at her, couldn’t turn his frame towards where she likely stood, gazing down at him in disbelief, wonder, or disappointment. He hoped it wasn’t the latter, because he already couldn’t forgive himself, and if he somehow managed to disenchant her too…the thought died off on a croak, on a slashed spark of dismay, attempting to stop her from pending rituals. “Enna, don’t-“ The lad heard her fall next to him, felt the rush of warmth of her figure nestled near his, listened to the enchanting lull of her voice, I’m here, she said, and he was twisted in being grateful, being content, being happy that she was at his side, and ashamed, sheepish, mortified she’d become part of his cycle of weakness. He thought to fight against the tempest of magic flooding his senses, to force it away from his structure, from his sentiments; to not be mended at all, for he’d attacked one of his own, for he’d been beaten and trounced and he was receiving his just desserts. “I deserved it,” he muttered through his lips, too tired, too drained, too lifeless to do anything but be entranced, beguiled, and allured by the sweeping hands of time; just as he’d been intoxicated by her those seasons before, laughing at the way she stomped amongst the Threshold, queen of thorns and barbs, stinging and sweet all at once. A sigh trickled along his mouth, billowed through the rain and torment, allowing the agony to pass away, the wounds to heal, the open lacerations on his shoulder stitching back together as if naught had happened at all. 

He could feel her worry and he hated himself for it all over again, twisting his head around to stare at her, to feel the light kiss placed on his crown (it felt broken and loose, might discarded, fallen somewhere amidst the rain and torture), to extend his maw against hers in a show of his existence, tangibility. The boy lowered his mouth to her shoulder, pressed it close, murmuring the weight of his actions across her skin, “I was stupid.” I still am, he wanted to say, but he just stayed bowed against her, hiding all over again; cowardly, not daring to stare at Ashamin again, not daring to face any more of the truth. 

Wolves, Ashamin had said, bleeding and blending into a lie fitted to the boy’s noose, wrapped and knotted and gnarled together. He wanted to defy it automatically, to let the seething rasp of his turmoil elongate along his lips and past his mouth, to etch and sketch and carve its way through their humanity, because he’d been beaten, he’d been tarnished, and it should’ve amounted to his poor, inept distinction. He didn’t want to be in the Haruspex’s debt, clinging to the chords of their fabrications (the lad would always hold his pretenses, his duplicities, but didn’t crave being chained to another’s). Perhaps his father would know of his failure. Maybe someone else down the road would hear his name on the manifestos of losses and defeats, laugh and chuckle and scorn, but he’d earned those regards, those humiliations, those harsh, unrelenting whips of shame. Would it make him weaker, fragile, if he fled from his follies? How far would his lies go? Would everything around him be a specious mirage, a corporeal hallucination, a tangible spell of deceit and torment, and the closer they all came, the more they were swallowed, deeper and deeper, until he consumed their flesh, their bones? The sentiments were difficult to face, to master, to control and contort.
 
Ashamin was offering him a way out. A path to slink and slither upon and forget it ever happened, to forgo the canals of weakness and the sad, sullen lives they’d come to lead.
 
But he wouldn’t forget – Erebos knew that much. It would wound him every day, to taste the blunt, caustic edges of failure. It would blind him, scar his sights, mutilate the way he maneuvered, the way he carried himself. He’d always be a beast with a weight on his shoulders and an ax to grind. He’d always be marred, impaired, blemished from the perception of his ignorance, and seek to restore it as best he could.
 
The prince could have stayed in Enna’s presence for the rest of the evening, ignoring her lectures and diatribes, merely clinging to the endless monotony of another day survived. But he didn’t want her to see him like this again – one more fragile, stupid little boy wandering the plains, incapable of getting out of his own unrelenting, soulless path. He needed to be tougher, braver, brazen, and audacious. He needed to grow, needed to change, needed to learn from these barbaric circumstances. There would always be more savage cretins than him. There would always be stronger beings than him. What he did, how he concocted, how he orchestrated and laid out his plans, would solidify the result.
 
He simply hadn’t done enough.
 
No one deserves to be pain - he wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to bite and snatch and sneer, be a brute, be a malicious, asinine fiend and chase off the wounds no longer plaguing him, the lacerations cutting through his fatigued mind.  But instead, he ignored. He knew what he merited. They all did.
 
Enna pulled away and Erebos did the same, gathering the renewed strength in his limbs, in his muscles, she’d proffered upon him. “Thank you,” he spun from his lips, giving forth one lingering touch upon her shoulder, but incapable of glancing towards her eyes (she didn’t need to see what flickered there, she didn’t need to register those small, fragile emotions flaring and breathing and brewing beneath the haunting snare of his gaze), before riveting his stare towards the Haruspex, the painted man, the one who bore skulls in the dead of night. “I thought one was a bear…” he courted, one half of a cheeky smile resting in his lips, delving only partly into the masquerade, before a sinister thought rustled through his mind, savage and untamed, and he didn’t know if it had come from him or Orsino. “If we meet them again, perhaps the result will be different.” His head tilted, and an ominous lilt rang through his cranium, wild and free, feral and ferocious.
 
When it returned to its former position, he felt Enna’s maw reach along his cheek, and the devilry disappeared, as if it had never been there at all. “Home sounds wonderful.”