He waited. He waited for her to acknowledge his weakness, laugh, laugh, and laugh at his failure. He waited for her to rain more blows upon him, for his chest to tighten, to hurt, for his memories of that day to become further haunted by mocking decibels and a cheery din. He waited in between the hollows of silence and the murky unknown, where the walls of his youth, the shame of his loss, caused him to lower his gaze to the ground. The boy couldn’t bear to look at her, couldn’t bear to see what she thought of him now.

You’re such a fool.

Erebos wasn’t sure if those words were from him or Orsino, but they stung all the same, because he knew he was being stupid. It was a ridiculous habit, one borne from being young and foolish, from being naïve and ignorant, from being audacious and not thinking about consequences until it was too late (and if fortune favored the bold, had he already missed his touch of glory?). He couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing him as feeble, reduced, or diminished – he should’ve always been bright, brilliant, silly, mischievous in her eyes – destined for something because he yearned, he wanted, he craved. His desires weren’t meant for gutters and catacombs, for erosion and despair. When the world recalled his name, and its many uses, its many parallels and pretenses, he wanted it strung together on greatness and power, prestige and vengeance. There was renown in triumph, in conquest, but not in downfalls. No one remembered the weak. Their callings were everywhere – in bloodstains, in broken, shattered bones, in desolate, forgotten dreams.

Hadn’t she already seen him at his worst, crawling across a sodden floor, pretending to be felled by wolves, when all along, it had been because he’d dared a little too far, and received exactly what he deserved?

Erebos. At her voice, he flinched, expecting a harsh retort. He remembered, recalled, the way his rage had simmered as he bellowed against the Colossus, claimed he wasn’t a God, that he’d had no right to dictate who lived and who died, and how little it had mattered. He’d been shouting and screeching at a tormentor, at a murderer, at an executioner and naught else had happened – he would’ve been better off cursing the wind. Which was going to be worse? The giant’s face as he ignored the futile railings of a child, or Enna’s impending mockery? Hers, he knew. Her derision and ridicule would drive the sword further into his skull.

Then she drew closer, he watched her feet move within the water, and pressed her lips to his brow. The scion raised his eyes back to hers, staring openly (in shock, in awe, in amazement and divine reverence), while his heart hammered wildly in his chest. Her words, her phrases, were just a quiet, serene reverie - There isn’t a single soul that could have. Not with all the willpower, the might… - and perhaps she understood him more than he could ever imagine, freeing him from the chains that had always held him taut, tethered, dangling from a noose. He’d always believed there’d been a chance, an opportunity he’d missed to save the poor golden girl made of silk and steel. If he’d been a little bit faster, a little bit quicker, capable of finding someone larger, stronger, to take down the beast. If he’d found a healer, if he’d cried out for a Mender nearby, if he could’ve dragged her body to the Basin in time, if his determination could’ve melded, molded, and fused into action instead of disbelief and hate.

But even she couldn’t pluck the wrath, the contempt, completely from his heart. It’d festered, it’d brooded, it curled and contorted until it simply remained, blistering and smoldering, seething and tormenting. It gnarled and knotted down into the marrow of his bones, and he didn’t bother trying to alleviate it from his skin. It’d consumed in the fickle, feral, ferocious way damnation settled into anything and everything, touching, caressing, stroking over his sinew as he struggled to possess power, as he fought to stay above the current. Then, finally, he accepted it as part of himself – a dark, malicious, conniving thing nestled and creeping amongst his soul, his entity, his existence.

The boy couldn’t come up with anything to say. He leaned back into her touch, taking her comfort, her assurances, and swallowing them until they felt real, felt secure, lodged in his throat, in his mind. He remembered the mentioning of her daughter, and tried to blink away the tears threatening to escape from his eyes, because she deciphered, fathomed, and apprehended the ways in which the world was completely, utterly vicious. She’d know why he couldn’t accept how fiends concocted, how they were permitted to control, to malign, to destroy anything and everything in their path. His head lowered along her neck again, pressed her into his shoulder, embracing every ounce of her love, her acceptance, her belief, she was willing to grant. We both know that if there was someone to save her, it would have been you. “Thank you,” he stammered, he whispered, incapable of stating anything else. What would she do if he professed all his sins?

She asked who, and he could see him now – the big, blundering, painted cretin with his nonchalant features and smug, caustic indifference, standing over Arwen’s corpse. Again, amongst battlefields and plains, when Erebos had been nosey, curious, whittling his way through scenes and drama to witness more of the beasts’ crimes, when a girl had saved him as he unleashed a timely attack on the Colossus’ turned back. Once more, with dragons rising towards the heavens, screeching, calling, gold and ivory, bestial and mad, feeding off the adversary’s diseased, decrepit mind. The youth didn’t let her see the narrowing of his eyes, the flickering of hate stirred all over again, keeping her close, caged in his veneration. The malice, the abhorrence, surely crawled and slithered its way through his vocals, made its path just as tainted, just as savage, as the loathsome enemy himself. “I don’t know his name.” The little girl in the Throat had tried to tell him, but even she hadn’t known. “He’s black and white, built like a draft. A Unicorn, but no one from the Basin.” Did the biggest always fall the hardest? “He has two dragons, one white, the other gold.”

He leaned closer to her now, moved so that his lips, his mouth, pressed against one of her ears, firm and resolute, stern and determined. “You have to promise me that if you ever see him, you run.” I couldn’t stand to lose you too.