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06-20-2016, 04:17 PM
 The Reaper was in a constant state of imperfection. The shadows marked him as one of their own and breathed avarice into his bones; the darkness played over the wiles of his compassion (the little that remained) and whispered barbarity into his blood. The foolish ways in which he’d carved his name into rubble and chaos only rekindled the wild whims of his past atrocities – urged him to cling more to violence, to vigilance, to decay and acrimony. It was all he knew, all he’d ever known, and all he’d ever be. Despite his determination, the cold, savage winds beat down upon his chiseled surface and made him bleak, chilling, and miserable. Despite his perseverance, the forged, Lucifer intricacies of his birth, of his namesake, of his calling, of his soul, made him desolate, isolated, and unattainable. Despite all the years, all the seasons, all the days he’d lingered within the temples, ruins, and empires, he’d only managed to become an eroded shell, a remorseless vessel, a piece of earth and disaster. He’d been christened, anointed, designed by flaws, by defects, by cruel, bitter entanglements, by bewitched, eldritch incantations, by the slim handle of a scythe and the iron will of a titan, and he didn’t know why they needed him anymore. The Lord was in and out of iniquity, balancing tightly on a rope, on a noose, on a strangling cord binding its way across his neck, and every day, every moment, every hour, it told him of his worthlessness, of his failures, of the way the herd managed to crumble around him. It was breathtaking and harsh, and he fought on because he could, because he was strong, because he didn’t give in when everyone else yielded to cumbersome pressure.
What hurt the most was that he tried, and none of it seemed to matter. Know your people, his father had said, love them….if they follow when you lead, then you will know you have done something magnificent. So what had he done after talking to his sire’s ghost, after whispering into the flames, after lingering and longing for something, for someone, to cling to and tell him how to accomplish these tasks? Maybe the Basin was about to become as empty as his title, as his throne, and the rest of the world could sit and laugh while they chipped away at their own land. He glanced to Hotaru now – and he didn’t know her. He had bits and pieces, fragments of her in his sight, in his memory, of rosy hues he once thought of as mere petals that somehow, somewhere, blossomed and bloomed into materials of stature and noteworthiness. She’d been sneaky, she’d been cunning, she’d orchestrated warfare alongside the Forsaken, she’d stolen and been stolen, and then he named her to the crown after everything was over, finished, final. What he learned since then? The same as everyone else he’d encountered: nothing. He was a hideous, worthless King. He might have told her that, as she asked how he fared, as she left the hot spring just to wile away the hours with a ridiculous, bloodthirsty soul who only knew how to hunt and murder, who could lead soldiers to battle but couldn’t get a group of rancorous brethren to agree on what to do with pieces of metal. He might have told her he was tired, he was exhausted, he wanted to lay across the dirt and ice and wait for the world to go quiet and dark around him, so he wouldn’t have to endure anymore of his own ineptitude, so he wouldn’t have to watch them all tumble, fall, and fail around him. Instead, however, he endured, like a timeless artifact, like a haunting, harboring disease, pestilent and pernicious until the end (when all he’d ever wanted to do was make them reign supreme, above everyone and anything), gravelly vocals punctured and laced from the carnivorous wake of his unreachable demeanor. “I am fine.” He’d always be fine, fine, fine, fine, until the devil chose to drag him back to where he belonged. The monster’s great head turned then, surveying her from head to daggers, looking over scraps and chunks of scars where blood had once stained – she’d never told him how she’d managed to procure such injuries. She’d never told him who to stalk, chase, follow, or bludgeon (which was brutally unfair – to not employ him in one of the few skills he had). He wanted to ask her again (what happened?), to yield into the denizens of violence and not be awakened for eternity, to correspond and strike something, anything, anyone, down for marking and beating one of his own. But he didn’t – like one more foolish rendition of a failed monarch, he merely extended the query she’d composed back into the air. “Yourself?” DEIMOS
delivered from the blast
last from a line of lasts and now the kingdom comes crashing down undone |
image credits
@Hotaru
