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Something was wrong.
The prince woke up with Orsino in his face, gilded eyes sizzling like hellfire, narrowed and suspicious, agitated and restless, hissing like mad over the onslaught of rain pouring outside their cavern wall. Apprehension curled over him, froze his veins, shattered his soul, and brought back a thousand thoughts over a multitude of possibilities. The buzzing over their connection was rasping and gnawing, pulling him from the floor, staring down at the kitsune as it muttered and murmured death? Death? like the cretin was puzzled, perplexed by the shapes and sounds of demise rustling along their door. So Erebos peered out the aperture, gazing across the flickering of dawn and decay, wondering just who’d fallen apart this time, narrowing his eyes at the motionless shape by the unfreezing lake, and his heart dropped.
He could feel it beating minutely, slowly, shocked, unraveled, unfurled, even as he raced across the land and slid along the rime, choking back cries and completely uncertain if his voice worked as he screamed Father? and waited to hear a response. He’s resting, he declared in an act of brutal, ignorant defiance, trying to make himself believe the words. He enjoys the rain, which was the truth, for it’d been like mother, gentle and serene, a glimmer of hope on the edges of corruption and deception. But there was nothing – naught a single sound from the Reaper, bowed against the embankment, covered in the cold cascade of the cascading showers, and the boy said it again and again and again, shouting until he thought he’d make himself deaf. He knew death – he’d seen it so many times before, painted on the faces of the perished and departed (sometimes his friends, sometimes his family), the ruined and discarded, but had never pictured sketched along his sire’s form.
“You can’t,” he said on a harsh whisper, defying the travesty even as it lay there, cold and cruel, because everyone was made of flesh and blood, even his father – but he’d always been so much more, larger than life, a beautiful, elegant piece of harsh marble and unrelenting stone, capable of wielding weapons and taking lives, smiling when he was finally content, laughing when the humor had been earned…
It felt like eons before he made it to the Reaper’s side, like he’d lived a thousand lifetimes in the span of a few moments, weathered and aged, brutalized and tortured, grasping for something else, a lifeline, a tether, to pull him back ashore. He sunk into the sand and dirt, the wet, damp soil, and lowered his head upon the great beast’s shoulder, struggling with what to do, what to say, where to go from here. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, with their last parting words full of you will be better and the scion just laughing it off when he should’ve held him, should’ve told him how much he loved him, how much he’d learned, how much he wanted to be by his side at all times and if mother would be proud of him, if sister would tease him. He wasn’t ready to live without his sire steadfast and stalwart, rushing headlong into battle for each and every one of them, plunging his sword into the bellies of their adversaries, stoically standing proud and tranquil, calm and composed, a monarch reigning in winter ferocity and unrelenting prowess. The Lord deserved so much more than slipping away in the tremors of the water, but the prince had nothing else to offer him except an all-encompassing love.
The boy buried his face into his father’s hide and simply wept, didn’t care who saw him, didn’t bother to shield himself from the onslaught of emotion or the tremors of loss. It ate at his core until he felt nothing left but shame and agony, clawing, ripping him apart, leaving him alone to the perils of the Basin, to the rising hardships, to the contorted coils of anarchy and anguish. Perhaps, worst of all, was that for all the times, all the hours, all the years, where he’d wanted to reach out and embrace the terror and tyranny that was Deimos the Reaper, he could only do so when the King had faded from life. He didn’t have any more words – they would only fall from broken, barbed sobs. For once, the little cretin was only made of tears, sorrows, and despondency, wishing for something he could never have again.
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