All my life I’ve been searching for something
Vexation pulled at his heart and made it fester, made it decay, made it wither inside his chest, broken little shards tugged out of their strings and webs, thrown, tossed into the wind. He was incomplete, another lost soul tattered and frayed, glancing out upon the earth and knowing, understanding, that it had nothing to give him – no promise, no conviction, no oaths, no pledges. Those were all gone now, split apart like Ode’s flesh, like Aithniel’s shadow, like Enyo’s vanished, disregarded trace – and everything he’d ever fought for. The Basin was a lifeline, and it’d been robbed of its beating forces, its potent distinction, its herd, its empire, its futility, and in turn, its forgotten General paid the price by his abandonment. He thought to run and run and run, screaming, tearing, defiling, back into the void and merely see where it would take him, out of sight, out of mind, flailing straight into cruelty or nothingness; either would suffice, the end or the beginning, the genesis or the finality. But words on the horizon were mere echoes of the past, whispering to him, pulsing, pervading forged between his anger and his acrimony, plunging deep, like a knife, like a blade, like a sword, thrust in his rib cage, stuck through and sworn to anguish. You will be better, one said, his father’s deep, resonating speech, the last phrase he’d ever spoken to his son (and know he understood why the Reaper had always appeared so cold, so nonchalant, so reticent, because then nothing and no one could hurt when everything was stripped away). Look forward, a now fallen God had once told him, glancing towards the skyline and not the delusions of history, where their lines bombarded his soul, where they stomped on his Machiavellian distortions until there was naught left but an aching need for retribution on a force that couldn’t be maligned. Believe it, and so will they, Weaver had spoken, but it didn’t matter now, for there was naught left of him and what he used to be (valor, gallantry, the indentation of an impish smile; what had it ever given him but vanished, murdered, scarred friends and misery?). They need you, he thought he heard Orsino, but the kitsune had been eerily quiet, and it could’ve been the cataclysm, the catalyst, of the breeze, of the fog, of the mist playing tricks on his battered skull, casting one more onslaught, one more terror, one more horrific nightmare, stabbing, lacerating whatever was left of his core. And you need them.
He’d always tried, but what was there to venture for anymore?
We’ll find her, was the answering growl, and it was too optimistic to be Orsino, so he ignored it, stared into the facets of treachery, of danger, and wondered how long it would take to consume him. Erebos was still flesh and blood, still tenacity and cunning, still iron and fire – perhaps simple audacity kept him going, kept his veins pumping, kept his muscles undulating, kept his military machinations alive (contempt, loathing, and despair, mixed and blended and brewed with so much viciousness his body seemed molded from it; savage, nefarious, wicked, wild, daring the world to ruin him one last damned time).
They walked and ambled, looking for pieces, for signs, of a griffin’s wing or the familiar click of a fledgling’s beak, but the shadows clung to his eyes and all he could remember was disaster, the cloak of bedlam, the infernal unknown gasping, grasping, taking them all into oblivion (it could only be hell here). “Enyo,” he whispered into the dark, hoping his voice didn’t carry the weight of his melancholy, that the reverberations, the murmurs, didn’t inform the world of his unraveling fringes. His stare flickered into the void, into the abyss, into the Stygian empire and its fervent mist, then caught ivory.
The prince’s head swung quickly, rapidly, swiftly, a predator’s carnivorous notion, and his stare followed the line of white wings, pale, alabaster, ones he hadn’t seen in so long that disbelief suddenly melded into his core – he shook his cranium, the crown fallen, misshapen, crooked, believed it an error, a trick, a play to make him truly split into miniscule pieces. It couldn’t be, he assured himself, the way all beaten, destroyed things have a way of vowing and aligning, protecting whatever small hopes they had left – because she was gone too, like his mother, like his father, like Ode, and he was the only one remaining, stark and desolate, restless, weary, and shattered. It cawed though, and he kept his piercing stare on its fluttering plumage and haunting, poignant hues (wanting to ask why something else had been sent her to mock him, to tease him, to consume him), watching another form shift below it, through the haze, through the fog.
Then he saw flowers, faded, and remembered so many things (silver lines and hidden skulls, ringing laughter, like bells and satin, teasing, taunting, and pride, Huyana’s gentle voice and devilish delight to match them; ghosts, all of them, veiled, shrouded wraiths plaguing at his soul).
“Loth?” He murmured into the void, almost inaudible, because hope hastened to his chest, bright and wicked, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, crumble again.
(something never comes)
erebos
never leads to nothing—nothing satisfies
but I’m getting close
The Portal
