rebirth

Erebos

He had nothing left for her – just listened to her oaths, to her proclamations, to her declarations, the little blue boy lost amidst the world again. Every tender glint of warmth, of hope, had been drained out of him from his last speech, raw, savage, fettered, and he was burning at both ends, a flame cast into the gloom only to return just as nefarious as he’d been when he left. In some ways, he was gone too, no longer the bright star blazing across the horizon, no longer the silly scion with charismatic grins and avaricious eyes – he’d already sunk far too low, and the pieces of his past were mere pretenses now, follies for everyone else to see, while he wrestled and entangled with other monsters, with other cretins. The tides had taken him out to sea and left him there, pushed against the sides of cliffs, the rocky shore; he had the scars to prove it, every last one of them beating upon his chest or his shoulders, in the dark length of his stare, in the piercing, penetrating way he stood amidst the fog, the mist, the abyss, like he’d soon be consumed by it (and not care; simply not care at all). A part of him had died with his father, with his mother, with the Basin – and he existed simply to defy the rest of the world, to carry on his vengeance, to see his sword slip through enemies. It was enough, for now, to settle over the void with hate on his shoulders and menace in his heart; it saw him through the wicked vitriol, the toxic acrimony, the pulsing, pervading ghosts dashing along specious routes. He couldn’t give her the hope she craved though, the smallest gesture of optimism in the strange, unyielding sovereign; there were no holy kingdoms, no empires made of ice, no lands to claim, maintain, and defend – no union but the ones of prior bonds, either through blood or camaraderie, comrades in arms all struggling to survive in misery. “It takes,” was all he could convey – because the Rift snagged and crawled, stole and abolished, ensnared, captivated, then consumed, swallowed, every token breath of expectancy, of blossoming dreams, of whimsical aspirations. The warrior didn’t tell her about his lost companion, out in the middle of nowhere, or how some of his magic (the one that resembled his father’s the most; the fire, the embers, the brimstone) had simply vanished, gone back into the damnation. He didn’t tell her how he planned to snag it all back through cunning and treachery, through wicked, condemning means, through dastardly, bestial ways.

So he granted her the only thing he could – and that was his faith, his trust, his steadfast, stalwart essence, still there, buried under all the armor, the hate, the contempt, the conspiring. “Come with me,” he spoke, gaze tender, riddled and mired in too many other conflicting emotions. It wasn’t a command or demand, but driven from his heart, from his soul, from those accursed sentiments wrought along his iron-forged entity. Erebos didn’t have a direction, didn’t have a home, didn’t have anything but his ideals, his creeds, his oaths, his might, and his list of audacious persistences, but perhaps it’d be enough. They could torch the world together, and it’d be a beautiful, unwinding blaze made from death, from rain, from everything they should’ve been from the beginning. A smile started on his lips, stranded out in the open, resting on the hope he should’ve have strived for, shouldn’t have craved; because he knew what this world was like (and dared anyway).

I'LL SHOW YOU HOW GOD | FALLS ASLEEP ON THE JOB
Image Credits

@Lothíriel