have heart, my dear

It was all a cavalcade, a procession, of rancor and melancholy – they succumbed to it brilliantly, nothing left but shadows, air, and mist, intoxicating, suffocating, pushing them down into the bellowing regions of hell where no one heard them scream, no one heard them cry, no one heard anything but the discordant strikes of upheaval and misery. It was an exchange of hidden parcels and specious daggers, the lines drawn between concealed secrets and inner flames; he had naught to hide now, as bare and pathetic, as stripped and useless, as the day he’d been born. His mask had fallen somewhere, between the crack and rubble, between the sands and time, unguarded and wretched, tattered and torn. She seemed less indulgent on other things, alterations, and his eyes only strayed to the armor, to the X, to the blaze of new wounds he had no ability to fix (what could he do, anyway, when all was said and done?). So the warrior didn’t focus on them for long, harked his gaze solidly on her features, on her face, on the pieces where they seemed eager to achieve the same means, sharing a soulless adoration for vengeance and disaster. He permitted her touch, she was familiar, she was strong, she was stalwart, and he needed to be reminded of those things too – how they’d once been a greater part of mountains, majesty, and power. Her words were more drumbeats of fallen figures, and though he hadn’t known them (he should’ve, some deep, piercing cutlass slammed into his skull, he should’ve recognized the beings from their world, honored them in some way), he could understand her abhorrence, her grief. “Orsino is nearly silent to me. Enyo has vanished.” The truth corroded his throat and scorched his tongue; his stare landed on the sable kitsune, who usually growled and hissed and pledged every asinine twist and turn, every cunning, Machiavellian pursuit – and without him, without his voice, without his barbaric insights, it’d been Erebos, just Erebos, in his irreverence, in his fire, in his fury.
 
What did that say about him? How much was Orsino, and how much was his dastardly, wicked, condemned self?
 
“Aithniel and Ode were killed.” The General didn’t draw up his shield, and allowed their names to circulate, to pervade, to haunt, as their lifeless frames, their phantom figures did in his sleep. “Remember them. Never forget their faces, their heroics, and what they hoped to accomplish.” It was a burden to bear, even as he nodded, even as he pledged, but it was a welcome agony he’d thrust over his shoulders, pressed down with the other cumbersome loads, and when everything was overwhelming, he wouldn’t care any longer; because they were only memories now (when they used to be someone, something, bright, incandescent beacons) and they couldn’t possibly be too heavy.
 
But her admission, of following the beast, of caving to his whims, caused a brief furrowing of his brows. He would’ve thought better of her, to not be so easily enticed, intoxicated, or tempted by the whims of so many eldritch things, but to voice such a sentiment would lacquer him in further hypocrisy. They’d all been tricked, all been duped, all been escorted right into the slaughter, done his bidding, orchestrated his tasks, sometimes without a damned thought. So the scion’s voice quieted, not harsh, but unyielding too, a pressing force of veracity meant to hit her ears, her heart, her being. “All of us were deceived. What matters now is that you’ve seen him for what he truly is.” A monster, a heathen, a fiend, a foe that needed to be stopped. Revenge sparked between their marrow, an infernal gallows sweeping in oaths and assurances - he must be stopped - and a haunting, feral, savage smirk swept over his lips, just briefly enough, just brutal enough, to know the nefariousness brewed within him. “I agree with you,” he nodded again, eyes alight with ardency, with fervency, with every ounce and fiber of his father’s soul reaching past bloodlines and voids; you will be better whispering through his skull, a monster on a mission. “But we have to wait. He wants us to learn.” The smirk grew, wild and chaotic, a virile, Cheshire grin that held no impishness – just danger, potent, savage treachery. “So we shall – and then we’ll use our knowledge against him.”

Erebos

i have nothing, but then the have is not as good as the want

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@Kiada