» Hauntings & Healings

Erebos

Erebos fought – some days that was all he ever did, digging into the void and trying to plunge his acrimony into its loathing contortions – and it didn’t seem to matter. The damnation he promised was nothing like the gods’ abilities. They ensured pain and devastation, loathing and abhorrence, and it seared, it burned, it scalded around his edges, while he pulsed, while he raged, while he fumed. In the blink of an eye, the potency swirling around him held minute meaning, an empty gun, an inept grasp on a slashing sword – because his eyes glimpsed over the ghost of his father, and he was still.

Frozen in time, back into the years where he was just a boy and his sire was the most demonic, awe-inspiring thing he’d ever seen; a beacon of admiration, of strength, of pride, of fortitude, and the scion had none of it now. He was naught like the Reaper, easily condemned by the swinging scythe, by the unleashing of treachery and wreckage, one more piece of prey to the butchery, the brutality, of havoc. The phantom seemed eager to remind him; torturous and horrifying, staring him down with his father’s penetrating, blue stare, striking into the air, while Erebos could only think, could only feel (he wouldn’t do this, he wouldn’t do this, this isn’t real, he wouldn’t), could only gaze in stunned, befuddled silence.

Not enough. You’re not enough the world shouted back.

He closed his eyes as the weapon came shuddering towards him. The General didn’t want to see the blade daring to close over his form, daring to pierce, daring to consign him to death’s door. Perhaps he wasn’t brave enough to see his death. Maybe he didn’t want the last image stored in his skull to be Deimos sending his son into oblivion.

The cold air whipped by his face, made him shudder, made him tremble, made him quake more than anything ever had – but he opened his eyes, he remained firm on the soil, upright, breathing, whole. Orsino was at his feet, cursing in rough growls and hideous, foul hisses, gazing at the beast’s maw as if there was something ominous, something wrong.

Then there were more hisses, and mists spiraling from the bottom of his chin – marked by Medusa’s hands, possibly saved by the relentless frame of his father, but not the cruel balance of this world’s fate – snakes intertwining themselves where his beard used to be.

And he laughed – laughed because it seemed so stupid, so asinine, so bewilderingly idiotic, tucking his chin closer to his chest so the rest of the world couldn’t see what he’d become already, in this den of asps and vipers.

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