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The once-General didn’t expect to find another portal to the past right in front of him – but he should’ve known better, should’ve presumed everything was a piece, a puzzle, a map of innermost tortures and bestial burdens. There was nowhere within this world that held serenity, charm, or easygoing grace; it melded and molded, frayed and folded, into a patchwork scheme of menace and vices, urged to play the parts and roles of soulless figures, of hours spent in anguish, revisited for the sole purpose of mayhem and acrimony. So when he was told, when he was urged, when a whisper came into his ear, to stumble back into the ruins and grove of a kingdom that had once chewed him up, spit him out, made him stumble, made him crawl, fall, and become nothing, the apprehension stirred. Orsino’s silence was just another part of the ongoing tomb, of the faltering into more catacombs – because here he was reminded of how easily he could crumble, how far he’d been pushed, how days of youth had seemed so meaningless, so silly, so fraught with faults and errors, and how they’d never really gone away. One look into the den of greenery, of lost hours and maligned beasts, of havoc and upheaval, of thunder, of ominous masks staring back at him, was enough to make his lungs seize, make his breath hitch, make his proud, regal, defiant head lower and stare at the ground. Answer the vengeful spirits of the Green Labyrinth he’d been tasked; but he half-wondered if it would be his ghost staring back at him, wondering why he’d still accomplished so little in his motives, in his aspirations, in his cold, chilling ambitions.
Erebos lifted his crow the moment he stepped within, for as foolish as he’d become (always been), he comprehended the way this earth worked, the machinations, the foils, the clawing, gnashing grasp it played on horrors and misgivings. He forged the thoughts of another time out of his membrane, out of his skull, away into the murk and the mire, and spun it back into the Stygian qualities – pretended he was more than he was. The pretenses were dark and intrepid, a gallant little ghoul awakening the heathenous rapture of an empire that craved shadows and betrayed light, and he soldiered on, lowering one hoof and lifting another, proclaiming bravery and might in the hushed, building, glowering silence.
Then a fire flickered at the corner of his gaze, and he twisted towards it, craving its familiarity, the rush of infernos, the spread of embers, coals, and meticulous precision; knew it art because its maker was an ally, a friend, a light in the bewitching haze. He could be like her blades and armor, a sword and shield, a plunging dagger, a rapacious rapier. “Kiada!” He shouted from beyond the shadows, shifting closer and closer to her, hastening a rapid, mischievous grin across his lips, along his mouth, trying to forget the way she’d plunged headlong into the lake, more apt to rekindle the oaths they’d shared, the anarchical sway of their seditious forms. “What brings you here?”
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Green Labyrinth
