THE STORY GOES OR THE WAY THAT I WAS TOLD
THERE WAS A KING THAT ALWAYS FELT TOO HIGH
AND THEN HE FELL TOO LOW

It came back. Of course it came back, it is a chronic disease, bred into his veins. A weighty, unwieldy weapon that had never settled into his palms like a well-smithed tool—instead, it had been pressed into his hands without word and without consent, by a towering, horn-helmed shadow, and there it settled deep and undisciplined.

Until, over storm-churned sea and salted sky, he had thrown it off. Loosed himself from it! Felt it leave like a letting of spoiled blood from his body! He had felt, in one stilling and strange moment, a lighter sort of being. A master of his own mind, unburdened from the swampy suck of his heredity.

(Somewhere, deep inside—entombed under leagues of earth and stone—a monster turned over and growled his great displeasure. Because somethings cannot be out-maneuvered or outrun. Somethings cannot be slain.)

Damnit it. It came back.

As gently as it left, it so violated its way back in.

There is no fear like Fear subsuming itself. Wide-eyed and panicked, it crashed over him in waves—terrific, angry, violent waves. Without the impetus to expand, his lungs drained themselves, closing tight as if cast in iron. Gods damnit it all to hell, it came back in the only way Pollock’s gift could. 

He fell to his knees, sputtering and moaning, as the living tissue of his hooves screamed and throbbed—one, two, three, four—each cleaving in two. His brain fogged, pounded, and he felt the unkind splitting of his forehead for just a second before he lost consciousness. Blood spilled over from the roots of his horns as they grew, slowly and deliberately, thickening and curving tight around to the base of his ears.

He came to, the blood beginning to curdle and dry, thick and nasty down the bridge of his nose. In his head, he feels little claws pulling and kneading—damnit, it is back. He stumbles (as he does) to the river, mist circling and spinning off its bitter surface. Falk hisses, curses under his breath, and steps towards the edge, watching the water rock softly in and out, before shuttering his eyes tight.

Damnit, it’s cold as hell! He sucks in air, stunned as it laps at his ankle and warns him to enter no further. But the smell of blood, weaseling its way past him gums as a taste that nauseates him, beacons him down, kneeling to wash his face, as best he can, of the messy process. It still stains the wide white between his eyes, rusty and clotted here and there, but he pulls free of the river with a gruff, “shit!” and steps away, shivering.

“Shit.”