09-27-2026, 05:46 PM
Alaunus
Years pass in mere moments, in heartbeats.
Both of which he no longer has.
His heart had long ago stopped beating as he passed from living to dead. That righteous, stubborn organ finally set to rest. Maybe that had been his undoing. Perhaps it had run so hard and so fast, that it had used itself up before its time.
And time, speaking of, was now a stranger to him as well.
Alaunus couldn’t feel the many years that rolled on like waves on the shoreline, ceaseless and sure. All he could sense was being outside of them. Other. He wondered, of course, what was happening without him. The children and their children and so on and so forth. The kingdoms and their feuds. The women he loved and the women his body loved, for a time (the ones he admired and revered, too). Mostly, he reveled in the peace of death. The quiet of it. It is so different than life ever was.
So it is jarring and unnatural when he is violently ripped from the sanctuary of the afterlife. But he is also relieved, in some way.
His atoms precipitate amongst the sea-spray in the violent toss of the sea. Alaunus doesn’t register the exact second his eyes form again, because it is already so very dark. He hears the voices first instead. They swirl and eddy around him, pulling his attention this way and that, trying to find the faces that should be attached to them. His mother. His brother. His lovers. Carnage. A sick symphony that pulses in ears that are again-new to this world.
And then he sees. It is impossible, or should be. He wonders if he is still dead and this is the penance part he is finally owed. Surely his defiance and willfulness had earned him some type of retribution after his final breath? Maybe this is it. Because the creature that roars above him looks like it has been carved from the stones of Hell itself.
He manages to tear his gaze away long enough to notice others materializing nearby. Had they been dead just before, too? Or were they unfortunate enough to be sucked out to sea and into the clutches of the behemoth? Beqanna is a land of mysteries and magic, to be sure. But he never expected to be caught up in the chaos so long after he passed on. He also never expected to feel the vivaciousness of being alive again.
It is a subtle thing at first, a warmth blooming in his chest. But despite the creature and the howling voices of his past, it ignites into a fire that soon spreads through his limbs. It’s intoxicating: the way blood circulates through him, the way air expands and deflates his lungs. Alive, he thinks, one corner of his lips pulling into a crooked grin. Alaunus faces the towering figure then fully at last. “Would I ever.” Alive. Alive. Alive.
Both of which he no longer has.
His heart had long ago stopped beating as he passed from living to dead. That righteous, stubborn organ finally set to rest. Maybe that had been his undoing. Perhaps it had run so hard and so fast, that it had used itself up before its time.
And time, speaking of, was now a stranger to him as well.
Alaunus couldn’t feel the many years that rolled on like waves on the shoreline, ceaseless and sure. All he could sense was being outside of them. Other. He wondered, of course, what was happening without him. The children and their children and so on and so forth. The kingdoms and their feuds. The women he loved and the women his body loved, for a time (the ones he admired and revered, too). Mostly, he reveled in the peace of death. The quiet of it. It is so different than life ever was.
So it is jarring and unnatural when he is violently ripped from the sanctuary of the afterlife. But he is also relieved, in some way.
His atoms precipitate amongst the sea-spray in the violent toss of the sea. Alaunus doesn’t register the exact second his eyes form again, because it is already so very dark. He hears the voices first instead. They swirl and eddy around him, pulling his attention this way and that, trying to find the faces that should be attached to them. His mother. His brother. His lovers. Carnage. A sick symphony that pulses in ears that are again-new to this world.
And then he sees. It is impossible, or should be. He wonders if he is still dead and this is the penance part he is finally owed. Surely his defiance and willfulness had earned him some type of retribution after his final breath? Maybe this is it. Because the creature that roars above him looks like it has been carved from the stones of Hell itself.
He manages to tear his gaze away long enough to notice others materializing nearby. Had they been dead just before, too? Or were they unfortunate enough to be sucked out to sea and into the clutches of the behemoth? Beqanna is a land of mysteries and magic, to be sure. But he never expected to be caught up in the chaos so long after he passed on. He also never expected to feel the vivaciousness of being alive again.
It is a subtle thing at first, a warmth blooming in his chest. But despite the creature and the howling voices of his past, it ignites into a fire that soon spreads through his limbs. It’s intoxicating: the way blood circulates through him, the way air expands and deflates his lungs. Alive, he thinks, one corner of his lips pulling into a crooked grin. Alaunus faces the towering figure then fully at last. “Would I ever.” Alive. Alive. Alive.
