His world has gone stagnant.
That’s the trouble, you see, with immortality. You live on and on, one day folding into the other, your body never changing – stuck, as the world changes around you. Family, friends, lovers fade into gray and dusty memories, faces blending together until your past is someone else’s and you are lost among the faces. A deep breath fills his rib cage and his throat shudders with the exhale. Nera, Nazul, Tatter, Frostreaver, Chain … Starlace. Gone, images on the fickle breeze of time. Nostrils pinch tightly closed in a brief display of annoyance, the only sign that he’s noticed the light rain that has begun to fall. He lies curled against the boulder on the shoreline; the rock he always returns to, shadowed by the weeping willow whose branches hang low, just brushing the water’s surface. The dirt is cool beneath him, scarred shoulders twitching with battles gone past as he drifts into sleep.
Set awakens with a start at the loud caw, mismatched lids snapping open to reveal deep gold irises, a sinking feeling in his gut. He looks up to find a raven perched atop the somber grey rock, having brought some half-torn squirrel to sup on only to find a piebald stallion resting against his favored dining perch. It hops toward the stallion, head tilted in that curious manner of his kind, squawking it's annoyance. Set watches it for a moment, his expression blank, before smiling vaguely and setting fire to the obnoxious little vermin. White hot it burns, managing to choke out one final, strangled sound before there is nothing but ash left. Unperturbed, Set rises to his feet. The remains of the squirrel still lies atop the boulder, it’s tail and hindquarters the only pieces left intact, viscera a hopeless, tangled mess. Briefly he inspects it before turning away, jaw stretched wide in yawn turned smile as the half-squirrel suddenly leaps to life, scampering off into the woods, intestines hopping and skipping behind the now two-legged creature.
Momentary distraction gone, he cannot shake this strange feeling.
He wades into the water, welcoming the chill as he lowers his head to drink. Perhaps it was time to do something about his life’s stagnancy. Decades have come and gone since he was the crowned prince of the Chamber, heir to his mother’s throne. The Alliance is but a distance memory of battles hard fought and won. What does he have to show for the years in between? Sensing movement in the distance, he raises his head, water dripping from his chin. One ear twists forward, the other back, sentries switching positions at will as he narrows in on this second source of disturbance.
His soul drops, his tattered heart stops.
It cannot be.
His magic is forgotten in the thrill of the moment as the dead traverses the distance between the two. A chill tickle-taps down his spine, rendering him motionless, speechless. It simply cannot be. How many times had he explored the depths of the underworld, forcing his son to return time and again to search the deepest recesses of the afterlife? All his searching had been for naught, his mother lost to the past forever … Yet here she walks, alive and well, her footsteps echoing the sharp staccato of his thundering heart. It cannot be …
“Mother?” he croaks, blinking wildly against the nearly overwhelming emotions. “Mother,” he whispers, unaware of long limbs with a mind of their own, the water that parts before him as he delves deeper, the earth that drops away beneath his feet. Powerful strokes take him across the center of the lake, striped hooves finding the silty mud beneath him once again. Even as he emerges from the depths, he does not take his eyes off of her, fearful that she will disappear before he can reach her. It simply cannot be … and the soft clinking of bracelets, the glint of gold from her ears tells him indeed, it is not.
It is the cruelest joke, this creature who mocks his sorrow. A low, wailing sound fills his ears, the ominous rumble of an avalanche and it is several seconds before he realizes it is him. It is not Starlace who wanders amongst the burnt and blackened pines – a fake, an imposter. Trembling, he takes a step forward, now two. Tears track down his face, running over high cheekbones to fall to the earth below, tears of anger, tears of loss. The ground beneath him begins to tremble in empathy, spreading out across the clearing like a sickness. The stalwart pines lash against one another in a wild display of his angst, the earth falling away in a wide circle to trap her there, with him.
“You had not right,” he seethes in a whisper of pain and anger. Despite the chaos his pain has brought to the once-quiet clearing, she will hear him, and he her …
skin to bone, steel to rust
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Set
