05-03-2015, 03:24 PM
KINGSLAY
They always know.
They can feel him before he ever comes. He is the prickle on the backs of their necks that leaves the hair standing on end. He is the distant snapping of twigs and branches underfoot when there is no one in sight. He leaves raised bumps along their skin, and sends the whites of their eyes rolling in fear. They always know. It is an instinct bred so deeply into them that it winds in helical ways around the strands of their DNA.
They always know.
They always know, but they never listen.
They aren’t listening now. They can’t hear the sounds of his ribs as they rattle, or the gluttonous mewls of the thing that drives him (a thing that wants blood, a thing that can never be satiated). If they heard they would run. If they heard the sounds of salivating jaws, or bones breaking, they would never look back.
Etro heard, once.
Etro looked back, every time except the last one.
‘Welcome to the Deserts,’ the first one says, and he says nothing but remembers the sandstorm in Yael’s eyes and knows that he has never been welcome here. He does not belong anywhere, or to anything. He is a god. He is a king. He is death.
They should run.
They should run because he can taste the blood in their veins. They should run because he wants to smell their flesh as it burns, and add their bones to his pyre. They should run because the flames along the back of him burn white-hot, and they’ll start to find the heat uncomfortable. The temperature will climb slowly for now. He’s only playing, for now. He wants to see the sweat roll down their necks and backs. He wants to see them squirm.
He will not answer why he has come, but the answer will swim in his eyes like the galaxies swam in hers.
He will always come back for Etro.
He took life, but she took him.
“Kingslay,” comes the hiss that parts his lips at last when he is ready.
And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.