and lord, I fashion dark gods too;
Ungrateful.
He hears the murmurs, though he pretends not to. He had promised them that he would take a land, and did he not? Yes, it is a wasteland, a barren, hideous, place, but he doesn’t quite mind – he minds more that this was not his intention.
(For he had a wasteland, once, an old battleground. A place where he fought, and died, and walked again.)
So he doesn’t mind this. Perhaps in time they will seed it with trees, or perhaps he will keep it like this, a scar drawn across Beqanna’s breast.
He keeps none of them here. The land (wretched place though it is) is here, and it is enough. It is his mark.
The fever has subsided, somewhat; the pain slowing from a river to a trickle. He still sweats as he moves about here, leaving salt-streaks on his dry coat as it evaporates.
He eyes them, knows he should say something. It feels strange, to be a king again, tied to a land that’s not just his kingdom, but his
creation.
“This land is our bounty,” he says. Bounty is an odd word to use when describing such a place, but he uses it nonetheless, “our fair salvage.”
(There had been nothing fair about what he had done to make it.)
“You may stay, or not,” he says, “those who stay, I welcome you. You may build. You may bring your children here, your lovers.”
Once, he might have demanded the men leave, might have created for himself a harem. Now, he needs no such thing. It doesn’t matter.
Ah, their cancerous king, crowned again in dust and dismay. Waiting to remake a place that should never have existed at all.
c a r n a g e