09-28-2018, 07:09 AM
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Khaedrik came upon his doom, studded with horror and all the traits of that which lurks and lures children, into the shade of night.
When water-air slides down his throat like sweet wine, Khaedrik raises his head; and stares into the wet eyes of his demons, amassed and collected.
And smiling.
And speaking.
<i>”She is sick.”</i>
Khaedrik had arrived in this land thusly attired in the rivers of his life; for blood, and sweat, and tears all ran down the contours and angles of his face. They did not forgive, or absolve, or renew; they were useless, as he was. Khaedrik himself was a dream of an imperfect golden stallion down here, a clustering of pain, a ghost more than he was flesh and vein – but he does not know that, though he fears it to be true. This chaos of thought and madness and all lost hearts had a single chord, reverberating without end, inside; a string, plucked by Carnage’s unforgiving hand.
There is the pain; wild and relentless; stretching its claws inside him as the pieces of Pangea seeks to reunite with their maker. Her sick, dying heart calls out for him as he falls to his knees again. The stench of it came in shifting zephyrs, and he breathed the scent of death as though it was the only thing to keep him alive.
<i>”Make the sacrifice”</i>
He can feel it – the briery edges of something clawing its way out of his chest and he wept the burning oceans that come when an old wound is opened, and newly pierced.
The corners and corridors of this place are not friendly. Oh, he did not know, this maker of shadows, that he was dashing towards his greatest fear; we mortals rarely do know the turns our feet take. But there, with a rake’s burning smile, lay the zenith of all Khaedrik’s fears on a pillow of emerald light. Though bejewelled and edged with gleaming, ailing light, the heart continues to beat faintly. This threnody of his own demise – calling softly for the pieces of dirt embedded in his chest. And all he could do was bleed.
From the shade of his own racing heart, he peered into Pangea’s many rotting souls and dissembling halls – and found the same smiling darkness, that lurked inside his own breast. On every outstretched bough, at least one glazed eye was mounted. On every breathless silence, fey shadow was fastened, by a tether of heartbeat on dying earth.
Khaedrik clenches now; made delirious by the onslaught of pain.
<i>”Cement the bond”</i>
And before his unseeing eyes came shadows that danced without owners, things that moved without existing and evaporated as quickly as they came. In strange consequence they collected themselves about his feet, enshrouding the crimson-bright pool of blood there in black.
How fitting.
He feels more alive in dying than ever before. As the blood leaves his veins and returns to Pangea’s greedy maw. As pain renders his body useless – a pile of dead matter and nothing else – as the pieces hum violently against the confines of his bones and skin – threatening to tear it all apart.
He could hear it, even as his breath laboured in gasps and wheezes from his mouth, even as his heart gave its final footsteps against his breath; a lute, a note, a single thought. It echoes, and dies, and gives a silence that animal feet or mouse whispers or any forest symphony could not destroy. Then, oh, then, it returns; and blazes, for the instant of his life, the image of a sun-child inferno.
The last thing he saw was that sick drumbeat light; carmine now with the blood of his sacrifice; and then he coughed on ocean-water and saw only the murk of his mind.
Then, time.
Untold, perhaps none at all.
Counted in the scent of the sea as it strengthens.
And <i>life.</i>
It coils around his heart with choking tendrils. These coy, strangling wisps tightened now; and pulled his head upward on an intangible string. In the universe of his gaze (an empty place, of pooled torment and nightmares still fermenting), there was only the leering face of a god, wreathed in scintillation.
Oh Lord, what have they done.
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Khaedrik came upon his doom, studded with horror and all the traits of that which lurks and lures children, into the shade of night.
When water-air slides down his throat like sweet wine, Khaedrik raises his head; and stares into the wet eyes of his demons, amassed and collected.
And smiling.
And speaking.
<i>”She is sick.”</i>
Khaedrik had arrived in this land thusly attired in the rivers of his life; for blood, and sweat, and tears all ran down the contours and angles of his face. They did not forgive, or absolve, or renew; they were useless, as he was. Khaedrik himself was a dream of an imperfect golden stallion down here, a clustering of pain, a ghost more than he was flesh and vein – but he does not know that, though he fears it to be true. This chaos of thought and madness and all lost hearts had a single chord, reverberating without end, inside; a string, plucked by Carnage’s unforgiving hand.
There is the pain; wild and relentless; stretching its claws inside him as the pieces of Pangea seeks to reunite with their maker. Her sick, dying heart calls out for him as he falls to his knees again. The stench of it came in shifting zephyrs, and he breathed the scent of death as though it was the only thing to keep him alive.
<i>”Make the sacrifice”</i>
He can feel it – the briery edges of something clawing its way out of his chest and he wept the burning oceans that come when an old wound is opened, and newly pierced.
The corners and corridors of this place are not friendly. Oh, he did not know, this maker of shadows, that he was dashing towards his greatest fear; we mortals rarely do know the turns our feet take. But there, with a rake’s burning smile, lay the zenith of all Khaedrik’s fears on a pillow of emerald light. Though bejewelled and edged with gleaming, ailing light, the heart continues to beat faintly. This threnody of his own demise – calling softly for the pieces of dirt embedded in his chest. And all he could do was bleed.
From the shade of his own racing heart, he peered into Pangea’s many rotting souls and dissembling halls – and found the same smiling darkness, that lurked inside his own breast. On every outstretched bough, at least one glazed eye was mounted. On every breathless silence, fey shadow was fastened, by a tether of heartbeat on dying earth.
Khaedrik clenches now; made delirious by the onslaught of pain.
<i>”Cement the bond”</i>
And before his unseeing eyes came shadows that danced without owners, things that moved without existing and evaporated as quickly as they came. In strange consequence they collected themselves about his feet, enshrouding the crimson-bright pool of blood there in black.
How fitting.
He feels more alive in dying than ever before. As the blood leaves his veins and returns to Pangea’s greedy maw. As pain renders his body useless – a pile of dead matter and nothing else – as the pieces hum violently against the confines of his bones and skin – threatening to tear it all apart.
He could hear it, even as his breath laboured in gasps and wheezes from his mouth, even as his heart gave its final footsteps against his breath; a lute, a note, a single thought. It echoes, and dies, and gives a silence that animal feet or mouse whispers or any forest symphony could not destroy. Then, oh, then, it returns; and blazes, for the instant of his life, the image of a sun-child inferno.
The last thing he saw was that sick drumbeat light; carmine now with the blood of his sacrifice; and then he coughed on ocean-water and saw only the murk of his mind.
Then, time.
Untold, perhaps none at all.
Counted in the scent of the sea as it strengthens.
And <i>life.</i>
It coils around his heart with choking tendrils. These coy, strangling wisps tightened now; and pulled his head upward on an intangible string. In the universe of his gaze (an empty place, of pooled torment and nightmares still fermenting), there was only the leering face of a god, wreathed in scintillation.
Oh Lord, what have they done.
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