"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
08-18-2020, 02:50 PM (This post was last modified: 08-18-2020, 02:50 PM by jamie.)
from the destruction, out of the flame
He smiles, even as the fog takes him to his knees.
But the shadow thing remains on his feet, watching.
Still the smile remains, even as the chest rattles and the air goes thin. Even, the shadow thing suspects, as the vision goes soft at its edges. And the fog does not retreat until the breath goes shallow, steady. He has not killed him, no, he has only brought him the rest he’d promised.
But Jamie feels no relief.
The joints still ache. The pulse still flutters with exhaustion. The knees still tremble with their own want to buckle. He sinks to the damp forest floor beside his keeper then, exhaling his own rattling breath. He reaches out to rest his mouth on the blue stallion’s shoulder, closing those bold yellow eyes, praying for sleep.
But it does not come. And he cannot command the fog to take him there.
There are several long moments where he waits. Waits for the pain to ease, waits for the awful clamor in his chest to soften. But it is so quiet here that he almost goes deaf with it.
The tremendous effort it takes him to stagger to his feet leaves his chest heaving, his own vision soft at the edges. He is so tired. The pain unbearable.
“Wake up,” he wheezes, quietly at first and then louder, “wake up.”
There is no venom in the voice. Only volume because he cannot reach out and shake him awake. He is not an angry thing, Jamie. He is too tired to be anything but tired.
“You lied,” he murmurs into the darkness. It is a mournful sound. “You lied to me.” So full up with sorrow that he almost chokes on it.
The darkness that greets him is nothing like he has seen before.
It is quiet, still, and endless.
There are no voices, no demons howling their commands and rattling his brain loose, not even his own subconscious thoughts to trickle timidly to the forefront. There is simply nothing and Balto wonders if death is really this simple. The stallion fades into this state of nonexistence, where nothing is king and time no longer flows, the warmth of peace satisfying him in a way that leads him only closer; a tranquil path towards the afterlife that the shadow monster takes him down, like an old friend.
But suddenly, it is all ripped away from him.
He first feels the hardness of the forest floor beneath his body, cold and unforgiving against his aching muscles and weary bones. Then the peaceful blackness that had covered him like a blanket is torn away, shivering beneath the moonlight and attempting to scramble away like a fearful child as terror grips his chest. His darkness, his friend, betrays him. Something like anger then begins to brew, interlocking with his fear and boiling over, his fierce blue gaze snapping upwards at his Darkness, scowling as it shouts at him to wake, accusing him of being a liar.
And it’s voice is so calm, so sorrowful, that Balto’s anger only rages all the more. He had been so close - it had all been so close. But he can do nothing - he is too weak to act on this anger, too broken to do anything. Despite the betrayal that stirs up a whirlwind of emotion within the blue stallion, he struggles to stand. When he finally does and balances on spindly, creaking legs, the exasperation and disappointment are clear on his weary face.
“You lied,” he sharply retorts, repeating him with a growl in his throat, spittle spattering from his dark mouth. He can hear their feet rustling in the empty space behind the shadow beast and his eyes flicker to them, their hollow eyes staring into his and their laughing smiles contorting as jaws unhinge like a viper, low hisses and clicks leaving their dark, abysmal throats. His gaze falls back to the piercing yellow, unafraid and emboldened by the truth of his situation: “We will never rest now.”
The demons rush him, climbing up his legs and across his back, their insect-like legs pricking into his skin as they clamor and writhe. His eyes close as the feels them all around him once again, feeding on whatever is left of him. Had they been visible and real, the blue roan stallion would be painted in twisting black.
The shadow thing has never known true anger.
It is one of the many things that the weakness has taken from him.
So rarely does he have the energy for it and, when he does, there is nothing to rouse it.
But the shadow thing does not take kindly to the accusation.
The darkness flashes its teeth, its ink-black mouth. Gone is the shark-tooth smile. Gone is the feeble attempt at warmth.
The shadow thing does not like being called a liar. Ideas cannot lie, they can only be misconstrued. Thoughts cannot mislead, as they are only thoughts. And he does not belong to this blue stallion and the blue stallion does not belong to him. He has wasted much time believing these things and his heart chugs something painful.
Perhaps his expression would darken if the peculiar face had any features. But he just stares, unblinking, as the stallion succumbs to his demons. The shadow thing cannot see them, nor does he care to. He cannot save this tired soul and this tired soul certainly cannot save him.
For the first time in a long time, he wants to sink his teeth into the stallion’s flesh. He wants to taste the blood. He wants to drain the life out of him for calling him a liar. Isn’t that what the teeth are for? He feels no hunger, he does not feed the way that they feed, so their sharpness must mean something sinister.
“You will never rest,” the shadow thing agrees. How easy it would be to kill him. To snuff the life out of him with those fingers of fog or bleed the life out of him with the razor’s edge teeth. But the darkness is such a vengeful thing. The darkness will not kill him, no. It will continue to punish him. For lying, for calling the shadow thing a liar. To kill him would be too merciful.
“It could have been beautiful,” he continues and the sorrow returns to his tone as he tilts his peculiar head, “but you lied. I don’t belong to you.”
He draws in a long, rattling breath and exhales a mournful sigh. “I could have helped you.”
The kindness (can it even be called that?) that he had found on the shadow and its accompanying darkness withers away, disappearing into nothingness before his very eyes. It’s mouth resembles that of his own demons, frowning and disappointed, teeth flashing amidst the black. It does little to change the expression that the blue stallion holds; he has been betrayed, promised sanctuary only to be released back into the hell he had tried to escape. Twice now they have failed him and he wonders if he should not rely on them any longer - death will never come to him, perhaps it is finally time to face his eternity with willingness.
He is too tired to fight it any longer.
But he still harbors residual anger for this shadow beast, almost wishing that its teeth would find purchase amongst the sallow blue of his mottled skin.
You will never rest.
The darkness repeats him with a sinister voice while the chorus of black bodies scrounging about his skin echoes it in haunted whispers and moans.
Balto nearly presses forward - to push the Darkness to its edge; if he will not be given death willingly, like an old friend, maybe he can force its hand. But their twisting and writhing bodies - slack-jawed and menacing as they howl mournfully into his skin - remind him that there is no escape from his eternal nightmare and that this being will not grant it to him. The rage falls away as the Darkness’ voice becomes solemn and even once again, reminding him of what could have been.
The stallion’s eyes are glassy and crystalline as he stares desperately into the piercing yellow.
No escape.
“Please,” he whispers to the Darkness with a shudder in his pleading voice, “please kill me.” His plea will fall on deaf ears, he knows, but he cannot be certain what will happen once he is left alone. They have pried at the door for so very long and he is so very tired - he must let them in.
Let us in.
The click of their legs and arms across his body is loud and incessant in his ears. A broken-hearted and defeated sound leaves the darkness of his cracked lips, realizing that his chance of finding a savior is now falling through his fingers like precious grains of sand.
“Don’t leave me here.” The words fall out of him desperately, though he knows that the Darkness only lingers perhaps to see him cave in on himself, to succumb to the evil that lurks just outside.
He is oblivious to the demons with their biting teeth and their scurrying feet. He cannot hear them the way the blue stallion hears them.
How peculiar. Because certainly the demons should belong to the darkness.
Surely the shadow thing should understand them even better than he understands the blue stallion who had looked at him and called him a liar. The shadow thing had not lied. He had tried to help him, but why should he try to help a thing that had lied to him first?
No, the darkness knows only silence except for the rattle of his ribcage and the feeble lungs within it. He pants and wheezes and struggles against the aching and exhaustion in his limbs. They could have rested, the both of them, they could have known peace if he had not lied.
The shadow thing is oblivious to the demons and so does not understand the desperation in the stallion’s voice. Please, please. He will not kill him, no matter how he begs. He has never known anger so intimately. It has never made him so cruel. But he shuffles soundlessly away from the pleas.
He understands the sound that comes whistling out of his mouth but it does not move him to sympathy. He has suffered. His whole life, he has suffered. He is not swayed by it.
But he does linger. And whether it be for the reason the blue stallion suspects remains to be seen. The shadow thing does not know why he stays.
Perhaps to prove that he is not a monster.
(Though wouldn’t only a monster stay only to witness the collapse?)
But the blue stallion asks him not to leave, so he doesn’t. He stays there, lurking in the shadows, watching.
“Let go,” the darkness says. It is the only help he offers. He calls back his fog until it curls sweetly into his sides and does not venture any further. It does not soothe the stallion, does not lull him back into the darkness. No, he only stands and watches.
He trembles, dark nostrils flaring and his eyes rolling white. That moment of reprieve is now gone; fallen away like sand on a turbulent seashore. His time of clarity is waning, more so than it had in the beginning of the night. Their voices are screeching and chittering, louder and louder, drowning out his labored breath and his pitiful pleas with their own chorus; the moment they had been grooming him for years is finally nearing the precipice. Balto had been so close to salvation, to reprieve, and now it sinks back from him, leaving him to succumb to the insanity he had fought so long to keep at bay.
He cries out, helpless, reaching out for the darkness but finding nothing to cling to. The walls are crumbling, the foundation cracking as their talons and claws dig and dig and dig, trying to squeeze beneath his skin and live within his very marrow. He is still there - a part of the shadows, completely now - and he watches Balto with those same piercing eyes that are now seared into his memory forever.
Let go, he tells him when his blue eyes find yellow. Balto’s face contorts into pure terror as the command rattles through him, his dark demons echoing in haunting whispers all across his skin. He tries to call to him again, to save him, to help him, but nothing comes from his throat. The devils fill his mouth, pouring into his body like smoke; he chokes and sputters on seemingly nothing, those crystal blue irises wide on the fierce yellow of the darkness.
The last one enters him, its tail like a sliver of a viper in the way it wriggles down his throat, and Balto’s sounds of turmoil immediately cease. The stallion’s head lowers for a moment as if gathering his bearings. For a long time, it is like this - silent and still - before the blue stallion’s head finally lifts, meeting the shadow beast’s eyes with new resilience in his own, glimmering with madness.
“Thank you,” comes his voice - and it is his voice, of course, but the actual sound of it is nothing like it had been moments before. The words are venomous and ghastly, absent of all the weariness and the sorrow that had been there. “He will never rest.”
And then a smile - dark and morbid and full of hellish secrets - curls carefully into the dark of his cracked lips.
He feels no remorse, Jamie.
This battle is not his.
And he would have helped if he had not been lied to. They could have both been saved. Spared their shared misery.
No, it is not remorse the shadow thing feels when the stallion succumbs to his demons. It is some strange misery. A wailing sorrow that blooms and bursts in the cavern of his deep black chest. The sound of it echoes in his head, even if he does not open his mouth to let it loose.
It is grief. A great, yawning chasm that opens up at the very center of him.
He should not have come here, the shadow thing. He should never have been drawn to the blue stallion who looks at him now, unblinking. And the voice is clear when he speaks next. Strong in its sinister nature.
This is who the blue stallion really is.
Or should be, the shadow thing thinks.
But he remembers still the desperate sounds he had made. He remembers the desperation. The dark heart twitches and spasms. He lets loose his own mournful sound. And he sinks closer and he touches the stallion with his dark mouth, but neither of them feel it. They are both gone now.
Still, he touches him and he sighs. And he closes those freakish yellow eyes and huffs out a cold breath. And even when he drifts away again, the fog still curls itself sweetly through the blue stallion’s legs. Kisses him so tenderly. And the shadow thing tilts its peculiar head and blinks at him baleful.
“He wouldn’t let me help him.” Whispers it into the space between them. All heartbreak. Whispers it to whatever dark thing the blue stallion has succumbed to. “I tried,” he says, wheezes, rasps. It makes his knees weak, the weight of all of his grief. “I tried to help him.”
jamie
