06-21-2022, 05:58 PM
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
He can remember mortality, faintly – being young, knowing already that he was strange, that he was powerful. Knowing he was different. He had not known what that meant, of course, had thought no further than the garish shows of power – killing an old king to ascend his throne, one measly kingdom amongst several. He’d thought that the apex of power, with this throne earned through bloodshed, the women eager for his children, Beqanna shuddering at his actions. He'd dreamed no further than that, really, not until his first death – fire, it had been fire – and then he had his taste of godhood, of other worlds, and so the story really begun.
He had wanted to love. He remembers that, too. He and Gail, children, each other’s first, her saying I love him and him saying nothing but listening to the thrum of her heart, the song of her blood, and she said it again, I love you.
Later, he would destroy and create worlds for her. He would rip her back from the dead and build her a kingdom of her own.
Maybe that was love.
He doesn’t care, now. He knows there are certain individuals to whom he is drawn, who he will touch softly – though he’ll wound them, too. They are few. They are often short-lived, but sometimes they stay, sometimes they find each other again and again and they still surprise him.
Maybe that’s love. Or it’s the echo of it, the way he was once a mortal thing. A faint tinge in the blood.
But none of this matters. It is not his affairs that are causing pain. She, who had started as nothing, who had been chipped and worn by the gradual erosion of emotions, is the one who hurts.
And he, the dark god, is the deus ex machina who can reset the clock, take these things from her. She may not be better for it – he long ago learned he cannot fix their emotions, you take one thing away and something else crumbles – but he can solve this issue now, can rid her of the fool who preoccupies her mind.
“The pain,” he says, “I can take it away.”
Not his usual thing – in pain, he is a giver, not a receiver – but he is curious to see her reshaped, remade as a star-thing who no longer recalls a soft touch.
He steps closer. He’s close to touching her.
“Just ask,” he says.
As if he needs permission.
c a r n a g e
@Islas