who we are and all that we're trying to be
The goddess found his weaknesses and plucked them for all to see – except it was just them, in the here and now, while his eyes flickered to Amalia, the mocking, the jeering, crooning over his form. So intrinsically flawed, so defective, so lacking, and she knew, had seen how he’d tucked himself behind high walls and massive fortifications, how it was the easiest route, to not let anyone in.
Then she was before him, eye-to-eye, sword and stars, and he held his breath, a sharp inhale as she riddled and scorched. When will you learn? Perhaps never – too daft, too slow, eroding, decaying, wilting before he ever managed to understand or comprehend what was required. He took hold of blades, cutlasses, and shields because they were steel and iron, because they were better than himself, because it was an extension of him –
Outside of himself – as if anything on the inside had any value at all. He didn’t want to look inside. He didn’t want to see the shards and claws and scars, the void, the abyss, lying in between ribs and lungs.
Before he could truly contemplate what she meant, he was lifted by the throat, incapable of growling, of screaming, of howling into the skyline, along the horizons. His hands thought to wrap around hers and claw, rip, tear, but then – it would be him and the clouds, falling, falling, falling. His chest heaved and he forgot how to breathe, staring at her, a singular chance while terror and damnation pulsed in his veins. The wind brushed against his ankles, and death loomed, just as it had done from his incantations, from his enchantments, since the moment he’d been baptized in blood and barbarity.
But none of that was here now – just the ghosts, just the sprigs of the breeze, just the open sky beneath his feet.
This was a test.
He was going to die.
Too cowardly to fail. Hadn’t he failed before? Or maybe it didn’t matter anymore. He hadn’t been sent to the gallows for a third time yet. But he was about to be.
Strength in himself. Strength in himself. It was a ballad in his panic, in his trepidation, and then, a strange, eerie, otherworldly tolerance, what all the others he’d sieged his power upon must’ve felt. Death would either sing in his bones, or something else would take root, take hold.
His jaw clenched, and he nodded. Do it would’ve pierced from his mouth, but the notion of acceptance was already there in the singular movement.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
