who we are and all that we're trying to be
They came together again: back into the struggle, back into the nuances, the restless entropy galvanizing, harpooning them to these shifts and alterations. There was a cumbersome, overwhelming feeling clustered and coiled over his spine, down his shoulders, at the distinction between waiting and rebellion: how they would get there, what they would need to accomplish, pushing him further and further, back into the denizens of sedition and anarchy. The open forum had been a disastrous thing, but effective in its own way, because now they were all fully aware of where they stood, of where they needed to be, meeting down in the basement, furtive and secret until duplicity and liberation could encase, could embody, the whole – mutiny in their claws, in their spirits, in their irreverence. They knew she was incapable of listening. They knew she was incapable of comprehending their concerns. They knew she was a politician and a tyrant through and through, and despite some of the good she might’ve been committing into the terrain, the maddening outliers stacked against her. Rexanna’s case was a bloody, minatory force in his skull too, a weighted echo puncturing the back of his skull.
He slid in on the evening air, Zuriel nodding and waiting outside, a warning beacon (and a weapon; sword at brow) in case they had other lurking forces along the walls and eaves. Then the beast listened, to Amalia’s discourse, to the choices they’d have to make, who was going to be the helm, the throne, when they tossed the Merciless off. He nodded and found himself a chair, watching, waiting, for the proceedings to begin: his time as a king had already come and gone, thank you very much, and he had no intentions of repeating the debacle. There were others here far more skilled, far more proficient, far more capable; and he allowed a hint of a smile as Ronin took to the floor, announcing his predilections, his candidacy. His mind reeled at the last sentence, at the way they’d all finally managed to agree on something: she does not deserve to rule.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
