to remind you of my love

that was pointlesss. we could have stayed strangers

Pomp and swagger, wrapped in feathers. Footprints tipped with claws that fade with each crash of waves against the shore. He's back, warmed by the Torchline sands and cooled by the Deepfrost gales that have carried him here.

Arsen walks, watched by eyes much sharper than most. He's tracked and weighed and judged and measured - his fate was decided back on his first day in Torchline, not that he could have known it back then.

He is already dead even before the sack is drawn tight over his head. Before he's struck hard, before he's dragged away, before events unfold as they always would.

He is dead long, long before he stops breathing.

Arsen

oceans rise, empires fall, we have seen each other through it all

Light dapples on the walls of the Slagveld when dawn breaks. The building is sleepy at this time, until its proprietor comes to open the place up. And when the boy does come - oh, what a sight will greet him.

The harpy is splayed upon one of the walls overlooking the boxing ring, wings and talons stretched out wide, as if in welcome. Blood and mottled feathers slick the floor, rusting through the sand, clogging all with red.

Arsen has been dead for hours now - not a drop of blood remains in his body, making his cause of death easy to discern. There is enough crimson on the ground to drown in.

And that is precisely the point.

Nearby, a note in a hand that Sunjata will recognise well:

Ek het jou 'n guns gedoen. Maak hierdie gemors nou skoon

~FIN

SHAJU